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To close off the FWG Awareness week for March, we’ve reached out to editors, authors, and publishers in the furry fandom to bring you a short reading list of works touching on post-colonialism and the development of cultural identity in former colonies. While not a common topic both within furry literature and outside it, such themes can be found in the stories listed here. Please bear in mind that this is by no means a comprehensive list, though!

Furry Short Stories:

• “We Are One” by Thurston Howl (from ROAR 8), a sci-fi horror story about finding a paradise supposedly untouched. To say more would give away spoilers.
• “Migration Season” by J.A. Noelle (from Seven Deadly Sins), a story about the clash between cultures and the cost of pride.
• “Long Time I Hunt” by Erin Lale (from ROAR 7), which follows a wild cat spirit through time, starting with its connection to Native Americans through to present day.

Furry Novels:

• Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, which follows three generations of polar bears in a circus.
• Barsk: The Elephant’s Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen, set in the distant future where humans have vanished and their uplifted animal creations have built their own society.

You can find the furry anthologies and novels here:

• ROAR 8: https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=905
• ROAR 7: https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=877
• Seven Deadly Sins: http://thurstonhowlpub.storenvy.com/products/21737903-seven-deadly-sins-furry-confessions
• Memoirs of a Polar Bear: https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Polar-Bear-Yoko-Tawada/dp/081122578X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521217819&sr=8-1&keywords=memoirs+of+a+polar+bear
• Barsk: https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=838

Non-Furry Novels and Series:

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, a novel with two overlapping story arcs, both of which focus on Okonkwo. The first arc focuses on his fall from grace within his tribe, and the second focuses on the culture clash that devastates Okonkwo’s world when aggressive European missionaries arrive.
• Cities of Salt by Abdul Rahman Munif, a story of the disruption to a poor oasis community after oil was found there.
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, set in Kerala, India, 1969, this story follows the trials and tribulations of a family as it tries to cope with cultural changes.
• The Alliance-Union books by C. J. Cherryh, an expansive series that follows Earth and its interstellar colonies as they declare independence, expand and encounter other species, and the conflicts that ensue.
• The Ancillary Trilogy by Ann Leckie follows a former ship’s AI trapped in a human body as she tries to learn what it means to be an individual, and uncover the act of treachery that tore her former life away.

(All of these can be found either at your local bookstore or on Amazon.com!)

Many thanks to Mary E. Lowd and Kiris, whose suggestions helped us put this list together!

We have Fred Patten to thank for this: He pointed us in the direction of Kuku and Mey Mey, a new 2D animated comedy series of shorts created by Anish Patel and realized by HopMotion Animation. Here’s how they describe the show: “On the edge of the wildlife sanctuary that is Kuku’s home, is a famous Jungle Inn. This is Kuku’s hunting ground and the comforts of the Jungle Inn are big game. All Kuku wants to do is sneak into the inn and steal the modern day comforts it has to offer. Meanwhile, the territorial Mey Mey will go to any lengths to stop Kuku from trespassing. Her notorious booby traps are set at every corner to do the trick and embarrass the beast out of Kuku. The result is a chaos laden chase comedy that turns the tables on predator and prey.” Now, about distribution: “The first season of the show has 78 episodes of seven minutes each and is available on North America’s OTT platform Toon Goggles and VOD platform Amazon Prime US, under the title Kuku and the Goat.” Got it? The article over at Animation Xpress has more details and a preview video too.

image c. 2018 HopMotion Animation

I flunked out of finishing school. I never could get all the streaks and bubbles out of the wood coating.
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For 15 years, the Ursa Major Awards lacked resources. Costs came from organizer pockets.  This year they tried a GoFundMe, and it’s getting close to the goal!

• It’s not there yet and still needs your help. Please see the fundraiser here.
• Don’t forget to vote for the awards!

Here’s some good news courtesy of Fred Patten.

At a recent Anthrocon Board of Directors meeting, it was approved for Anthrocon to match up to $350 in donations received in the UMA’s GoFundMe campaign to cover trophy manufacturing and costs.

The donation is viewed as a way to support writers. Many publishers release new works at Anthrocon, and the con has a substantial writing track which doesn’t cost much to run. Anthrocon spends a lot to support fursuiters (they can get special souvenir tags, for example), but the writing track has never asked for more.

During the discussion, it was noticed that the ALAA hasn’t gotten other cons to donate yet. It was suggested the ALAA use this opportunity to ask other cons to match a portion of GoFundMe donations too.

There was discussion of making Anthrocon’s donation regular annually – if other cons donate regularly Anthrocon is likely to join in, probably matching their amounts. Now is the time to step up and help.

AnthrOhio has agreed to host the 2019 UMA presentations, and Biggest Little Fur Con the 2020 presentations.

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.

Newberry Award-winning author Linda Sue Park has a new fantasy series out as well called Wing & Claw. From Amazon, here’s the description of the first book, The Forest of Wonders: “Raffa Santana has always loved the mysterious Forest of Wonders. For a gifted young apothecary like him, every leaf could unleash a kind of magic. When an injured bat crashes into his life, Raffa invents a cure from a rare crimson vine that he finds deep in the Forest. His remedy saves the animal but also transforms it into something much more than an ordinary bat, with far-reaching consequences. Raffa’s experiments lead him away from home to the forbidding city of Gilden, where troubling discoveries make him question whether exciting botanical inventions—including his own—might actually threaten the very creatures of the Forest he wants to protect.” Raffa names that bat Echo, and the two of them — along with other animals of the magical wood — are the main focus of this series for young readers.

image c. 2018 Harper Collins

It looks like Pikachu is solving a case with Yasuko Sawaguchi herself!? (She plays a criminal investigator (Mariko Sakaki) in the tv show Kasōken no Onna) ...the real mystery is why Pikachu can talk.
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Hello Everyone!

We open this week's show with a discussion on our appearance on the wonderful podcast, Life on the Swingset. You can hear us talk about ethical non-monogamy in the fandom on Episode 317 BY CLICKING HERE or by visiting their website, lifeontheswingset.com. 

We also talk about why loving someone else isn't always enough to make love happen. We go over why unrequited love can often feel so strong and certain yet it goes absolutely nowhere. 

Our main topic is on how to maintain independence in a relationship. We talk about why it's important to do so, what happens when you become codependent, and ways to practice independent living.

We close out the show with a question of mismatched motivation drives in a relationship. Is this a relationship killer, or can this be overcome?

For more information, including a list of topics, see our Show Notes for this episode. 

Thanks and, as always, be well!

FA 102 Maintaining Independence in a Relationship - When do you deserve love? When should you declare independence? When is the opposite of a lack of motivation a bad thing? All this, and more, on this week's Feral Attraction!

Welcome to the second FWG Awareness Week! This is a bi-monthly event, run by the moderators in the FWG Slack group (Searska GreyRaven, ritter_reiter, and George Squares) as a way to bring focus to minority culture and writers in furry literature. Through features such as interviews, reading lists, and author AMAs, we hope to provide ample material and a safe, respectful setting for inter-cultural dialogue within our diverse community.

Our focus this month is on authors from post-colonial nations, and for our second interview we’d like to present Jako Malan! Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, Jako is a computer programmer by trade who has a recurring fascination with the furry fandom. He considers himself a casual furry, enjoying the added aesthetic quality and versatility of working with non-human characters. After a delightful episode of globetrotting—which included an extended stay in the US and England—he now lives with his wife and two young children in Bellville, nestled comfortably behind the Boerewors Curtain. Jako is the author of the post-human anthro novel reWritten, and his anthro stories can also be found in Passing Through and Symbol of a Nation. A member of the Furry Writer’s Guild, he can be found there and on Twitter under the alias Erdwolf_TVL.

Disclaimer: While the Awareness Week project seeks to amplify underrepresented voices and perspectives, please bear in mind that our interviewees comprise one opinion out of many, and do not represent everyone within their demographic.

Tell us briefly about yourself as an author. How long have you been writing?

I see myself as a creator in a more general sense, rather than an author. I allow my imagination to run amok; mashing together ideas that seem completely unrelated and (sometimes) outright ludicrous. I tend to latch onto a specific theme or idea and become completely obsessed by it. I tend to move on to the next theme or idea rather abruptly, though. If I had the time, talent and resources, I would probably make movies. Writing is a quick and economical alternative, though, so it has been my tool of choice.

As a hobbyist writer, I don’t force myself to write a specific quota of words per day. I often go months (sometimes years) without writing a single word of fiction. When the bug bites, however, I tend to be very productive. I wrote large parts of reWritten in the mornings before work and during lunch breaks, checking in well over 2000 words on a good day.

The oldest piece I have in my archives dates from around 1992. It is essentially a piece of fan fiction loosely based on my favorite TV show at the time – Ovide and the Gang.

Creative writing was one of my favorite subjects, though I didn’t produce much work outside of what was expected of me in school. I spent most of my free time being a computer nerd – creating and playing DOOM mods and writing computer programs.

The writing bug bit me in my senior year at high-school. I wrote three fairly long fan fictions based on the Star Wars prequels – Gungan lore with a host of original characters. It was fun, but being fan fiction, it would never be published. I started toying with the idea of creating something original around this time.

Throughout, most of my writing was done in English, despite it not being my mother tongue. Afrikaans is a truly beautiful language, but it takes a lot of work to do really well. It involves a lot more typing (because of accent marks and double-negatives). The potential audience size is also a lot bigger when sticking to English.

After finding inspiration in the Furry fandom in the early 2000s, I started working on an early version of what was to become reWritten. This first incantation – Shadows and Reflections – was written as a script for a graphic novel. It was mostly complete in 2006, though I only managed to get the first 25-odd pages illustrated before funds (and motivation) ran out. I might revive this one day, though.

I took a lengthy break between 2008 and 2016, during which I wrote (mostly terrible) poetry whilst building my career, traveling the world. My wife and I got married in 2013. Our daughter was born in 2015 and our son in 2016.

Despite many sleepless nights during this time, 2017 was my most productive year to date. I was accepted into the Furry Writer’s Guild. My debut novel and two shorts were published.

Right now, I’m stewing over a novel-length furry piece, three or four short stories, and the script for my visual novel, Project Greenfields (the latter being most active). I’d really like to have something done by the South Afrifur Convention in July, but so far this year has been more about fighting fires than stopping to smell the flowers.

How did you encounter the furry fandom, and why did you start contributing to it?

I think that most of us start out as furries. The characters on cereal boxes, sport mascots, cartoons, movies… We literally grow up surrounded by anthropomorphic animals. It is our “normal” as kids.

I remember a particular despair when my father told me that cartoon animals didn’t “live” like we do – I could not meet them nor visit them in their hometowns. I guess we all have that watershed moment where we can choose to continue believing in cartoon animals or not. (Clearly, I chose the former.)

Though I kept my interest in animal people, I spent my young days oblivious to the existence of the furry fandom. These were pre-Internet days, so ideas travelled more slowly.

In the early days of dial-up internet, my sister and I joined the Jar Jar Binks Fan Club Message Board. (I believe this still exists.) Amongst others, I met a dragon scalie from Pennsylvania who introduced me to the furry fandom. I managed to visit him during my first trip to the USA and we are still in contact to this day. I am not sure if he still considers himself a furry, though.

Yerf!, VCL, IRC, and various awful websites hosted on AngelFire became my staples. I did some personal furry-themed illustrations and paintings. It dawned on me that Furry would be a good platform to tell my stories in. Apart from being a genre that piqued my interest, it would also give me an audience to target – one that I considered myself a part of and understood fairly well.

The rest is history, I guess!

Who are your favorite authors? How about furry authors?

As far as mainstream fiction goes, I liked reading Arthur C. Clarke, PJ O’Rourke, Neil Gaiman, and local veteran author Leon Rosseau. Furry authors I like reading include Tempe O’Kun, Watts Martin, Patrick Rochefort, and Mary E Lowd.

I must confess, however, I’m not a big consumer of fiction. (I’d probably be a more prolific writer if I were.) I do consume a lot of poetry, non-fiction, and music with strong lyrical content, though. I adore the work of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Justin Hayward, and Jacques Brel. Local poets and songwriters whose work I enjoy include Amanda Strydom, Koos du Plessis, Anton Goosen, and Randall Wicomb.

I try to appease my lack of reading by convincing myself that programs are novels for computers. And that writing fiction is programming for the human mind.

By that measure, I guess, I am a prolific writer after all.

You’ve lived in the US and the UK for an extended period, before returning to South Africa. How did life abroad compare to life back in South Africa?

After finishing high school, I spent four months working as a telephone operator at a New England ski resort. This was pre-9/11 – the USA was still the place we knew from watching television as kids. The fabled land of opportunity, yellow school buses, red fire hydrants and Mickey Mouse. I’ve had the opportunity to travel to the USA again hereafter. It is telling how things have changed since then (and, I think, not for the better). I’d love to visit the USA again, this time with my wife – though I’d be hard-pressed to live there long-term. The strong consumerist culture of America is very different from the more conservative norms / austere circumstances most South Africans grew up with. What I do like about the USA, however, is how easy it is to get hold of “cool stuff” and that you never have to travel very far to find that rare record, piece of electronics, or… furry convention?

I lived in Kew Gardens (South East London) between June 2005 and July 2006. I was on a working holiday visa, though I did manage to cement the first of a good nine-year-long career at a large multinational. I really enjoyed my stay in London and really wished I could stay a bit longer. It is not without its share of social ills, but it is a well organised and charming old place.

What I miss most about London is the public transport. The ability to walk around town at just about any time of day, not being bored and being reasonably assured of your personal safety. London is great if you are young and single. Not the ideal place to raise a family, though. London kids are… strange. I also have fond memories of hanging out with the London Furs during this time.

As of today, I am back in Cape Town’s northern suburbs, where I was born and grew up. With my wife and kids, it is convenient to be close to my parents and in-laws. Cape Town is a beautiful and pleasant place. Not as vibrant as Johannesburg. Not as accessible as London and not as ambitious as Boston. It does offer a very decent standard of living and has good amenities.

You once mentioned South Africa as “a setting with unique stories that’s woefully underrepresented in the sci-fi community”. Aside from the distinct choice of species you show in your stories, what would you personally want to see in South African furry or sci-fi fiction?

Little things can make the difference between a narrative that feels tired and done – and something that feels fresh and innovative. There is hardly such a thing as a new story. As writers, we have been pretty good at repackaging these old ideas and distracting the audience with fancy new decor.

Take the movie District 9, for example. It is not African per se. The plot could have worked just as well in another international city. But little nuanced things gave it a distinct local flavour. And I think audiences appreciate this. The animated piece Khumba is also a good example (although in my opinion, it tries a bit too hard to appeal to international audiences).

Many popular period pieces have local equivalents (or local perspectives) that allow a writer to make great use of the local scenery. We had a revolutionary war against Imperial Britain. (Two, in fact!) We had an age of pioneers, which includes a lot of conflict with the indigenous peoples. We had our unpopular war (the Angolan Border War). We had our civil rights movement (against apartheid). The list goes on.

In terms of furry, obviously we have incredible biodiversity. We are spoilt for choice when it comes to species. Our relationship with animals is different to that in other parts of the world. Human influence is still big, but since land is not at such a premium (such as in Europe), animals have less contact with humans and can “be themselves” to a larger extent.

On a grander scale, what I would really love to see is more pre-colonial African folklore, superstition, and culture woven into our stories. I think the emphasis thus far has been too focused on recent history (Nelson Mandela, the fight against apartheid, etc.) I don’t claim to be an expert in African culture, but I DO know enough to know that I haven’t even scratched the surface.

South Africa has had a long history of tension and conflict – examples which come to mind are the Boer Wars and the struggle against apartheid, echoes of which still remain today. Do these conflicts influence your writing, and if so, how?

I always say that my indoctrination program was interrupted at a very critical point. Until the age of 13, I experienced a very different “normal” than I did thereafter. Some of the mind-shifts my generation had to make were rather dramatic. People who were national heroes before were now suddenly the villains. Things that you took for granted before were suddenly gone.

An example of this would be the role of Afrikaans (my home language) in society. Before apartheid ended, you would see both Afrikaans and English on just about every product you buy at the store. Appliances and cars would have Afrikaans manuals and labels. Most things are exclusively English nowadays. There is also a move towards English-only in academic circles, as students believe they will be more employable in the global economy.

Overall, though, I am grateful for a very privileged upbringing, comparable in many regards to that I might have had, were I born in Europe or the USA around the same time.

I think the conflict that has the biggest influence on my writing was the border war with Angola and possibly the Rhodesian bush war. These are recent conflicts where the distinction between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” isn’t as clear cut. These were messy, politically complex wars. Many who died were ignorant to what was really going on.

To say these things do not influence my writing would be ignorant on my part. reWritten doesn’t deal with the above mentioned conflicts in any direct way, however. It is more of a statement on post-humanity (more on this later).

The search for cultural identity is an involved process for furry species created by humankind, as in your novel reWritten. Did growing up in a nation with an analogous background (i.e. a colony created by a powerful nation) affect the way you portrayed this aspect of furry identity?

As a white Afrikaner, the search for identity is very topical. People have very strong opinions about who we ought to be. A pseudo-identity was manufactured for us by the nationalist government. For better or worse, it was forced down our throats. It is probably the closest we’ve had to a true identity, but it is neither authentic nor sustainable.

Ultimately, I think we are heading towards self-discovery, but we are not there yet. Other groupings in South Africa are in a similar process of self-realization: the Lost Generation, the Born Free generation and those I consider to be the “True Millennials” (born after the Internet).

Each of us have a story to tell and a destiny to fulfill. And we also have to figure out how to live together in harmony.

Though there may be undertones of this seeking in reWritten, the Mammalæ world is more post-human than anything else. The sons of man look at the wreckage of the world we left behind for them. They try to make sense of what they see. And try to survive at the same time.

I think we are pretty bad tenants in this world, but Mammalæ have a different perspective on this.

Their society is built in the ruins of our own. They were created in our image, to live amongst us. It is therefore inevitable that they would imitate us in many respects. In other aspects, however, their society is much more complex. With many different species of different shapes and sizes, created for different purposes and with different natural tendencies. Their society inevitably operates differently.

This is a challenge, but it also enables many things that would be difficult to portray in a homogenous society. I alluded to the inner working of their society in reWritten, but I hope to explore this in much more detail in Greenfields.

For non-native writers looking to use South Africa as a setting, is there anything you would like to see them portray more of? Are there also any stereotypes or misrepresentations you would like to draw attention to?

There are parts of South Africa that can be used as a plug-in replacement for other parts of the world, without too much inner knowledge. To make a story truly South African, subtle details will need to be considered. To make a story both South African and one that appeals to an international audience… I think this still needs to be done well.

With regards to Africa as a whole, I’d like to echo something that is often said. People need to realise that Africa is a continent and not a country. Africa has many languages, many cultures. Many histories. There is room for The Lion King and derivatives. But to think that Africa is just about savannahs with animals running around is like thinking that London is the entire United Kingdom. Or that New York City is the be-all and end-all of the USA. Or that Germany is one big year-long Oktoberfest.

Which of your works are you proudest of?

Naturally, I am very proud of reWritten. It has been a long and exciting journey to get my work in print. However, the piece I had the most fun writing and re-reading (to date) is “The Savage Caravan” (Passing Through anthology by Weasel Press). It sets the tone for a spicier kind of story that works well in the furry market. The Gentler Times canon which it belongs to is also a lot more accessible than that of Artisans and Opportunists (the universe of reWritten). It is more Zootopia-like, in that it uses the existing world we live in, but where humans are replaced with anthropomorphic animals.

Any parting words of advice for aspiring writers in the fandom?

As an author, you have a duty to explore. Expose yourself to new ideas. Learn to absorb without feeling an obligation to change yourself (or the others). If you only expose yourself to that which you are comfortable with, your writing will be boring and predictable.

Furthermore, I encourage you to find your own measure of success. Not everyone who writes a piece will get published. Not everyone who gets published will sell a million copies (or make any money to speak of). Unless you are a professional writer, write for yourself first, everyone else second.

When the time comes to show your work to the world, take the time to polish your work and make it accessible. Get an editor. Have your stuff beta-read. Be willing to make changes you don’t necessarily agree with, if they will make your work more accessible.

Make use of all the wonderful free resources that are available online. Visit tvtropes.org. Join the Furry Writers’ Guild. It is a small community with many folks willing to help. Often for free.

Lastly, play nice. Don’t be a primadonna. It is a small community and hardly anything nowadays happens without everyone knowing about it.

 

Discuss this article on the Guild forums, or check out Jako’s page on Goodreads.

Ok, you will have to indulge me here. I just feel in love the style of this weird little experimental film as it feels so much like the early 70s stuff made with those old analog motion graphics machines. If you don't know what I mean by that here is a short bit about those: https://youtu.be/0wxc3mKqKTk The software the animator used was homebrew and the source is available over here: http://www.tedwiggin.com/TinkerYonder [1] [1] http://www.tedwiggin.com/TinkerYonder
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[Note from Patch:] Thanks to Summercat for this guest post. It’s a follow up to: Ever hear that Altfurries are just trolls? A real Nazi leader is taking them seriously. More than a few commenters had a mistaken impression that Dogpatch Press was original poster for a photo of “nazi furries”. We weren’t. That was a screencap, and it wasn’t posted to endorse the contents. An automatic feed to Twitter made it the cover image there. 

Summercat continues:

We’re creatures of the internet. We all know that images and photos can be ripped from their context and spread around with new interpretations that show them in a different light than intended. Context matters, even for items that appear to be clear cut.

A prior article I wrote about Altfurs includes a photo shared by Neo-nazi Andrew Anglin. It shows three fursuiters posing happily in front of a Nazi flag.

I’ve seen this picture for years.  I’ve heard many stories about it – that it was someone’s home, it was a Nazi museum, or that it was photoshopped. I’ve thought poorly of those who were in the photo, disappointed in all three and especially towards one of them, who I had admired up to that point.

The truth of the matter is fairly innocent. The picture is real and not photoshopped – but resharing it has stripped away the crucial context.

[Patch:] Here’s examples of the photo being used to represent Nazi furries. These bring up other interesting info too.

• An article at TheRooster.com makes it cover image for the story of the Furry Raiders ruining RMFC.
• A Geek.com article has the photo (also reposted to the Hatewatch twitter account with 76,000 followers.) The article was written by a former admin of Portal Of Evil, a site devoted to cataloguing the worst of the internet. It was from the bad old early 2000’s “yiff in hell furfags” time. Portal Of Evil spread hate and debate about fandom members like 2 Gryphon, who joined the Nazifurs Livejournal group. The Geek.com article gives background about the Second Life troll group “Furzis”, without getting to the part where the Furry Raiders spun off from it. The NaziFurs on Livejournal claim to have invented the “pawstika” armband, and want no connection to Furzis or the Furry Raiders. Hilariously, everyone involved sounds like they would be first in line to be executed by fascists AND each other. 
• Incidentally, you may also notice a famous “Furries for Trump” image that I’m told also misrepresents the furs in it.

In response to the article on Altfurs being taken seriously, Beetlecat spoke up about the provenance of the picture – and identified herself as one of the three suiters.  In 2009, they were among a group of six furries who visited the Alberta Aviation Museum. Beetlecat, RavenWolf, and Amran were in suit. They spent time posing for personal photos of their fun trip, never expecting to be immortalized for the wrong reason.

This was taken at an aviation museum in Alberta in like 2005 when you could make a Nazi joke without people getting seriously concerned lol

— Adum (@HorseWengh) August 22, 2017

It was taken at the Alberta Aviation Museum. And yeah no one in that photo holds any Nazi views.

Source: I'm on the left.

— Beetlecat Originals (@Beetlefursuits) March 9, 2018

These photos were provided by Amran (the foxcat suiter with the red marking), from the same trip. This is not a Nazi museum or someone’s home shrine, but a Canadian museum and an unfortunately taken-out-of-context pose. According to Beetlecat and Amran, none of the three hold Neo-nazi viewpoints. Amran has even stated that the photo was uploaded without their permission.

@foxcats (Amran) wrote: 

Hello Dogpatch Press! Someone pointed out to me your article showing an image of three fursuiters posing with a display of WWII artifacts at a museum. This photo was taken at the Alberta Aviation Museum in 2009 with a group of six, including myself, who had gone for a short tour there. (In the photo are Beetlecat, RavenWolf, and Amran – myself). Unfortunately someone had uploaded this and other photos without our consent. It took off quickly afterwards. I’m linking you to a few other images from this outing to help show that it was taken at the Aviation Museum. I’d like to confirm that as Beetlecat said, this was an innocent tour. None of us hold views aligning with how the photo has often been misinterpreted.

Context always matters. Nearly a decade ago, not as many people on the internet were as sensitive to the appearance of Nazi symbolism as today. Social media wasn’t as much of an organizing center for the kind of hate group activity that came together in Charlottesville in 2017. At the time I was still thinking that most Nazifurs were either trolling or doing it as mockery of Nazism. It would still be a number of years before I realized differently.

What was intended to be a silly picture got removed from the original context and made into some sort of pro-Nazi Fur image, against the wishes of those pictured. Hopefully this clears some things up, and though I never expressed my disappointment, I own an apology to Amran for thinking ill of him like that.

– Summercat

UPDATE from Patch:

An interesting response came immediately. The photo itself needs context, but not so fast about relieving the local community, says an Alberta furry.

Sick of local furs acting like it's okay to be obsessed with nazis as long as they don't hold the views. Sending you some more info on this that I think was purposefully left out.

— Akira DevilDog (@TheraAkuma) March 14, 2018

I’ve been an Alberta Furry since 2011 and there is a lot about the local community that I think is being covered up to save their reputations. I’m not here to say they all have nazi views, mostly I think they’re enablers and I’d be extremely skeptical of them saying Alberta Furries are anti-nazi at all.

I dug up some old threads relevant to your recent article about the museum pic, as well as some very recent telegram messages from local furries that show they’re still supportive of nazi imagery. There’s also a couple locals with nazi fursonas, one is an artist that’s been toning it down to avoid getting in trouble. I would say the entire local fandom, at least back then and lesser now, was supportive… It’s okay to be nazi as long as you’re not “serious” about it. Ever since AltFurry came out there’s been some removal of art, retconning nazi fursonas so they’re just “German”, things like that. Alberta is a very right wing province so I’m not surprised there’s so much love for “hugo boss”.

Of the three in the photo, Amran and Beetlecat hold no nazi views as far as I’m aware. Ravenwolf mostly isn’t in the fandom anymore. His mate at the time had a book collection with nazi literature (this was a few years ago and he claims he doesn’t remember).

It’d be a shame if it was all swept under the rug because “uniform fetishists” aren’t “real” nazis. Your article is rock solid, just the reaction the locals had about it all was very shady. Let the screenshot gallery speak for itself.

Shady indeed: Messages and a “pawstika” armband photo mostly from 2009-2010, and a recent PM asking for removal of nazifur art.

UPDATE 3/17/18: One artist who appears in the gallery, Eerie, responded.

I have no affiliation to alt right views and have made a permanent decision to not draw anything of the sort, related or otherwise. I have drawn Nazi imagery in the past, but at the time I was naive and did not understand the complexity of the imagery. I was interested in the history aspect and was trying to make a comic about it, but I have since decided scrap the idea and start from the beginning and am revising my characters.

I am also trying to remove what has been drawn (kind of hard on the internet). The commissioner of the image wanted their and my character in that type of setting. I’m pretty open minded and didn’t think much of it at the time. Those said commissioners also have no affiliation with the Alt right view as I know them personally.

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.

Check out this bio: “Matt Laney is an ordained minister with a lifelong interest in world religion, wisdom traditions, martial arts, big cats and middle grade literature”. That might explain the spiritual slant behind Reverend Laney’s first fantasy series for young readers, Pride Wars. The first book, The Spinner Prince, is out now in hardcover from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “In the scientific realm of Singara, where feline humanoids rule, fiction is forbidden. Those caught telling stories lose their tongues before being exiled. Heir to the throne, thirteen-year-old Prince Leo, is cursed with the “fiction affliction,” the unpredictable, uncontrollable habit of telling stories. Worse, the stories carry a dangerous power, leaving creatures behind who cause trouble and threaten to expose Leo’s affliction. Meanwhile, Leo’s elder cousin is making his move to seize the throne and the enemy beyond the Great Wall, another feline race called Maguar, are rising up. Will Leo claim the throne from his rival (and keep his tongue) before his curse is revealed? Or will he embrace his ability as a gift and discover a far greater destiny among the Maguar?” Check it out over at Kirkus Reviews.

image c. 2018 Houghton Mifflin

There is no sound for this but ... damn.
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Guest post by Arrkay from Culturally F’d, the furry youtube channel. See their tag on Dogpatch Press for more.

Finally, the YouTube channel for the furry fandom has enough videos about foxes to make a whole playlist. Our latest episode is all to do with the classic 1973 Disney film Robin Hood. This timeless classic surely set many young minds onward to furrydom. Our guest writer Tempe O’Kun has Arrkay squawking all about the stable relationship between Robin and Maid Marian.

Hey, who’s that middle fox in the thumbnail? Why it’s a Patreon sponsor in a YCH slot with art by Underbite Dragon! It’s a thing we’ve been offering since August on our regular episodes.

Subscribe to Culturally F’d on Youtube for more Foxes and more Fursuit History

In other news, the creators of Culturally F’d will be in attendance at Furnal Equinox 2018, and they’re running a couple of panels. Rusty gets into those in this months F’d Up Date. Rusty also responds to the amazing comments left on Fursuiting a History Part 1: Masks.

Events: https://furnalequinox2018livinlarge.sched.com/

YouTuber Meetup
4:30-6:00PM Friday March 16
Room Bay
YouTubers meet and discuss the platform in an open Q&A discussion with a group of confirmed guest speakers from all genres! We have gamers, live streamers, fusuiters, a cooking show and an entomologist. We even through in a few jack-of-all-trades just to keep things lively! Furries are so talented! Arrkay and Underbite are moderating the discussion and we hope to talk about production, post-production, using YouTube, building channels and communities in online video entertainment.

ZandZftw
WeekendWolf
LoveYourFood
Dakota Whitemane
MythicalRedFox
Hojozilla
PixelParasite
RicardoNightwing
Nasi
Paradox (Furcast, XBN)
Majira Strawberry

Culturally F’d Panel
7:30-8:30PM Saturday March 17
Room Bay
Arrkay and Underbite share whats new and what’s up with the channel, and a sneak peak for whats next with Fursuit History (though Dogpatch readers may already have a clue). Culturally F’d actually premiered at FE2015, so this marks our third year in production! Most of our very first fans subscribed after meeting us at our first panel where we screened Episode One and outlined the general plan for the series. We’re now at Episode 58, with over 150 videos uploaded to YouTube (including F’d Up Dates, live streams, promo videos and Patreon Exclusives).

BONUS

Show creator Underbite Dragon is now in the band Xephyr, with fellow furs Clumzy, Turi and Cobalt. Three dragons for every lion! Catch their performance at Furnal Equinox: Friday March 16 7:00-9:00PM alongside the fluffy duo Foxes & Peppers.

You can also catch an encore performance at a real human venue! Xephyr and Foxes & Peppers are performing the Hard Luck Bar on Monday March 19, 8:00PM (It’s the same venue as Howl Toronto).

Like this and want more? Buy Culturally F’d Merch, Support Culturally F’d on Patreon, and subscribe to the Newsletter.

Author Mira Bartok has raised quite a stir with her first fantasy novel, called The Wonderling. “Welcome to the Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures, an institution run by evil Miss Carbunkle, a cunning villainess who believes her terrified young charges exist only to serve and suffer. Part animal and part human, the groundlings toil in classroom and factory, forbidden to enjoy anything regular children have, most particularly singing and music. For the Wonderling, an innocent-hearted, one-eared, fox-like eleven-year-old with only a number rather than a proper name — a 13 etched on a medallion around his neck — it is the only home he has ever known. But unexpected courage leads him to acquire the loyalty of a young bird groundling named Trinket, who gives the Home’s loneliest inhabitant two incredible gifts: A real name — Arthur, like the good king in the old stories — and a best friend. Using Trinket’s ingenious invention, the pair escape over the wall and embark on an adventure that will take them out into the wider world and ultimately down the path of sweet Arthur’s true destiny.” According to the publisher, this new hardcover book has already been optioned for a movie adaptation.

image c. 2018 Penguin RandomHouse

So Finnish company Metsä Tissue [1] has squirrel mascots for it's Serla brand paper products. Because, why the heck not? SQUIRREL! https://youtu.be/frKMtIGZVSs https://youtu.be/9ZULxis_1Jk https://youtu.be/eF6tddznpAw [1] https://www.metsatissue.com/en/Pages/default.aspx
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Guest post by V, who’s gone through a variety of names that people found hard to pronounce and eventually settled for simple. V is a dragonish critter who’s been floating around the outskirts of furry since the early 00’s. They’ve written previously about species identity as lizardywizard, and can currently be found on Mastodon, as @behemoff@dragon.style, and Twitter as magnetongue.

I’ve read a lot (a lot!) of great writing on gender here at [a][s], and Makyo’s recent post “Gender: Furry” was no exception. I must admit, however, that I clicked on the title expecting, hoping for—and yet, deep down, knowing I probably wouldn’t find—something different.

See, as much as [a][s] is a site that dares to go deep into questions of gender, sexuality, and how those things are expressed in the playground of liminal, hot-swappable identity that is furry, there are surprisingly few writings on species as identity.

Therians and otherkin are more common in furry than we seem—when mentioning I’m a therian at furmeets or in chats, I always get at least one person per gathering who admits “Me too”. It’s obvious in hindsight that if anywhere would be a natural fit for such people, of course it would be furry, where we live out a startlingly profound yet largely unspoken agreement: to set aside our human personas completely among our friends, even when not roleplaying. Think about it for a moment. While there’s no requirement in furry to portray yourself as your character, wouldn’t a furry who used a human name and avatar for all their interactions seem weirdly out of place? The default, the expected, is that we uphold the masquerade. Through fursuits, avatars, usernames and conbadges, we ensure that our friends in the community know us primarily for our fursonas, not our physical forms.

Yet despite the obvious overlap, the topic by and large remains the elephant (or wolf, or cougar) in the room that is furry, just as furry seems to be a verboten subject in therian communities. Somewhere down the line, we mutually agreed to ignore each other’s existences.

I’ve got some theories on why, but those will come a little later. First, my story.

I was in college when I first discovered what “transgender” meant.

It wasn’t that I’d been shielded from the world as such: I had a liberal upbringing as a homeschooled child who, unlike the typical American picture of homeschooling, was allowed to research freely into whatever topics took my fancy. It just so happened that those topics were largely “animals” and “science”, and as these were the days before home internet was common, that meant I spent my days with nature encyclopedias and biology books—neither of which (back then, at least) said anything about gender identity.

I do remember using a pencil to black out the “fe” in “female” in an article about frogs, leaving the text, nonsensically, describing the behaviours of the “male and male”. As a child on the autistic spectrum who was particularly picky about words, I told myself I just didn’t like the aesthetics of the word “female”.

I often blacked out the word “human”, too.

But: college. It was then that I first stumbled, in my searching for anime- and manga-themed content, upon the writings of Jennifer Diane Reitz, probably best known (if at all) among furries for the long-running webcomic Unicorn Jelly. The comic was okay, but I was much more interested in the more personal writings of the author, who described in great detail her wrestling with an identity crisis of which I had never heard, but which I instantly found compelling.

It seemed to start out simple—a preference for, and fascination with, “girl” toys over “boy” ones—but by the onset of male puberty she was tormented to the point that, despite the pain and expense of surgery, the isolation of starting anew, and derision and abuse from almost all who knew her (Reitz was born in 1959, among the early modern pioneers of the transgender movement), she set out in pursuit of a remote, precarious and at times impossible-seeming goal: to live life as a woman, despite being born “as a man”.

I read and re-read the story countless times. I put it down to curiosity—here was something I had never before encountered, an incredible story of bravery and triumph—but my innermost self was unconvinced. I didn’t usually get invested in human interest stories, after all; I wasn’t much interested in humans. I preferred to read about animals, or to immerse myself in stories of fantasy creatures. What was the big deal about one kind of human turning into another kind of human? It was cool, but not my thing. And yet here I was, feeling that on some level this story represented me, knowing in some deep-down way that I, too, felt alienated by the body I wore. Despite the clear hardships she faced, I felt that I, too, would willingly subject myself to them in order to achieve what she had: a sense of peace, when she looked in the mirror, at her body’s alignment with her soul.

Over the next several years, and through the encouragement of the internet, I found myself veering first towards a non-binary identity (or “androgynous”, as we thought of it back then), then a male one, before finally settling somewhere between the two. I went back and forth on the topic of hormones, eventually deciding they weren’t for me, but in 2010 I went ahead with top surgery.

It increased my sense of comfort with my body immensely, and I’ve never regretted it. I wish I’d done it sooner. But as I looked further down the paths that were open to me for bodily change, I felt a dissatisfaction that I couldn’t shake. Asking myself what kind of body I wanted, I realised I didn’t want to be a human man, or a human woman, or even something that was both or neither (though lacking visible sexual characteristics sounded nice).

I didn’t want to be a human anything at all.

Not in the sense of not wanting to exist. But in the sense of wanting, desiring features that weren’t human. The human face, with its flatness, its square, bovine front teeth, felt wrong. Flesh felt wrong, this exposed pink-beige wrinkly stuff. Feet, legs, stance: all wrong. Objectively, wasn’t just about anything more beautiful than a human? Even a chimpanzee had variety, its face contrasting flesh and fur, tan and black, light and dark. The human body was utterly bland, boring. Couldn’t I be colourful? And what was with this unwieldy walking-upright thing?

Some of you might be thinking that the fandom had conditioned me to feel this way, that a diet of too much furry erotica had hijacked my natural appreciation for humanity. In truth, I was and am pretty much asexual, and I can look back throughout my whole life and see that even at an early age, these feelings were present. I always preferred animal toys over human ones, always rooted for the dragon or monster instead of the human protagonist. I loved dinosaurs, as many kids did, but I didn’t develop the obsession with facts and species names that marks most childrens’ love for dinos: instead I fixated on oddly specific things like whether the shape of their snouts felt “right” to me, by some strange internal compass that was apparently measuring these things. My fantasy worlds were never populated with humans, and when I found stories with entirely alien casts I jumped for joy, especially if they delved deep into the society and culture of those other species. I absorbed those cultures into my mental worlds and longed to make them my own. I longed, impossibly, for a social and bodily niche that didn’t exist: something not quite animal, something with a complex culture, but not human either.

Not to get too philosophical about the cause of this—I’m fairly agnostic on why I am this way, I only know that I am—but even now I’m still discovering little ways in which my early self-perceptions match the outside world. A few years back, on a recommendation, I picked up the book Raptor Red by paleontologist Robert T. Bakker: a fascinating exploration of his theories about dinosaurs, told from the (imaginary) perspective of a female Utahraptor. I had a breakthrough moment when I noticed the protagonist instinctively identified herself, and potential mates, by the colour of their snouts: Red Snouts like herself were viable mates, while Yellow Snouts were the outsiders. It reminded me exactly of the way that I did, and still do, categorise dinosaurs as looking “right” or “wrong” by their snout shapes. Even if written by an expert, Raptor Red is speculative fiction, but it’s an odd little coincidence.

We can argue proof and evidence all day and ultimately come to no satisfactory conclusion. The only hard fact I have is that this is my experience, and has been my experience since I was young.

No matter what I told myself, I was never quite able to shake it. I tried everything, from telling myself “this is ridiculous” (which of course never works) to fursuits, body paint, even running quadruped along the beach (“it’s the new exercise craze!”). I’ve listened to hypnosis recordings to try to conjure, even fleetingly, the feeling of being in a reptilian body. I’ve seriously considered body modification a la Stalking Cat, whose death touched me greatly: we never met, but he was one of the few people in furry who I felt would have truly understood where I was coming from. I’ve hoped, wished, dreamed and prayed, but in the end, nothing has brought me close to that state that I seek.

After 34 years, I’ve found the feeling comes and goes, and in better times I can accept that if I’m meant to transform, it probably won’t be in this lifetime. Right now I’m in the part of the story where the dragon lives as human for a while, and I’ve more or less made peace with that, though some part of me is still holding out for a virtual-reality miracle.

Still, as someone who is both transgender and, as I’ve occasionally referred to it in understanding company, transspecies, I can definitively say which bothers me more. There are a bunch of things I could change about this human body to make it more androgynous, but I don’t feel they’re worth the effort or expense. But give me the opportunity to become just a little more reptilian, and I’ll be looking for a place to sign before the words are out of your mouth.

I’m not “supposed” to say that. Ask a room full of furries what “TF” means and you’ll find at least one enthusiast; but for all that countless man-, woman-, tod- and vixen-hours have been devoted to portraying the moment when we finally slip off our human masks and become the creature we see inside, we rarely talk about it as a serious want or even need, at least for a minority in the fandom.

Perhaps it’s that masquerade again: just as a fish doesn’t notice the water it’s swimming in, maybe we’ve successfully immersed ourselves in the theatre of furry identity such that questioning it seems to break the magic. Of course I’m a dragon; of course she’s a fox. What else would we be? To probe too deeply into the meta-question of why we chose this is to remind ourselves of the very thing many of us, therian or not, are here to escape: the gap between who we are and who we want to be.

Perhaps it’s discomfort with what seems, to most rational-minded adults, to be a strange and frightening delusion. To not probe the masquerade is to not have to sit too deeply with the question the outside world often throws at us: isn’t there something unhealthy about choosing to spend so much of our time, money and social lives on the pretense that we’re animals? When faced with this question, we often retreat into our well-worn excuses. “It’s just a hobby”; “it’s just roleplaying”. But do those words really describe the extent to which, for many of us, this masquerade is our lives? Are we afraid of looking at the “extreme” cases of species identity because of what we fear they might say about us?

Perhaps we simply don’t think it’s worth it. To look to the professional world for a diagnosis of “species identity disorder”, per Gerbasi, would be sticking our heads above the parapet to be shot at by any number of trolls. For most people, the risks are too great, the possible rewards too remote. Even in the therian community, I seem to be in the minority when I say that my identity has caused me clinical levels of pain, that I’ve sought therapy for it on more than one occasion. If you’ve found comfortable ways to live with it, then why draw more attention to an already maligned group of people?

And of course it’s not just us we fear harming. People worry that talking about species longings as a genuine struggle for some might tar transgender people, by associating them and their struggles with “those crazy people who want to be animals”. As a trans person myself, I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot. I want to advocate for people with similar species feelings and hopefully, by talking about these experiences, make them feel less alone and that someone else is taking them seriously. And I can’t accept the conclusion that it harms people to talk about this, so we should never discuss it or study it. We may be few, but our feelings are still valid, and for some are lifelong. That shouldn’t just be discounted.

But I also understand that it’s not something that would be taken kindly if we were to go public with it. Although honestly I think few would listen—I don’t think the small subset of furries who could genuinely be said to suffer from “species identity disorder” is powerful enough to make anyone pay attention to us, let alone harm the much larger cause of transgender rights—I know that relating the trans rights movement, and the countless lives that have been lost or shortened in the continued fight for equality, to something that seems so flippant makes people wince. And of course I don’t mean to claim that as a group, we are in need of political protection.

My point is simply that, at least for a handful, it isn’t flippant. I know that can be hard to take at face value, but I’d like you to try. I’d like you to try to understand that when I sat for hours at that college computer, hanging on every word of Reitz’s story of transformation, I wasn’t mocking anyone or playing a game. I didn’t even know what I was feeling at first, why the realisation that maybe I too was trans felt incomplete, not like the life-affirming victory I had expected. I didn’t start going online, all those years ago, with the expectation that I’d ever find anyone like myself. And certainly, I’ve found few, even among furries. But we do exist, and now I know I’m not alone in these bizarre thoughts and feelings.

So, yes, my gender is “scaly”. Because the boxes “male”, “female” and “other” don’t mean that much to me, but this one does. Because the desire to be this has always been with me and always will be, no matter how silly it seems. Because it’s what I would transition to, if I could.

Welcome to the second FWG Awareness Week! This is a bi-monthly event, run by the moderators in the FWG Slack group (Searska GreyRaven, ritter_reiter, and George Squares) as a way to bring focus to minority culture and writers in furry literature. Through features such as interviews, reading lists, and author AMAs, we hope to provide ample material and a safe, respectful setting for inter-cultural dialogue within our diverse community.

This month, we wanted to highlight authors and creators from post-colonial nations. Here to kick off the March edition is Erkhyan! Erkhyan was born, grew up, and still lives in the central highlands of Madagascar. He has held jobs such as illustrator, translator, and various one-shot DIY projects, while his usual hobbies include reading, attempting to write, drawing, spending way too much time on Wikipedia, and video games. He goes around learning to be a fosa — please note the correct spelling! Erkhyan can be found on Twitter under the same handle (@Erkhyan).

Disclaimer: While the Awareness Week project seeks to amplify underrepresented voices and perspectives, please bear in mind that our interviewees comprise one opinion out of many, and do not represent everyone within their demographic.

Tell us briefly about yourself as a creative person – you’re both an author and an artist. How long have you been doing either of them? What are your favorite themes to cover?

I’ve dabbled in both writing and drawing since the mid-to-late 1990s. I got to the point of being able to show my drawings publicly in 2000, and my writing in 2005.

My favorite things to draw are natural landscapes and, unsurprisingly, furry characters. I mostly draw pinups of characters, but when I feel technically able to do so, I like drawing pictures of characters being affectionate with each other.

In writing, a theme I find myself often coming back to is finding your own place to belong in society when said society never made you feel like you had one.

You’ve been around the furry fandom for several years. When did you first enter the furry writing scene, and what drew you to it?

I’ve been aware of the furry writing scene since 2006 (in the days of Yiffstar), but didn’t quite join until 2010 through the late FurRag. At the time it was mostly just a combination of my love of reading and my interest in anthropomorphic animals, but the old urge to write my own stuff quickly resurfaced after that.

Who are your literary and artistic influences, both in furry and in general?

Writing-wise, my biggest non-furry influences are Timothy Zahn and Aaron Allston. On the furry side, there’s maybe too many to count so I’ll only mention a few. Kyell Gold and Kevin Frane were among my earliest influences. Rukis and Ryan Campbell are more recent ones. But the fact is, if I’ve read your writings in the last ten years, chances are I count you as one of my influences.

On the drawing side, Disney movies are obviously my earliest influence. Then came Claire Wendling and Juanjo Guarnido. Then, in no particular order: Chelsea Kenna, Rukis, Nesskain, Kenket, Teagan Gavet, and Kamui, to name a few…

In both cases, I admit I have far many more influences within the furry fandom that outside of it. I have no formal literary or artistic training, and it shows in my choice of inspirations.

You’ve lived in Madagascar practically all your life. Can you tell us some aspects of your culture that you think define Madagascar the most?

If I were to summarize contemporary Malagasy culture in a few words, it would be: heavy reliance oral traditions, the pervasive influence of the spiritual on daily life, a strong preference for DIY solutions and repairs over replacement, and a strong accent on respecting one’s place in both clan and tribe.

Madagascar used to be part of the vast colonial empire that France once boasted. Personally, how do you think the Malagasy culture and identity have developed since gaining independence? Does French influence still make itself felt in everyday life?

French influence is still very heavy on Malagasy everyday life. The French language is ever-present in commerce, education, and the media. People will often switch to French when Malagasy vocabulary fails them. Or when communicating with someone who speaks a dialect of Malagasy that sounds too different to be easily understood. Or, in general, when communicating with members of the various expatriate communities (mostly South Asians, Chinese, and French).

My personal take on the evolution of post-independence Malagasy culture is that a lot of it has had to be rebuilt from shaky foundations. Most of the Malagasy ethnic groups relied almost entirely on oral traditions before, and very little of that was committed to writing before the missionaries, then the colonial authorities either rewrote it to suit their purposes, or outright tried to suppress it. Malagasy literature barely had time to be born before it found itself bound to colonial rules.

Nowadays, very few traditions have survived intact. Most are more or less heavily bastardized, a few (like the fitampoha) had to be resurrected or even reinvented almost from scratch. Malagasy history as the common people know it is often fragmentary and heavily tinted by tribal tensions, and sometimes differs quite significantly from history as academic historians know it.

Much of your art and writing revolves around Madagascan species, as well as Malagasy history. Can you tell us more about these themes, and how you bring them out in your work?

My switch to using Madagascan species and Malagasy themes is actually relatively recent, coinciding with my personal struggles. Being the grandson of a Frenchman and raised as a French-speaker, I grew up severely at odds with the both the tribalism of Malagasy culture, and its painful history with France. It wasn’t until these last few years that I finally started to work on the fact that, regardless of my limited French heritage, I am still mostly Malagasy by blood and have lived almost all my life in Madagascar.

All of that leads to the themes I use the most: the pros and cons of Malagasy tribalism, and the fact that so much of our history beyond the last couple of centuries is throughly mixed with myth. I usually tackle these themes by having characters who are trying to find their place in society despite being (or having become) outcasts. Whenever supernatural elements exist in my settings, I now try to base them on elements that do exist in Malagasy folklore: nature spirits, lingering ghosts, and the taboos enforced by their presence.

Are there any stereotypes or misrepresentations that you’d like to draw attention to?

So many misconceptions about Madagascar wouldn’t exist if not for Pandemic 2 and the Dreamworks cartoon franchise… In particular, how many ports and airports we have and how easy it would be to lock down the coutnry’s borders, how many people actually live here, whether we actually like to “move it move it”, whther or not we’re safe from the plague (ironically, Madagascar is the world capital of plague cases) … Whether one reacts to these with humor or annoyance tends to depend on how often these misrepresentations come up.

If there are misrepresentations I’d like to address, it’s Madagascar as a small island (it’s actually the size of mainland France, one and a half the size of California), and our relationship with Africa. Madagascar is geographically and politically an African country, but our history and culture have been isolated from the mainland for so long that for most people there is just no feeling of sharing much with even our closest mainland neighbors.

As a speaker of Malagasy, French, and English, you’ve been in a unique position to make linguistic observations, such as of place-names and folk etymology common or individual to each language. Do you make use of this when writing stories about Malagasy characters? If so, how do you go about “translating” idioms or other figures of speech?

I tend to stay away from untranslatable idioms and concepts, but otherwise I like to play with language. For example, the etymology of Malagasy names is often much closer to everyday language than in Western cultures. Until the relatively recent adoption of the first-middle-last name system, many people used to have names that said a lot about them: their past achievements, their ambitions, etc. I often make use of that while naming my Malagasy characters, giving them meaningful names that might not always be obvious unless one speaks Malagasy.

In the end, I wouldn’t mind using local idioms if giving them context doesn’t come in the way of a story’s pacing.

Which of your works are you proudest of? Feel free to include any upcoming stories or pieces.

That’s a rather difficult question. I do not have enough finished written works for me to feel proud of them, but I admit I can’t wait to finish my first stories set in Madagascar.

As for my drawing, it’s a hard choice, but recent favorites include “Dazzle the Stage”, “Tsingy Mena”, and “Lefona sy Ampinga”.

Any parting words of advice for aspiring writers or artists in the fandom?

Honestly, I can’t think of any advice other than: just do it. The furry fandom is so centered on creative activities, it would be a shame not to contribute to it if you wish to. You can always learn on the way—exchanging ideas and tips with other artists and writers is a good way to do that. Keep in mind that, even though you will always have something to learn from others, there’s a chance that you will have something to teach others too. If not in your skills, then in the messages your art and writing send out.

 

Discuss this article in the Guild forums, or learn more about Erkhyan on his SoFurry page. 

From wikipedia:

The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loosely-connected grouping of white supremacists, neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, and other far-right fringe hate groups.

The “alt-lite” is frequently contrasted with and compared to the political alt-right, with which it shares some features, but the alt-lite remains distinct from the alt-right in that it claims to reject identity politics—including the white nationalism and racialism of the alt-right—though they share other key features and beliefs.

Learn more from the Anti-Defamation League – From Alt Right to Alt Lite: Naming the Hate.

Below is a guest story sent in by an unnamed furry, shared for awareness about how hate groups gain influence in a subculture like furry fandom.

– Patch

A springboard into the alt-right.

Reading your article: (A deep dive into the Altfurry mission to “redpill” fandom with hate) motivated me to speak up on a similar topic. There’s a bigger number of “conservative” furries, and their less vocal communities, which often serve as a springboard into the alt-right. Those groups often distance themselves from the altfurs because they genuinely don’t like (some) extremist viewpoints of the altfurs (to a degree). But despite that, the membership gets caught in an echo chamber that slowly pushes them towards more and more extreme views.

This is a ground level report. My experience wasn’t in actual altfurry, but I ended up within circles that shared similar sentiment and beliefs about the SJWs, trans people, Jews, “globalists and leftists”, and similar. People often believe that they would manage to spot those and avoid them, but that isn’t true. I did, but still ended up as an active member. Many in those groups don’t fall into the “stereotypical” picture of the alt right. There are often liberally inclined people, gay people, or even trans people. That often conceals the much more extreme members, and makes it seem as a “neutral” place, and sometimes it’s easy to disregard the extreme members.

But constant bashing on certain topics from extreme members and tons of “information” that get dumped onto you, with lack of proper opposition (more vocal people against it get kicked out), slowly distorts perception. Many people stay “moderate” right, but I have seen many pushed into extreme beliefs.

It took me some important self realizations to finally get away out of that cursed echo chamber. I believe it’s important to demystify it and make the community aware of how easy it is to end up, or get pushed into such groups.

It takes time and support to get rid of distorted views.

Before everything, I’m asking for a bit of understanding. I’m not writing to argue, defend or excuse anything, but to give insight in how things like this can happen. I’m still neutral/ambivalent to some things because of how long I’ve been exposed, but I’m trying to get rid of them. Being surrounded by people like those distorted my views. It takes time and support to get rid of them, and it’s been just a couple of months for me, after being in it for a few years.

Compared to your article about alt-furry, my experience was much more grounded, and the groups I was a part of didn’t have that recruiting. I even met some higher ranking members in them personally, and they have shown me what is going on in the upper hierarchy. The groups acted more as a “safe space” for members, rather than a recruiting ground. Some were just alt-lite, and some were alt-lite furries, or had hidden/separate channels for furries. They had a better grasp of real life than what the alt-furs have.

This is just a story of what my experience was, and it is not, and should not be reflective for others. The communities that I was in were more moderate (on average) than the full blown fascist/sexist/racist/xenophobic alt-right ones. But there are still many malignant people in those alt-lite groups, who are just not as extreme as the actual alt-right.  I have never shared the ideas of the alt-right. There is nothing nice to say about them.

When I felt unwanted, their community drew me in.

As a quick profile of myself, I was always voting for socially aware parties, participating in some protests for social and minority rights, and actively working to help people during the massive influx of immigrants and refugees that we had a few years ago. At the same time I was already somewhat participating in right-leaning groups. It wasn’t that I shared beliefs with those people, but their community made me stay.

I understand and feel for the sexual, ethnic or any other minority parts of the furry community and their issues, but the discourse was alienating. It was generalizations like “the whites are again at it”, “cis people don’t understand”, ”they’re a cishet male”, etc. The constant stream wore me down. Trying to raise concerns about it was rarely met with understanding. I never cared that I was straight, cis, and white. Those weren’t an important part of my character.  There were nice people who let me know that they weren’t referring to me in those posts, but it made me feel unwanted.  So I just gave up on the regular community.

I started interacting with other furries who weren’t bringing up politics, or going somewhat against the regular community. It felt better, as I stopped seeing the blame for something that I wasn’t even guilty of.  With time, I started joining alt-lite furry communities.  They made me feel welcome. I could talk about things that might have been controversial and ended up in a callout fest. People there were disagreeing with me but also discussing. They seemed more reasonable and despite politics being an often important topic, people were talking about other things too. It felt good.

These groups weren’t large, but they were spread out, with members in multiple groups leaning towards the right wing. I had time to get to know some of the members more personally, and it was a more varied bunch than I expected. It wasn’t just straight white dudes, but there were gay people, women, variety of skin colors and even some trans people. I was intrigued about how they joined, and I realized that many had similar experiences to mine. They felt unwanted for a variety of reasons, and these communities accepted them. Some were doxxed and received death threats because they were disagreeing with the general community, others were betrayed by close friends and lost support, some were ridiculed for their beliefs in completely unrelated topics, or were disregarded because they weren’t a part of some minority. A decent number of them didn’t join alt-lite groups because of their political or social beliefs, but because those groups welcomed them and offered them acceptance. I was one.

Again, it’s not my interest to defend any of it, but to give an insight and understanding into how these things happen.

Debating or ignoring extremists

Of course, it wasn’t all nice. There were a certain amount of extremists who were alt-right and full blown fascists or bigots. I was cautious of arguing or calling them out, because I didn’t want to get ostracized again, especially knowing how the alt-right can be hostile. But other people were arguing against them. It was something that I hadn’t seen before, so I started participating too. Most of them didn’t share my views, but they didn’t kick me out.

Not many people in the community looked favorably towards the alt-right, maybe agreeing in some broad strokes, but mostly considering them man-children. Most had favorable views towards topics that I found distasteful at best, abhorring and disgusting at worst.  It went from conservative beliefs to creation of an ethnostate, denying trans rights, heavy opposition to what they considered SJW’s, hostility towards non western european / american nations, and global / jewish conspiracy. It paled to the degree of what the alt-right does, but it was there.  I kind of ignored them because there are always maniacs in all groups.

An important rule in many groups was no stirring up drama. It was mostly used when people got personal during discussions, and wouldn’t drop issues. It was supposed to apply to everyone, but eventually there was more leeway for those right wing oriented ones. For a long time I ignored that because I was privately laughing with some of the alt-right, having the impression that they were community buffoons.

The danger of a safe space that welcomes extremists

After being a part of such groups for a while, your beliefs still stay the same, but you start giving leeway to those you disagree with more and more. Using a variety of insults and phrases becomes more and more acceptable, you start ignoring more and more of the extreme views, because you stop considering them as worth of talking about.  You stop minding topics that you’d vehemently disagree with before. The topics brought up almost always end up with some of the more extreme members joining in, so you ignore them. And you don’t notice how your perception gets distorted.

What you’d argue against before, you stop caring, slowly some of the arguments and “information” that you see start having some sense, or at least worthy of being considered. You get assaulted by tons of data that you have to sort to find what is the issue in it. By the time you finish taking apart one thing, three more get thrown at you. You still go against over-exaggerated narratives that they throw at you, but some of the data starts chipping away at you. The more you dig into it, the less you see the whole picture, and the godawful bigoted narrative that they present.

This starts affecting interactions with people outside of the groups. Before you were just pushed away, but now you start getting defensive, which in turn makes people even more upset with you. And you have no clue why, because in your perception, you didn’t change. It pushes you even deeper into alt-lite groups, as they offer also other content than politics. You stop caring about the general population.  The longer you’re in those groups, the less you care about what you disagree with, and more about what you have in common. Art, movies, series, games, food, nature, whatever. You avoid politics, thinking you won’t be affected by it, and feel cozy in the situation.

“No drama” rules = weak defenses

Now the more extreme ones are still tossing awful shit at you, and you don’t care any more. Sometimes a newcomer may argue, and they get kicked, and you don’t care. You just see some leftist arguing with the local extremist who you don’t pay attention to.

When you do take up discussion, both inside and outside those groups, you do it weakly, because you know that its just going to be a constant stream of dumb and annoying things. You stop caring about those topics, as it becomes a self maintaining circle of apathy and not wanting to be involved (again) in something that is too stupid to argue against. You hope that people understand that some of it is inherently bad, so why should it be even talked about. If you try, you have to go against what the alt-right extremists are throwing at you, muddling the whole picture.

The biggest danger of such groups is not realizing that your experience and worldview is being distorted, and being slowly pushed more and more towards apathy, despite their beliefs going against it. Those groups don’t do it intentionally, as the alt-right ones do, but it’s a side effect of constant exposure. It doesn’t matter if someone is social-democrat, labour, conservative, liberal, green, centrist, unaffiliated or whatever other political party they might be. Being in such alt-lite groups affects everyone, some more, some less, and it distorts them.

It becomes hard to get out of those groups.  People argue for or against your beliefs without too much drama, and you feel appreciated without being insulted, you are set with what you have and become complacent and lose empathy to those outside.  You lose motivation to try, and nobody is there to point out what is happening.  If I hadn’t met one amazing person, I probably would be still stuck in those groups, having my perception slowly distorted to be more and more favorable towards the alt-right.

A wake-up call

One outspoken person stayed a bit longer on one server, and didn’t get kicked as fast, so I had time to get to know them. They were somewhat similar to me when I joined, just much more vocal. It felt good to have someone who shares the same social awareness as I do. Up until they got banned, I ignored and dismissed when newcomers were getting kicked out, and cared more about the regulars.  But now the “management” and some other regulars were trash talking them and it was straight up awful. It broke the image that I had.

I started looking into other groups and noticing the same thing. They were straight up awful to anyone who wasn’t a part of them. More and more extremist voices were being tolerated and supported. I realized that I had lost the human touch I had before I became a full time regular member. With time, I slowly started interacting less and less, finally leaving all of them them.

It’s been a couple of months and rejoining the regular furry community takes a while. Getting rid of distorted worldviews isn’t simple, and there are still issues that pushed me away the first time, but I learned how to deal with those to a degree. I know that I don’t want to end up back in those alt-lite groups.  If I could share one important lesson about it, it would be how to discern people who are misled, from those that are malignant alt-right, and how not to push them into it.

Good defenses.

People can be misinformed, have bad or old information, and use it to argue. At the start that was often me, but instead of being offered information I felt alienated. Also, being honest to oneself about different information isn’t simple, and people often miss it. Looking back now I see a lot of similarity between what people similar to me were saying, and what the alt-right are doing, but there are some important differences.

The alt-right forces you to argue little details, and they want you to do it publicly. They intentionally ignore requests to go back to the general topic. They start swapping phrases and terms as if they’re all the same thing. They always counter whatever is said and don’t back down or accept being wrong, but always try to one-up it. The purpose is to annoy and upset you.

Don’t cede them the spotlight. Call them out for doing something wrong, and if they don’t step back, they’re doing it intentionally. When that happens, don’t waste any more of your time to let them share their views.

When people toss out some generalizations, ask them simply- do they have any questions about it?  Good meaning people, and those who are misled, will have questions. Their tone will change, and they won’t stick to single talking points.  They’ll raise issues they might have, be polite, and ask questions. Don’t be hostile towards them just because what they said had might have bad implications. If nothing else, don’t feed the hate. (Also, please avoid “the cishet white males” posts. It’s hard for me to have sympathy when phrases like sound similar to stuff that the alt-right says.)

A bit of understanding can bring a lot of change – but don’t waste your time if there is none. Thanks to people who offered me a chance and understanding, I managed to get back into the furry community.

Thanks to this guest for their story. Get in touch via the About page to submit guest posts. – Patch

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Katie Cook is best known among Furry Fans for her work as a writer and artist on both My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comics and for her own creation, Gronk. Being something of an expert on drawing adorable things, now she’s written and illustrated an instructional book called Drawing Cute (from Impact Books). “Master of cute Katie Cook teaches you how to draw everything adorable in her first tutorial book with quick and easy-to-follow step-by-step lessons. All you need is a pencil and paper…or a napkin or a wall, depending on how confident you are in your drawing ability. Learn how to turn curvy blobs, shapes and squiggles into more than 200 different things, including fuzzy animals, cute food and inanimate objects like yarns balls, luggage and a toaster. Add nubbins, swishy bits, and little smiley faces to anything and everything to transform it into something really, really cute.” It’s available now from Amazon.

image c. 2018 Impact Books

 

Screen Daily has an article about 10 Lives, a new CGI feature film created by some familiar names. “The film is the second to be produced as part of a joint venture between Chinese animation outfit Original Force and GFM Animation. The first, Duck Duck Goose, will be distributed in China by Wanda Pictures and in the UK by Entertainment Film Distributors… 10 Lives is produced by Penney Finkelman Cox (Shrek) and Adam Zhang, senior vice president of Original Force. The story follows a once scrawny shelter kitten that now leads a pampered life after being adopted. Everything changes when he loses his ninth life. In the afterlife, he escapes and cheats his way into another cycle of nine lives, but he doesn’t realise that each of the nine lives will see him return as a different animal.” As you can see from the article, the film has already set up distribution throughout much of the world — but no word yet about North America. You can just bet, though, that a US or Canada deal is going to hinge on how well Duck Duck Goose does at the box office later this year.

image c. 2018 GFM Animation