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submitted by rottenartist
[link] [11 comments]

When I was pulling together the contributions page, I did my best to think through all the types of submissions that would fit in here on [adjective][species].  I wound up tossing “fiction” in there just in case someone could think of a way to write meta-furry fiction.  I could think of one example by WhyteYote that would’ve fit, except for the fact that it was erotica.

However, lo and behold, our first piece of fiction arrived just a few days ago. Katzenjammer, after hearing stories about overzealous convention security, pulled together a short piece about a rent-a-cop taking his job protecting the animal people a little too seriously…

“Why did you do this, Lewis?”

“The rules state only one handler per. The lady or gentleman involved was attempting to bring two. That is double the allotted number.”

“But did you have to tackle one of them?”

“They were not responding to my verbal direction.”

“People here are calling us Nazis. I don’t need to tell you that is not the image we are trying to project.”

“With all due respect ma’am but I’m certain that at the Nazi ‘furry’ convention we would not be having this conversation as no one would consider bringing two handlers into the headless lounge because they had a respect for order that is sadly lacking here.”

“Oh. …are you some kind of World War II history buff, then?”

“Huh? …no.”

“Oh. Well I’m just concerned because you’ve been doing such a great job so far. I mean, we all appreciate you taking this seriously. I know that this can be a job that is difficult to take seriously. But there are limits. How did you come across this job anyways?”

“Well I really don’t know much about your organization here, but I saw the posting at the temp agency for additional help and it seemed… it seemed important to me.”

“Important?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a very strange choice of words.”

“I apologize.”

Sigh.  ”So, how am I going to explain this to the staff?”

- § -

It was 1983 when we landed in the swamp.

They told me that the mouse lived here. That’s all I needed to know. Why did he live here, I wondered, in this oppressively sweltering land? Perhaps to keep his enemies at bay. Perhaps as a challenge to the righteous. I was righteous. Did he think that a lay over at the stagnant, labyrinthine Atlanta airport would stop me? Did he think that making the best option for lunch the airport Applebees would slow me down? There was a lot of suffering in that Applebees.

‘Muggy.’ That’s how people from the midwest describe a hellhole. People with values. Good people. That’s how my parents described it. They didn’t deserve this.

We arrived.

The sign had printed on it ‘The happiest place on earth’ but I understand that what it was saying was ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here.’ The snow cones around every corner seemed like a sick joke. What chance did they have?

It wasn’t difficult to find him. The mouse. We stood in line, I would have my meeting, it was imminent. But wait.

They came out of nowhere but the incessant, shrill cackling was unmistakable. Teenagers! They descended on the mouse. I couldn’t tell what was happening and they disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.

When I finally got a view of what was going on I saw it happen. He just collapsed. The mouse. How could he be so weak. His image adorned every surface that could take it for fifty miles around. This was the reason I had come so far? Yes. This was nothing, a surprise attack by cowards, no real damage was done. A prank. My concerns were unwarranted. I thought.

But he stayed down. His vassals arrived.

Then his head came off.

What?

His HEAD came OFF.

WHAT.

They lifted it off, like it was the lid on a jar of pickles that a friend had already failed to open but regardless claimed credit for ‘totally loosening it’ when you succeeded.

I don’t. I don’t understand.

Yes. You do.

Oh god.

It’s not over yet.

Why.

It’s just not.

What is that inside of him? Is that a person? What was going on here? This was madness! Was I wrong? Was I not prepared? My mind was too fragile. Why didn’t they warn me?

But it wasn’t over, he was right. In this heat, this… interloper started… vomiting.

Alright that’s just gross.

I know. I’m sorry. But it happened. It seems so obvious. He was vomiting out the magic. It kept coming out of him until it stopped. Then, mercifully, they took him away.

But it stayed. It just lay there, baking in the sun. The magic. To say that it was ruined was offensive. It was destroyed. Annihilated. Extinguished.

Never again.

- § -

“Hey? Hey are you listening to me? You kind of zoned out there for a while. Just don’t it again, alright. Try to relax huh, try to have some fun. This isn’t exactly Fort Knox. You’re too tense.”

We’re always willing to take a look at possible submissions; information is on our contributions page!

Just to name a few:

Temeraire series (their antics over food really amuse me, and I love the relationship between Temeraire and Laurence even it's tended towards preening of late)

Age of Fire (loved the sibling dynamic, too bad about the 6th book)

Inheritance series (disliked the Roran sequences, ending was decent and sufficiently twisty)

The Liveship Traders

The Earthsea Quartet

Spirited Away

How To Train Your Dragon (not a kid, but I absolutely love this movie)

Just a little add on...I dislike the Pern series, the dragons hardly have any character other than to be flying horses. But most seem to like the books :/

submitted by teryxc
[link] [16 comments]

Here’s a power-house of a collaboration! Barry Sonnenfeld, director of all three Men in Black movies (the third is coming up) has announced a new project: A graphic novel and movie to be called Dominion: Dinosaurs versus Aliens. Both the graphic novel and the movie script will be written by comic book writing superstar Grant Morrison, known for utterly re-inventing numerous comic book lines, including DC’s Animal Man. This is from Previews magalog: “When an alien invasion attacks Earth in the age of the dinosaurs, the planet’s only hope is the giants that roam the planet with, it turns out, a lot more intelligence than previously realized.” The graphic novel will be illustrated by Mukesh Singh (who previously teamed with Grant Morrison on 18 Days) and published by Liquid Comics later this year. A special preview of the graphic novel will be available for free (of course) on Free Comic Book Day, May 5th. No word yet on a release date for the movie, but Deadline.com has an extensive story on the project and an interview with Barry Sonnenfeld.

image c. 2012 Liquid Comics

submitted by blueyoshi11
[link] [1 comment]

This week on KnotCast, we have a bit of an off topic week. We have some mates from hell, some unfortunate news, and some good news in a followup... plus all our usual rambling. Use our coupon code 'knot' at Adam& Eve for a great deal! www.adameve.com This weeks song is 'Daring Escape' by Jago from BadAss - Boss Themes, an OCRemix album Available at - http://badass.ocremix.org/ Episode 164 - Q N A

Disney Cars 2 blu ray edition is just released. And Ideal Blu-ray Copy
has successfully removed the tricks in it, you may backup this bluray
and appreciate it on your HDTV, enjoy what happened to McQueen and
Mater in Cars 2.

Ideal Blu-ray Copy supports two copy modes, entire disc and only the

submitted by NateVarmac
[link] [11 comments]

I've decided that a great way to boost activity on this subreddit is to declare a theme to submit by! It's not an official stance at all, but it'd be very fun to see what art/stories/whatever you people submit!

SO, I DECLARE THIS WEEK DRAGON WEEK. Until next Monday, try to post some of the best dragon pictures you have, whether they be anthro or more traditional dragons, eastern or western styled, or even ones from popular culture! Post flash videos or short clips of dragons that the furry fandom might enjoy! Maybe write some short stories!

And most importantly, have fun with this! Maybe if this is a success, then every month or so I can pick some new theme!

submitted by captainbozo
[link] [13 comments]

www.draggetshow.com

Hey guys! Last time I posted, we had just started, but now we have a few episodes under our belt w/ a site, rss feed and all that jazz. You can subscribe to us on iTunes and Stitcher. Furry isn't the focus of the show, but it's rather chaotic (this is Alkali after all) and it does come up. We hope to get more guests on, which we know we will have the IFC staff, and I'll try to get 2, Kage, and more people on as well. Hope you like it!

submitted by xandertheblue
[link] [5 comments]

This episode Roo & Elias discuss all things relating to getting a fursuit.   They also make the announcement that they will be doing some panels at FurIdaho! (www.furidaho.com).   They are also joined by a very special guest, Inigma Bunny from Secret Bunny Studios! Today's musical breaks include Canada Was the Largest Eurodance market Outside Europe and Really Hungry, Really Tired both by Truxton.  Next episode is about all things fursuit.  Hope you enjoy! Now Listen: Episode 8 – Fursuit Construction - This episode Roo & Elias discuss all things relating to getting a fursuit.   They also make the announcement that they will be doing some panels at FurIdaho! (www.furidaho.com).   They are also joined by a very special guest,

submitted by Hicarbut
[link] [4 comments]

submitted by korosarum
[link] [8 comments]

what would a furry look like IRL? no fursuits please.

submitted by Yvefff
[link] [17 comments]

Hedgie returns for more background 'fun' as he becomes kitchen slave to the rest of the cast for the night, cooking a nice pork meal during the show, live on air. The Gaming News laughs at The Daily Mail, and talks about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Oh Hell Yea! For Done and Dusted TK reviews The Swan Hotel's Sunday Carvery, and the film The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) - Uncut. Xavier played some Edge World, a browser game for Google Chrome, as well as the demo of Puddle on the PSN, a Playstation Move title. He also talks about the film of Conan the Barbarian. Eeve3 reviews Dawn Metropolis by Anamanaguchi, the guys who made the OST for the Scott Pilgrim game. Werewolfe gives us the review of the 2011 film of The Muppets, There was no review from Felis this week again. Starring TK, Xavier, Eeve3 and Background Hedgie. TigerTails Radio - Season 6 - Episode 23 - Cooking With Hedgie

Many of you will be vaguely familiar with Gulliver’s Travels, the satirical novel written by Jonathan Swift and published in 1725. However you may not know that the book is overtly furry.

Gulliver is a traveller who, through misadventure, voyages to four unknown lands: Lilliput (a land of little people); Brobdingnag (big people); Laputa (a scientific ruling class repressing an uneducated populous); and finally Houyhnhnmland – land of the rational horses.

Pronunciation note: ‘houyhnhnm’ is the name the horses have given themselves and so should sound much like a horse’s whinny – ‘hwinnum’.

I won’t go into the plot in detail (although I will discuss Houyhnhnmland a little later on) but suffice to say that it’s a very easy and entertaining read. The language isn’t as antiquated as you might think; no more so than the contrivances used by some fantasy authors.

And then there’s the furry content.

For starters there are the rational horses, the houyhnhnms themselves. They talk, they use their forelegs to handle tools and to eat, and they live in a society. In short, they are anthropomorphs.

Swift uses his anthropomorphic horses much in the same way many furry books, and sometimes furries themselves, use anthropomorphs: to reflect on human society. The houyhnhnms are entirely rational and live in a peaceful collective where the concept of lying is unknown. To draw a parallel with a more modern invention, they share similarities with Star Trek’s Vulcans and in many ways, Borg.

Swift goes a step further by including zoomorphic humans: the yahoos. The yahoos are humans stripped of their rational nature. The resulting animal is reduced to a violent, selfish, scatological and sex-driven being. Gulliver is so disgusted by the yahoos that he begins to hate himself as he sees his instincts reflected in their behaviour. He yearns to be less human; more horse.

The entire book, not just the Houyhnhnmland voyage, looks at human society from an outsider’s point of view. This, in my opinion, is how many furries see the ‘human’ world: as a collection of laws and unsaid rules that are often illogical and arbitrary. In each of the four islands visited by Gulliver, he experiences an askew version of England and English society.

Most famously, on the first island, Gulliver is a giant amongst two nations of tiny people who are at war. They are, literally, at war because they disagree over which end of a boiled egg should be sliced off before eating: the big-endians and the little-endians. On his second voyage, Gulliver finds himself the diminutive amongst giants. He attempts to justify the slaughter of his fellow tiny men in the war between England and France by the insignificant perceived differences between the two nations. His explanation is met with the same disbelief and horror that Gulliver expressed over the endian war.

England is no longer at war with France however the metaphor is just as strong today. I think many furries consider themselves to be outsiders from human society, and see many of society’s actions as equally illogical and harmful as the endian war. I don’t think you, reader, will struggle to find a relevant modern-day analogue.

Back in Houyhnhnmland, Gulliver’s Travels explores the conflict between our instinctual, atavistic side and our rationality. By creating beings that are purely rational (the houyhnhnms) and purely animalistic (the yahoos), Swift asks the reader to consider himself. We like to think that we’re rational beings, but how true is that? Surely most of our decision-making is driven by instincts like fear, or sexual desire, or love?

Furries explore the same questions pretty directly. By presenting as non-human (or part-human) animals, we’re disassociating ourselves from the rules of ‘normal’ human behaviour. Starting from a position a half-step away from humanity, and a half-step towards our furry avatar of choice, we think about our animal instincts and consider that perhaps some of the artifices of human behaviour are untenable. The traits that we’ve appropriated from our avatars are usually instinctual ones; instincts that bring us closer to the animal world, and closer to one other. We’ve learned that a hug is often preferable to a handshake.

Through this lens, furries, like Gulliver, can see how humans everywhere are guided by instinct. (Many, if not most, people would deny this.) Once you think of everyone as an animal, it’s easy to see selfish or territorial or lustful behaviour. And it’s easy to see that denying that these behaviours are instinctual, and so applying a sheen of redemptive ‘reasoning’, often leads to harmful outcomes.

The houyhnhnms have no such instincts and accordingly their lives are guided by purely rational principles. They know neither love nor empathy. Decisions are made collectively and never second-guessed. Mating pairs are selected based on genetic synergies. They enslave and freely execute yahoos, rationalising that such wretched creatures cannot have worthwhile quality of life. They eventually exile Gulliver after observing his human flaws.

The furries might say that embracing instincts for what they are – natural – leads to a new understanding of ones self, and leads to the possibility of a richer life. If you are naturally flawed, it’s easier to accept that everyone else is too. The furry community, for all its problems and drama (brilliantly encapsulated in these virtual pages by Makyo), is a welcoming and tolerant one. Swift’s houyhnhnms and yahoos, representing the two extremes of our human animal nature, live in two very different but equal hells.

Gulliver’s Travels is out of copyright, and so is available to download for free from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org). You can get it in any format imaginable: plain text, Kindle, HTML, even as an audiobook.

No copyright means that there are no royalties payable, and so the story of Gulliver’s Travels has been adapted countless times. The ‘fantastical voyage’ aspect of the story makes it ripe for adaptation into children’s stories, much in the manner of One Thousand and One Nights. The book has also been exploited with varying degrees of adherence to the source material in middlebrow cinema, notably the 1990′s TV miniseries featuring Ted Danson and the recent film starring Jack Black.

Adaptations of Gulliver’s Travels usually focus on the first two of Gulliver’s voyages, where he is respectively huge and tiny amongst the native population. The adaptations usually water down the occasionally explicit sexual content of the novel, which is a key theme. Human sexuality is a major societal motivation and Swift does not withdraw from the topic: Gulliver’s comparatively massive genitals are key to his activities in Lilliput; he becomes a sexual plaything for teenage girls in Brobdingnag; crude sexual advances from pubescent yahoo girls lead to his eventual abandonment by the houyhnhnms.

Gulliver’s Travels and Swift’s houyhnhnms helped me understand my own identity as a furry. It’s given me an insight into myself and also provided the language and framework to allow these ideas to become fully formed. Swift’s focus on the true motivations of the human animal – instincts such as sex and fear – helped me understand that my own motivations are just the same as everyone else.

I sign off my emails as ‘your friendly local houyhnhnm’, but this is not to say that I see myself as a rational being. It’s quite the opposite. The houyhnhnms, for me, are a reminder that I am just an animal. I have instincts that I can’t deny or rationalize away.

Gulliver, on the other hand, is seduced by the logic and the reason of the houyhnhnms. Despite being cast out by the houyhnhnms and being returned to England by sympathetic humans, Gulliver rejects human society outright, seeing only a group of yahoos. He ends the novel as an embittered misanthrope. Sadly this is also the fate of many furries. Like Gulliver, they are blinded to the greatness of society by contemptible human actions, false rationalisations and the other ways in which we humans fail.

Swift encourages the reader to empathize with Gulliver and this is part of the book’s genius and power. We watch and understand his downfall but we ultimately reject Gulliver and his beloved houyhnhnms. We can choose a happier path.

My furry self, the horse, stands for two things: my animal nature that I need to learn to embrace and accept, and the fact that I can use reason and rationality to improve myself and my life. The houyhnhnms and the yahoos are metaphors for our dual nature as human animals. They’re something I’m running towards and away from at the same time.

There is irony here. By stepping away from my human form into my furry one, I’ve learned how to be human. The most human version of myself is the horse.

(click here if video does not load)

Well it’s coming up that time of the year again and much like last year we have a Camp Feral Video. This year the Feral crew is making a “Future” based theme, which should open the door to crazy ideas. Take a look at the first footage I found on behind the scenes and stay tuned for more craziness coming soon. All videos are rated PG unless alcohol is  rated G… cause ya know … in Canada things are different : P

submitted by AstronotusOcellatus
[link] [4 comments]

Come with us this week as we continue our discussions on having and showing faith in a faithless society; also welcome JWingy and Kail’s girlfriend, AJ (she’s taken guys!) to the studio. Join us for the only podcast where coffee is not a suggestion.

Metadata and Credits WagzTail Podcast 2.0 Episode 7
Runtime: 30m
Cast: Levi, Kail, Wolfin, JWingy, AJ
Format: 128kbps ABR split-stereo MP3
Copyright: © 2012 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0. If distributed with a facility that has an existing agreement in place with a Professional Rights Organisation (PRO), file a cue sheet for 30:00 to Fabien Renoult (BMI) 1.67%, Josquin des Pres (BMI) 1.67%, WagzTail.com 96.67%. Rights have been acquired to all content for national and international broadcast and web release with no royalties due. Special thanks to sagetyrtle and tandoori for additional sound effects and to tzooka for the Podcast thumbnail for this episode. Episode 7 - Come with us this week as we continue our discussions on having and showing faith in a faithless society; also welcome JWingy and Kail's girlfriend, AJ (she's taken guys!) to the studio. Join us for the only podcast where coffee is not a suggestion.

submitted by Greynois
[link] [32 comments]