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And more kitty art, courtesy of artist Kevin Chan. According to his web site, HeyItsMeu.com, “Kevin Chan is a Los Angeles-based illustrator, designer and multidisciplinary maker.” In spite of the title he’s chosen, he doesn’t only do cats — you’ll find dogs, bears, sheep, and monkeys there too. Many of them available on pins, plushies, prints, and other items that he sells through his Etsy store.

image c. 2018 by Kevin Chan

I would totally go to Cats island.
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Chlorophylle et le Monstre des Trois Sources, by Jean-Luc Cornette (writer) and René Hausman (artist). Illustrated.
Brussels, Le Lombard, March 2016, hardcover, €14,99 (48 pages), Kindle €9,99.

Thanks, as always with French bandes dessinées, to Lex Nakashima for loaning this to me to review.

I am a big fan of the original Chlorophylle stories written and drawn by Raymond Macherot (1924-2008) in the 1950s and 1960s. They have all been reprinted in an attractive three-volume Intégrale set, which I applaud and recommend.

Today Le Lombard is having new adventures produced of many of its most popular comic strips of the French-Belgian “Golden Age” of the 1950s and 1960s, by the most prestigious artists of today. (You should see what has been done with Mickey Mouse!)

Both Cornette and Hausman have had long careers in the French-Belgian comic-book industry as both artists and writers. I will speculate that the main attraction of Chlorophylle and the Monster of Three Sources is Hausman’s detailed watercolor art.

I can appreciate it intellectually. But on a basic emotional level, it seems wrong. It’s like seeing a Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge story by Jack Kirby or Art Spiegelman in their own art styles – or, contrariwise, a Captain America adventure or a Maus episode drawn in Carl Barks’ art style. But this is being done deliberately.

Macherot made Chloro’s woodland village in “le petit bosquet” (the little grove) look like a little animal village in the forest. The houses in treetrunks and hillocks had front doors and windows. The mice and rabbits and crows wore scarves and hats. In Hausman’s interpretation, they are all unclothed animals living in bushes and tall grasses that are so spiky with twigs and thorns that it’s a wonder the smaller animals don’t spend their time caught up in tangles.

S. Salin in BDGest says that this is an homage, a makeover; not an imitation. Hausman knew and respected Macherot and his work, and he chose to draw Chloro and his northern European woodland grove in a more realistic style than Macherot did. This is Chloro and Minimum just before they abandoned the grove for the island of Coquefredouille and its animal civilization.

Chloro (dormouse) and Minimum (mouse) have had their adventure in a small human city (Pas de Salami pour Célimène, 1957) and returned to the little grove. Minimum has gotten a crush on Particule Piquechester, the youngest and prettiest of the three Piquechester mouse sisters. Particule has chosen to leave her sisters and build her own cabin on the shore of the lake of three sources (three small riverlets feed into it), where she goes swimming.

“‘Particule, do you know that we’re swimming in an enchanted lake?’ Minimum asks. ‘Do you know the legend of the lake of three sources?’ ‘No! I’ve never heard of it.’ ‘They say that the three riverlets are those of friendship… of love…and of separation. The water of the three riverlets mixes in the lake. When someone swims in it, they have to go to a place far from friendship and love to find separation.’” (pgs. 9-10) The next day Particule is missing and her cabin has been smashed to rubble. Chloro leads a rescue mission of Serpolet the rabbit, Particule’s sisters Olive and Vinaigrette, the beaver family, and others to find her (Minimum is too distraught to do anything practical).

To give away a major spoiler, Particule has been kidnapped by Caczor, a genuine Frankenstein’s monster sewn together from a badger and a hedgehog. But like the monster in Shelly’s original novel, Caczor is more a creature of pathos than of horror. The bittersweet ending leaves Minimum free to go with Chloro on future adventures.

Chlorophylle et le Monstre des Trois Sources is successful on its own terms as an-homage-and-not-an-imitation. It’s interesting to see Chloro the dormouse, Minimum the mouse, Serpolet the rabbit, Torpedo the otter, and others drawn in – well, not a realistic style, but more realistically than in Macherot’s funny-animal style. I certainly wouldn’t have recognized them if they hadn’t been addressed by name in the dialogue. Get it as a sample of René Hausman’s — a major European cartoonist’s – art style, in a rare example of his talking-animal art.

– Fred Patten

• Buy on Amazon

La souris Pâquerette a disparu. Chlorophylle et Minimum comprennent très vite qu’elle a été enlevée par le terrible monstre du lac. Sans perdre un instant, les deux compères et leurs amis se lancent sur les traces de la créature. Mais la chasse au monstre leur réserve bien des surprises… René Hausman et Jean-Luc Cornette unissent leurs talents pour rendre un éblouissant hommage au héros culte de Raymond Macherot.

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Nellie Le is another artist with a watercolor style and a very straightforward cartoony look — which she puts forward to good effect. At her web site she shows off her latest paintings and prints, but as you can see at her Shopify store she also offers her art on a variety of buttons, bags, pillows, and other household goodies. And, as you can see, many of her items are selling out fast!

image c. 2018 by Nellie Le

Jen Ena is another artist we met at WonderCon (it’s good for those!) As you’ll see on her web site she specializes in highly-stylized fantasy portraits of fairy folk and magical women.  But, if you follow the links to her “Miniatures”, you’ll see her other skill: Creating really, really small paintings of kittens, little dogs, and other fuzzy things. Many of which you can purchase at her Big Cartel store.

Image c. 2018 by Jel Ena

Ok, Vivziepop gets a lot of leeway here. Yeah, have to squint a bit for the furry side of this but it's the Die Young animatorso OMG!
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Author and “sit down comedian” Christopher Locke is back with his second novel, Vincent and the Dissidents. It’s the sequel to Persimmon Takes On Humanity, which of course we talked about before. “In Book Two, while Persimmon and The Enlighteners continue their daring efforts to rescue all animals who are suffering, little do they know that Vincent — the cunning mink who helped the team liberate a fur farm — has been assembling an army. Vincent and The Dissidents are conducting their own rescue missions, but their violent tactics against humans are quickly leading to catastrophic consequences.” Vincent is available now in paperback from Fathoming Press.

image c. 2018 Fathoming Press

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Black Friday, by Jan Stryvant.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, September 2017, trade paperback, $9.99 (226         pages, Kindle $3.95.

Perfect Strangers, by Jan Stryvant.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, September 2017, trade paperback, $9.99 (240 pages), Kindle $3.99.

Over Our Heads, by Jan Stryvant.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, October 2017, trade paperback, $10.99 (252 pages), Kindle $3.99.

Head Down, by Jan Stryvant.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, November 2017, trade paperback, $10.99 (250 pages), Kindle $3.99.

When It Falls, by Jan Stryvant.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, January 2018, trade paperback, $10.99 (284 pages), Kindle $3.99.

Stand On It, by Jan Stryvant.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, January 2018, trade paperback, $10.99 (256 pages), Kindle $3.99.

The first sentence of Black Friday is, “Sean looked both ways as he started across the street, not that there was much traffic during the day here at the University of Nevada, Reno campus this late in the day.” The third sentence is, “Mid-terms had just finished and he was pretty happy with his grades this semester, he’d finally gotten the hang of this whole ‘college’ thing, so what if it had taken him nearly three years!” Sean may be a college student, but I’ll bet he hasn’t been taking any writing courses.

Black Friday is the first novel in the six-volume The Valens Legacy. It is one of the five novels on the 2017 Ursa Major Awards ballot for Best Anthropomorphic Novel of the Year. It has 506(!) customer reviews currently on Amazon (most books are lucky to get 10 customer reviews), mostly five-star and 4-star reviews, although I agree more with the first cited, a two-star review: “Entirely avoidable grammatical mistakes, misuse of terms and DEAR LORD the treatment of adjectives!”

The other four Ursa Major finalists for Best Novel are Always Gray in Winter by Mark J. Engels, Otters in Space III: Octopus Ascending by Mary E. Lowd, Kismet by Watts Martin, and The Wayward Astronomer by Geoffrey Thomas. I have seen all four of these discussed on furry-fandom websites. I have not seen any indication that anyone in furry fandom has been reading Black Friday. Where did its nominations come from?

Sean Valens has been a student at UN,R for three years. He is walking across the campus when someone tries to kidnap him.

“A van screeched to a halt in front of him, the side door sliding open as a man with his face covered jumped out and ran to help the guy Sean was now struggling with. When a hand came over his mouth as he started to yell, he bit down hard, enjoying the curse of pain from behind him, the guy being distracted enough for Sean to move to his right and slam his hand back into the man’s crotch.

[…]

Sean came to slowly, to the sound of gunfire. In the tight enclosure of the van, it was painfully loud. Grabbing for the hood over his head he gasped in pain, his right arm lit up in agony. Using his left he ripped the hood off and looking around it was complete and utter mayhem. He was covered in blood, and from the bone sticking out of his forearm, it was pretty clear that a lot of it was his.

The van was a complete wreck, the windshield was gone and from the blood and pieces of flesh on the broken jagged edges, he suspected someone had gone through it. There was now a telephone pole where the passenger’s seat used to be. The driver, who was either dead or unconscious, was slumped over the steering wheel, still belted into the seat.

[…]

But that wasn’t the part that was strange; it was what the man was shooting at.

A lion.

He was shooting at a lion.

But this lion didn’t look like any lion Sean had ever seen before, and again, living in Reno, he’d seen quite a few. No, this lion was huge, well wait, weren’t all lions huge?

It hit him, it was a lion-man, and just as the kidnapper fired another shot, the lion-man finally grabbed the arm that was holding the gun, and with a sickening wet sound he ripped it off.” (pgs. 5-8)

The writing may leave something to be desired, but you can’t say it lacks action. This is on the UN,R campus in broad daylight, remember.

Sean and the lion-man escape. The lion-man, who is a were-lion friend of Sean’s dead father, has been shot with silver bullets several times and is dying, so he hurriedly bites Sean and turns him into a were-lion with instantaneous healing abilities.

The rest of the book, and presumably the next five, are about Sean with the aura of an alpha-lion. Everyone knows that in lion prides, the males just relax and let the lionesses do all the work.

“‘Let’s go back to my place,’ Roxy said, grabbing his arm. She could see the conflict raging behind his eyes. His beast was starting to come out.

‘Are you sure?’ Sean asked, because he was totally unsure of himself right now, he knew if he got her alone, well, he was sure to get himself in trouble!

‘Yes,’ Roxy said dropping her voice to a more sultry timber, ‘I’m very sure.’” (p. 22)

Roxy Channing knows this because she’s already a werecheetah. They have mucho macho sex together. Roxy recruits her best friend, Jolene, a tantric (sex) witch, to be part of Sean’s pride.

“‘Also, lycans are looked down on by most magic users and the greater magical community.’

‘Why?’ Sean asked, and then gave her a little nip that made her gasp.

‘Because you’re animals, of course.’

‘Animals?’ Sean growled and gave another, harder, nip, enjoying the way Jolene arched her back and moaned.

‘Oh, they have a low opinion of tantric magic users, too; they say we’re all sluts and whores.’” (p. 110)

Roxy’s father, also a werecheetah, is resigned to her becoming part of Sean’s pride.

“‘Yeah, lions are like that. They fill their prides with kick ass women and then go absolutely mental if anyone even looks at them sideways.’

[…]

Her father shook his head. ‘You know that the different councils that oversee the wizards and other magic users don’t care for us, Honey. They’re not going to want to tell me anything about Sean’s father, and this definitely sounds like the kind of screwed up mess that they’d cause with their politicking.’” (pgs. 115-116)

It turns out that Sean’s father, who was mysteriously murdered long ago, was a rogue alchemist who was friendly to lycans (lycanthropes), and was killed to keep him from developing some magical benefit for them. Now Sean is within a week of his 21st birthday, and these councils of human wizards are afraid that Sean will inherit his father’s power and complete his work. The bad guys who try to kidnap or kill Sean are from the Council of Vestibulum and the rival Council of Gradatim.

The climax (which has a double meaning in this case) has Sean, Roxy, and Jolene attacked by lightning elementals:

“‘So,’ Sean asked, ‘does a lightning elemental look like a ball of static electricity?’

‘Huh?’

Sean pointed down out the doorway and into the area they’d just left. There coming down the staircase was what could only be described as a ball of lighting [sic].

‘Shit,’ Jolene said and pulling out a piece of chalk she started drawing on the floor. ‘Guys, I know this is rude, but if the two of you could start fucking like bunnies, that would be great.’” (pgs. 213-214)

Does Black Friday (cover by eBook Launch) have any female readers? It seems like such an adolescent male fantasy. The covers of some of the later volumes of The Valens Legacy show that Sean’s harem pride grows. Both Roxy and Sean shift into their humanoid cheetah and lion forms, and there are other lycans seen briefly such as a wereboar, that furry fans will not feel disappointed for that reason. Happy rutting!

Black Friday is a Ursa Major Award finalist! Have any furry fans read it?

– Fred Patten

• Buy Black Friday (Book 1) on Amazon
• Buy Perfect Strangers (Book 2) on Amazon
• Buy Over Our Heads (Book 3) on Amazon
• Buy Head Down (Book 4) on Amazon
• Buy When It Falls (Book 5) on Amazon
• Buy Stand On It (Book 6) on Amazon
• Visit Jan Stryvant’s Website

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Yeah, we've all been there .... probably.
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We set up the Auction Art Contest for this year’s Furrnion.
Visit this form (link⇒) to cast your vote!

The entry Auction Art Contest for Furrnion 2018 appears first in FurryFandom.es.

Fred Patten started off with a message to Patch O’Furr:

This is a rant, as much as anything.  I wrote, as Secretary of the ALAA (AKA the Ursa Major Awards) to the AnthrOhio Committee, to invite it to host next year’s award presentation ceremony.  AnthrOhio is the new name of former Morphicon in Columbus, Ohio. They presented the Ursa Majors in 2008, 2011, and 2015.

I got a very nice reply from Danny Travis, this year’s Director of Programming for AnthrOhio.  He thinks it’s a great idea and has agreed.  But his reply implies that he’s never heard of the Ursa Major Awards, and that he was unaware that they have been presented at Morphicon/AnthrOhio in the past.

This makes me wonder how many of today’s furry conventions are being organized by people who are mainly interested in putting on a big party with fursuits, and little interest or knowledge in furry fandom beyond their own convention, including their own con’s history.  Some like Anthrocon with Dr. Sam Conway and CaliFur with Rod O’Riley (and any con with staffers who have been around for a while) know what’s going on. But how many are being organized by young people who only use the trappings of furry fandom to have a good time?

You have been following not only the conventions but a lot of the smaller furry parties and raves.  Do you get the impression that most attendees are more interested in partying then other active fandom?

Patch wrote back:

I think part of that may be the reach the Ursa Major Awards have. This award has been around for 17 years or so, before some new furries were born.  The growing population of new, young members are less likely to know the founders. They might not be uninterested with everything else fans do – they might just be out of reach.

Kyell Gold’s books, for example, are really popular with young people. Kyell was so successful with the awards that he had to bow out. I’m not sure how many of his fans are even aware about that.

For more reach, keeping a more active presence for the awards year round would be much better than taking it out of hibernation once a year. It would take hard work, like updating a Twitter regularly. That’s why, a while back, I suggested doing a regular “where are they now” series about award winners (and maybe con guests) from the past. There could be an interesting feature about them once a month to sustain regular interest.

Fred answered with an update about recent Ursa Major Award voting:

The voting for the 2017 Ursa Major Awards is closed, and this year’s voting statistics are in. 1,247 people requested a ballot. 882 actually voted. 250 of those waited until the final day to vote.

That isn’t very good. It’s really bad! The ALAA has statistics back to 2009 for the 2008 awards, the first year that the ballot was completely by e-mail (rather than people requesting a paper ballot to be voted upon and physically mailed in). The number of people actually voting, rather than requesting a ballot, have been:

• 2008 = 273
• 2009 = 1,150
• 2010 = 1,372
• 2011 = 1,782
• 2012 = 1,112
• 2013 = 856
• 2014 = 2,851
• 2015 = 1,157
• 2016 = 1,446
• 2017 = 882

The nominees for 2014 included Guardians of the Galaxy for Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture, and Furry Force for Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Short Work or Series. Furry Force was broadcast on College Humor and was one of the few movie or TV productions to acknowledge its Ursa Major nomination. Maybe that was the reason for the unusually large number of votes that year.

Furry fandom supposedly has hundreds of thousands of members and is growing. Theoretically the number of people who know about the Ursa Major Award is also growing each year. But that isn’t reflected in the number of voters each year. It’s been stagnant at 1,200 to 1,300, and took a sharp nosedive this year for reasons unknown.

Some Internet creators ask their fans on their websites to vote for them in the UMAs. We may get a few votes for that reason, but the number of voters still doesn’t go up each year. This year, the Ursa Majors initiated a GoFundMe campaign, and while that has been successful financially, it has not brought any increase in the number of voters. It’s frustrating.

The votes vary from complete ballots – votes in all twelve categories – to votes in only a single category. Most ballots contain votes in about half of the twelve categories. The most popular are Motion Picture, Dramatic Short or Series, and Game – the three that would fall the most if the Ursa Majors were turned into an award for furry fandom creators only.  Movies, TV, and games tend not to be created within furry fandom.  I’m afraid that Best Anthropomorphic Magazine, where Dogpatch Press qualifies, is consistently one of the least voted-upon categories.

Patch thought about it:

This could involve saturation. It’s math – while audience grows, their attention span stays the same. If a group goes from 1,000 to 10,000, but each spend the same hour a day on media, and many of those 10,000 people are also creating media themselves – you see the problem of falling attention span to watch everything.

Creating costs time and money and those who grow a fanbase invest extra effort beyond just enjoying a hobby. If a pool of creators shares revenue among individuals, when they grow, a more-or-less basic share to everyone gets more expensive. Value per person falls and entry cost gets more prohibitive. I think that’s why Youtube creators had ad revenue they depended on cut this year. Only larger producers with more views get it now.

Mainstream book publishing is like that with a few high-traffic bestsellers pulling weight for thousands of “wallpaper” titles. There also used to be the midlist thing with authors who were productive and reliable, even if rarely bestsellers, but I suspect there’s been a lot of polarization with Amazon killing competitors and gaining a monopoly. Furry authors may know the challenge.

Saturation goes with electronic media that can repeat infinitely compared to printing paper. It can go out of control and test the human brain and learning. Black Mirror is a great TV show telling dark futuristic stories about society changing that way. On a down-to-earth level, that saturation can just make a slippery business with a race to the bottom nature.

This is why I think conventions and parties, and the popularity of fursuiting are important community glue. It’s valuable to have real, tangible experiences you can’t download. That’s why this fandom is great compared to others. In fandom there can be advantages for media that’s tethered to a real foundation (like book sales at cons). Engagement can also benefit from the timing of getting it from each other independently of corporate media production schedules.

I think the Ursas could harness that energy from face to face groups and events. How about more focused con panels, workshops, parties, contests, regional awards, or even book clubs? It takes team work, but I hope that helps for ideas about how to keep the awards active. Instead of parties competing against fandom creativity, putting them together could improve both things.

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

OMG! So may growlithe!
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Braden Duncan is an illustrator who creates watercolor-style works under the name Clockwork Art. According to her web site, her main artistic muse is a black kitten named Diesel. The kitten certainly turns up in much of her artwork! (There are a pair of grey kittens who just joined the household, and they’ve been making appearances too.) She also has an affinity for birds — and, as you can probably guess from her moniker, a thing for steampunk. Much of her work is available as prints or ‘fridge magnets from her Etsy Store.

image c. 2018 by Braden Duncan

Welcome to Bessie, of Marfedblog, a comics review and criticism site. There’s furry stuff there, and much more, with devoted curation by a fan doing exactly what they love. If you like this, give it a follow. And expect more syndicated content reposted here. (- Patch)

Even in a room full of people wearing cartoon animal costumes, a guy lugging a box of old vinyl to his table is going to stand out, especially when he starts drawing and painting on them. This is what caught my eye the first time I saw Eryshé Falafe, also known as Joe Meyer, at Pittsburgh’s Anthrocon around 2011. I ended up getting one myself that still takes up pride of place in my office, and eventually ended up carting a not insubstantial pile of vinyl across the pond for him to deface on my latest pilgrimage to Pittsburgh. One of them was the bawdily British  “Sinful Rugby Songs” which was quickly snapped up by a commissioner who also saw it’s parody potential.

Alternating between his three fursonas, cat-bunny hybrid Eryshé Falafe, red roo Divvy and rabbitdeer Galahad he has been producing comics since he was a kid, discovering furry around 2001, with a number of published works including. Slammin Buneez, the autobiographical In the Meantime and his scathing, satirical and unrelenting look at the fandom, Furry Nuuze Teevee. The strips feature Twiggy, a dumb overly enthusiastic canine TV reporter and host of his own show who diligently reports on the fandom. As a character reserved for lambasting and commenting on internal politics and drama that flair up in the fandom with alarming regularity he usually ends up reflecting the positive side of the fandom while making fun of the negative elements and people.

Running since 2006 and the flip side of the coin to FNTV, Destroying the Illusion is Meyer’s series of diary comics about his daily exploits, conventions and the absurdity of everyday life. Instead of the general drama and negativity this series is more introspective autobiographical comics about Joe’s time in the fandom and goings on in his life. Almost always overwhelmingly positive they often reiterate what anyone will say about the furry fandom and tell you makes for a great con experience: the people. Befitting the immediacy of the travel, diary comic  style, Joe’s art on the strips, mostly in black and white have a cartoony look to them and a sketchy quality.

My favourite of his work though has to be his defaced vinyls. Maybe it’s the same feeling that comes from graffiti, that thrill of doing something you’re not supposed too. Don’t worry for the most part the ones he uses are some truly awful records. Inspired in part by a tumblr group featuring vinyl that had been found defaced in simple and random ways. Scribbles, scrawls and misplaced labels from the original owners, the majority of them are ‘found art’ curiosities discovered in charity shops and yard sales. Taking the idea one step further and with more care and attention Joe has altered and tinkered with  them in various ways, reinterpreting them as unique pieces of artwork. Painting over aspects of the cover, usually the figures with a commissioner’s fusona. I love how fun they are and how even within the confines of what’s already on the sleeve he can capture the personalities of the people behind the characters he paints onto them.

The site hosting the older comics is currently down but newer Destroying the Illusion comics (fondly dubbed DTI2.0) are currently hosted on his own site.

Macro crabs .. ? Sure, why not?
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Art by Sisk

Before the web, zines were a gateway to subculture. In the 1990’s, one of my subscriptions was to Industrialnation, a zine for music where robots met punk. I never expected the prison-industrial complex to get involved. It offered a free ad for subscribers, so to be silly, I put something like “send pranks and hate mail”. The underground obliged. I got comics, tapes, and a cursed baby doll with monster fangs and one eye popped out (plus spiders, nails and burned nipples). It was gross-out hilarious. But the most unexpected thing was mail from lonely prisoners. A few of the letters needed to get picked up with tongs and thrown in a barbeque, but most were just forgotten people who’d write to anyone with an open mailbox. It was almost like bottling it and throwing it in the sea. They were in no position to hurt me, and just wanted a voice from outside. Now imagine having a family that didn’t communicate well, and a parent intercepting a letter and shitting squirrels about it. I felt misunderstood. That’s how giving an ear to society’s trash can become mind opening.

http://www.saveoursisk.org is the introduction you need for why Sisk is jailed for a sex offense. Please be familiar with “Sisk’s Story” to make informed comments about her guest post.

I don’t claim to know more facts, and I have questions, but here’s some context I found important. For sex charges against an LGBT person, with extradition from Utah to Arizona, one place is Mormon and the other has Joe Arpaio’s “concentration camps”.  It seems like being gay in Uganda and getting sent to Mordor. If this did involve misunderstanding/prejudice, expect railroading. Whatever the case may be, she’s getting what a court deemed to be fair punishment. Here’s what Sisk has to say about it. – Patch

>> Due to unforeseeable events and a twisted view to "justice" my life as a #trans woman is resident to a male yard in an AZ prison. I'm very much alone as a woman, here, and I face daily trials by those taking advantage of my gender. >>#SaveOurSisk #TDOV #TransDayOfVisibility pic.twitter.com/JStjnpBNpQ

— Siskmarek Namaruk ~☆ (@Tailpoof) March 31, 2018

ORANGE IS THE NEW FLUFF: Furry Life in Prison

 

“Mommy!” A short, bald Chicano squeaks as he glomps me from behind. Others in line with us stare in confusion, annoyance, and a lot of other descriptive words. Even more heads turn as he makes cute animal noises, then pants like a happy dog. Is this a furmeet at the local theatre?

Nope! It’s prison!

I can’t say this is what I expected when I was sentenced. Meeting furries in the wild has always felt like the Internet sprung a leak, and when those furs are in prison the whole experience takes a turn to the twilight zone. It’s as jarring as finding a phone booth on top of a mountain, and I can legitimately make that comparison, because I really did find a phone booth on top of a mountain once! Granted, our numbers are small, but we exist, taking things one day at a time in the Meadows Unit of the Eyman Prison Complex in Sunny Arizona.

Meadows is one of several medium-security protective custody yards dedicated to housing sex offenders. Due to the nature of many sex crimes and the type of people who commit them, sex offender yards are considered “easy” as far as prison experiences go — inmates in here joke that Meadows is a “retirement home” — though no prison is without danger, especially if one sticks out.

For me, being a transgender woman on a male sex offender yard crowds out all other concerns. Dodging predators aside, I’ve never felt the need to bring up my involvement in the furry fandom unless asked. If I did bring it up unprompted, inmates would give me a blank stare, shrug, then move on. The few who have heard of us give the standard line of, “Oh, those guys who have sex in animal costumes?” Given where we are, though, fursuit sex is ordinary compared to that creepy old guy on the yard who pays young inmates for baggies of their semen. For what purpose, you ask? Not even the angels know for sure.

Thus, my experience being a fur in prison is a personal one. For others I’ve had the chance to observe and talk to, it hasn’t always ended well. Sometimes that’s their fault; other times it couldn’t be helped. That’s just how it goes in prison. Boo.

Sometimes A Golf Pencil Is All You’ve Got

Yes, furry prison fetish exists. Art by GabbyGerbs.

My small notoriety in the fandom comes from me being a webcomic artist, and, more recently, from a few other things as well. I eventually decided to violate my probation a few years ago by going online in the face of a lifetime, court mandated ban on my internet access. The wisdom of that decision is arguable, but the loss of my online life was so devastating that I attempted suicide shortly after I was sentenced. That most definitely was a mistake, and after taking almost a month to recover, I concluded that if things were bad enough to die, then they were bad enough to live.

I lived, and did some of my best work with my webcomic, “Ask Keis”. I also helped a lot of people both online and off. Then I learned that ex-wives can be really vindictive. In short, getting into a heated disagreement with a vindictive spouse while they have the leverage to see you thrown in jail is a bad idea. HOMEWRECKING: NOT EVEN ONCE. (I joke).

That I thought the gamble was worth it says how I feel about my connection to the furry fandom. It’s easy to scoff at that, and say it’s just cartoon art and stories, but when you’ve been neck-deep at the bottom of the Geek Hierarchy for two-thirds of your life, all of that becomes you. So when a judge points at you and says your very identity must end, that’s as terrifying as an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. That’s what made me want to die, then want to live.

This is all a lot of words to say that I am my ability to create art and stories that those inside and outside the furry fandom can enjoy, and because this connection still exists even while I’m in a dreadful place like this, I still exist. As long as I still exist, I can do some good in this world, and I have my fiance to thank for that. He works hard to not only build our future, but to also keep my online presence alive.

Working my craft in here is not easy, though. Prisons are negativity vortexes that are fed by an internal culture incompatible with external society. If you think your work environment is bad, try concentrating on a drawing while someone is getting stomped a few bunks away for not paying his debts. Depression is highly contagious, and as of this writing, I’ve been struggling with it for a while. Sorry about that.

On the flipside, being an artist in prison is like being an artist in the fandom: it bestows a special status. There’s no shortage of inmates wanting custom cards or other crafts for their loved ones, and every prison has a thriving, policy-violating tattoo industry. I can neither confirm or deny that my art has made it onto people’s bodies, but I do have an advantage when it comes to stuff like birthday cards for kids. Children are natural furries, so it works out great for the both of us, because I really like drawing fluffy things.

Delivering art in here gives me something I rarely got to experience on the outside, too, and that’s to see my clients’ faces light up in person. Being a prison artist also gives me something else: I get to be seen as just an artist. It’s my fault that I carry the furry artist label on the outside, but in here my art is just art, except for the few who lump my work into the “anime” category. I silently rage inside whenever that happens. Still, it’s a refreshing experience.

Ironically, what’s also a refreshing experience is the challenge of creating art with a minimal set of often sub-par supplies and tools. I don’t know why I’m wired this way, but I take pride in gnawing the tip of a golf pencil to sharpen it, because proper sharpeners aren’t allowed in isolated confinement. If even a golf pencil wasn’t an option, I’d fall back to my own blood. I’ve used it in art before, and I sure as hell will use it again.

opportunity for artists and teachers

It can’t be all tailpoofs and pawprints in here, unfortunately. If you’re a furry artist who’s planning on going to prison, be sure to brush up on your busty human babes, angel wings, demons, skulls, and celtic knotwork.

…or you can, y’know, not go to prison. That works, too. Congratz if you’re on top of this.

The Antithesis Of Furry Culture. Sort Of.

The furries that reside here don’t get much of a chance to socialize together. Meadows is split into East and West yards by a fence, and although there’s a central gate, movement across it is only allowed for limited reasons, and meeting fellow fluffs is not one of them.

An additional barrier is racial. Prisons are racism training camps, and suspicion can easily arise if inmates of different races mingle too much. Caution could be thrown to the wind, but I am aware of another subculture that faced the same racial barrier, and lost: the Juggalos; fans of the Insane Clown Posse, and embracers of weirdness much like furries do.

Juggalos wanted their own “political” group in which they could manage their own affairs, but the established races shut that down quick. They couldn’t have members of their race ignoring edicts because they also held allegiance to another group. LGBT groups have also fallen to this political logic, and a furry group would surely follow in their footsteps. Whatever sense of community a furry was brought up to exercise, that must be left at the prison gate, and a new community beyond their control to belong to will be assigned.

That sounds extreme, but it’s a reality, and I have flirted with disaster on the previous yard I was housed on when I spent most of my time with a guy not of my race, but who was the only person who hailed from the same Internet culture of games, memes, and shit-posting I was a part of. I don’t really know how I can put it any other way than it sucks. I’m doing some serious mental gymnastics to not walk out of here with a trained distrust for other races. My only choice may be to throw in with otherkin, and just hate humanity as a whole.

An unfortunate commonality between prison and furry culture is punishment of those who mess up. There is a fingersnap readiness to brigade and bully, and there are always a few inmates wandering around who have been put on “shine” — don’t interact with them; don’t help them. Trust is able to be rebuilt again, but never fully. History sticks, and instead of websites that list transgressions, prison uses an oral history, and memories are long. The only thing the online world lacks is the ability to punch people over TCP/IP, though I’m sure there’s an RFC working on that. That leaves prison one up.

Another commonality that is really a symptom afflicting modern society as a whole is the age of offenders. A lot of guys I’ve talked with in here were pulled in for crossing that barrier that decides who gets to vote, or get shot at by foreign armies. The depressing average seems to be 18-20 years, and a few were cuffed younger than that, and tried as adults.

All but one of the other furs in here fall in that early adulthood range for their offense. I, myself, was 23 when I committed my crime. It’s up to readers on how to interpret that information, though the low-hanging fruit seems to be that young people are more prone to being dumbasses. That drugs or alcohol were a factor of their offense lends credence to this hypothesis.

I sat with a fur recently, and discussed an uncomfortable subject. We wondered if the fandom was more prone to producing sex offenders than other subcultures. There’s not many furs in here, maybe seven or eight, but in proportion to the total yard population, that’s a high number. I’m in no position to investigate this, and although I have my suspicions, the scientist in me must fall back on the philosophical razor of Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword: Anything not settled empirically is not worth debating. Any sociologists out there are welcome to study this, though, and then piss off the entire fandom if it turns out to be true.

StrawberryNeko: The Crib

Dramatis Fursonae

I’ll spare my readers the detailed biographies of every fur that is or has been on the yard, but a few notables do deserve paragraph space. Their experiences probably speak louder than mine.

Winter is a siberian husky punk rocker with gauged ears, a split tongue, and plenty of piercings, all which match his real self. Seeing him wiggle the two halves of his tongue independent of one another is disturbing and cool, and he’s chill with having his gauged lobes tugged on. That’s probably the best way to describe him: chill, except when he works in the kitchen, apparently. Then he wants to stab people. Winter’s former job on the outside was a porn actor specializing in BDSM. He’s willing to do a lot unless it involves midgets. He’s afraid of midgets. I felt it was inappropriate to press him as to why.

This husky is a recent member of the fandom, having joined two years ago. He’s taken to it fairly well, staying low key for the most part, but not afraid to bring it up in conversation as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Winter is not afraid to say a lot of things, actually. My first exposure to him was on the last yard I lived on (though, I didn’t know he was a furry then), and it involved him jumping atop an outside park table, pointing at me, and shouting, “You’re my next rape victim!” How charming.

Despite what most would consider a horrific introduction (including me), Winter’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of mellow, take-life-as-it-comes happiness is an island of positivity in an ocean of suck. I have yet to see the guy in a bad mood. I love having him around.

Winter has a tag-along called Blue Jay, a jackal convert from the anime fandom. In real life, genetics conspired against him to deliver perhaps the most unfortunate mole placement ever: on his filtrum, right between his nose and lips. The resulting effect is an emo-style Mexican Hitler, and we jokingly call him “Mexler” when we want to be dicks about it. Blue Jay rolls with it, a sure sign of immunity built up from years of teasing. Goddamn, what luck, though!

Blue Jay is an up-and-coming artist, formerly into pure anime, but Winter helped him to see his furry side in the past few months. On reflection, Blue Jay thinks he’s always been a furry, but just didn’t make the connection until now. After seeing some of my art, he’s hyped up for sergals, and has drawn a group picture of Winter, him, and me together as our glorious furry selves. I haven’t known Blue Jay for as long, but he’s similarly low-key from what I’ve observed, and I’m getting a fanboy vibe from him towards me. He’s amazed at how fast I can draw, but he doesn’t know how lazy I am between drawings. I think it evens out between him and me. Unfortunately, both Winter and Blue Jay are not of my race, so my exposure to them has to be limited. Boo.

Emerald arrived late last year, a full-fledged, green-furred sparkle wolf who also crosses over into the MLP fandom. This poor kid had absolutely everything going against him: he hit the yard with a snitch jacket — wherever he was before, he ratted out another inmate; he was utterly obsessed with the furry and MLP fandoms, and he let you know it; and he had a shrill voice that was even more intolerable to listen to than two cats making carnal love. Emerald also had the tendency to lie. A lot.

I consider this kid’s story to be a tragedy, though. Emerald — or Emmie, as I called him — had a lot of mental health issues, foremost being his autism. His obsessive babbling about ponies and wolf-kitsune crosses to anyone unlucky enough to be in earshot reminded me of my mentally handicapped sister, but replacing furries with movies. Emmie was mentally ten years younger than his actual age, and given his size and youth, he could’ve easily passed for a teen.

The yard heads banned Emmie from entering their buildings, and the youngsters harassed him constantly. Things got bad enough that he confessed to me he wanted to end his own life. I talked him down from it, but I knew the idea would remain. Emmie was facing four years — not a horrible sentence, but might as well be an eternity for a scared kid like this. Worse, several lifetime probation terms awaited him at the gate, and I can’t see him being successful with that. If Emmie somehow survives this four-year gauntlet, her’s not likely to make it through the second, or the third, or…

My friend and I were his only support. We did our best to teach Emmie about prison life, made sure he had enough hygiene, swatted bullies away, and let hims play in our Pathfinder campaign to keep him away from the drama. We both saw the writing on the wall for this one, but we had to try.

And then one morning Emmie was no longer there. We would learn later that several inmates conspired to drive him out. The kid was easy to manipulate, so they set him up to do something extremely taboo, “caught” him in the act, and then threatened to beat the shit out of him if he didn’t bounce to another yard. So.. Emmie bounced.

Several days later, my friend and I were sitting on a curb, and our talk turned to Emmie, and the dirty way he was ran off the yard. He said something then that hurt to hear, but I knew was true.

“That kid is going to get raped.”

We got Emmie to let on a little of why he was in prison. We didn’t twist his arm too hard about it, but from what little he spoke of, I can guess what happened: Emmie had a furry boyfriend who was underage, and he got caught sexting him. That’s upsetting, y’know? Arizona might have well sentenced this kid to death, or worse, and for that.

…Give me a few moments. That was a tough one to write about…

Artist: Rainy-bleu

There are some other personalities I could cover, but for the sake of brevity, I will skip those whose main claim to fame is shoving shampoo bottles into orifices not explicitly recommended on the label, getting busted for mailing out furry porn, or pissing off enough people with their entitlement to get several visits from the Fist Fairy. Amidst that chaff, however, is the story of Dez and Llewellynn, and their story is one worth telling.

My first encounter with Dez was in front of medical. The transgender woman had just arrived, and was slated for a two month run before going back out on probation. She was speaking to another transwoman, and dropped that she was waiting for her legal paperwork to come in, because one of those papers had a drawing of her fursona on the back of it. This was a blatant fishing attempt, but I couldn’t help but look at the sky and groan.

Dez is actually the first known furry I met in prison. She is a cat-jackal hybrid, a self-labeled sociopath, and skilled “cyber-warrior”. Dez considered herself to be untouchable, and carried herself as such, surveying the prison landscape with the aloofness of a cop. In fact, she claimed that one day she wanted to work as a corrections officer. That’s probably not a good thing to say when you’re wearing orange.

While not as obnoxious as Emmie, Dez made sure to put her furriness on display, much to the chagrin of others. She drew pawprints on her shoes and arms, like tiny kittens had stepped on an ink pad, and then walked all over her. Dez would also meow and make cute gestures while waiting in line for meds. At one point, she wore her ID lanyard like a tail until the cops chewed her out for it.

This is the weird thing, though: As much as you hated Dez, you still wanted her around. That is a terrifying power to have, and before long even my friend, who had threatened to deck Dez for starting an annoying cat chorus, came to like her.

I think half of it was that the yard had never seen anyone like Dez before. Usually, inmates get checked in the chin for not leaving their freak at home, but everyone was swept into this surreal spectacle of a trans woman pretending to be a cat. Two inmates were so taken by this display that they became furries themselves. Dez was a furry virus slowly infecting those around her.

One of those converts would come to call himself Llewellynn, choosing to be a femboi fennec with a massive, floofy tail. He is the one I described glomping me at the start of this essay. He would could to be an even grander spectacle than Dez.

Dez and Llewellynn eventually hooked up. The relationship was highly exploitative, and even dangerous. Her untouchable attitude, and her expensive wants and vices did not endear her to those wanting payment, but Llewynn was smitten by Dez, and he made it his personal mission to protect her. Her debts became his debts, and her attitude became his problems. The fennec took a lot of punches because of Dez. For a time, it seemed like every new day brought a fresh bruise. He fought back valiantly, but the regularity of battles demoralized him, and Dez showed no sympathy to him, nor did she express a desire to change her behavior to spare him the violence.

Despite this, Dez retained her magnetic pull, not just on him, but on all of us. We picked up her mannerisms, like faux-sneezing cutely when our nose is touched. I have never acted that murry-purry in real life; prison has ruined me.

I did try to pry Llewellynn away from her, but since they both weren’t of my race, the options were limited. Llewynn wouldn’t listen to what advice I gave anyway. She was, depressingly enough, his first real relationship. I could do nothing except watch.

As we all ticked over to 2018, Dez went back out onto the streets. Llewellynn was crushed, and spent nearly two week indoors. When he did come out he would howl, forlorn. Fennecs aren’t really known for that, but I let it slide. I was relieved Dez was gone for Llewellynn’s sake, but standing in line at medical wasn’t the same anymore. That ambivalence is scary. Dez is one of the worst people I have ever met in person, but a small part of me wishes she was still here.

I may get my wish: we had friends keep tabs on her, and about a month and a half into her probation, she made a violation, and was sent to jail. Apparently Dez flipped out and assaulted her probation officer. As stupid as that was for her to do, I totally get why she did it. WITNESSED.

Even if she doesn’t come back to this yard, Dez’s legacy will live on for a long time. She changed people, including me. She also brought Winter to my attention, and Winter then went on to make another convert. For better or for worse, Dez is responsible for giving furries a foothold in prison, bringing them together (as much as prison life allows), and expanding the ranks. Furries are now a subculture here at Meadows, alongside the races, the nerds, the comic book/manga enthusiasts, the pagans, the Juggalos, and so on. Yes, Dez is one for the history books. Goddamn cats.

I’m proud of Llewellynn. However unhealthy his relationship was with Dez, Llewellynn stood his ground where lesser men (or furs) would have fled. This little femboi fennec held onto his new furry identity in an environment that can easily respond violently against it. If there’s anyone I know who has been through real “fursecution”, it’s Llewellynn. Out of all the people on this yard, I admire him the most, and I wish he didn’t face the decades of prison ahead of him. I wish he could have a second chance.

I asked Llewellynn how he felt about being a furry in prison. “It sucks”, he replied, “but I wouldn’t want to be anything else.”

I feel the same way.

#ArtvsArtist Hola! I'm Sisk - illustrator of aliens, builder of worlds, and visual creator who uses what little is at her disposal.

Which, at present, is not much more than lead, a pen, ten colored pencils, some envelopes, and the help of my friends. pic.twitter.com/jJV5ZaYj5J

— Siskmarek Namaruk ~☆ (@Tailpoof) April 11, 2018

The Tail End Of Things

As of this writing, I have approximately a year and a half to go. What happens after that is an ominous question mark. The #Justice4Sisk and #SaveOurSisk campaigns garnered a lot of support, but brought out a lot of powerful enemies, too. Most of their advocacy centered on me, but they also paint a bigger picture of a felon’s life — the lives of sex offenders especially. It’s easy to forget that criminals are still human, and it’s just as easy to look the other way from how cruel and damaging prisons can be, both physically and mentally. What’s hardly thought of at all is the swath of destruction wrought not only in the lives of victims’ families and friends, but also in the offenders’ loved ones. When offenders lose everything, the pull of their criminal past strengthens, and these men and women who have the greatest need of help to stop a destructive cycle are the least likely to get it.

I heard what happened to RC Fox. I won’t condone what he did, but neither will I condone what the fandom did to him. It’s been a joke for as long as furs have been around that our main export is drama, but whenever you maliciously harass someone, online or off, you’re acting like a criminal. You’re acting like a convict.

The furry fandom is all about fantasy. We get to tell stories about, or imagine ourselves to be, anthropomorphic animals, often in an idealized way. If we’re going to do that, then we can go one step farther, and rise above what humanity does to each other.

We’re halfway there, I think. Furries have created a racial diversity inspired by nature, and in that diversity is a near totality of acceptance of different species. It’s still fantasy, but it’s remarkable that a wolf and rabbit can fall deeply in love with each other. It’s normal, not only to the happy couple, but to their peers as well.

We can still be better. Remember, we have to convince geneticists that creating real anthro animals is a great (if not extremely far fetched) idea. Don’t mess this one up for all of us, guys.

–Farrah “Sisk” Barney

Mail to Sisk can be sent with the guidelines on this page.

From Australian animation studio BES Animation [1] this series has been batted around for close to 3 years and it looks like this show it finally landed with Disney. If Disney has taught me anything over the past few decades is everybody wants to be a cat. I quite like the art style. This clip also just showed up on Disney Africa: https://youtu.be/-7ib7qmpsic [1] https://www.bogan-es.com/
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