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Um, we’ll let the folks at Kechal Comics explain it: “Placed in men’s tightie whitie underwear on a whim by the scientist who captures him, Baxter the monkey does the only logical thing possible – he instantly develops consciousness and the ability to speak. Because… SCIENCE!!! Excited by his discovery, the scientist decides to see if other animals react as well as Baxter. Gaining intelligence, rational thought and an innate understanding of justice and fairnesss. Let’s just say further experiments do not go as well. Join Baxter as he navigates a world he’s just starting to understand, a world full of fearful humans, zany animals, and one seriously deranged bunny rabbit.” See? We told you they’d say it better! Underwars #1 was written by Kevin Joseph and illustrated in black & white by C.M. Brennan, based on a series of paintings he did.

image c. 2017 Kechal Comics

Thanks to a conversation with FableCharm, a brony, we've realized our previous furry lifestyler episode is in need of a revisit! This is the revisit. Tugs is joined by Nuka while Roo takes a break, reading your emails and discussing the lifestyler question from an academic point of view. What is a lifestyler? Does this change over time? How does experience shape the ideal of one's furry self? Are hobbyists as valid in the fandom? Where does "get off my con" come from? Find out, along with new Space News, Olde Timey Ads, and Fifty Sheds of Grey.





NOW LISTEN!

Show Notes

Special Thanks

Nuka, our guest. Check out some science!!
Caudle
Moss
Simone
Joey Saso
Mfalme
Red
Docos
Hachi

Music

Opening Theme: DJ Earworm – The State of Now. USA: YouTube, 2017. ©2015 DJ Earworm. Check out the original piece at his website.
Some music was provided by Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech.com. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. We used the following pieces:

Spy Glass


Space News Music: Fredrik Miller – Orbit. USA: Bandcamp, 2013. Used with permission. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)
Mystery Skulls – Ghost. USA: Warner Bros Records, 2011. Used with permission.
Closing Theme: Husky In Denial – Cloud Fields (Headnodic Mix). USA: Unpublished, 2015. ©2015 Fur What It’s Worth and Husky in Denial. Based on Fredrik Miller – Cloud Fields (Chill Out Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. ©2011 Fur What It’s Worth. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)

Patreon Love

The following people have decided this month’s Fur What It’s Worth is worth actual cash! THANK YOU!

Uber Supporters

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Premium Supporters – None :c

Bride of Pinbot Supporters

Docos (Picture coming soon…when he has one! Any artists out there wanna hook him up? 🙂 )
Bowler Hat Supporters

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Deluxe Supporter

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Want to be on this list? Donate on our Patreon page! THANK YOU to our supporters once again!

Next episode: Our next episode is the Season 6 Recap! What episode moments were your favorite? Send them to us by August 12, 2017! S6 Episode 19 – Furry Trash - Thanks to a conversation with FableCharm, a brony, we've realized our previous furry lifestyler episode is in need of a revisit! This is the revisit. Tugs is joined by Nuka while Roo takes a break, reading your emails and dis

Here’s the Plan is a new 2D animated short film from Chile, written and directed by Fernanda Frick. “A married cat-dog couple of cupcake bakers dream of opening their own bakery. One day their oven breaks and they have to postpone their dream in order to earn money and replace it. Somewhere down the line, they drift apart from their dream and from themselves.” It had its world premier at the Nashville International Film Festival last April, and it’s been making the rounds at animation festivals since then. The official web site has a lot more info.

image c. 2017 herestheplanfilm.com

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We take a sip of corn, churn through a ton of news and eat some disgusting jelly beans.

Download MP3

Watch Video Link Roundup:

• Fandom Fashions Tail Hoodies
• Why It Sucks To Be A Male Hyena
• SyFyWire’s “How Furries Became A Fandom”
• Fairly OddParents creator working on Danny Phantom-like series for YouTube
• BadDragon’s YouTube Channel
• BBC: Meet the trio who ‘married’ each other
• Rockos Modern Life returns with movie: Static Cling
• Kentucky Ark Encounter wants to ‘take back’ rainbow from LGBTQ community
• Psychology Today’s “What’s the Deal With Furries?”
• Daily Mail: The psychology of furries: Expert says dressing up as animals could boost mental health by creating ‘strong social support networks’ and achieving a ‘positive sense of self’
• Second Life’s Immersive Sequel [Sansar] Is World-Building at Its Finest
• Daily Mail: ‘Stop pretending this is normal!’ This Morning viewers baffled by ‘furry fandom’ guests who socialise in ANIMAL costumes (and Eamonn wants to know if they ‘sniff each other’)
• @kittywarrior16 draws cute art for Paradox. Seeks commissions!
• Adam Ruins Everything: Alpha Males Do Not Exist
• NHL 18 Game has Mascots in it
• Samsung Wireless Charger Convertible: Launch Film
• U.S. Muslims More Accepting of Homosexuality Than White Evangelicals
• In a Heartbeat – Animated Short Film
• Florida Today: Unfurgettable: Megaplex in Orlando celebrates furry fandom
• Splatoon 2’s Lobby Is Full Of Furries
• Culturally F’d: Copyright for Furries
• Centaur Skyrim Mod
• Firefox Nightly has a new logo
• The Verge: This Japanese mascot is an enema disguised as an adorable penguin
• Scent Generator
• VR Next Generation

News:

• Texas Man Shoots Armadillo, Bullet Ricochets Back In His Own Face
• UK to implement age-verification system for porn sites
• Is This The Most NSFW Scientific Study Of All Time?

FC-273 Monster Butt Punching Rally - We take a sip of corn, churn through a ton of news and eat some disgusting jelly beans.

We take a sip of corn, churn through a ton of news and eat some disgusting jelly beans.

Download MP3

Watch Video Link Roundup:

• Fandom Fashions Tail Hoodies
• Why It Sucks To Be A Male Hyena
• SyFyWire’s “How Furries Became A Fandom”
• Fairly OddParents creator working on Danny Phantom-like series for YouTube
• BadDragon’s YouTube Channel
• BBC: Meet the trio who ‘married’ each other
• Rockos Modern Life returns with movie: Static Cling
• Kentucky Ark Encounter wants to ‘take back’ rainbow from LGBTQ community
• Psychology Today’s “What’s the Deal With Furries?”
• Daily Mail: The psychology of furries: Expert says dressing up as animals could boost mental health by creating ‘strong social support networks’ and achieving a ‘positive sense of self’
• Second Life’s Immersive Sequel [Sansar] Is World-Building at Its Finest
• Daily Mail: ‘Stop pretending this is normal!’ This Morning viewers baffled by ‘furry fandom’ guests who socialise in ANIMAL costumes (and Eamonn wants to know if they ‘sniff each other’)
• @kittywarrior16 draws cute art for Paradox. Seeks commissions!
• Adam Ruins Everything: Alpha Males Do Not Exist
• NHL 18 Game has Mascots in it
• Samsung Wireless Charger Convertible: Launch Film
• U.S. Muslims More Accepting of Homosexuality Than White Evangelicals
• In a Heartbeat – Animated Short Film
• Florida Today: Unfurgettable: Megaplex in Orlando celebrates furry fandom
• Splatoon 2’s Lobby Is Full Of Furries
• Culturally F’d: Copyright for Furries
• Centaur Skyrim Mod
• Firefox Nightly has a new logo
• The Verge: This Japanese mascot is an enema disguised as an adorable penguin
• Scent Generator
• VR Next Generation

News:

• Texas Man Shoots Armadillo, Bullet Ricochets Back In His Own Face
• UK to implement age-verification system for porn sites
• Is This The Most NSFW Scientific Study Of All Time?

FC-273 Monster Butt Punching Rally - We take a sip of corn, churn through a ton of news and eat some disgusting jelly beans.

We take a sip of corn, churn through a ton of news and eat some disgusting jelly beans.

Download MP3

Link Roundup:

• Fandom Fashions Tail Hoodies
• Why It Sucks To Be A Male Hyena
• SyFyWire’s “How Furries Became A Fandom”
• Fairly OddParents creator working on Danny Phantom-like series for YouTube
• BadDragon’s YouTube Channel
• BBC: Meet the trio who ‘married’ each other
• Rockos Modern Life returns with movie: Static Cling
• Kentucky Ark Encounter wants to ‘take back’ rainbow from LGBTQ community
• Psychology Today’s “What’s the Deal With Furries?”
• Daily Mail: The psychology of furries: Expert says dressing up as animals could boost mental health by creating ‘strong social support networks’ and achieving a ‘positive sense of self’
• Second Life’s Immersive Sequel [Sansar] Is World-Building at Its Finest
• Daily Mail: ‘Stop pretending this is normal!’ This Morning viewers baffled by ‘furry fandom’ guests who socialise in ANIMAL costumes (and Eamonn wants to know if they ‘sniff each other’)
• @kittywarrior16 draws cute art for Paradox. Seeks commissions!
• Adam Ruins Everything: Alpha Males Do Not Exist
• NHL 18 Game has Mascots in it
• Samsung Wireless Charger Convertible: Launch Film
• U.S. Muslims More Accepting of Homosexuality Than White Evangelicals
• In a Heartbeat – Animated Short Film
• Florida Today: Unfurgettable: Megaplex in Orlando celebrates furry fandom
• Splatoon 2’s Lobby Is Full Of Furries
• Culturally F’d: Copyright for Furries
• Centaur Skyrim Mod
• Firefox Nightly has a new logo
• The Verge: This Japanese mascot is an enema disguised as an adorable penguin
• Scent Generator
• VR Next Generation

News:

• Texas Man Shoots Armadillo, Bullet Ricochets Back In His Own Face
• UK to implement age-verification system for porn sites
• Is This The Most NSFW Scientific Study Of All Time?

[Live] Monster Butt Punching Rally

From out of nowhere… actually, from out of Spain. The Think Lab is an animation production house in Madrid, and they recently completed their first CGI feature film, Deep, directed by Julio Soto Gurpide. “In 2100, when humanity has abandoned the earth, a colony of extravagant creatures still thrives in the deepest abyss of the ocean. Deep, an adventurous ‘dumbo’ octopus and the last one of his kind lives there with his two unconditional friends: Evo, a nerdy and clumsy angler fish, and Alice, a neurotic deep-sea shrimp. When an accident destroys their home, the guardian of the abyss, The Kraken, will send Deep and his friends on a perilous journey to find a new home. In their mission, they will be joined by Maura – a voracious moray eel – and together they will travel to amazing places like the submerged city of New York, the Titanic, or the Arctic, facing formidable enemies and hilarious situations.” No talk of a release here, but the IMDB page lists all English-speaking actors, and the trailer is in English too.

image c. 2017 The Think Lab

Pornhub had been looking to help Panda's get it on? Well, I .... huh ... so this is a thing?
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer

ArCANIS: A Modern Animal Tarot, by David DePasquale. Illustrated.
Los Angeles, The author, July 2017, hardcover $30.00 (unpaged [168 pages).

I went to the Center Stage Gallery in Burbank, CA during August to see the “ArCANIS: A Modern Animal Tarot” art exhibit by David DePasquale; a full 78-card Tarot deck in color, divided into 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards split into 14 cards each of the four Tarot suits (swords, wands, pentacles, and cups), with each card featuring an anthropomorphized animal. Besides the original art (for sale), there were the printed cards, a rotating enlargement slide show so the attractive stylized art could be easily seen in detail, and brief notes on the history of Tarot and the meanings of the cards.

In addition to the exhibit, visitors could buy in advance (the publication date is in September) the printed 3.5” x 5.5” deck of 78 cards in a customized tuck box, and a de luxe hardcover book showing the 78 cards individually on right-hand pages with a one-page explanation of each on the left-hand page:

THE NINE OF WANDS

Upright: Determination, Hope, Persistence

The Nine of Wands can represent searching inside yourself for the inner strength to overcome a final hurdle. You have worked through many obstacles to get to where you are now, so do not give up when you are so close!

Reversed: Defensiveness, Hesitation, Paranoia

The reversed Nine of Wands can indicate that you are slowing down in your progress toward your goal and defensive about how much you’ve been accomplishing. You’re hesitant to take on more work when you already feel like you’re drowning in it. You could use a good, long break to recuperate and gather your strength.

The Nine of Wands features an orange-&-black dragon. The jacketless book is attractively printed in color (although each card is in just one color plus black) on thick glossy paper. The binding is black cloth stamped in silver foil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David DePasquale is a Los Angeles/Hollywood visual development artist who has worked at Nickelodeon, Disney and DreamWorks, among others. His online posts are heavy on anthropomorphic paintings. He got the inspiration for this Tarot card deck and book last November, received lots of encouragement from fellow artists, ran a Kickstarter campaign from March 17 to April 18 of this year, and raised $19,748 with a $13,000 goal. He’s been working since to complete everything; this ArCANIS art exhibit at CSG in Burbank, July 28 to September 3, is its first public release.

Fortunately, there are plenty of his Tarot cards on his website to show what they look like: modern, stylized, and bold. There are dragons, goats, cats, raccoons, eagles, lions, wolves, deer, storks, horses, bear – you name it. There are not 78 different animals and birds, but duplicates (except dragons) are kept to a minimum.

ArCANIS: A Modern Animal Tarot is a private art project and is not publicly available – but its Kickstarter is still online. For a $30 pledge, you can still get this book; or the Tarot card deck, if you prefer. For $50 you can get both the book and the card deck. See the Kickstarter for other goals, such as an enameled pin or original sketches.

DePasquale says on the Kickstarter video that he will launch ArCANIS more publicly at this year’s CTN Animation Expo, in Burbank, CA on November 17-19, 2017. CTN stands for Creative Talent Network; it’s not a fan convention but a professional animation artist’s job fair. Check out the Wikipedia entry. Furry artists and fursuit makers may be interested.

–Fred Patten

• Pre Order on Kickstarter

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon, where you can access exclusive stuff for just $1.

We got this one from Animation magazine too: “BES Animation (Monster Beach) has made a deal with Jetpack Distribution to distribute its new [2D] animated series, Kitty Is Not a Cat, internationally… Kitty Is Not a Cat centers on a co-op of stray cats living together in a dilapidated mansion, left to them by an eccentric baroness. The cats’ life of constant partying is abruptly interrupted when they answer a knock at the door to find ‘Kitty’ — a cute little girl in an orange catsuit who followed one of them home. Determined to behave like a feline and not help the cats find her proper human home, Kitty becomes a part of the ‘family’ with hilarious results.” There’s a preview clip up on YouTube. Par for the course: No word yet on any distribution in North America.

image c. 2017 BES Animation

Oh boy! Love is in the air at Seoul Tower in South Korea. [speaking in Korean]
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Dear Papabear,
 
Although mass surveillance has made the world safer especially when it comes to the internet why do I feel paranoid everywhere I go in public and whenever I use the Internet to do research I hate being watched like this 24/7/52 also the Feds make me fearful one wrong move and I could be black bagged cuffed and taken away.
 
Sergie
 
* * *

Hi, Sergie,

You are not unjustified by your concern. Since the passage of the 2001 “Patriot Act,” there has been considerable concern about American citizens’ privacy, especially regarding their online and phone behavior. Basically, if the government thinks you might have a connection to terrorism in any way, it has carte blanche to access your files and possibly prosecute you. They can wiretap your phone or other device without telling you, and they can do the same monitoring your Internet browsing behavior.

Furthermore, there is increasing surveillance of our streets, airport security is a hassle, and it is probably not far off that they will demand we all have chip implants.

Because computers are easily accessed remotely, and so much is stored on “the Cloud,” it is feasible that government agents could plant incriminating evidence into your files, then get a warrant, “discover” it, and arrest you.
Scary times. Or so it would seem….

Fortunately, there are still laws made to protect Americans like you and me. The Fourth Amendment protects you against being searched without a warrant:
 
U.S. Constitution Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 

Also, US v. Katz 389 US 347 (1967), a U.S. Supreme Court decision, said that the government cannot eavesdrop on your communications, except in narrow exceptions that must be specifically explained by law.

Now, there is something called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that provides for the government to spy on citizens regarding communications with foreign entities, but the government still needs a court order to do so.
But the government tries to get away with shit all the time. That is when organizations such as the ACLU get involved and defend citizens’ rights and the Constitution.
​
Do not be afraid to defend and stand up for yourself, getting an attorney if needed. The government is supposed to serve the people, not vice versa.
At any rate, I sincerely doubt you are doing anything of interest to the NSA. Also, you are not being watched 24/7. There simply is not the time or staff or budget in the government to watch everyone do everything. Like any other investigative work, they rely on tips and leads to target suspicious activity.
But if you are concerned, here are some programs that can help shield you from nosy people:
 
1. Signal (https://whispersystems.org/) encrypts your text messaging and phone calls.
2. Tor Web Browser (https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en) makes it harder to follow your web activities.
3. 1Password (https://1password.com/) helps you keep lots of passwords safe and makes it so you don’t have to worry if you forget a password.
 
Happy Surfing!
Papabear
​

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

Avaritia: A Fable, by M.D. Westbrook
Wichita, KS, M.W. Publishers, April 2016, trade paperback $9.99 (200 pages), Kindle $1.00.

Usually the dedication of a book is not pertinent, but this one really sets the mood:

“This book is dedicated to rising taxes, broken promises, forgotten children, crime, starvation, war, death, and despair.

Thanks for the inspiration, guys. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Avaritia has a very plain cover (by the author, credited as Mark D. Westbrook), but it turns out that there is a reason for this. The novel is grim and preachy, but fascinating in an Old Testament way. The only anthropomorphic novel that I can think of that’s remotely similar to this is the black comedy Play Little Victims by Kenneth Cook (1978). See my 2014 review of it on Flayrah: https://www.flayrah.com/5725/review-play-little-victims-kenneth-cook

But there is nothing funny about Avaritia. I read Play Little Victims almost forty years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. I don’t expect to ever forget Avaritia, either.

Avaritia begins in a house with a human father, a mother, and two brothers. The younger brother has three pet rats. The older brother has a bowl of mice, but Older Brother Human only keeps them to feed to his pet snake.

The characters in Avaritia are its mice and rats. The story begins with Older Brother Human lifting Radish, one of the mice, out of the bowl to feed to his boa constrictor while her mate, Cookie, pounds on the glass and squeaks, “Take me! Take me and leave her!”

“Cookie cried uncontrollably, watching as the snake slithered behind his mate.

In a blink, the snake struck. Radish released a final squeak as the constrictor wrapped around her lower abdomen.

‘Noooo!’ Cookie wailed.

Radish opened her mouth, gasping, and beat her tiny paws against the orange and yellow scales, but to no avail. Radish’s once soft pink eyes bulged, now a darker hue of red.

Older Brother Human laughed out loud. ‘Good boy, Petey. Eat ‘er up.’” (p. 2)

Most of the mice accept their eventual doom fatalistically. They have even made it into a religion.

“York turned to the crowd of mouse families. ‘We honor those who make the sacrifice. Another day to eat. Another day to sleep. What a glory to give your all for fellow mice.’” (p. 3)

Only Benny, a young black-furred mouse, has doubts about this fatalism. He is the skeptic who questions everything; the Cassandra whom nobody listens to.

The plot changes drastically on page 7. (Sorry; that’s supposed to be a spoiler.) Younger Brother Human’s three rats get loose – mates Mad and Dolley, and their daughter Moon — cross the hall and liberate the cage-mice (despite mice and rats supposedly having nothing to do with each other), take them to join the mice in the house’s walls, and they all escape together. The humans, who had looked like they would be important in the story, completely disappear.

Many of the mice want to remain close to the humans’ house to raid it for food, but the rats and the leaders of the mice insist they have to get as far away as possible.

“‘Why didn’t we just stay in the walls of the humans’ house?’ asked Cookie. ‘You wall-mice were fine there.’

‘Pib, Fib, and Tib. See those three numbskulls?’ Lint scowled in the direction of three identical mice with bright red fur, currently flirting with one of Cookie’s daughters. The female mouse giggled as the mouse trio literally fought for her attention, yanking at each other’s tails, biting and scratching. […] ‘Those three have dung for brains. They thought it was a good idea to steal from the humans’ food pantry.’

‘And they were caught?’ asked Cookie.

‘No, but Mother Human didn’t have to be a genius to realize it wasn’t raisins in her cereal,’ replied Lint.

A few of the babes, and even the older mice, chuckled at this.

‘You can all laugh, but Father Human talked of poison and traps … and even a cat,’ said Lint in a serious voice.” (pgs. 16-17)

They all settle near “a solid wall of cornstalks, continuing in both directions as far as the eye could see. To the right of the rodents stood a single mighty cottonwood tree.” (p. 18) With the corn for food, the tall cornstalks to hide among, and the plowed soft earth to burrow into, the escapees have found a perfect home. Everyone has all the corn that they can eat.

Instead, it all turns into a nightmare. Avaritia is a Conservative extremist’s parable of what will happen if the Liberals control society, with the rats as the Conservatives and the mice as the Liberals. The rats are hard workers who follow The Old Code. They spend all day climbing the cornstalks to pry corn kernels from the corncobs, but they want to keep what they amass and spend it as they wish. The mice scorn them as greedy and selfish, hoarding their wealth instead of using it to help the community.

It starts out small, when their community is attacked by a much-larger opossum:

“‘We believe,’ announced York [the community’s leader and Benny’s father]. ‘that a defense against the opossum would be feasible. However, it would require time for training, planning, and a vigil watch. This would allow the other mice to work and live in peace. As for payment for these services, these … these defenders will no longer have to work in the field.’

An excited murmur broke out.

[…]

‘Since the defenders will be serving all mice, all mice will contribute a single kernel from each leaf harvested to a pile. This pile will then be divided and shared amongst the defenders.’” (p. 31)

The rats object to participating, but are outvoted by the mice. When some mice become too sick or too old and feeble to harvest their own kernels, the community votes to give them a kernel a day from the pile. The pile is officially named the Kindness Pile, and the mice congratulate themselves on their generosity. The community is dubbed Generocity.

When some mice have more babies than their parents can support, they are allowed to take kernels from the Kindness Pile. That’s what community spirit is all about! When the Kindness Pile shrinks faster than it grows, the mice agree to increase the Kindness donation to two kernels – then three kernels. Generocity should support schools for the mouse babies. Four kernels! As more mice see their daily harvests shrink through these donations, they call in sick so they can eat without working like the genuinely sick. Those relying upon generosity grow more numerous, until one day the Kindness Pile completely disappears. Where has all the corn gone? The selfish rats must be stealing it. Tax the rats especially heavily!!

This review gives away the basic plot. Read Avaritia to find out the fate of the mice, of the rats — of Generocity. And what Avaritia means.

The details aren’t pretty. Little Benny is the Everymouse who witnesses it all, and plays an important part at the climax. Whether you agree with the moral philosophy or not, Westbrook tells a compelling tale in short, easy-to-read chapters.

The price on the book is $9.99, but Amazon says it’s $5.99 without any discounts. The Kindle is even cheaper.

–Fred Patten

• Buy on Amazon

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon, where you can access exclusive stuff for just $1.

Qvisten bill themselves as the largest animation studio in Scandinavia. Among their recent productions is a feature film called HuckyBucky (aka Dyrene i Hakkebakkeskogen), directed by Rasmus A. Sivertsen and based on a book by Thorbjørn Egner. The description on IMDB reads like this: “In the woods there lives a mouse and his friends, and they are always scared of getting eaten by the fox or other predators who can’t get food in a fair way. They have to make some laws so they all can live together in peace.” No word yet on a possible release in North America, but there is a subtitled trailer up on YouTube.

image c. 2017 Qvisten

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Kori has returned! So cute.
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Hello Everyone!

On this week's show we open with a discussion video games and employment. Recent studies show that more young men than ever before are playing video games rather than seeking employment. Does this make us unhappy, and what lessons can we learn from all of this?

Our main topic is on First Times. Continuing our summer of conversation and introspection we discuss our first times and how they went great (but, really, how awful they were). We also give some advice on what the best practices are for a positive first time experience. Part whimsical, part sentimental, and entirely too much information, it promises to be a a fun trip down memory lane. 

We close out the show with some feedback on murrsuit care as well as two questions-- one on how to break up with a clingy past relationship partner who refuses to dampen the flame of their desire for you, the other on how to get started in the fandom and whether female murrsuiters exist.

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

Thanks and, as always, be well!

FA 080 First Times - Is transparency good? Are first times always bad? Are clingy exes the norm? All this, and more, on this week's Feral Attraction!

Vice’s Furries topic has excellent news reporting. You can find a few missteps, but it has some of the best focused attention that the media has ever given to the fandom, way beyond Furries 101.  One outstanding article is CSI Fur Fest: The Unsolved Case of the Gas Attack at a Furry Convention. Writer Jennifer Swann got an Ursa Major award nomination for it.  Their most recent is Who Makes Those Intricate, Expensive Furry Suits? (Fred Patten and myself were proud to assist writer Mark Hay – I sent a long summary of history, makers, details to investigate, and links.)

Super thanks to @GoraLadka for consulting @phoenixwuff, me, @furbuy for this fabulous #fursuit article! @Spottacus https://t.co/0EjnvcMwg3

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) July 28, 2017

Those show that not all media is bad, and talking to them has good results. That’s different from prevailing attitudes against “sensationalism” that blindly treats “the media” as an epithet – as if PBS is the same as the National Enquirer. There’s a world of difference between trashy daytime TV and well-researched long-form reporting. But a fandom grudge persists, for as long as 16 years after stale old incidents we all know and hate. There’s even backlash at members who step out of line. This friend of ours experienced it:

That’s too bad for Ursa-nominated Jennifer Swann, who’s working on a Vice piece about the Fullerton murders to cover upcoming news about the trial.

And for Sanjiv Bhattacharya, who made effort to learn about how the fandom was dealing with the Fullerton tragedy while he writes an article for The Atlantic.  This article he wrote about a school shooting proves what worthy service he could be doing.

If you can help Vice cover the Fullerton story, please send a confidential contact to patch.ofurr@gmail.com that will be passed to Jennifer Swann. (Sanjiv’s contacts are in his link.) Trial news is coming, and there are a lot of unanswered questions. The hope is for a story that everyone can learn from.

Some further opinions:

For those concerned about “fandom image”, a smart idea is to pick good, careful reporters to work with.  Refusing to talk is reasonable for stories that don’t exist unless the media makes them.  But I don’t think that’s the case with this murder story.  It will get attention no matter what, and it’s a community happening with undeniable furry connection. (There would have been no crime if the participants weren’t closely tied through fandom – akin to a tragedy at a school or workplace). Rumors and false beliefs about it can get dismantled with careful reporting, but they grow worse without it.  I think it’s self-defeating to assume “the media” in general has bad faith.

From a topic started by Dogpatch Press staffer David.

Journalist work involves fact finding. Like in a court, there’s a process of putting evidence itself on trial. There can be many versions of a story that need a pro to investigate. Kind of like lawyers, journalists are liable to get treated like they’re always wrong – until a person needs one on their side. Good reporting can make sympathy, abate rumors, or aid a cause like fund raising for the kids in this story. Free press is even essential to democracy. It’s about government (that’s what law and justice is.)

It all relates to telling a shocking story, which isn’t the same as being “sensational”.  If anti-intellectual attitude shuts down reporting it, next time something bad happens, then ask “how could we have seen this coming? Why us? How can we stop this?” And the answers were there, but nothing was learned because image was too important.  Or worse – nobody even bothers thinking about it because it has “nothing to do with us”.

It’s easier to forget the whole thing.  But there are those close to this story who will never forget. Understanding for them can come through understanding by us.

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Here’s another one that somehow flew over the moon yet under our radar for some time. Rocket Monkeys was a 2D animated series from Canada (they get SO many interesting shows up there!) created by Dan Abdo and Jason Patterson. According to Wikipedia, “Brothers Gus and Wally are monkey astronauts. They’re not the brightest or coolest astronauts, but since they’re the only ones around, they are called upon to go into space and carry out different kinds of important missions—including battling rogue black holes and vengeful aliens. Other members of the brothers’ crew include bossy astrophysicist Dr. Chimpsky, who gives the monkeys their assignments; YAY-OK, a devoted robot that is slightly outdated and is the brothers’ only hope to help keep them on course; and Inky, a space octopus and artist who communicates through his ink drawings.” Looks as if the show ended it’s run in the US back in 2016. Fortunately, lots of episodes are still up and about on YouTube.

image c. 2017 Atomic Cartoons