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Amy Wascher is a sculptor and mold-maker who works extensively with Super-Sculpey. Of late her subjects have been leaning towards pop culture in general, and cartoons in particular. And yes, that means funny animals too. Visit her web site, ClayBrushes.com, to see her current stuff plus what she’s working on now.

image c. 2016 by Amy Wascher

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Reminder: We're on Patreon! If you could kick us a buck or two, we'd greatly appreciate it. www.patreon.com/thedraggetshow ALSO, we're not just on SoundCloud, you can also subscribe to this on most podcast services like iTunes! It's a show with Patreon sponsor, Tobe the Otter! We talk about all sorts of crap. Don't forget to hang out in our telegram chat, now w/ over 100 members! telegram.me/draggetshow Lastly, don't forget to check out our YouTube, where we have many extra vids, like a fireside chat. www.youtube.com/user/DraggetShow/videos ep. 128 - Patreon Guest, Tobe! - Reminder: We're on Patreon! If you could kick us …

We are in the heart of summer. The pools are open, the grills are cooking, and for us writers, Sofawolf’s long running anthology Heat is OPEN FOR SUBMISSION for their fourteenth volume. One of, if not the longest, and the most prominent, anthology in the fandom; Heat is once again open for all of your erotic encounters. But outside of being an erotic anthology, Heat never does a yearly theme like its contemporaries like Roar, Fang, or Trick or Treat.

Heat does not, and has never had, a theme beyond “furry erotica.” Heat occasionally develops themes post hoc, like the Americana theme running through Heat 13. We didn’t choose those stories for being related to Americana: we chose stories because they were good and it turned out that the stories we chose had a lot to do with Americana.

Write the hot and sweaty or sweet and sensual furry story that you want to write. It doesn’t need to–and shouldn’t and can’t–be tailored to what we want.

There is only one thing the people on Heat want?

In brief: short, well-written furry erotica of all orientations with an emphasis on good story.

That is what we want to see in general, but there are certain things we want to see more of. A lot of the stories we get are straight or gay, have a male protagonist, have a young protagonist, have a canine protagonist, are set somewhere in contemporary America, or are fairly straight-forward romance story. Anything that moves away from this would stands out among our submissions.

We’d love to see more stories with a lesbian or bisexual focus. We’d love to see more transgender characters. We’d love to see more female protagonists. We’d love to see middle-aged or older characters. We’d love to see ourselves visiting different time periods or different locales or transported to whole other worlds. And we always love when our writers can mash together erotica with an unexpected genre. (I still think one of my favorites for this is Tempe O’Kun’s “The Case of the Gelatinous Gemstone,” which mixed erotica, comedy, and mystery.)

While kinks are allowable, remember that most of our audience is not likely to share that particular kink and therefore it should not be the primary focus of the story.

However, the editor of Heat, Dark End, points out that there are many common mistakes made when people submit to Heat. He recently posted a detailed blog about it on SoFurry, but if you choose to write for Heat, keep these things in mind to avoid these common mistakes. One of the biggest being, don’t make your erotic story just about the sex.

Failing to proofread is a surprisingly frequent mistake. We’ve seen some pretty egregious typos on the first page that make us really worried about a story.

A lot of the issues we see are related to story structure: stories that wait to get the conflict going until half-way through or that resolve the conflict on page two, stories that try to cram too much in eight thousand words, stories that are confusing, stories where the stakes are so low that we say “What, that’s it?”

By far and away, the most common issue is with writers not knowing how to write a story that makes use of sex but isn’t just about the sex. This is a big one. If I can remove the sex scene and nothing about the story really changes, then the sex isn’t as important to the story as it should be. To borrow a cooking metaphor, in a good story for Heat, the sex should be like a perfect sauce that brings together the rest of the meal together: it shouldn’t try to be the meat, and the potatoes, and the drink, and the dessert.

Dark End would know since he’s been working on Heat in some way since volume 10. Dark End has been apart of the Furry Fandom for over a decade, but only in recent years started writing his own stories and getting some of his shorts in Hot Dish and Heat, plus a host of hypnosis stories on his FA and SoFurry, which in this writers opinion is awesome. I have a thing for hypnosis. Don’t judge. His main work though is editing the various books Sofawolf makes.

I first started working as a story and copy editor on Heat with Heat 10, published in 2013. My duties started expanding, and by Heat 12 in 2015, I was the managing editor. These days my duties include reviewing submitted stories, choosing our final slate of stories, doing full editing work on around three of the stories, and doing a proofreading of the entire final volume.

That hard work has paid off since Heat Vol. 12 just won the Ursa Major for Best Magazine this year. Heat is a major work within the Furry writing community. As far as I can tell, it’s the one all writers want to be accepted in. It helped pave the way for other anthologies and opening the door for many Furry writers. Kyell Gold’s first published story was in Heat Vol. 1. There is a history Heat carries and Dark End couldn’t believe he’s the one in charged of it.

Gobsmacked. Thunderstruck. If you’d told me five or six years ago that I’d be doing this, I might have laughed. At that time, I was a guy with a couple of barely read stories on FA, and now there’s an Ursa Major Award with my name next to it. How did this happen?

I’ve seen how many readers, writers, and editors look up to Heat and, by association, me, so I’m surprised, but I’m also very honored. People trust me to do an important job and do it well. I don’t want to let them down.

At the same time, I am–perhaps surprisingly–not that stressed by the work on Heat. It’s an important work to the fandom and it has major status, yes, but we have a big team so that no one feels like they are the linchpin holding everything together. We also don’t feel the pressure to top what we did last year. We’re not competing with our past selves. We just want to put out a great book every year that shows off the talent of the fandom, and I think we’ve done that fairly well for the decade-and-a-half Heat has been in print.

So now you want to try your hand at writing for Heat. What are the basic rules to know?

Stories should be furry, erotic, and between 4 and 8 thousand words. There is some leeway on the word count, but don’t push it far.

DO: give us your whole story.

DO: edit it several times before sending it to us. Use spellchecker.

DON’T: expect to catch every mistake and typo. We know there will be some.

DO: use a standard font (Courier New or Times New Roman work best) and font size (12 pt is quite standard). Feel free to make use of the standard manuscript format, which you can find examples of by googling, but it’s not a necessity.

DON’T: overexert yourself on formatting. It will all be reformatted if accepted anyway.

DO: Be prepared to work with us on your story, including on possible major rewrites.

DON’T: simultaneous submission. If you submit it to us, don’t have it submitted anywhere else while we are considering it.

DO: feel free to use a pseudonym on your submission (although if we accept it, we will need to know your full name eventually).

DO: use your cover letter space to tell us a little bit about yourself and what you’ve done writing- and publication-wise, especially if you have never published with Sofawolf before.

The deadline this year is September 19th and is planned for release by next years Anthrocon. Payment will be at the rate of $0.01/ per word. You can learn more about the Do’s and Don’ts of Sofawolf’s submission page. But like I said, this is the anthology not only for stories, but poems and comics as well with their own requirements. There will be a lot of competition, but if you want to have a fighting chance, Dark End recommends this.

Pick up a volume of Heat and read through it. See the kind of stories we like to publish. A lot of eager writers don’t realize quite what we mean when we say, “We want a story, not just sex,” until they have read through an issue.

Talk with other writers. Share ideas. Ask for help beta-reading your story and offer to help beta-read other submissions. Visit the Furry Writer’s Guild; even I’m there… sometimes.

Good luck to all the writers and creators, old and new, who are submitting to Heat. May the best erotica win.

-Matthias

• Buy Heat on Sofawolf

A new publication from Create Space: Dinosaur HeRAWRsies — A Coloring Book for Dinosaur Fans of All Ages. “Fun and educational, this pun-filled collection features some popular dinosaurs as well as recent discoveries! Includes familiar favorites such as T. Rex and Triceratops, plus newly discovered dinosaurs like Aquilops, Tarchia, and Prestosuchus. Includes fun facts about each dinosaur, as well as funny visual puns and geeky references.” The title itself is a reference to The Dinosaur Heresies, a famous work of non-fiction by paleontologist and Red Raptor creator Robert T. Bakker. On the other paw, this new coloring book was written and illustrated by Chandra Reyer and Jennifer Nolan — and it’s available now in paperback on Amazon. You can also visit Ms. Reyer’s personal web site to see more of her fanciful illustrations and color works.

image c. 2016 Chandra Reyer / Jennifer Nolan

Hey there, Papabear,

It's DT here after quite some time!

Anyway, I'm just writing I guess as an update and a further question about what to do.

So... remember that guy I was telling you about who I was into and was into me, but stuck on his ex? Well a lot of time has passed, they broke up again last year and we started talking once again in October. Since then we've been getting closer and closer, seeing each other many times throughout the week.

We're getting closer and closer to a real relationship. He agreed to pick up the "dating" moniker and things have been.... well somewhat smooth.

We started having a few disagreements and he ended up getting angrier and angrier with what I was doing, so he ended up telling me a bunch of rules to follow and, despite me not agreeing with them, I agreed to follow. They were relatively simple, no RPing with my main 'sona (other sona's allowed), no pictures with my main sona with anyone else and not in YCHs unless topping. And no browsing FA without telling him about it or including him in some way. And he stalks my page so he knows if I was like faving something without him.

I don't agree with them, but I understand why he wants them. And they're not really that big a deal. So I agreed to them and have been staying with them, but the arguments keep happening.

Every now and then (about once a week or every two weeks), something will set him off and he'll fly off the handle, going off on me (always over text as well), sometimes insulting me, sometimes just saying I don't care about him or love him. Every now and then he brings up his ex as well. He can be pretty petty at times, and will even admit this. The most recent thing to set him off was during a misunderstanding when I thought he was asking to come over when in reality he was asking if I wanted him to go to Walmart with me. He asked me why I would think that and I mentioned "I dunno. second thoughts?" and he blew up in the course of 3 messages and such. Got him to calm down about an hour later and chill with me.

I always get him to calm down after a lengthy conversation. I'm pretty good at that. I let him know that we should compromise and try talking before letting emotions get out of hand, to call more often if tensions start getting high, etc. But he only seems to partially follow this. Instead he wants me to apologize and change something else about me, which I do. Each time.

I know it feels like I shouldn't be doing that, but it’s what calms him down and it usually is something I should have seen, but I don't like how almost every time is the "last" time and he's always "done" with me. It really is disconcerting. I'm trying my best and working on everything. It doesn't feel like he is, but he insists he is whenever I bring it up.

That's another issue. I want to bring things up with him, but the only time I really can are during these fights wherein he claims I don't stand up for him or care for him or agree with him on things. I feel like if I try to bring up anything, he'll get angry with me, and it’s just not worth it.

I feel like there are things I can't do without upsetting him as well. Like there are a couple parties this weekend I would like to go to and I have invited him. Told him he should come with, but he refuses to go to any furry party and anybody's house. And I know if I go he'll whine and be upset that I went, so I'm probably not going to go. Just chill with him instead I suppose. This has happened before.

I know it sounds bad. It does. But when these things aren't happening he's incredibly sweet, close, talkative. I love it and I feel like I do love him. It's just this is beyond frustrating and it's changing just so slowly. During the fights, he keeps saying he wants to just shut everything down in this un-official relationship, but I always end up talking him out of it, and saying something to try to change, to make it better. And that's pretty much the end of discussion until the next one.

The only other issue is sex I suppose. I mean, the sex is great. He can be a bit too bitey, but most of the time it’s great. I just wish I could penetrate. He likes to say "total top" but I dunno. He's pretty submissive emotionally. Doesn't seem to like things up the rear though, so looks like I'll have to wait.

Anyway, I'm just trying to figure out what to do I suppose. I do love him and he says he loves me. Says it and writes it down. I'm just getting really frustrated with this. I'm tired and it feels like I'm getting nowhere. And I've been changing so much. Doing basically everything he asks of me. What do you think I should do?

Thanks and have a great day!

-DT

* * *
 
Hi, DT,
 
What you’re dealing with here is a very insecure mate. When people are insecure about their relationships, one thing they often do is try to control their partner. They become fearful if they feel they don’t know what their partner is doing all the time, and they quickly become jealous. I don’t think I need to tell you that this is not healthy. You’re giving in to him all the time just encourages the behavior. What you are doing is bending over backwards all the time to make him happy. And how about you? Are your needs being met? They are just as important as his needs. You don’t seem overly happy in the bedroom, and you are restricted in what you are able to do socially, such as what events you are allowed to attend.
 
If you are truly determined to work on this relationship, then you need to bolster your partner’s self-esteem and trust in you. Some suggestions:
 

1. Take pains to give praise and say “thank you” for things he does for you and around the house.
2. Pick activities to do together to reinforce your bond.
3. Create friendships with people who are not “your friends” or “his friends” but “our friends.”
4. Be transparent. He obviously doesn’t trust your Internet activities. I would not hide what you’re doing from him. At the same time, I would not alter my behavior for him. If he doesn’t like what you’re doing online but it’s stuff you want to do, then there is a problem you need to discuss.

In my experience, I’ve seen all too many people compromise when it comes to a partner, often to the point where they have someone in their life who is verbally or even physically abusive. Why do they do this? Usually one of two reasons: 1) they are so afraid of being alone that they will take in anyone willing to be with them, or 2) they have such low self-esteem they feel they are not worthy of a better partner and that “this is the best I can do.” I think you should take a moment and consider if one of these might not be a possible reason you are with this guy. Sure, he can be sweet and loving (if you say so) but he is also controlling and distrustful. If you can’t get these issues resolved with him, then you should seriously consider other options.

Good luck!

Papabear

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

The Fuzzy Conundrum, by John F. Carr & Wolfgang Diehr.
Boalsburg, PA, Pequod Press, May 2016, hardcover $32.00 (421 pages), Kindle $7.99.

The Fuzzies’ story goes on! For the record, this is the sixth approved novel in the series. They are: Little Fuzzy (1962), Fuzzy Sapiens (1964), and Fuzzies and Other People (1984), by H. Beam Piper; Fuzzy Ergo Sum (2011), and Caveat Fuzzy (2012), by Wolfgang Dietr; and The Fuzzy Conundrum (2016), by John F. Carr & Wolfgang Diehr. For the full history, read “The Fuzzy Story” by yours truly. Yes, we know about Fuzzy Nation (2011) by John Scalzi, but that is a tribute to Piper’s original novel and not a part of the series.

The copyright on Little Fuzzy has lapsed and the whole novel can be read for free on Project Gutenberg. I must’ve read it a dozen times over the years; it’s one of my favorite s-f novels.

The first three novels tell of the discovery of the Fuzzies on the colony planet Zarathustra, a member of the Terran Federation, by sunstone prospector Jack Holloway; the legal establishment of their childlike human sapience; and their protection by the Zarathustran government. The next two novels, written by a Fuzzy fan with the approval of Piper’s estate administered by John F. Carr, create backstories for Jack Holloway and other established characters, add some new human characters (including strong women; one of Piper’s weaknesses), and expand on the Fuzzy-human relationship.

The Fuzzy Conundrum begins by establishing that the events of the previous two years, including the attempt by the Zarathustran underworld to train kidnapped Fuzzies for crime, were high-profile news throughout the Terran Federation. The Fuzzies have been shown on galaxywide news as so cute and cuddly that, even though their intelligence is emphasized, millions of people just have to have one as a status symbol. Those who study the Fuzzies’ official status, which is as a protected species for their human childlike mental level, apply to adopt one as a legal child. Those who just want to own one and have more money than smarts buy one illegally as a pet. The Zarathustra planetary government finds hundreds of spaceships landing at the Mallorysport terminal filled with applicants to adopt a Fuzzy. At the same time, it becomes aware that new criminals are seeking to kidnap wild Fuzzies from the Beta continent reservation, not to train them for crime but to sell them to those who do not know or care that this is illegal.

The focus switches back and forth between several stories. Buck Trask, an agent of the Federation Bureau of Criminal Investigation on Terra, is assigned to go to Zarathustra to uncover the criminal organization responsible for trapping and transporting kidnapped Fuzzies to Terra:

“Trask mentally processed the list and stalled on the last item. ‘Wait … Fuzzies? Wasn’t there something in the news about a year and a half ago about some big court battle that proved these …these Fuzzies were sapient beings?’

Springbok nodded. ‘Damned straight. And they were locked up in cages like animals under the casino. Lousy conditions, too. Moreover, they were being used as entertainment; dancing, mock duels, and some acrobatics.’

‘That’s slavery and then some, sir. A bullet in the head for everybody involved.’ Trask read the Colonel’s face and could see there was more to come. ‘What else?’” (p. 19)

The kidnapping and taking Fuzzies offworld seems so well organized that Trask goes to Zarathustra prepared to investigate for corruption in the planetary government – including Jack Holloway, who is now the Commissioner of Native Affairs, and others who have been the cast of earlier novels.

–Jack Holloway and his friends and family, of course. The novels by Diehr establish his son, who comes to Zarathustra. The Fuzzy Conundrum expands the Holloway family in both directions, adding a newborn grandson and Jack’s elder sister.

–The criminals: who the Fuzzy kidnappers are; how and why they’re trapping wild Fuzzies; what Jack Holloway and the Zarathustran government and police are doing about it; and what the wild Fuzzies are doing about it. The first contact that some tribes of Fuzzies have with humans is with their criminals, and the Fuzzies fight back, often with deadly force.

“Darius, the inner moon, hung low in the orange sky as the morning sun cleared the horizon. Little Fuzzy pressed his nose to the shatter-resistant glass as the contra-gravity vehicle made its descent. Once grounded, Jack told everybody to stay close to the aircar.

‘Are you worried about something, Jack?’ Pat asked.

Jack nodded. ‘Like I said before, these Fuzzies are very different from my crowd down south. More advanced in terms of weaponry and social development, and they do not – underlined, italicized and in big red letters – not like Big Ones sticking our oversized noses in their business. They had a very unfortunate first contact with our species and you never get a second chance at a first impression.’” (p. 98)

–A group of six young scientists who come to Zarathustra to investigate the world’s planetary oddities:

“‘Hmm. Oh, I get it,’ Cinda said with a smile. ‘You are all here to figure out why Zarathustra isn’t just a big chunk of ice.’

‘Exactly,’ Dmitri cried. ‘As you must be aware, for a planet this far from its primary to maintain the extant temperatures, it should orbit a G0, or at least a G1 star. Freya, for example, is approximately .61 AU from its K0 primary, and manages a world climate comparable to pre-atomic Terra. Zarathustra defies the very laws of physics by being so hospitable to Terran life forms.’” (p. 60)

One of them is a womanizer. One them is a ringer.

–And the Fuzzies; mainly Little Fuzzy as the head of those who are comfortable around humans, and Red Fur, the Wise One (leader) of the wild and often hostile Fuzzies. This subplot centers around the ominous mystery of Fuzzy sterility. Something about their contact with humans is making the Fuzzies unable to conceive children, potentially threatening the Fuzzies with extinction.

The Fuzzy Conundrum is a s-f novel, not a furry novel. There are more humans in it – a few of whom, fortunately only minor characters, talk mit thick Cherman agzents — than Fuzzies, but there are enough of the latter to keep the interest of most furry fans. The Fuzzy Conundrum (wraparound cover by Alan Gutierrez), and the entire Fuzzy series, is highly recommended.

Full disclosure: I am a rabid Fuzzy fan. My first fanzine book review was of Piper’s Little Fuzzy in January 1962. I helped proofread The Fuzzy Conundrum, and I have a credit in it: “And to Fred Patten for his help in keeping the continuity straight and true to H. Beam Piper’s vision.”

– Fred Patten

• Buy on Amazon
• Read the first Fuzzy novel in e-book

This week, we talk about the ways the fandom tears down walls and makes it easy to talk to others furries.

Metadata and Credits Furry: The Great Equalizer

Runtime: 31:21m

Cast: KZorroFuego, Levi, Wolfin

Editor: Levi

Format: 96kbps AAC Copyright: © 2016 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0.

Furry: The Great Equalizer - This week, we talk about the ways the fandom tears down walls and makes it easy to talk to others furries.

This week, we talk about the ways the fandom tears down walls and makes it easy to talk to others furries.

Metadata and Credits Furry: The Great Equalizer

Runtime: 31:21m

Cast: KZorroFuego, Levi, Wolfin

Editor: Levi

Format: 96kbps AAC Copyright: © 2016 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0.

Furry: The Great Equalizer - This week, we talk about the ways the fandom tears down walls and makes it easy to talk to others furries.

Among the many categories of stuff that one will find at San Diego Comic Con are some truly strange toys, models, and action figures. Among those you will find Munky King, a Los Angeles-based company that specializes in toy design and animation production. And yes, several of their designs (but not all, by far!) do in fact deal with monkeys. Not very happy monkeys either, it seems. Not very happy bears and (ahem) very happy cats also come into play. If you’re an adult (seriously!) take a look at their web site for more of their current designs.

image c. 2016 Munky King

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Hello Everyone!

On tonight's show we talk about how gender-stereotypical genes might play a large role in your attraction towards others in life. Viro talks about a recent study that might show how the stereotypes of gender affect interpersonal attraction. We also point out the problem areas in the study and why this is not yet a universal truth.

Our main topic is on how to be single and happy. For some, it can be difficult to attain both at the same time. We discuss ways and methods you can employ to achieve both without ignoring the fact that you are, in fact, not currently in a relationship. A lot of the methods can play a part even when you are in a relationship, especially if your partner(s) are long distance or prone to travelling often.

Our question this week is on how to handle your feelings of affection, romance, and sexual desire toward a roommate that may not be reciprocated. If you have had sex before you moved into an apartment with someone as a roommate, how do you handle a potential cooling off that might occur.

We have feedback on sounding advice and why, perhaps, our sound advice was a bit unsound. Confused? Sir Arcane, co-host of A Hairy Prone Companion and the President of the Lansing Pups and Handlers, takes us to school. 

We also would like to remind everyone to check out our appearance on the Alter Ego podcast. We talk with Athena, the host of the show, about fursonas, why we're furries, and what the fandom means to us. It's a great show and you should give it a listen.

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

Thanks and, as always, be well!

FA 029 How to be Single and Happy - Gender-Stereotypes, Being single and happy, roommate romance, why unsound sounding advice is bad! All this and more on tonight's Feral Attraction

The cast is all back together and discuss a man shot lying on the ground and a special way to treat your pets to a spa trip. Episode -29 - Always get your pets excersize...d

Vox has flown the coop in tonight's episode. Join the rest of the cast and have a good laugh! Episode -30 - The vanishing of Vox

Worst Job Stories (Pawsome! #20)
Bandit and Drake share their least favorable experiences from various jobs they've had in the past. ***NEW EPISODES BIWEEKLY ON WEDNESDAYS*** THANKS FOR SUBSCRIBING!!! FACEBOOK: http://www.Face... From: The Raccoon's Den Views: 1310 30 ratings Time: 05:55 More in Entertainment

This article in our series debating the Furry Canon is a roundtable discussion of Watership Down by Richard Adams, first published in 1972. Your panelists are JM, Jakebe and Huskyteer.

JM

Jakebe, Huskyteer

Thanks for letting me lead off this roundtable exploration of Watership Down for the [adjective][species] Furry Canon project. Jakebe, I know that this is a book close to your heart, as it is close to the heart of many lapine furries, and by asking me to read and comment you’re risking have me piss all over something personally important.

But before I do just that, let’s look at the book in more general terms. Watership Down is a 1972 children’s novel—my copy is published under Penguin’s Puffin imprint—about rabbits trying to survive in the Hampshire countryside.

The environment is one of rolling green fields and small family farms, an idyllic version of England but one that still exists today. Our rabbits are intelligent, quick-witted, and vaguely preternatural. The story is, at heart, an episodic adventure: our heroes fight various obstacles for their safety and their future.

It’s an easy read and also rather long. I can imagine that it is the sort of thing that young bookworms lose themselves in, become immersed in the world and form bonds with our lapine heroes.

Jakebe, to kick off, can you talk about your own relationship with Watership Down?

Jakebe

Hello JM and Huskyteer!

First off, let me tell you how thrilled I am to be talking about a book I love with two people whose opinion I respect a great deal. It’s pretty awesome. :D :D

I have to admit that I came to Watership Down pretty late, all things considered — up until the time I read it about ten years ago in Arkansas, it wasn’t much of a touchstone for me. The books that had informed my early furry aesthetic were The Wind In The Willows, and Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of NIMH, and the Spellsinger series from Alan Dean Foster. Now that I’m thinking about it, I really *wish* I had discovered Watership Down a lot earlier than I did — I’m pretty sure I would have made my way to rabbit as a species a lot more quickly than I did.

For me Watership Down is a simply amazing book — it talks about the importance of individuality, but also the importance of being a part of a community; it deals with learning how to be brave in an enormous, confusing, and often hostile world; it introduces the idea of spirituality as something that deepens your experience of reality instead of encouraging you to ignore parts of it, and it allows the rabbits to make sense of their world in a way that enables them to be more fully involved in it. The trials of Hazel, Fiver and Bigwig show us how people bond through shared experience even though they’re incredibly different, and how those bonds enable us to tolerate a wide range of personalities and beliefs. For me, the really impressive thing about Watership Down is how it deals with a kaleidoscope of personalities all struggling to accept the same lot in life, and how and why certain choices lead to such disaster down the road.

Personally, Rabbit is a Totem for me; it’s a spiritual partner that teaches me how to deal with fear and feelings of powerlessness. Watership Down was the first novel that felt like it dealt with those ideas head on, and showed the full scope of what it means to be brave instead of fearless. I think for most kids who are struggling to understand a complicated and scary world, the book can be an invaluable way to introduce a lot of concepts that would be difficult to explain head-on. It’s a story that serves as a wonderful escape, but also gives you something to take back with you to the “real world”.

Does that make sense? I hope I’m not talking it up TOO much, but it’s one of my favorites. :)

Huskyteer

By contrast, I came to Watership Down when I was young enough to be genuinely terrified by it. I must have been about 8 when I stumbled across the Film Picture Book, a large format book of stills from the animated movie with short narrative text. I was fascinated, and went on to the novel, which must have been the longest thing I’d ever read. I was all about the rabbits for some time, drawing pictures, attempting to turn the book into a play, and getting the one friend who claimed to have read it to join me in Watership Down playground games.

Strangely, although it’s a wonderful book which I re-read often, the novel has not left me with a particularly deep connection to rabbits. But I can’t see one peacefully nibbling the roadside grass on a summer evening without the word ‘silflay’ popping into my head.

JM

I find myself with mixed feelings, because I agree with all those positive things you have to say (and will undoubtedly continue to day). Watership Down is  such a special book, with so many terrific features that any reader—adult or child—can love and appreciate.

The characterization of our rabbit heroes is terrific. As you say, Jakebe, there are big personality differences between them, and its their ability to work together while taking advantage of each other’s strengths that shows the value of both community and individuality. And the lapine language is great, not least because it gives the author elegant euphemisms for certain unwholesome activities (i.e. “hraka” for “poo”). But I especially loved the rabbit fables, of El-Ahrairah exploring and defining what it means to be a rabbit. There’s great humour and a timeless quality to them: they could be published in a book of their own.

Yet I have some problems with Watership Down. There is an intrusive element to many of Richard Adams’s metaphors and similes that call attention to the time and place the book is written and set: Hampshire circa 1971. I found these aspects to be jarring on two levels: firstly because they don’t fit into our lapine narrative, and secondly because they are often political and negative.

On the benign end of the scale, there is a cricket metaphor describing Hazel’s confidence as he heads to Nuthanger Farm for the first time. It fails because it draws the reader out of the natural lapine world and firmly into the human one. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Adams specifically wants to cast Hazel as an Englishman, enjoying an appropriate English activity, in this case “a batsman [playing] a fine innings”. That undercurrent of slightly intrusive middle Englishness rears its head less benignly in a different metaphor that characterizes the Cornish as coarse, and another that aimed at the Irish which is unambiguously racist: “a rabbit can no more refuse to tell a story than an Irishman can refuse to fight”.

And can I float a theory about Kehaar? I know from background reading that he is supposedly based on a Norwegian soldier, but I can’t see that reflected in his pidgin English: in fact, I read his patois as Caribbean. His character as an honourable simpleton, his deference to the authority to the rabbits, his poor hygiene… I find it easy to see him as a racist stereotype.

To put things in context: the UK had seen significant Afro-Caribbean immigration following WWII (the Windrush generation) and race was a political flashpoint at the time Watership Down was written. The 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act contained explicitly racial, and racist, provisions designed to reduce the numbers of black people coming to the UK. Kehaar is a foreign interloper into the English lapine world: that he is a positive character is neither here nor there, as with Huckleberry Finn’s Jim.

I have some other, related issues – the characterization of the does (as Kehaar would put it, as “mudders” rather than fully-fledged actors), and the rabbits’ specifically Christian God. But I’ve complained for long enough. Hopefully, though, this explains my mixed feelings about Watership Down. On one hand it’s quite brilliant; one the other it’s tarred by a bigoted Little England sensibility.

Am I being unreasonably harsh? I feel sometimes like I cast myself as a wet blanket when I write about furry (and furry-adjacent) art here on [adjective][species], but I promise it’s not out of any pre-determination to find fault. I really do love reading, and there are many books that I truly love. Unfortunately Watership Down, for all its strengths, isn’t one of them.

Jakebe

I don’t think you should worry about being a wet blanket on this one at all, JM. It’s perfectly all right to turn a critical eye towards the things we love; in fact, I’d say it’s more important to do so. Engaging with the entirety of a work — its strengths and its flaws — shows a complete understanding and commitment to it that “mature, respectful admiration” requires. At least, I think so.

And Watership Down definitely has its flaws. People have taken Richard Adams to task for his treatment/erasure of women in the novel, and he’s taken strides to correct that in subsequent work; in the (sorta?) sequel Tales From Watership Down, Hazel’s mate is the co-chief of the warren and the female characters are given much more page-time and agency. At least, that’s what I’ve heard because I never actually read the collection. I’m a bad rabbit. :)

As far as the attempt to “humanize” the rabbits leading to Adams’ use of time- or place-dependent metaphor, I’ll give him a pass on that. As far as I know, he wasn’t a professional writer at the time he constructed the novel and even among a lot of the pulpy SFF writers of the time metaphors and allusions that dated the text were common practice. It may speak to the somewhat-myopic social outlook of Adams that he didn’t think about how non-white Englishpeople or people from other countries might take them, and that’s a fair criticism. But I was never taken out of the story because of that.

Your scan of the Sandleford rabbits as white Englishmen is something I had never really considered before, and it opens up a very rich vein for criticism. If we’re to look at the novel as a fable, then it stands to reason each and every character should/does have a real-world counterpart that people in Adams’ social group would be in contact with. I took Adams at his word with Kehaar, but it kind of blows me away that you’ve taken a different (and problematic) meaning from it. I’m not from Great Britain, and I don’t have much knowledge about social and racial politics there. But if Kehaar (and now that I think of it, the mice and hedgehogs the rabbits meet along the way) are meant to be stand-ins for different groups, then it’s a good idea to unpack that.

Huskyteer, what do you think? Would you agree with JM’s assessment that the personalities and outlook of Hazel and his crew are distinctly…middle English, for better and worse? What do you think of the representation of the does in the novel, and do you find that his characterization of other animals have some real-world analogues that those of us in the States might have missed completely?

Huskyteer

I thought I was writing a short reply. Apparently I thought wrong.

Watership Down is indeed set firmly in the England I, born in the late 1970s in a county next door to Hampshire, grew up in. It’s not a place that changes quickly; today there would be more fields of oilseed rape and less smoking, but the landscape and people are still recognisable. 

The book is written from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, which is often necessary to get across concepts outside the rabbits’ experience without wasting thousands of words on them. But the voice of that narrator occasionally slips and becomes the voice of Richard Adams, which I think is what JM is complaining about. 

The ‘hedgerow patois’ in which other species are represented as having foreign accents is one of many items Adams contributed to the talking-animal-story toolkit; it’s much less subtle in Garry Kilworth’s Hunter’s Moon, where, if I recall correctly, foxes speak standard English, badgers sound German and cats French.

(Adams’s mouse sounds Italian to me. I’d love to think this is a jokey reference to Topo Gigio, the Italian mouse puppet who was popular in the 1960s, but that’s a bit of a reach.)

I always interpreted Kehaar as a comedy German, one of the key British stereotypes, though that may be because Norwegians, and indeed Jamaicans, were outside my experience the first time I read the novel. 

I see it’s been left to the Brit to talk about class. Well, I would certainly pop the rabbits firmly in the middle class, with hedgehogs and mice as the slightly dim but hard-working lower class. The upper class is probably represented by certain elil, like foxes and weasels: frightening, respected, and everyone likes a joke in which they get their comeuppance. (I’m now picturing a rabbit joke with the punchline “The name of our act? The Elil!”.) 

Rabbits seem a pretty good metaphor for middle England, in fact; resistant to change, and highly committed to the natural order of things and the ‘green and pleasant land’.

The treatment of women (or, more properly, does) is problematic. Looking at the principal cast, I can’t see any reason why one, some or all of them shouldn’t have been female. Adams does make more of an effort in Tales from Watership Down, and props to him for trying, but I don’t think he manages to pull it off. Frankly, I’ve read WD fanfic that works far better than Tales. 

Several excuses can be made, besides the obvious one that the lack of does is what leads to the conflict with Efrafa (not good enough; I’m sure the Watership rabbits would have run foul of Woundwort’s warren in some other way sooner or later). 

Firstly, Adams was writing based on rabbit behaviour, and the dispersal of young males in the wild. However, this isn’t an accurate reflection of dispersal (more males than females tend to leave their birthplace, and males tend to go further, but travel is not the exclusive domain of the bucks). Similar excuses are used to justify the exclusion of women and minorities in sci-fi, fantasy and historical fiction, and are deservedly shot down.

Secondly, Adams famously based the cast of Watership Down on humans he had known in the military. It’s apparent that he is comfortable working with male characters and the relationships between them. 

I’d like to draw a parallel with J.R.R. Tolkien. Here we have two authors who each fought in a world war (Tolkien in the First, Adams in the Second), and survived to write stories about bands of travellers who defend a pleasant, cosy place against a dark and powerful enemy. This view might not excuse the resulting bunch-of-white-blokes ethos, but I believe it goes a long way towards explaining it. 

Bottom line: I don’t think it’s at all surprising that the novel reflects a society that is white, middle-class, male-dominated and Christian, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a matter for condemnation. Dismiss the novel for its limitations and you miss out on the rich story it tells, as well as characters who might all fall into the same social class but are still an interesting and varied bunch.

The world of Watership Down is necessarily a small one, with the rabbits’ exhausting and dangerous journey covering only a few miles. I think this, too, reflects small communities on a small island, where national and international affairs often take a back seat to local news.

JM

I think that’s good analysis and it gets to the nub of my real issue with Watership Down – that to drill too deeply into the novel’s structure is to miss the point. It really is a special book, with a combination of characterization, anthropomorphization, and adventure that doesn’t have any parallels in my reading experience. (The Hobbit is as close as I can get.)

Watership Down is a children’s book, and doesn’t hold up well to analysis. And that’s why I am going to vote against its inclusion in the [a][s] Furry Canon: while it excels in its relevance to furry and persistence in general, it’s just too simple for to me recommend it as an exceptional book.

I’m pretty confident that my vote is going to overturned by the two of you, and Watership Down will be recommended to our canon 2-1. And I don’t have a problem with that. In fact I suspect that my opinions are, in this case, less valid than yours, simply because you both clearly love the book. So I guess I’m casting myself as the [adjective][species] Antonin Scalia: contrarian but ultimately irrelevant.

Given that, I’ll halt my final contribution to this roundtable here. There’s a fine line between being contrarian and being belligerent. This has been great though, and I look forward to reading your final thoughts.

Huskyteer

I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Watership Down for the Furry Canon. I say that as a fan, but I think and hope I would have the same opinion if I hated it. Here’s how it matches up to the entry requirements:

Quality: The novel was critically acclaimed on its release, winning the Carnegie Medla and other accolades, and regularly turns up on lists with titles like ‘100 Books You Must Read’ and ‘Best Books of the 20th Century’. It has become the standard by which all books about animals who talk but otherwise lead more or less natural lives are judged. 

Longevity: See above. First published in 1972, Watership Down has, as far as I know, been in print ever since. Spinoffs have included the 1978 animated film, the late-90s television cartoon, theatre and radio adaptations, and a roleplaying game, Bunnies & Burrows. In 2016, UK broadcaster Channel 5 came under fire for airing the film on Easter Sunday, proving that it still has the power to traumatise small children, and at the time of writing a new four-part mini-series has been announced, with voice talent including Ben Kingsley and John Boyega.

Relevancy: Watership Down has a sizeable fandom within furry, with roleplayers, fanfic writers and artists presenting their own interpretations of both Adams’s cast and original characters. For some, Watership Down in one format or another was the gateway or catalyst that led them to furry in the first place. Finally, how many readers of furry news website Flayrah realise that the name is taken from the Lapine word for especially tasty food?

Jakebe

I would second the motion to recommend Watership Down for the Furry Canon. I realize how biased I may be about this, but there are also a ton of terrible rabbit-oriented stories out there that I really wouldn’t suggest anyone should read.

Quality: When most people outside the fandom think about anthropomorphic characters in literature, Watership Down is one of the very first works they think of — and for good reason. It really is an excellent book that stands up well to re-reading as you age; as a child, you get pulled in by the fantastic danger of these cute and relatable animals, and as an adult you realize how the various social systems set up in the warrens they visit have real-world analogs that are fairly disturbing. It’s a book that sticks with you, from the wonderful cosmology of the rabbit’s inner life to the rather visceral violence that frequently visits them.

Longevity: This book has been around for a while; it’s spawned an animated film that’s also a staple of many people’s childhood, an animated series, a sequel of short stories and a role-playing game. And even now, within the viper pit of Reddit, an AMA with Adams brought out a ton of folks gushing about what the book has meant to them. I don’t see its impact diminishing much in the future for those of us in the fandom.

Relevancy: Famous outside of furry, it’s nearly ubiquitous within it. Very few of us haven’t heard about Watership Down, at the very least, and what the book can teach us about courage, community and the fragility of life through the ordeal of the Sandleford rabbits is one of the reasons we get into furry in the first place. It uses animals to make us feel better about being human.

Submitted by Fred Patten

Kitsune-Tsuki, by Laura VanArendonk Baugh
Indianapolis, IN, Æclipse Press, September 2012, trade paperback $4.99 (v + 96 pages), Kindle $1.99.

Kitsune-Mochi, by Laura VanArendonk Baugh
Indianapolis, IN, Æclipse Press, October 2013, trade paperback $8.99 (xiii + 291 pages), Kindle $2.99.

Are Baugh’s Kitsune Tales Books 1 and 2 anthropomorphic or not? It’s impossible to tell until about halfway through Kitsune-Tsuki, defined in the glossary as “state of being possessed by a fox spirit”.

These two books are set in Heian Japan, the historical period from 794 to 1185 A.D. This was the period of the most formal Imperial courts, and when the belief in Shintoism, Buddhism, and Taoism were at their height. The imperial court’s most influential courtiers may have been the onmyōji, the practitioners of soothsaying, divination, astronomy, and other forms of fortune-telling. Hardly anyone, from the emperor to his concubines to their servants, did anything without checking with an onmyōji first to find out whether it would result in good luck or bad luck. The most famous onmyōji was Abe no Seimei (921-1005), who was believed to also be a powerful wizard. See the 2001 Japanese feature Onmyōji (it’s on YouTube) about Abe no Seimei as a good wizard battling evil onmyōji trying to destroy the emperor.

This was also the period when belief in ghosts, demons, and shapechanging spirits was at its height, including belief in nine-tailed kitsune (foxes) and fox-spirits possessing people. The insane were believed to be possessed by a fox-spirit. So in Kitsune-Tsuki a short novella or even a novelette), belief in fox spirits is not necessarily a fantasy about their reality. But yes, unmistakable fox-spirits do finally appear.

Tsurugu no Kiyomori is an onmyōji called to the court of Naka no Yoritomo, a powerful daimyō (regional lord) with a court rivaling the emperor’s.

“Naka no Yoritomo believed that a local kitsune meant to work mischief upon him or his new wife, Fujitani no Kaede. There had been strange incidents in the countryside of late, with objects of value disappearing and irrational stories offered by confused laborers for missing goods and missing hours. There had even been a recent case of kitsune-tsuki in the farmers’ village below, a poor young girl possessed by a fox spirit and driven to madness.” (pgs. 2-3)

Tsurugu, a genuine mystic, is politely skeptical. Nothing has happened that could not be explained by mundane superstition or trickery. He assumes that Yoritomo-dono has just used the incidents as an excuse to add a prestigious onmyōji to his court. Still, Tsurugu believes in giving value for the daimyō’s hospitality, so he conducts a supernatural inspection along with the lord’s regular investigator, Kagemura no Shishio Hitoshi, whom Tsurugu calls “Ookami-kun”, wolf-lad. The first book is more than half over before things happen that may be of a genuine supernatural nature. I would not give away a major spoiler except that it is hinted at in the book’s blurb:

“The handsome mute twin servants belonging to Lady Kaede are certainly suspicious, but it is the beautiful and strong-willed lady herself who draws Shishio’s mistrust. Tsurugu and Shishio must move carefully – accusing the warlord’s bride falsely would be death. But failing to identify the kitsune to the warlord is equally perilous, and there is more to discover.”

There certainly is! Kitsune-Tsuki (the winner of the 2012 Luminis Prize) has a major surprise ending. Those who like it will want to go on immediately to the sequel, Kitsune-Mochi (“fox possessor, a human who bound or used kitsune”).

It’s a true novel, almost three times as long. To review it in depth would give away too many spoilers in Kitsune-Tsuki, but briefly, Tsurugu returns along with the kitsune from the first book, plus “a host of oni, tengu, kappa, and others”. Tsurugu is gravely wounded; an unprincipled enemy onmyōji plots to destroy Lord Yoritomo and Lady Kaede; and there is a tender love affair between a fox-spirit and a human girl:

“She was cold, and hungry despite her distress, and she knew she should seek firewood and food. There might be berries ripening in the autumn woods, or nuts. But the tasks seemed too large and too difficult, and she could not bring herself to rise.

Something moved in the hut’s fallen doorway, and she glanced up with a start, half-expecting to see someone from the house come after her. But something else was there, and she stared in disbelief.

The fox took another step, edging into the room, and laid down the dead fowl it carried. It looked at her with an unnaturally steady gaze.

She stared at the animal, her heart pounding in her chest. ‘Kitsune?’ she whispered.

The fox was a pale color, almost amber. Its ears tipped back as she spoke.

She swallowed. ‘I have been driven out because of you, foul kitsune. I have lost everything.’

The pale fox dropped its head and nudged the dead fowl.

[…]

Murame began to pluck the chicken, her eyes still on the fox. The feathers hardly seemed to add to the litter of the hut. ‘You’re not much of a kitsune, are you?’ she said after a moment. ‘You have only one tail.’

The fox’s ears rotated backward in an expression that must have been embarrassed annoyance. This struck her as funny and she laughed, surprising herself.” (pgs. 55-57)

The other yōkai include a kyuubi (a nine-tailed fox), a bakeneko (a cat-monster), a kawāso, a river otter spirit; and more:

“Someone gave a keening cry, and others joined. Yips, yelps, shrieks, howls, and shouts rose into the dawn, an acclaiming cry as humans rarely heard, feet drumming the earth to replace the great drum.” (p. 230)

Baugh semi-apologizes in an Author’s Note to Kitsune-Mochi that “Folklore changes, of course, and in the last century or so particularly, the inhuman have been sanitized and de-fanged like never before.” Thus while her Not-Japan is generally as faithful to Heian-era Japan as possible, her kappa, tengu, and other yōkai are, if not as bowdlerized as the friendly versions in modern Japanese children’s picture books and movie and TV animation, not as fearsome as the ghoulish supernatural monsters of the past.

R. H. Potter’s cover for Kitsune-Tsuki is also available on a T-shirt on Baugh’s website.

– Fred Patten

• Buy Kitsune Tsuki on Amazon
• Buy Kitsune Mochi on Amazon

Leslie Levings is a sculptor and artist who created a line of colorful and imaginative clay creatures known as Beastlies before she even started high school. Now she’s all grown up — and she creates them full time! Each individual beastlie is a unique creation out of clay, made by hand. Most of them aren’t based on any recognizable animal species, but they are most certainly non-human characters with a lot of personality. Visit her web site to see her currently available models, and follow the link to her gallery of previous designs.

image c. 2016 by Leslie Levings

Reminder: We're on Patreon! If you could kick us a buck or two, we'd greatly appreciate it. www.patreon.com/thedraggetshow ALSO, we're not just on SoundCloud, you can also subscribe to this on most podcast services like iTunes! It's a show with Patreon sponsor, Nizzbit! We talk about all sorts of crap. Don't forget to hang out in our telegram chat, now w/ over 100 members! telegram.me/draggetshow Lastly, don't forget to check out our YouTube, where we have many extra vids, like a fireside chat. https://www.youtube.com/user/DraggetShow/videos ep. 127 - Patreon Guest, Nizzbit! - Reminder: We're on Patreon! If you could kick us …

This otter does public service in a proper fursuit, commissioned by local government. (Tip: Zeigler Jaguar.)

King County has two million people in the region around Seattle.  Their Department of Natural Resources and Parks has a new mascot who’s a uniquely Furry example of public funding for art and education.

On Twitter, Chrissy B asked who built the suit.  They answered: “Beetlecat Originals helped create Marta for river safety public outreach.”

I wondered how this came to be?  Why get such lavish custom art?  Since their Parks and Recreation Division covers 26,000 acres of land, hundreds of miles of trails, and a “world-class aquatic center”, it must be part of some serious public use and tourist dollars.

Meet Marta, the river otter, our newest advocate for river safety: https://t.co/zcQ3FfFk1l via @KCDNRP

— King County, WA (@kcnews) May 31, 2016

Marta was most retweeted topic of the month for their county services account with 50,000 followers. That could be a follower in 10% of households in their county – people in Washington must love their parks.  And now they’re getting zapped with Furry magic.

Marta has her own blog.  It mentions that this fursuiter doesn’t break the magic by speaking, she dances to an original song, and she shows off lifejacket fashion to help teach drowning prevention.  Besides adorable marketing, that must be an important reason to spend taxes on a mascot.  Saving lives saves a lot of bucks.

I don’t know of many tax-funded Furry-related activities – do you?  Canada gave $75,000 to furry social research by the IARP, but in the USA we just have the NSA spying on Second Life gamers and their “Cryptokids” cartoon mascots made to get kids into being spies. (More: “NSA To Recruit Children, Furries.”)

But I’m sure there’s nothing fishy about Marta except her lunch.

Speaking of Marta’s cost, in 2015 I compared furry art and high-end professional mascot building in my series about crossover between fursuiting and pro sports.  The amateur/hobby stuff is several times cheaper.  And doesn’t it look better?  With furries you get devotion to craft and bang for the buck.

Nice job, Beetlecat! Hopefully work like this opens doors for more and better commissions. Maybe those talents will soon be called to patriotic duty for building a presidential fursona.

Obama Commissions Fursuit So He Can Go Places Without Secret Service Hanging Off His Ass

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) October 22, 2015

More from Comic Con… Thanks to Cartoon Brew, we’ve learned that Marvel Studios have hired Passion Pictures to create a series of Rocket Raccoon and Groot animated shorts to be shown on Disney XD. “The shorts are being directed by Arnaud Delord, who is known for creating game cinematics with his creative partner Jérôme Combe under the moniker Arnaud & Jerome.” No date is set for the new shorts to be released, but the Cartoon Brew article has the test footage that Marvel recently showed. Interestingly, Passion Pictures also animated the well known “Meerkat” series of commercials for CompareTheMarket.com.

image c. 2016 Marvel Studios / Passion Pictures