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submitted by evilsibe
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Kyell, K.M., and Kit return to RMFC, with canine audience members, questions about writing, and K.M.'s bucket. Celebrate good times! Come on! Unsheathed Live at RMFC 2012 - Live at Rocky Mountain Fur Con 2012

Hi My name is Jack and from the start of the year I have become more & more interested in furrys & the furryfandom. I was just wondering if anyone can help me get more involved. Eg any books, comics, movies, website/blogs I should look at. Any help would be much appreciated.

submitted by jackonreddit122
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submitted by evilsibe
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submitted by evilsibe
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submitted by FancySkunk
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September is when folks usually start taking orders for art-calendars for the following year — and this one is no exception. Orders are now open for the 2013 Werewolf Calendar, featuring lycanthropic-themed works from artists like Goldenwolf, Kyoht, Vantid, Balaa [See Below], Nimrais, Kyndir, Katie Hofgard, Myenia, and more. According to the calendar web site, orders will open at midnight on September 1st, and the first 150 orders will receive a free werewolf sticker and bookmark as well. Then there’s the Rare Calendar for 2013, which every year features anthropomorphic versions of rare or endangered species — and this year, also features the theme of world cultures. The artists involved include Ashalind, CentraDragon, Tiina Purin, Donna Quinn, SilverFox5213, AlectorFencer, Katmomma, Qzurr, Nimrais, Heather Bruton, BloodhoundOmega, Windfalcon, and Kaji. Orders are being taken right now at the Rare Calender web site.

image c. 2012 by Balaa

submitted by Panther779
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submitted by 00vapour
[link] [8 comments]

Papabear,

I never thought that I would be writing you a second time, but I seriously don't know what to do.

A few months ago, I got into an altercation with my ex, which escalated until I was forced to leave our local furry group (it was either me take myself out or it come to physical blows with him). But now I want to come back, the only problem is, the furs in the group, my "friends" wont talk to me anymore. I've sent several messages to several people but no one responds and the furs I do talk to have been talking to me less and less. I want to have fun, but I feel if I go anywhere, they would leave. So, my question is this:

Did I do something wrong for them to hate me?

Ingavar

* * *

Dear Ingavar,

Although I am sorry you have to write to me about another problem, Papabear is flattered you are asking him again and hoping that the first situation you had (readers, see http://www.askpapabear.com/1/post/2012/07/after-10-bad-relationships-furry-is-reluctant-to-trust-in-new-love.html) has been resolved satisfactorily.

Papabear doesn’t know what all went on exactly between you and this group of furries before, so I can’t know if you did “something wrong” to them, but let’s assume it was nothing and it was all just between you and your ex. Now I am also guessing that your ex still belongs to this group that you wish to rejoin. A couple things could be happening here, then: 1) while you were away, your ex said all sorts of nasty things about you in your absence to these other furries, thus poisoning their minds with his viewpoint of the break up and how it was all your fault, or 2) if your ex is still there, the other furries are not too anxious to have a broken-up couple in their midst because it could possibly blow up again and cause a lot of unwanted drama within the group.

None of this can be resolved unless they are willing to communicate with you, which they appear unwilling to do. If you wish to keep trying, one strategy would be to find a moderator, a go-between to link you up with these furries. It would have to be someone both sides are cool with and who is, in turn, objective and willing to help. A person like that is pretty damn rare, sorry to say.

Another thing you can try is to make friends with your ex. That is to say, not get back with him, but talk to him and say, “Hey, we had our differences and I’m sorry for what happened, but it would be nice if we could be friends again and just hang out with the rest of our buddies.” Try to bury the hatchet, and if you can do that, ask your ex to talk to those in the local group and see if they will let you back in with a promise that there will be no drama because all the bitterness has been put behind you.

If you can’t talk to the others and everyone remains stubborn and close-minded, then, sadly, there is nothing more to be done, except hope that you live in a community where there are other furries besides these people with whom you can make friends and start over.

Not the best of news, perhaps, but I hope it gives you some perspective on the problem, Ingavar.

Good luck!

Papabear

My friend has known about me and my boyfriend being furs for a while, about 6 months, but she's never been very supportive of it. For a while she even openly hated my fursona and got very angry if I brought up furries. I think she was butthurt that she wasn't getting enough attention. (X

Recently she's been more supportive, even asking me to bring over my wip fursuit to work on while we watch movies. She's asked lots of questions about it, and about furs in general. I think she's even made a fursona: she's become rather obsessed with Bernese Mountain Dogs lately and she draws them a lot. She even hesitantly brought up the idea of me making her a suit!

She's still not very excited about the idea of being a furry and is having trouble getting past the yiff and the popular toony style; she really prefers plain 4-legged animals with human personalities. But I think she might decide she wants to call herself a furry, or at least get into the community more.

Tl;dr: my friend is hesitant about wanting to become a furry, but she is becoming one.

So here's where this becomes more than a story: I was wondering if anyone had suggestions to help her feel more comfortable in the fandom? Like if anyone would be willing to post pics of their fursuits or give her a friendly greeting, I think she might feel less scared of furries. And if you have favorite sfw artists, movies, music, and suiters you'd like to share, I'd love to pass those on to her. (:

Thank you for your time, redditfurs!

Edit: She has requested some pics of Bernese Mountain dog furs so she can see if she wants an anthro sona. Her first pic of her sona (drawn by me, overseen by her) can be found here: http://statigr.am/p/267622480775456257_45035488

submitted by xxxCAT
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submitted by TheScreamingDicks
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submitted by thatdarnmoose
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submitted by Cageshep
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submitted by Riley_Coyote
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submitted by neko
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Syphon's wife and child are not only not dead, they never existed.

Original post: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3782152/

Proof of the lie: http://pastebin.com/B5Us6TgL

submitted by Vigilant2012
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submitted by VentKazemaru
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submitted by Ninja_Budgie
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Fantastic Mr Fox, the brilliant 2009 Wes Anderson film based on Roald Dahl’s children’s novel, is driven by two coming-of-age stories.

The first, and more traditional, follows Mr Fox’s 12 year old son Ash. Ash is short, awkward, and prone to theatrical sartorial choices that reinforce his status as an outsider. He is forever comparing himself to his fantastic father and implausibly gifted cousin, Kristofferson. Over the course of the film, Ash learns to make the most of his strengths.

The second coming-of-age story is that of Mr Fox himself. Despite being a husband, father, home owner, and provider, Mr Fox sees himself as a ‘wild animal’, a kind of perpetual teenager who continually needs to prove himself to the world.

In the opening scene, Mr Fox and his wife are caught in a fox trap while raiding a squab farm. Mrs Fox reveals that she is pregnant, and Mr Fox agrees to settle into a safer life for the sake of his family. This brings about an internal conflict in Mr Fox. He retains his self-image (a wild animal), which is at odds with the safe domestic life he makes as a father and newspaper columnist.

Fantastic Mr Fox is a furry movie in that it features anthropomorphic characters. I’d also argue that Mr Fox’s internal conflict has parallels with the furry experience. His internal conflict is similar to the disconnect of identity experienced by many furries: we present one version of ourselves to the real world but have an internal life where our furry identity looms large.

I don’t want to overextend my linguistic gymnastics by stretching for too many parallels between the identity crises in Mr Fox and in furries. However, both we and Mr Fox must find some way to manage our split personalities.

Mr Fox does a poor job of this in the start of the film. He is prone to self-aggrandizement and risky behaviour, as if he is trying to prove his wildness despite his domesticity. He treats his friend, Badger, poorly – physically threatening him after being advised against a risky purchase, and cutting him off mid-speech. Mr Fox does so because he feels he must prove himself as the wild, fantastic animal he imagines himself to be.

Mr Fox’s crisis is resolved in the best – and most flawed – scene in the film: the wolf scene.

Just after the climactic action sequence, Mr Fox spies a wolf in the distance. The wolf is a wild animal: quadruped, mute, strong. Mr Fox, despite his self-professed lupophobia, tries to engage the wolf in conversation. The wolf remains silent. The scene ends with the two making a non-verbal connection, acknowledging each other with a raised paw. As the wolf leaves, Mr Fox says to his son and nephew “What a beautiful creature. Wish him luck, boys.”

It’s a powerful and understated scene. The connection between Mr Fox and the wolf indicates the reconciliation of Fox’s splintered identities. The gesture of acceptance shows the domesticated Mr Fox making peace with his atavistic self. With this acceptance, Mr Fox can find balance between his wild, internal world and domestic, external world. His newspaper column becomes edgier (“Fox on the Prowl”) and his next raid is on a safer target – a supermarket.

The gesture between Mr Fox and the wolf is a moment of personal triumph. It’s something we can all strive for.

Unfortunately, the wolf scene is arguably a racist one. The black wolf stands in counterpoint to the civil world of Mr Fox et. al., and is a representation of the wild.

The black wolf is intended to be a metaphor for Mr Fox’s internal atavistic shadow. However there is a history of blackness in cinema, where it is shorthand for mysteriousness and untamed animalism. This is a fundamentally racist association as it degrades blacks as being more like animals (and so less human). The black wolf is pure animal.

And, unfortunately, the key gesture between Mr Fox and the wolf looks a lot like a black power salute.

There is a long history of film using black characters in a racist fashion, even in otherwise excellent films. Consider Morgan Freeman’s benevolent servant in Driving Miss Daisy, or Michael Clarke Duncan’s “magical Negro” in The Green Mile. Such black characters only exist to act benevolently towards the white main characters, and have little other apparent motivation. Freeman and Duncan, in these films, are playing the stock character of the noble savage. Neither film is intended to be racist, however the characterization of the black characters in anachronistic.

I don’t think that Wes Anderson intended the wolf scene to have any racial connotations. Anderson has form: 2007′s The Darjeeling Limited is about the three Whitman brothers (literally, the White Men) who get lost in the Rajasthani desert. The Indians in the film are broadly characterized, but this is a deliberate device to reflect the privilege of the Whitmans and their unfamiliarity with the world outside their bubble. The Darjeeling Limited is a direct exploration of ‘whiteness’, arguably a theme carried throughout many of Anderson’s films.

Mr Fox is equally privileged and suffers the condition of being white. He is nattily dressed, speaks in a quasi-formal manner that suggests a traditional British-style education, is fluent in French, and is comfortable with Latin. While none of these things necessarily qualify him as white (he is, after all, a delightful shade of orange), it’s a reasonable assumption to make in the context of Anderson’s other work.

Like the black characters in The Green Mile and Driving Miss Daisy, I suspect that the black wolf’s cameo will become anachronistic over time. It’ll remain a small criticism of an otherwise excellent film, at least until the world improves to a point where skin colour doesn’t have associational baggage.

I, for one, would be happier if Anderson had taken a page out of the furry book and made his wolf blue. (Neon green bangs optional.)