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submitted by 123not-it
[link] [6 comments]

submitted by krtbuni
[link] [8 comments]

Hey guys :) I'm trying to find a good place to find fake fur to make a partial fursuit. But I don't have a ton of money, so it can;t be too expensive. Know any good places?

submitted by silverfennec
[link] [8 comments]

I submitted a picture i drew of a fennec when i was still newish to furry art unsure of how i felt about it.

Anyways I've continued drawing since then trying to straighten bugs and such out before submitting anything else.

earlier today i asked for a trade with an awesome person i met on FA when i joined. I'm damn happy over how it turned out and I'm sure she'll love it

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7114698/

Here's her half of the trade: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7113539

go check out her gallery and give her some luvings for being awesome.

submitted by Zerda
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submitted by draguu
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submitted by windandstorm
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I spent a night a while back cooking dinner for my fiancé , who was sick with the flu and a sinus infection. Though I was either cooking or working, we had a few moments of banality together, talking about work or taking NyQuil for the night. Eventually, I sent him to bed before he could start another TV show; I was feeling jealous that I was working so much and he had taken the day off. We said our goodnights and our I love yous, and he left to go lay down. As he did so, I was immediately struck by how weird the whole evening was to me, then fascinated that such would be the case. The whole night was totally banal, as are so many others, but it took place in person: something relatively unique to me and seemingly uncommon in the circles in which I hang out in the fandom. Even all of my relationships that weren’t strictly based online still had some interaction in that arena, and I think there are a few good reasons for this.

Furry is really important to me. Like, really, really important. I’ve thoroughly entrenched myself in the fandom, have lived it for more than a decade, and relish every moment of my interactions with it. That’s the whole reason I started this blog, really: the act of writing helps me understand what this is and why it’s important to me, and the act of sharing what I write is one way that I feel I can give back to the community that has meant so much to me. I’ve written about a lot, lately, and I feel that my topics have been fairly diverse, but not without their common threads. Of course, there’s the difference between how we feel and how we act, and the importance of a separate character from our selves, but what I think is the most important attribute of our fandom is the way we interact and the relationships we form with each other in the context of furry. There is a reason that the most-used tag on this site is the social interaction tag. Second to that is, of course, “Internet”, and the obvious combination of the two leads us to online relationships – that is, dating – which play an outsized role in our community.

I am no stranger to online relationships. Far from it, in fact: I think I can say that my online relationships outnumber my in-person relationships two or even three to one. One of the big draws to having a relationship online in a culture that is based in large part on the Internet is that you gain the advantage of the selection bias: by interacting in a primarily furry setting, you have at your disposal for potential partners primarily furries. A good part of a relationship lies in having a good deal in common with your partner, and that is almost built into the fandom. You likely have a group of people with similar levels of technological aptitude, a ready-made shared interest in anthropomorphics, and you don’t have to explain your activities to your partner. That you share this ahead of time makes a good case for dating within the fandom. It’s simply easier, perhaps healthier to be in a relationship with another furry.

I went through a relationship with a non-furry a few years ago, and while I cared for my partner deeply, there was always this thing we could never quite share. It’s not that we didn’t have other things in common, nor that we didn’t talk about furry. It was that there was this bond that I shared with other people that I could just never share with her, not without her becoming a part of the fandom,which is something I could never force her to do, and she did not seem interested in doing on her own. I still care for her and do miss some aspects of going out with a non-fur: particularly, I miss the fact that it often caused me to step back and take a look at the things that I was doing or saying or thinking as part of this subculture from and outside perspective. While I’ve always considered myself a fairly introspective person, I can honestly say that this was probably the first time that I had started to really look into what furry meant to me, particularly because either it or my relationship was on the line. The relationship didn’t last and was probably never meant to, with this another differences keeping us apart.

Another thing that that relationship lacked was not only the interaction between the two parties on a personal level, but interaction on a character level. Even though my fiancé and I rarely talk online (he’s a terrible speller – sorry, James!), we still have this multi-layered relationship that may be essential for a couple within the fandom. For furries, you have to interact well as a couple not only on a personal level, but as characters and vice versa, and this is one of the reasons several of my other relationships did not work out quite as well as either party had hoped. Although things may have been spectacular or mind blowing online, you’re just not really an eFox or iWolf in person (probably). Species aside, our characters are very much front-stage constructs, in the Erving Goffman sense. We build up these characters to emphasize or even take on attributes that may be lacking in us, and that’s what helps to make them a separate entity from our true self. It’s amazing to think back on all of the wonderful times I have had over the years in the relationships I’ve been a part of and realize that, when thought of that way, it’s like watching two completely separate people fall in love: my iFox to your eWhatever, and you and I are only the narrators, or the readers of a story.

More than just these separate aspects of our personas, however, is the barriers inherent in online interaction, particularly in a furry setting. The best, and also quite possibly the worst thing about online interaction is that, being primarily text based, you have the ability to construct your persona moreso than usual. You have the ability to reread what you’re about to say, and the ability to build a reply that is carefully designed with the other party in mind. It comes as a shock interacting with someone in real life after having only had the ability to interact with them online for so long. This is, of course, especially true when there are additional levels of fantasy involved in your interactions, the most salient example being gender play: not only are you constructing your front-stage avatar with this additional type of foresight, but you are changing a very basic fact about yourself in the process. Gender roles are complicated things that have their tie-ins even with role-play online as animal people, and when those roles are inverted or otherwise changed between the two settings of online and off, the interaction between the parties of the relationship is put at risk.  Even so, it’s important to have that interaction between both character and self within the relationship, offline and on. James is still my dog, and I’m still his…whatever species I am that day, even though we’re both grown men working our day jobs and taking care of each other when we get sick.

All of this relies on technology, though. It relies on the fact that we, as a group, tend to be some fairly tech-savvy people. I write these articles on an iPad, sync them to a remote site, then publish them on a copy of WordPress that I set up myself on a server I purchased space on myself, with a domain name I obtained myself. That may fly as impressive with, say, my folks, but I can already hear the jeers from my audience that I even mentioned an Apple product (hey, it was free, alright?). We are some pretty tech-literate folk, and that just adds to our relationships with each other. It takes a certain type of willingness to embed a portion of our lives in this thin layer of augmented reality that hovers over, beneath, and through everything else, and a certain type of person to find the thought of that enjoyable as compared to perhaps going out to a bar in an attempt to pick up a date.

This is not to say that we’re all nerds or anything. In fact, I’m pretty sure that much of the stigma that affects “nerds” outside the fandom translates to within it as well. Rather, we are a group of people that has embraced the technology around us and made it part of our lives, even if we don’t necessarily know, or even care how it works. We may not always be cutting edge, but we are contemporary with our generations, and maybe even a little ahead of the game, in general, and that may just serve as the basis for much of the social interaction within our subculture, and the relationships within that, taking at least second-seat to our interest in anthropomorphising animals.

I should wrap up by saying that I am not against online relationships in any way. That they didn’t work for me in the end is a fact I’ve come to accept, and that some of them led to pain on my partners’ end is something I deeply regret. But in the long run, I feel that I am who I am today in large part because of them – I’m one of those “even the bad times are beneficial” guys. I think that any chance we, as furs, get to share in the closeness of our bonds to each other and our characters’ relationships is worth taking, for sure. Online relationships have become almost an integral part of our fandom and it would be strange to see the culture without them in the fore. Love itself is too big a topic for a lay-fox like myself to even begin to comprehend; I’m simply glad that I had and have the chance to experience so much of it with such an awesome crowd, both on the ‘net and off.

submitted by TheSSF
[link] [11 comments]

As part of SEGA Games’ big 20th anniversary celebration for Sonic the Hedgehog, Archie Comics have released Sonic Genesis, written by Ian Flynn. This “story reboot” collection of all-new Sonic adventures is illustrated by various artists, including the return of fan favorites Tracy Yardley and Patrick “Spaz” Spaziante. After running in the Sonic comic book series this summer and fall (starting with issue #226, below), Archie will release Genesis as a hardcover graphic novel this coming April. You can pre-order this foil-covered new collection at the Barnes & Noble web site.

image c. 2011 Archie Comics (from the comic book series)

submitted by Zerda
[link] [3 comments]

For Immediate Release
For info, contact Max West, i...@sunnyvillestories.com

COMICS ARTIST CREATES FIFTH STORY
Small press comic keeps getting bigger in story

Comics creator Max West unleashes his top-drawer talent once more in
the latest release of the illustrious comics series, Sunnyville

Not sure how to word this....oh well. Here goes:

In Cerberus' flash animation Katan, there is this race of critters that, a year or so ago, I decided to form my fursona after.

The thing is, nobody can figure out what to name them. Not I, Cerberus, or even Swiftcutter (Who co-created them) have come up with anything worthwhile. Up until now they've just been called "Aztec Critters" or "Katan Critters" but that's neither official, nor is it fitting.

I was just wondering (with a huge PRETTY PLEASE here) if anyone out there could pitch in any ideas on naming these things. I guess you could keep the resemblances to other species in mind, or make up an entirely new name of some sort. It's up to you, really.

submitted by critrockets
[link] [11 comments]

Here is an upcoming web comic I think you guys might enjoy. I'm not sure if the artist considers herself furry (she only has a DA account) but the comic features anthropomorphic animals. Here is her DA: http://kobb.deviantart.com/ And here is a production blog for the comic: http://fourkingdoms.blogspot.com/

submitted by Fuuuuuuuuuuuun
[link] [6 comments]

Yeah, you probably haven’t seen it. It’s pretty underground.

I first began to suspect a furry:hipster overlap in the dealer’s den at Furry Weekend Atlanta, when I observed that the ratio of hat-wearing men was precipitously high. Not ballcaps, mind you — fedoras, flat caps, bowlers, and other examples of the sort of headwear that one would expect to find less in Atlanta than in, say, 1954.

If hats aren’t your thing (and how do you fit your ears through them, anyway?) you may defer instead to the Skinny Jean Quotient, which is also elevated. If anybody asks why you’re staring at their pants, just tell them it’s for research. Nobody wants to stand in the way of science.

As it happens, this helps explain a lingering geographic dilemma I’ve had. If you take a bunch of furries and group them by state, you can create a sort of density map: what percentage of furries live in any given state compared to what percentage of Americans in general reside there.

When you do this, you don’t find too many anomalies. Furries are underrepresented in New York, possibly because, let’s face it, most of us can’t afford to live there. And in general it’s what you’d expect: we’re slightly less common in the American South; more common on the west coast. Standing out as islands, as compared to their surrounding states: the Pacific Northwest, Michigan, and Colorado.

What’s the common thread?

By instinct, you want to look for furries in high tech density areas, because the basic idea that “furry=geek” is pretty well established. But only 8% of furries work in technology fields; a majority, 60%, are students of some stripe or another. This latter angle bids I point out that these islands are, for example, also where you can score high-quality pot. But I’m sure furries know nothing of that (certainly I don’t; I don’t like smoking, and I can’t eat brownies because chocolate is poisonous for dogs).

Anyway, when seen through a hipster lens, the inclusion of places like Portland, Seattle, Denver, and Ann Arbor suddenly fall into place. And this helps to explain the hat-wearing. It also helps to explain the results of a microsurvey I put together a few weeks back. I asked several hundred people 32 questions on their personal beliefs and behaviors, and I plugged this into a sinister machine of my own devising, the Behavioral and Attitudinal Tabulation, Mapping, and Analysis Navigator.

I asked BATMAN for “two-box” responses: when it tells me a general skew, it’s because a given respondent either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” (conversely: “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed”), leaving out the middle parts and focusing on the extremes. The computational engine whirred and thunked, and then it told me this:

• 80% of furries say that trying new things is fun and interesting
• 36% say they’re often the first person in their group of friends to try something new
• 29% say their friends look to them for advice on music, movies, games and so forth

BATMAN pointed out, in its surly fashion, that only 10% of furries say they’re ahead of the curve where pop culture is concerned. But that’s not surprising, actually: 44% describe mass media as being too “lowest common denominator” for them and 41% describe corporations and their products as “rather soulless.” That probably explains why 55% of furries agree or strongly agree that they’d rather patronise a small business.

These figures are all positively correlated with each other: the more likely you are to be asked for advice by your friends, the more likely you are to reject mainstream pop culture and the more likely you are to gravitate to small businesses. They’re also related to the creative spark: 58% of furries say creativity is one of their strongest assets, and 37% say they’d rather make something than buy it.

Beyond the numbers, this shouldn’t really be surprising to anyone who has spent much time around the fandom. We trade heavily in social currency — who you know and how well you know them. Listen in at the discussions at your next convention:

“Oh my god, who did that drawing?”
“Is that conbadge one of…?”
“Have you read…?”
“This is the new work by…”
“I’m getting a commission from…”

It’s all about the names. And since nobody is, let’s be honest here, really going to break out of the furry fandom, celebrity here has to be milked for what it’s worth. So there’s a fair degree of bandwagoning, as well, and you can get props for picking up a ‘famous’ person’s work at the auction just as easily as by discovering an up and coming artist on FA.

I don’t think it’s a particularly mysterious phenomenon. Hipsterism tends to arise in bohemian cultures where monetary capital is undervalued (either because everybody has money or nobody does). We’re certainly bohemian — on the fringes of social acceptability, wildly creative, anti-establishment, consuming mass media and pop culture only as far as it lets us repurpose it…

And, of course, money has no value in the fandom because we’re all digital here. Physical possessions and the means to acquire them are, more or less, completely irrelevant. As long as you have enough money to pay your ISP, you can plug into the fandom. So establishing your credibility has to rely on something else, and social capital steps in to fill that gap.

Some of this we can acquire by dint of our own creativity — those of us who are skilled at drawing, writing, music-making, fursuiting, roleplaying, or any other audience-focused activity can trade our abilities there for recognition and status. And if we can’t make things ourselves, we can know people who make things, and serve as a proxy to their own works: being the first person to share a new picture or story is the next best thing to having written it yourself.

Every meeting of furries I have ever been party to inevitably involves some modicum of gossip and discussion, frequently about those people whose talents we respect (or envy) and whose work we enjoy. And gossip, too, is essentially hipsterish: we prove how “in the know” we are by being the first to a scoop (or, if not the first, by having the most information!). It’s the common ground, for when novelty-seeking iconoclasts band together.

So we have attracted some of the trappings of what, ironically, I would have to call mainstream hipsterdom: the self-referential humor, the love of memes, the unorthodox fashion. To this we have added our own spin: I joke about having a mole for a furry avatar, but I’ve seen species propagate from a single point — somebody cool decided they were going to be something, and a bunch of people jumped right on. And artists acquire the same fetishistic attachment here as they do in any Seattle enclave.

But before you all try and close the circle by Rule 34ing Hipster Kitty, let me suggest that it’s not such a terrible thing. It’s who we are, and in a sense it’s what makes us unique: a shared sense of identity, a shared love of the new, the interesting, the exciting, the different, the crazy, the creative, the passionate. You could do worse than that, and if it helps you find a great new artist or two, your life’s all the richer.

Besides, at least PBR is cheap.

submitted by foxyvixen
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submitted by Vulpine
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submitted by Jin_Yaranda
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submitted by siskmarek
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Christmas is over! We talk about church, Monks, Iron Chef, the History Channel and racism. 002 - Sacralicious - Christmas is over! We talk about church, Monks, Iron Chef, the History Channel and racism.

submitted by TehSofaWolf
[link] [7 comments]