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Hunters Unlucky, by Abigail Hilton – Book Review by Fred Patten
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
Hunters Unlucky, by Abigail Hilton. Illustrated by Sarah Cloutier. Maps by Jeff McDowall.
Winter Park, FL, Pavonine Books, July 2014, trade paperback $19.99 ([9 +] 672 pages), Kindle $9.99.
“He walked in darkness. How long he’d been there, he could not say. Occasionally, he distinguished the silhouettes of rocks or faint light reflecting off pools of water. He stayed well away from the water. Sometimes he heard noises – rustling, the rattle of pebbles, a soft sigh like fur over stone.
I will not run.
But he walked faster. He was looking for something … something he did not think he would find. He heard dripping, and that was normal, but then he heard a sharp patter, like an animal shaking water from its fur. Another swish, closer this time.
I will not break. I will not run.
Somewhere in the darkness, something began to laugh. ‘Hello, Arcove.’
Then he ran.” (p. 112)
Hunters Unlucky is a collection of Hilton’s five separate novels in that series; Storm, Arcove, Keesha, Teek, and Treace. They were also broadcast on her podcast beginning on November 10, 2014 and serialized two episodes per week through July 2, 2015. But they flow together smoothly into a single novel. Arcove, for instance, ends with a real cliffhanger. Get them all together in one handy book.
Hunters Unlucky has been compared favorably by many reviewers with Watership Down, The Jungle Book, the Warrior Cats series by “Erin Hunter”, and practically every dramatic natural talking-animal fantasy. It is different in being devoted (at first) to two groups of fictitious animals on the large island of Lidian; the ferryshaft, basically intelligent omnivorous furry deer or llamas, and the lion-like creasia cats. Other intelligent animals include the large foxlike curb, the eaglelike fly-ary, the telshee and the lishty, both sea mammals roughly analogous to furry sea lions. There are also many dumb prey animals such as sheep, rabbits, frogs, and turtles, which are sometimes eaten as well as grass by the omnivorous ferryshaft.
The story is an excellent example of the term “action-packed”. The first chapter of Storm is a battle to the death between several ferryshaft and creasia. Storm, the ferryshaft protagonist, is born in Chapter 2, twelve years later, on the same night his father is killed; licking blood rather than suckling milk as his first drink. Storm is the tale of his youth. He grows up as a runt whom his herd expects to die. Only his mother So-fet and a wise elder, Pathar, pay any attention to him. Storm gets his own first associates when he joins a small clique of other youngsters who are all outcasts together; a few other males and one female. Their relationship is a combination of intelligence and instinct:
“However, he [Storm] did speak more frequently to Tollee. As the summer wound down, they developed a genuine friendship.
This provoked a certain amount of teasing from Tracer and Leep, especially as the fall season brought mating to the front of everyone’s minds. ‘Better watch out,’ said Tracer. ‘You’ll be fighting Mylo for her.’
Mylo did, indeed, fight off three male foals who challenged him over Tollee’s status, and the entire clique helped fight off two adults. Storm knew that, had she been alone, she would have dealt with constant harassment. Mylo’s status as clique leader entitled her not only to his protection, but to the protection of his entire clique. […]” (p. 73)
Storm is not only the story of Storm’s growing up. It introduces the reader to the social dynamics of ferryshaft herd life, and to the fatal subservience of the ferryshaft to the creasia cats. It concludes with Storm’s first act of what can be called leadership.
Arcove is both the title of the second part, and the name of the leader of the creasia cats; the ferryshaft’s enemies. Treace, the title of part five, appears here as another creasia cat; Arcove’s rival. Arcove is a “noble adversary”; Treace is ruthless. (The cover by Sarah Cloutier shows Storm being circled by Arcove and Arcove’s second-in-command, Roup. Pay attention to the round blue stone around Storm’s neck. It’s important.) Storm can respect and work with Arcove; Treace can’t be trusted. Arcove introduces the reader to the creasia cats’ social structure. It also brings another of Lidian’s species into the story; the curbs, in particular the young curb warrior Eyal.
Storm’s exploits are so harrowing that it’s almost a spoiler to reveal that he keeps escaping and surviving. There are two phrases to remember here: the book’s blurb, “He’s not bigger. He’s not faster. He’s not meaner. So he’d better be smarter.” And the proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But Storm needs to do more than trick the furryshafts’ enemies into fighting each other. He needs to win the ferryshafts some real allies.
These are the first two parts of five. Although Storm remains the main protagonist, important characters emerge among the other intelligent species of Lidian: Arcove, Roup, and Treace among the creasia cats; Keesha and Shaw among the telshee; still others. The story becomes complex, with major surprises for Storm and for the reader. Hunters Unlucky is well-enough written that, even at 672 pages, you’ll be reluctant to put it down until you’ve finished it. Definitely recommended!
She Followed Them… Everywhere!
Yes, still, it’s sometimes best to just let the creators explain their own work. So, here’s the tag for new graphic novel Little Dee and the Penguin: “When Little Dee meets a motley crew of animals deep in the forest, she knows she’s found the perfect set of new friends. Between the bossy vulture, the slightly dim dog, the nurturing bear, and the happy-go-lucky penguin, this mismatched group of big personalities doesn’t always get along—but they’re a family. And they’re on the run. A pair of hungry polar bears are after the penguin, and the rest of the team are determined to protect her. They’re not interested in adopting a tiny human. But Dee loves them—especially Ted the bear—and she won’t let them go. Instead, she hops on their getaway plane and joins them on an around-the-world adventure.” Written and illustrated by Christopher Baldwin, it’s based on his continuing web comic of the same name. And now it’s available in full-color from Dial Books, coming this April in hardcover and trade paperback.
image c. 2016 Dial Press
S5 Episode 12 – The Last Goodbye (Grief and Loss) - Roo and Tugs are joined by Lyrick as they discuss everyone's favorite topic to avoid - grief, loss, and death. How do these huge changes affect us? What makes loss unique in the fandom? What do we have i
NOW LISTEN!
Show Notes
Special Thanks
Lyrick, our guest!
Syd, for inspiring our episode topic!
Timid Grizzly, for today's ident!
Maverick Collie
Commander Wolfe
Spark the Dragon
Zeke Raccoon
Music
Opening Theme: Husky In Denial – Cloud Fields (Century Mix). USA: Unpublished, 2015. ©2015 Fur What It’s Worth and Husky in Denial. Based on Fredrik Miller– Cloud Fields (Radio Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. ©2011 Fur What It’s Worth. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)
Space News Music: Fredrik Miller – Orbit. USA: Bandcamp, 2013. Used with permission. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)
Get Psyched Music: Fredrik Miller – Universe, USA: Bandcamp, 2013. Used with permission. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)
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!)
Next episode: We're going to Salt Lake Comic Con's FanXperience! Check out our mini site at fanx.furwhatitsworth.com. S5 Episode 12 – The Last Goodbye (Grief and Loss) - Roo and Tugs are joined by Lyrick as they discuss everyone's favorite topic to avoid - grief, loss, and death. How do these huge changes affect us? What makes loss unique in the fandom? What do we have i
Episode 307 - TFF 2029
She's Feeling Guilty Former Boyfriend Is Struggling
It's been a good 5 years since I last wrote you, and I can gladly say that my life has been going in the direction I've always wanted it to and I'm pursuing a dream I've had since I was in 7th grade. I got admitted into my a college at the end of my senior year in high school and I've been a student at Purdue University since August so I can study to become a Materials (Science) Engineer. I also have a boyfriend who I met through a mutual friend of ours (we were actually set up by said friend, who is more than overjoyed that we're together. It was a funny realization that he went through all that trouble for us.)
But just because my life is all and well doesn't mean it's that way for everyone. Before I met my current boyfriend, I was with a different guy. I'm going to call him "Jamie" for the sake of his privacy instead of his real name. When I was 16, I met him, we became friends and we started dating. I met him through the fandom and was kind, respectful and loving to me. At the time, it was like a dream come true since the last few boyfriends I've had weren't so great and I ended up with a broken heart and with more than a few tears being shed. So, back to Jamie. He fell as hard for me as I did for him. Everything seemed fine; we went about our lives in relative happiness despite the 5 year age gap between us and his social and economic situation in his life. Even though the guy went through hell and remained a stable, kind person, we weren't really right for each other. The first red flag came to me two months after we started dating. After only 2 months, he asked me to marry him. Being young and stupid as well as love drunk, I said yes. Jamie was happy at my answer and we stayed together. I didn't tell my parents, obviously. I did tell some friends o mine and they said that it was too early, and that the age gap was concerning and that my parents would flip their shit if they found out. I ignored them because I truly loved Jamie and I believed we could have a future together. When I was admitted into college and began to plan for my future career, I began to realize how difficult it would be for us to be together. His "history" would make it extremely hard for him to find a job, leaving all the pressure on me to pay bills and taxes and what not. Even though engineers get a pretty good pay and that I was going to be C-OP'ing later in college, I wasn't going to be rich and I'd have to work a lot. Also, I was having mental issues since I had depression and I knew it would strain us because of the pain it would cause me and Jamie would be powerless to help me significantly.
Jamie and I sort of broke off while I was still in high school but the relationship never officially ended until my first semester in college.
Ever since I broke off completely from him, he's been a wreck. I can see it in the way he talks to me and in the FA journals he posts. He's in a deep depression along with trying to find a job to support himself and his mother (who is handicapped, I'm not sure how, I just know that she is. I never asked about it.) It hurts me to see him suffering and I know I can't help him. I don't have a whole lot of money to my name that is truly mine. My parents have paid for my college fees and I've paid for text books and other necessary things myself. I can't send him money. I also can't get back together with him. I broke up with him already and I fear for unhappiness for both of us if I stayed with him and I'm very happy with my current boyfriend. I have no clue how I can help him, let alone talk to him without seeing his heart break right before my eyes. Seeing it threatens triggering a depression relapse for me, which has happened twice already and I really want my mental health to be stable, at least for a while. (I've always had a hard time dealing others' emotions because if I could perceive them, I felt them too.)
I'm not sure how to help him or if I should. At this point I'm not sure what to even say to him. It also doesn't help that I'm in a different state currently because of college. I'm just struggling to decide if I should just cut off from him completely or if I should try harder to help him or make him happy. I still do love Jamie, just not in the same way that I did when I was 16. It's hard not to care for him still.
Dawnstar
* * *
Dear Dawnstar,
I’m so happy for you! Finding a great guy in your life and pursuing your education at a prestigious university! Kudos!
But Papabear understands your feelings and wanting to help Jamie, and although that is a noble sentiment, it is a misguided one.
We cannot help everyone on the planet who needs help. Imagine for a moment that you and Jamie didn’t have this history together and he was just a passing acquaintance. Would you contemplate giving him money and spending days or months or years emotionally supporting him? Probably not.
There are, literally, billions of people on this planet who are having some kind of struggle in their lives. While they can, and should, find people in their lives they can hold on to for support, ultimately the only person who is responsible for their lives and happiness is themselves. (You’re not too specific about his past, but I’m guessing he might have gotten into some trouble with the law?)
You and Jamie didn’t work out for logical reasons, and you’ve found that by leaving him you were able to find a new person in your life who was better for you, which really proves you made the right decision for you. There’s nothing stopping Jamie from doing something similar and finding a new girlfriend, which would certainly be a healthier pursuit than trying to get back together with you. He needs to move on and you need to stop looking backward and feeling guilty about his life when it’s not your responsibility.
Saying that, it doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk or cut him out completely. You can be friends and listen when he wants to talk, even offer advice (NOT money!) if you can, but just be sure that it’s clear that the two of you will never be a couple in a romantic sense. Again, his life, his choices, and his troubles are not your responsibility. You have enough on your plate with school and being a good girlfriend—oh! and don’t feel guilty that you are happy! That’s a good thing!
My mother always told me, “Guilt is the most worthless of emotions.” She’s wise.
Be happy. Live your life. Be kind, but don’t be a tool or someone’s rug to step on.
Hugs,
Papabear
An Apology to Toasty
When we communicate via text, we lose a good chunk of how humans communicate. One's tone of voice, facial, and body expressions convey much more than we give them credit for. When we remove those and leave only written words, we lose a lot. When I was studying English literature in college, especially schools of criticism, we see how this comes into play. Ten people can read the same novel and come up with ten different interpretations for it.
The same is true in emails and blogs. Apparently, I was not attentive enough about this and hurt poor Toasty's feelings. Guess it just proves that I'm certainly not perfect. I got a bit upset about some words used in emails toward me (I've become a bit oversensitive, I admit, because I have been attacked several times), but I recognize now that, in this case, no harm was meant.
Perhaps, if I can no longer write a column that is constructive (and this probably has a lot to do with the pain I'm still going through) it is time to stop.
Sincere apologies,
Grubbs Grizzly
Fursuits and Mascots (w/ Huscoon and BCBreakaway) - Huscoon and BCBreakaway join us again to discuss whether or not fursuits are becoming mainstream as well as the differences between fursuiting and performing as a mascot.
Huscoon and BCBreakaway join us again to discuss whether or not fursuits are becoming mainstream as well as the differences between fursuiting and performing as a mascot.
Metadata and Credits Fursuits and Mascots (w/ Huscoon and BCBreakaway)
Runtime: 32:44m
Cast: Wolfin, Levi, Huscoon, BCBreakaway
Editor: Levi
Format: 128kbps ABR split-stereo MP3 Copyright: © 2016 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0. Podcast thumbnail by @Exkhaniber, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
A Questionable Storyteller?
Rocket Raccoon (even with Groot in tow) might not seem the most likely candidate for a young readers’ novel. But that’s just what Tom Angleberger brings us in his new hardcover book, Rocket and Groot: Stranded on Planet Strip Mall. “After battling deadly space piranhas in Sector 7 of the Cosmos, Rocket and Groot crash-land on a planet made up of strip malls, maniacal robots bent on customer service, and killer toilets – yes, killer toilets! Told through the eyes of Rocket, Rocket and Groot will feature simple black-and-white drawing throughout, as Rocket uses a space stylus to express his adventures, visually, while Veronica, their space recording companion, lays out the adventure in text! Granted, the drawings are done by a space raccoon with a bad attitude, but what would happen if he gave Groot a shot to draw an adventure they had been on? What would we get? We’ll find out in the final chapter!” You have been warned. The book is available now from Marvel Press.
image c. 2016 Marvel Press
The Furry Canon: Redwall
Article by Toledo (@toledothehorse). To the furry community, Toledo has mainly been an amateur artist. But since he can’t stop his brain from analyzing furry things, he has decided to put his hoof to the keyboard more often.
I’ve been around the fandom in some fashion for fifteen years. Even longer have I had fleshspace friends who sang Brian Jacques’s praises. But before this week, I had never read anything Redwall. Somehow I’d avoided reading about all those medieval mice and rabbits and otters. Of course, part of that is explicable: before I encountered the furry fandom, the only animals in which I’d had any interest were dinosaurs and dragons. Little woodland creatures put me right off. I also had little interest in anything medieval until around the same time1. Between these two apathies, I’d missed the prime years for Redwall fandom.
Essentially, I am evaluating whether Redwall deserves to be a part of the [adjective][species] Furry Canon without a hint of nostalgia. I do not present this as a claim of objectivity, of course, but only that of an outsider looking in—and to make clear my relationship with the text.
As a preliminary note: I have been told that Redwall, Brian Jacques’s first installment in the series, is not the best of the lot. Mossflower and The Pearls of Lutra have been nominated to me for that title. Not having the time to read all 20+ Redwall novels to adjudicate the representativeness of Redwall, however, I’m left with the fact that it is the first. It is our first glimpse of Jacques’s world, from imagery to narrative style to characterization. It is the threshold of Redwall Abbey.2
Beginning the book, I was immediately put off by a quantity of exclamation points rivalling a Jeb! Bush rally. A Chekhov’s infodump followed on only the third page: the Abbot of Redwall Abbey explains to Matthias, our main character, something he already knows. That is, he goes on for a page about how Martin the Warrior, a mouse knight of ages past, defended the Mossflower (the land surrounding Redwall) against all enemies with his terrible sword but–of course–those days are past, having given way to peace and prosperity at the Abbey for all mouse-, otter-, badger-, hedgehog-, and squirrel-kind. One need not be an especially perceptive reader to chart out the rest of the book in rough strokes after this first chapter: the time of peace is coming to an end and Matthias must find and wield Martin’s sword to defend Redwall. Two pages later: cue the horde of enemies, Cluny the rat and his mangy rodent army, careening toward Redwall. The stage is set.
Characterization is not Jacques’s strong suit. At first, Matthias’s only traits are tripping over excessively large sandals and his fascination with warrior legends: he is the archetypical hero in embryo, a more competent Luke Skywalker. Most other characters fare little better. Particularly painful is Cornflower, (if I recall correctly) the only female abbey mouse to get a name, whose traits are “cooking well” and “being attractive enough that everyone comments about it”; it is no spoiler that she is practically assigned to be Matthias’s romantic partner3. The only character development in the novel occurs when an enemy, threatened with death, swears to do no harm–and immediately becomes a friend. And when it comes to revealing character traits, “show, don’t tell” is a rule Jacques breaks as a matter of course. If he does not explicate one character’s moral status and habits of thought through another character’s words, he does it himself in the narration.
One major criticism of Redwall I had already encountered is relevant here: in this book, species could easily double as a shorthand for personality. Rats, ferrets, stoats, weasels, and foxes are, to a man (animal?), conniving, treacherous, ambitious, and devoid of compassion. On the flipside, the inhabitants of Redwall are valorous and honorable. Shrews self-identify as shrewish.
I’ll admit: I found the first third of the book to be a slog, in part due to lack of interest in the characters. My boredom did not stem from lack of exquisitely described action, however. The book features battle scenes worthy of Peter Jackson4. I did not anticipate so much of what the MPAA calls “fantasy violence”: this is a bloody, sometimes brutal book, with characters slain left and right and blatant displays of apathy and malice. (At one point, a ferret is sliced in half!) And when the book is not following Matthias’s quest for Martin’s sword, it consists of rats and their allies plotting, and setting into action their plots, against the Abbey; meanwhile, the Abbey plots and carries out its own counterattacks. If tactics and fights are your cup of tea—they’re not mine—you will likely love this book.
Why did the book get better for me after the first third, then? Not from anything Jacques did, though Matthias’s search—complete with ancient riddles and daring journeys to the roof and a nearby farm—was a welcome respite from battles. Instead, I realized that I needed to read the book as if it were being performed out loud. While exclamation points, flat characterization, and blatant foreshadowing feel out of place on the page, they truly belong around a campfire. When told with exaggerated intonation and facial expressions, I suspect Redwall would entrance. While this did not fix the book’s flaws, it justified them more than sufficiently. Jacques is an effective oral storyteller disadvantaged when competing against works in a different genre. In that light, the reader begins to see glimmers of genius in description and diction outside the mouth-watering descriptions of Redwall’s feasts.
Many of those hints of genius are found in characters who, as the sole members of their species presented, can stand alone. While their personalities are known types, they are less archetypical, and thereby much more charming. Who can help but love the slightly off-kilter, distracted but dependable British-inflected battle-veteran hare? How about the melancholy aristocrat cat who has sworn off red meat? Or the shrew clan, a mixture of left-wing militia and Lord of the Flies that turns out to be silly and harmless? Even the dissensions and backbiting in Cluny’s horde can be engaging. While all these might be overdone, it is because they are eminently likable. They function as indispensable seasoning for Redwall’s main course. Without Matthias, there would be no Redwall; without the likes of Basil the hare or Constance the badger, I doubt there would be a Redwall phenomenon.
So, does Redwall belong in the [a][s] Furry Canon? Despite its faults and my misgivings—which lead me to shrug at the opportunity to read more from the series—I’d have to answer a strong yes. Here’s why.
First, in the thirty years5 since its first publication, Redwall and its sequels may have achieved greater penetration of mainstream culture than any anthropomorphic work produced in the same time period, save feature films and television shows.6 My edition of the book proclaims on its cover that 20 million copies had been sold by its printing in 2002–no mean feat, and one that cannot be justly overlooked. One fifth grade teacher who noticed me reading Redwall related that it was one of her and her students’ favorite read-aloud books7. And I cannot count the number of my non-furry friends who have loved Redwall; I can only imagine the effect it would have on a young, impressionable proto-furry mind.
Why this incredible success? I would hypothesize that Redwall bridges supposedly “juvenile” talking animals with “adult” fantasy’s battles and legendaria. Just as aliens allowed Star Trek to address racism in the 1960s, woodland critters classify epic adventures—with “damns” and “hells” to boot!—as children’s stories. Redwall renders nearly irrelevant publishing’s fanatical silos of age, opening up a larger readership. What is more, the generic nature of the characters and storylines also makes Redwall more broadly accessible.
Second, due to its deep penetration of young reader culture, Redwall provides many children with their first impressions of certain species that are otherwise under- or un-represented in popular culture8. Here the consistency of characterization by species, otherwise a narrative weakness, is a memetic strength: it can help readers come to associate species with certain traits, giving them a new symbolic language. These symbolic structures are steady foundations upon which a reader can construct a personal identification with a particular species.
Third, Redwall is almost the epitome of the furry aesthetic: bipedal (if not humanoid) talking animals, often dressed in clothes, living in buildings9 and tending agricultural duties, going about their daily lives and having adventures from time to time. The setting—medieval legend—is the nerd’s escapist retreat par excellence, and the stark divide between good and evil can provide a similar respite from everyday moral ambiguity. Unsurprisingly, Redwall has inspired or otherwise influenced innumerable furry productions of which I am aware, including the excellently written and beautifully illustrated online graphic novel Beyond the Western Deep.
Redwall might not be a masterpiece, but it earns its place in the furry canon several times over through its broad fanbase, its longevity, its furry ethos, and influence on the furry fandom itself.
1 Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons, with its civilized, sympathetic dragons, led me to seek out images of dragons online and was the indirect cause of my finding furry media on Yerf and in webcomics. It also opened me to the (faux) medieval aesthetic and works in that vein in which I’d had no previous interest, such as The Hobbit–with its own intelligent dragon!–and The Lord of the Rings.
2 Redwall is also the one I picked up from a book bank for free several years ago, and this year one of my goals is to focus on reading books I own. In this case, my choice of reading material propitiously coincided with the beginning of the [a][s] Furry Canon project.
3 Thank goodness that other female characters, including the sparrows Warbeak and Dunwing, the squirrel Jess, the badger Constance, and the fox Sela get more varied treatment. Cornflower gets a heroic moment herself, though it is by accident.
4 His Lord of the Rings, of course, along the lines of a Helm’s Deep; being “worthy” of his Hobbit films is a circle in my personal hell.
5 It occurs to me that Redwall is as old as furry—the fandom—is itself.
6 Redwall has itself been given the television treatment at least once.
7 Concurrently corroborating my thesis about Redwall’s value as an oral story.
8 There are no ferret, otter, or badger main characters in Disney, for instance.
9 One major snag in my reading experience was that I could never understand the relative scale of the buildings, the woods, and the animals. Nearly every other page I was revising my mental image of something or other. It was terribly distracting.
Follow this link to explore everything we have published on the [adjective][species] Furry Canon project.
Advice for a Fellow Empath and People Pleaser
Apologies in advance for the inevitable disorder of this letter, I struggle to get my thoughts onto paper in a well-structured way. Here goes...
I'm, apparently, a wonderful person, according to a few people. I wouldn't categorize myself anywhere near that because I am in fact distant and a little hostile in most situations. I'm told I'm a great listener, and I give great advice, and I have many traits of an empath (that's one thing I can agree on). Since getting involved in the fandom these things have been made very apparent through my interactions with the people I've met.
Sometimes I just ... have to help. Often it doesn't even feel like it's me doing it. I'd compare it to a deep spiritual urge. For quite a long time now I've been the shoulder to cry on, the adviser, the helper etc. etc. Which is fine, I guess. But if that is who I am, why does it feel like something that's been forced on me?
This is hard for me to admit, even with anonymity, but this urge to help has cost me over £3000 of my own money, from helping a total of 5 furs who were in dire situations. On top of that are many hours of advice, counseling, emotional support, and being on hand almost 24/7 in case emergencies arose. I should add that these people were complete strangers to me when I first assisted them.
So, I've established my compulsion has cost me a lot of money, but considering that one of these people erased all trace of their situation after receiving my help (presumably to cover the whole thing up), one of them proceeded to credit two of their friends with a big sentimental journal, while staying deathly quiet about my many contributions, and one of them managed to indirectly tank my relationship, then lead me on as a dating backup afterwards, I've also lost a lot of time, happiness, and emotional well-being. I daresay I've even lost emotional stability. It all messed me up pretty good.
Nonetheless, after all these things passed I continued to do my thing, albeit not on such a grand scale. A helping hand here and there, slightly stressful but manageable.
But lately, I've been experiencing a shift in perspective, and it frightens me. Reflecting on all these things I've done, and what people have come to know me for, I began to observe the way a lot of my friends interacted with me, and the way I interacted with them.
And I realized, things are very one-sided. Not just with one or two people...I'm talking about most of them. I can see that a lot of my friends don’t love me, they love what I do/did. I notice I'm the one they come to when there’s a problem, but not the one to enjoy everyday fun with. People start conversations with me to launch straight into tirades about their problems, people hint at their financial worries hoping my empathy will kick in and I'll be forced to help them, they talk extensively about their passions and interests and who they are but you know what? Not one of them know the same things about me, because they never ask, and they never care. It has become apparent they just need a dumping ground for their mental and spiritual detritus, and clearly I am that dumping ground. Nobody knows or cares what I am outside of the benevolence that they benefit from. Nobody looks into me how I look into them.
When I'm vulnerable I get to thinking of all I've done, and how nobody will do the same for me should I ever need it. And it scares me. Don't get me wrong, I don’t give with the expectation of return. What scares me is how unknowingly willing I've been to put myself at risk for the sake of others. Literally this whole thing is a hole I've dug myself into.
So, I guess the rambling has to end and it's time for the questions.
Is unbridled generosity good? Is benevolence necessarily a good thing? Did I do good things, or misguided things? Would it be wrong to blow these people off? To hurt them even?
I'm sorry if it's difficult to make sense of this, like I said I struggle to get my thoughts onto paper, and there is a LOT here I had to leave out for the sake of length. Feel free to bin this one if its a bit too tricky, just a shot in the dark really. An outside perspective may be all I need.
-Manul (age 23, UK)
* * *
Hi, Manul,
If you’re looking for “an outside perspective” you’ve come to the wrong place because this bear has been EXACTLY where you are—in spades. We are both empaths and we are both people pleasers. I, too, have lost many thousands of dollars helping people. All told, I would say we’re talking $35,000 to $40,000. During that time, I have been used, insulted, and even had a lawyer sic’d on me with possibilities of a lawsuit, and one furry accused me of being a secret police officer who was trying to get him locked up in a nuthouse. Seriously. Sometimes, apparently, such people don’t even realize they are being butt munches. I recently had a writer tell me that my belief that I was an empath was “silly” and he had no clue he had just insulted me. All this for trying to help people. As they say, “No good deed goes unpunished,” right?
So, I guess ol’ Papabear beats you when it comes to feeling like a fool. But, really, it is a matter of learning how to control your empathic abilities and also to learn how not to be a tool while still enjoying helping others. Actually, one powerful device I use is this column. Here, I am free to help and give advice, and because I don’t know the people who write to me, I do not expect their friendship, compensation, or even gratitude (although it’s wonderful to get a thank you letter), and I don’t feel compelled to help them with money or other material assistance. It is, so to speak, a buffer. I get amazing satisfaction from writing “Ask Papabear.” Not sure how you might feel about it, but hey, you could try writing a column or blog, too. Since you’re in the UK, you could have a more British/European perspective that would make your column unique.
Be that as it may, another thing you need to learn is when to say “no” and that it is okay to decline helping someone—especially when that involves someone asking you for money or other material gains at your expense. That’s pretty challenging for people like you and me to do because we want to help others, but the first rule of helping others is that you have to be healthy and happy yourself, and that means being kind to yourself before you are kind to others. For example, you may have noticed I haven’t been writing this column as much lately, and the reason for that is because I only write it when I am not feeling under the weather from my grief over losing Jim. Some days, like today, are good, some are bad and I don’t write on those days.
Here is some good advice on being an empath that includes learning how to shield yourself and cleanse yourself: http://paganandproudofit.com/empath.html.
The other thing to learn is which people are friends and which are not. Don’t expect everyone who asks for your advice to become your friend and, therefore, don’t be disappointed when you learn they just wanted your advice. I dearly hope that at least a few people you know are true friends. A true friend is someone who is there for you as much as you are there for them.
If you learn to do these things in your twenties, you will be about twenty years ahead of yours truly and will be blessed. Being an empath is a gift, and if you learn to be one properly you will no longer resent it (like you’re kind of doing now) and learn to realize that this makes you a special person who is a rarity among human beings, most of whom suffer from tunnel vision and selfishness.
I hope this helps.
Blessed Be,
Papabear
How did Disney inspire Furry fandom? A look at early influences by Fred Patten.
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
How Disney Influenced Furry Fandom is an artist’s thoughts shared in this week’s Newsdump.
(Patch:) Furry artist Joe Rosales focuses on California fandom in its formative years, including fursuiting. It concludes that Disney should get major credit. I liked it, but it doesn’t give enough credit for sci fi fandom, and misses early fursuiters like Robert Hill who were not professional (and not G-rated, either.) The unnamed animator must be Shawn Keller, maker of the notorious Furry Fans flash animation and comic. (If he didn’t want to be named, he shouldn’t have published “Shawn Keller’s Horrifying Look at The Furries.“)
I sent it to Fred Patten and asked for his thoughts. In between, a similar media article happened on a psychic wavelength:
Here’s what Fred wrote in response to the first one.
(Fred:) This is very good, but you’re giving Disney credit for too much influence.
First, define early furry fandom. 1980 to … 1983? 1985? 1990? Don’t forget, by 1980 and for the next decade, Walt Disney and the Disney Studio were pretty much Old History. Carl Barks was retired. In comics, Marvel’s Howard the Duck (Steve Gerber), DC’s Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! (Scott Shaw!), and Pacific Comics’ Destroyer Duck (Jack Kirby) were the New Wave; the new influences. In underground comix, there were Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. In independent comics, there were Steve Leialoha and Michael Gilbert in Quack!. … (Fred, what about the great Bucky O’Hare comic? – Patch)
For those who championed the old comic books and strips, there were George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Walt Kelly’s Pogo, and DC’s Sheldon Mayer with The Three Mouseketeers, Dizzy Dog, Doodles Duck, and their pals. (Mayer’s Amster the Hamster, a W. C. Fields imitation, was my favorite.) Japanese animation and manga fandom were brand-new in America, and we were being blown away by the funny-animal manga of Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishimori/Ishinomori.
Dizzy Dog
In animation, Don Bluth was the new wunderkind, who we anticipated reviving the art form with Banjo, the Woodpile Cat, The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, and All Dogs Go to Heaven. Early furry fandom’s overlap with anime fandom meant the animation of Osamu Tezuka; TV animation like Kimba the White Lion and The Amazing 3, theatrical characters like Pincho (acknowledged as a tribute to Disney’s Pinocchio), Crack, and Pooks in Phoenix 2772, and the TV movie Baghi, the Monster of Mighty Nature. Disney was still present with The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company theatrically, and doing slightly better with such TV cartoons as Adventures of the Gummi Bears and DuckTales, but mostly the studio was washed up as far as being an influence.
Disney was still respected for its comic books by Carl Barks, and its animated characters like Dumbo, Bongo, the Wind in the Willows cast (Ichabod and Mr. Toad), The 101 Dalmations, the mice in The Rescuers, etc., and of course the 1973 Robin Hood, but all this was in the past. It wasn’t the influence that the current 1980s funny animals were. Disney’s impressive new work with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and the TV TaleSpin and Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers were all 1990s products, after furry fandom was established. (If you want a real influence, how about the Russian cultists who worship Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Ranger’s Gadget Hackwrench as a goddess?)
Yes, furry fandom was massively molded by Mark Merlino & Rod O’Riley during the 1980s. But they were promoting Merlino’s edit of the two Animalympics TV Specials into a movie (before the release of the authorized movie), and videos of Osamu Tezuka’s animation, more than Disney fare. Merlino was a correspondent of Ken Sample in NYC, so he can be said to be a seminal influence on furry fandom of both coasts. But in fan art, Merlino & Sample were spreading Merlino’s skiltaires – otterlike aliens with antennae – not Disney characters. Other artistic influences from within 1980s furry fandom were Steve Gallacci’s Erma Felna cat-woman, Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo, Mike Kazaleh’s Captain Jack cast, Fantagraphics’ Critters comic book, Reed Waller’s “Omaha”, the Cat Dancer, Eastman & Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and all their imitations … not Disney stuff.
This cites Disney creators and animation presented at the ConFurence conventions of the 1990s. Too late to be major influences, and overshadowed by such Warner Bros. TV cartoons and their characters as Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. An ongoing feature of the 1990s ConFurences was the romance between fan cartoonist Mitch Beiro and WB.’s Minerva Mink from Animaniacs.
“This all changed one year, 1993 or 1994, when an animator – whose name I will omit, since I’m sure he wants no part of this post […] – showed up in the first fursuit; a fully realized Pepe Le Pew costume.”
I’ll name names; it was Shawn Keller. He was a Disney animator who had animated Ursula’s two hench-eels in The Little Mermaid, among other things. But Pepe Le Pew wasn’t his first costume. He had made an excellent Kimba the White Lion costume in the 1980s. At the 1990 San Diego Comic-Con, he appeared as Charlie B. Barkin, the German Shepherd from Don Bluth’s All Dogs Go To Heaven in a costume so much like the animated cartoon character that it looked at first like a professional promotional costume – until you looked at the groin and saw that it was anatomically explicit.
But Keller’s Pepe Le Pew costume at the 1993 or 1994 ConFurence was hardly the first fursuit. The term “fursuit” was first used at the 1993 ConFurence by Robert C. King; they were already common by that time. Note that I call them “costumes”, not “fursuits”. There are no hard & fast definitions, but in most furry fans’ vocabularies, a “costume” is a depiction of a particular, well-known character (usually copyrighted), while a “fursuit” is an original furry character, usually created by the wearer. Keller’s Pepe Le Pew suit may well have been fabricated with the help of Disney park costumers (unofficially, surely, since it was Disney personnel making a costume of a Warner Bros. character). But as a costume of a specific copyrighted character, it had almost no influence on fans’ original-character fursuits – although it was inspirational in showing fans what could be accomplished in costume-making.
So was Disney a specific and major influence in the creation of furry fandom? I don’t think so – speaking as one who was there.
(Patch:) Crediting Disney for fursuiting does seem a little overgenerous. It’s great to read about how it contributed to the leap in craft of fursuit-making that kept going until it’s an awe-inspiring cottage industry now… but wasn’t costuming only a minor thing that already existed in sci-fi, while furries came together around art and fiction?
Fred has a lot of good stuff to say about all the super fertile stuff that was happening while Disney was in a very unproductive period between the late 70’s and late 80’s. But even if it’s older, many furry awakenings still come from this hot fox. – Patch
Kitten? Stray No More!
Konami Kanata is well-known for her full-color manga series Fuku Fuku, dramatizing the adventures of her adopted stray kitten of the same name. Now Vertical Comics have brought together several adventures in a new graphic novel, Fuku Fuku: Kitten Tales. “From the author of the New York Times manga best seller Chi’s Sweet Home comes a delightful series of vignettes in the life of a kitten and her doting owner. To a young kitten, even the most mundane things appear fresh and exciting (and sometimes unpleasant or scary). Join FukuFuku on her journey and rediscover the world from a tiny cat’s point of view.” Visit the Vertical web site to see a preview.
image c. 2016 Vertical Comics
Fake Furry News Video 3 of 6 PLAYLIST
Morning, Noon & Night, by Michael H. Payne – Book Review by Fred Patten
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
Cover by Marilyn Scott-Walters
Morning, Noon & Night, by Michael H. Payne. Illustrated by Roz Gibson.
Balboa, CA, “Hey, Your Nose is on Fire” Industries, September 2014, trade paperback $14.00 (325 pages), Kindle $3.00.
“‘You dare?’ Koyannaset, the Black Sphinx of Andeer, let herself burst upward, towering onto her hind paws, the now massive points of her crown smashing the marble of the throne room ceiling into boulder-sized chunks; plummeting, they shattered the tile floor, cracks spidering out from the craters to splinter the pastel mosaics covering the walls. ‘I am your Goddess Queen!’” (p. 7)
This is one book where it pays to read the dedication:
For Lauren Faust, Rob Renzetti, and all the creative people behind My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic without whom this story would not have been possible
Morning, Noon & Night does not try to hide the fact that it is little more than MLP:FIM fan-fiction in a transparent disguise. The two equine goddesses of Equestria – Princess Celestia and Princess Luna – are the benevolent white griffin Princess Equinox and the murderously insane black sphinx Princess Koyannaset. The “Mane Six” ponies – Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and the rest – are the Champions of Andeer; two each of humans, hawks, and dogs, all adolescent females. Spike the dragon, Twilight Sparkle’s juvenile assistant, is Chert the (adult male) housecat, human Larissa Noon’s familiar but in love with the other human Champion, Violet – “even though every article Larissa had read on the subject said that interspecies romances never worked out!” (p. 16)
The six Champions of Andeer are Larissa Noon and Violet, humans; Thermal Updraft and Pinfeather, hawks; and Astrid Spin and Flaxen, dogs. The latter two are specifically a French poodle and an Irish collie. They have just been appointed the latest Champions of Andeer by the griffin Princess Equinox, now Andeer’s sole goddess since Princess Koyannaset became homicidally mad. Once each hundred years, Equinox appoints six Champions – six mortals from the civilized peoples of Andeer, all young sorceresses or other magic-users – and leads them to the ruins of Koyannaset’s temple/palace in Sahan to renew the spells that keep her banished into limbo, and Andeer safe from her murderous rages. The Champions’ duty is over once that’s done, and they can relax for the rest of their lives, basking in their reputations of being this generation’s Champions.
Illustrated by Roz Gibson
The leader of the newest Champions (and the novel’s protagonist) is Larissa Noon, because she’s the most powerful sorceress. But she’s also the shyest and, with stringy brown hair and a nothing figure, the plainest. (It doesn’t help knowing that the two hawks and two dogs are considered very attractive among their species.) Violet is outright beautiful (Chert has promptly abandoned Rissa to drape himself around Violet’s shoulders), with styled blonde hair, a great figure, plus an outgoing, friendly personality, kindly and helpful … well, Rissa has gotten a serious inferiority complex. Which doesn’t help either her leadership or her spellcasting.
Before anyone can do any more, the unexpected happens. When Koyannaset reappears to be banished once again, she’s cured! She’s calm, rational, and horribly embarrassed for what she did while she was mentally sick. She tries to officially abdicate, but Equinox, delighted to have her cousin and best friend sane again, insists that they will reign together as co-rulers; Equinox in charge of the day and Koyannaset in charge of the night. The Champions are disbanded.
Time passes. The Champions are still getting together socially. Rissa has become Chief Archivist in Stillwater, Andeer’s capital. Violet is a leading couturier; “Pinfeather had signed an exclusive contract with the modeling agency Raptor House [and] the advertisements featuring the lovely yellow hawk that had started appearing in newspapers and magazines almost immediately” (pgs. 46-47) have financed the finest veterinary hospital in Andeer. Pinfeather retires as an avian model to concentrate on veterinary magic. Thermal Updraft is working with the Weather Wardens who control Andeer’s weather; but she’s at the ex-Champions’ parties. Astrid Spin the poodle has become a prominent stage director and playwright, and Flaxen manages the successful Ruby Red Farms.
This is the new status quo when Princess Koyannaset comes to Rissa. Equinox wants to take her first vacation in five hundred years. To show Koyannaset how much she trusts her, she is leaving the sphinx goddess in sole charge of all Andeer for a week, from the palace-city of Sahan. Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, but just in case, Koyannaset herself wants the six Champions to reassemble and watch her closely for that week. The Champions agree, figuring that this will be like a paid vacation. Besides, the peoples of Andeer are beginning to feel that the six are resting on past glory, and this will remind everyone that they’re still the Champions.
All of this is prelude. Chapter One starts on page 58. The Champions find that the inhabitants of Sahan, mostly officials, palace staff, and honor guards, and their families, are polite but little more. They consider themselves to be Equinox’s staff, and Koyannaset to be an intruder. There is an embarrassing “accident”. Politeness evolves into disapproval, then to ugly gossip that proves to be organized.
“‘We’re facing a smear campaign, dear fellow, a vicious slew of gossip no doubt organized by or at least allied with whoever dropped that beam at the Day Palace this morning.’” (p. 178)
An adolescent girl readership should be able to relate to gossip and a smear campaign. Then it turns deadly. Does someone just want to kill the Champions, or to increase the emotional pressure on Koyannaset’s fragile sanity in the hope of driving her mad again? Why? The Champions individually investigate, at the same time they collectively organize fabulous palace balls and parties.
Morning, Noon & Night, like MLP:FIM, is basically for adolescent girls. Like MLP:FIM, it features lots of talking, magical animals, although not horses. Furry fans will enjoy it, both for the fantasy story and for Payne’s humorous and lyrical writing.
“Pinfeather blushed – the only bird Larissa had ever met who could do that –“ (p. 22)
“A pop behind them, and Larissa turned back to see Astrid Spin trotting out, her jaw working a huge mass of bubble gum.” (p. 61)
“A clatter from the front door stopped Chert from saying he hoped so for all their sakes, and he turned to see Astrid Spin come bouncing in, panniers bouncing against her flanks. ‘This is so exciting! I mean, I didn’t even know there was a five o’clock in the morning!’” (p. 66)
“It wasn’t sad, but at the same time it kind of was. Just exactly like evening, she realized, the way it’s sad that the day’s over but not really sad since night time can be fun, too, and then there’ll be the next day and the next day and the next day after that, each one, she knew, destined to be the best day ever.” (p. 143)
The “cover design” is credited to Marilyn Scott-Walters, who has adapted an ancient painting of a phoenix. Roz Gibson has four full-page portraits of the main cast.
Peace of Mind. It’s a Piece of Cake.
Looks like we have not seen the end of anthropomorphic movies for 2016. Now another one has been added to the growing herd: The Wild Life, an English-language version of the Belgian CGI film Robinson Crusoe. From Cartoon Brew: “In this loose adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s tale of a castaway marooned on an island, Crusoe must team up with a bunch of animals to defeat a couple of savage cats who are trying to take over his tropical home. Ben Stassen and Vincent Kesteloot directed at nWave Pictures (The House of Magic, Fly Me to The Moon), which produced the pic with Studiocanal. It opened last month in Germany, and has grossed a respectable $4.6 million to date in that country.” Both Cartoon Brew and Animation Scoop have the first English trailer. Lionsgate (Norm of the North) is set to release The Wild Life this coming September.
image c. 2106 Lionsgate
FA 010 The Campsite Rule - How do you handle relationships with a significant age or experience difference? Also, should you have sex with an ex?
Hello Everyone!
Episode Ten! Wow, it's been ten weeks of this show-- thanks for your support and listening in!
Today we discuss the Campsite Rule, a concept that deals with intergenerational relationships (or relationships with drastic experience differences). How can you be in a relationship ethically when you are with a partner who is much younger than you, or much less experienced at relationships / sex / intimacy than you? We also talk about whether or not you should have sex with an ex, especially after you've just broken up.
For more information, including a list of topics by timestamp, see our Show Notes for this episode.
Thanks and, as always, be well!
FA 010 The Campsite Rule - How do you handle relationships with a significant age or experience difference? Also, should you have sex with an ex?Opinion: Why the Furry Fandom Shouldn’t Bother (too Much) with the Media
Guest article by Televassi.
Televassi is a bit of a newcomer to the fandom, however in his time here he’s been amazed by the friendly and creative nature of the people that make it up. Apart from being a writer, he also enjoys rock climbing and scuba diving, and has a keen interest in Celtic and Germanic cultures. You can find this torc wearing wolf on twitter as @Televassi, and find more of his writing and art on FA and Weasyl. He’s always happy to meet new people, so don’t be afraid to say hi!
For a long time I’ve never bothered to explain what I write about to friends and family. I’ve never bothered to explain why I have art of anthropomorphic wolf people. Nor have I bothered to explain precisely who I’m talking to online, or meeting on weekends. “Friends” is usually the monosyllabic and vague answer I’ll give – often met with little investigation now that making friendships online is a little less uncommon.
While such evasions may deflect questions, it isn’t satisfying to lie. It’s only natural to seek to openly express your interests to others. People often construct their identities based on their interests; they introduce themselves as climbers, divers, artists, and writers. In each of those examples, the activity the individual partakes in is not presented just as what they do, but also who they are. The activity becomes who you are, and when you do it, you are expressing yourself. Furry works in the same way too, yet even though it is something that binds Furries into a community through social, written, and artistic expression, many do not openly express it. This is seen in the recent [adjective][species] data snapshots on how open people are about being involved with the fandom:
It is clear that self-identification as Furry does not correlate with public expression of Furry. One probable reason for such a relationship is the media’s negative perception of Furry, a view commonly expressed by Furries and documented by [adjective][species]:
The resulting belief of media scrutiny however, is a perception that does not correlate to current levels of coverage of Furry, a subject which does not appear frequently enough in both print and online news outlets to justify the belief. Regardless, it is clear that Furry is concerned with how it is scrutinised by the media, and this article seeks to explore that scrutiny when it does occur. Analysing recent articles from The New Yorker and Inquisitr, this article will analyse how they misinterpret and misdefine Furry in differing ways.
In the New Yorker article, if you can get past its overbearing style, lies an example of the misdefinition of Furries. For an article delving into post-humanist themes, it falls disappointingly short of understanding the relationship between post-humanism and Furries. Instead, it opts to group Furries with other eccentrics who have undergone attempts to become more ‘animal’; the article specifically mentions the case of a man who tried to live as a badger. As a result, the conclusion of the article rather predictably ends with the caveat that despite human attempts to become more animal, human beings cannot transcend their essential humanity and achieve animality – at best we are left with a human experience of the animal; the anthropomorphic, which, is the essence of the Fandom. The article interprets achieving ‘only’ the anthropomorphic as a failure by all the groups it has gathered together. As a result, the man who failed to live as a badger (to the extent of eating earthworms and living in an earth den) shares the same failure as the Furries who dress up in Fursuits and act like animals – that regardless of trying to become animals, both have failed to transcend their humanity and become animal. Yet this is erroneous, as for most Furries, becoming an animal in the total, ‘feral’ sense if you will, is not the goal. While it is for some, it is not for others – and thus one sees the problem of grouping individuals together without consideration of their individual differences.
One must be extremely suspicious of theories that attempt to create generalising, overarching statements over groups that have vast differences – or to use technical language, to create a ‘totalising metanarrative’. Thus, examining Furries at the same time as a man trying to live as—and thus become—a badger should be treated with the same scepticism one would get for saying anthropomorphic cave paintings are the same as modern day Furry art. Both examples are different, and do not share the same goals even if they share thematic similarities; it is not enough that they are simply anthropomorphic. The mistake of the article lies in imposing a meaning on two similar but ideologically separate groups in order to make them fit a general hypothesis. The nuances of both positions are lost, or one position ends up defining the other. One should examine the differences in a search to find that group’s own meaning, independent from the other. Put simply, such simplistic grouping inevitably places disparate things in the same box, when they should have a box of their own even if they belong on the same shelf. As a aside, thus article was written with the understanding that it’s analysis may well impose an interpretation on the fandom – an amorphous group of individual interpretations of Furry. However, that is something this article shall try to avoid, and neither shall it pretend that it is an authority to a community of individuals with their own valid opinions. Conversely, the problem with the media is that it does impose its own meanings upon Furry, either because journalists do not have enough time undergo extensive research, or that further investigation goes against the type of article they went to write.
From that introduction one can see how Furry can be misrepresented or misdefined in the media. For journalists, Furry seems something to either portray as exotic, with varying degrees of scandalous behaviour added to flavour the mix. For those who are not writing an article that investigates the curiosity of the ‘Other’, they often attempt to define Furry and understand it which, while admirable, carries the risk of defining Furry with little regard for Furries’ individual terms. Thus, Furry can be placed into a category which it wouldn’t necessarily fit – like The New Yorker did. Given the amorphous discourse upon what makes ‘Furry’ within the fandom, any disappointment one may feel arising from erroneous definitions and categorisations is justified. However it is understandable that mainstream media seeks to define Furry in a simple, bitesize way for its audience to understand as time and space are limited. Yet one must keep in mind that the media’s main objective is to cater to its audience, which inevitably is not Furries. As such, there will always be a disconnect – making readers understand and representing Furries accurately are not mutually exclusive. At its worst, the media can simply seek to reinforce the prejudices of its readership, which is not healthy for the Fandom.
This article is not advocating a conscious blockage of the media, because that is a futile gesture. Furries are always going to provoke curiosity, and such curiosity makes the Fandom news-worthy material. Even when the article is about clean content, Furry finds its niche as in ‘eccentric/curiosity’ article, in which the report navigates a fine line between celebrating difference and finding it as an object for ridicule – or simply, for the ‘norm’ to have an object which they can compare themselves too, and find themselves favourably. The latter method in particular can be a mode of reinforcing a belief of superiority for the audience’s own standards, and we inevitably find this when the topic turns to adult content. Adult content wouldn’t be a shock factor for most if sexual activity was seen as solely the business of the parties undertaking it. Yet sexual activity is a vexed topic, and so Furry sexuality is going to receive undue scrutiny because it deviates from the heteronormative standards society commonly holds. For media outlets this is a gift – as it takes little effort to be portrayed as shocking or depraved, and we’ve seen how Furry has been used to that effect in the past. Again, the intent of such pieces isn’t to understand, but to give its audience an object to ridicule – in this case, for entertainment and to feel superior because they are not ‘depraved’. Conservative outlets are more likely to do so than liberal ones; however a significant portion of articles on Furries question Furry sexuality. The response is usually a defensive ‘it’s a minority’ claim. This is telling in itself. The answer really should be ‘it’s not anyone’s business what consenting adults do’, and yet, the fandom is always put on the defensive by such questions, forced to justify itself as acceptable in terms of the readers’ standards, rather than our own. Why should society care about what people find attractive? If it is of age, and if it is consenting, does someone else’s opinions matter? Yet this is not the case, and such scrutiny in articles about the fandom reveals it is not allowed to speak for itself – it rather has to answer the questions of the outsider in a way that is acceptable to them, not to Furries.
When Furry tries to present itself so that it appears acceptable to an article’s audience, it closes down the most liberal aspect of Furry – that it celebrates and embraces a diversity of sexual preferences and fantasies, and for the most part, doesn’t bat an eyelid about it. Of course there are problematic preferences, but if those are of age and consenting, there’s rarely a problem. However, the media isn’t interested in creating nuanced, investigative reports – if audiences really responded to furry sexuality with no judgement over what consenting adults choose to do, then Furry sexuality would not feature.
One can see such scrutiny of Furry sexuality in a recent story about how the Disney movie Zootopia, was allegedly marketed to Furries. As the story spreads from the original Buzzfeed article (which did not mention sexuality at all), the original headline changes into another story, one that is about the scandal of perceived ‘deviant’ sexuality. The article from Inquisitr (aptly named for the witch-hunt it undergoes) takes the title about marketing, and then tries to prove it in a unique way – by attempting to read any hint of sexuality in the film as appealing to Furries’ sexual tastes. There is a sleight of hand here – the focus changes from having a film marketed to Furries, to talking about how the film appeals to Furry sexuality. As a result, this theme appears throughout the article:
“But this doesn’t seem to be an out of the blue connection between Disney and the Furries, as many of the characters in the movie seem a bit sexier than your average Disney creature. One of the animals, voiced by Shakira, was obviously drawn and selected by Disney to exude sex appeal.”
The original topic is twisted in favour of the story the journalist actually wants to write – a sex scandal about a Disney film and Furries, which at the end of the day underlines how the fandom can be misrepresented by those seeking to generate some scandal for their readership to consume.
“The Guardian is saying that Disney fans will find it hard to avoid learning a whole new vocabulary associated with the furry life. Let’s just say that predators and prey mean very different things than in the traditional sense.”
This particular quote is interesting because it is suggestive. Seemingly innocuous enough, the comment of a deviant, alternative predator and prey relationship, works by suggestion. It leads the reader on with a sentence that withholds any facts, in order to give the opportunity for the reader to answer what the alternative meaning is with their own prejudice.
“Tommy Chong, Idris Elba, and Ginnifer Goodwin are just some of the main voices that will lure in adults, as well as the theme of not being judged by your species, and the Mammal Inclusion Program, that helps the bunny Judy (Goodwin) become the first bunny to become a cop, and a sexy, sassy cop at that, who is actively being checked out by all of those around her.”
It’s surprising that this is a PG rated movie being talked about, considering the efforts of the author to extrapolate some sexual interpretation from it. It serves as a good example of a journalist taking one story and twisting it to write their own, ultimately misinterpreting the facts in favour of a more alluring story, no matter how erroneous. The mere mention of the word Furry starts an inevitable link to sex and sexuality, seeking some sort of scandal, which in this case, is ultimately one of misrepresentation and misinterpretation.
Moving on from adult content, another issue is the perception that those who read interviews from figures in the fandom can take them to be authority figures for Furry, that their explanations are the truth, rather than their opinion. Returning to the fact that Furry is a loosely defined collective – united by an appreciation for the anthropomorphic, or the animal. Even in that sentence, one can see Furry is hard to define, as it is easy to find Furries who represent themselves as anthropomorphic animals, or simply as ‘feral’ animals. A common explanation of Furry is that Furries have fursonas, yet there are people in the fandom who do not have one. The challenge for any article is how to define (and thus allow understanding) a subculture where its meaning depends upon individual beliefs? The media simply cannot, or does not understand that Furry has no iron-clad definition; rather, it is individual expression. Furry is lots of individual voices all saying their own thing, rather than one voice saying what they all are. The meaning of Furry depends on how it is expressed, rather than a set of rules everyone follows – because we do not. To speak personally example, my expression of Furry is anthropomorphic Celtic/Germanic warrior culture animals, with classical motifs thrown in for good measure of diversity (and lots of mead!). Warrior wolves clad in mail drinking in mead halls abound, and it is clear that it is an individual expression of Furry. Furry varies between other people – and that is wonderful. However, the creativity arising from the way Furries express their own ideals of Furry has to be condensed and simplified for an article, for both the sake of brevity and understanding. Such compression comes at a loss though. Hence, we arrive at definitions that Furry is about the anthropomorphic, animals, or fursonas – and while those simple statements certainly unite individual’s expressions, they strip away the creativity of each individual’s expression of Furry; the nuances that make people fascinating are gone. Articles with interviews in particular have trouble with this, as they have to negotiate between two issues when exploring Furry. One, that it doesn’t simplify an interviewee’s individual expression of Furry; however such attention can give that individual the danger of seeming like an authority figure because they are the only one speaking. Two, that it takes many individual’s expressions and finds a uniting, often simplistic theme, which prevents an authority figure from rising, but also removes the creative diversity that makes Furry what it is.
Finally, the last point about Furry in the mainstream media is simply a suggestion that it is not actually ready, ideologically, for what Furry does. Outside of Furry, we live in an epoch of our own making – the newly declared Anthropocene, an age where humans have an impact on shaping what goes on this planet. Human beings are undoubtedly in control and at the top of the order of things. This conflicts with Furry, because Furry is post-human, Furry reduces that superiority of human beings. Furry is not anthropocentric in a time when society is. Furry takes specifically human traits – our perception of the world, our human brand of intelligence, our lifestyle, language, emotions, etc., and places them in post-human bodies. Furry looks beyond the human and unities it with the animal – at a time when animals, though seen as capable of intelligence and perhaps emotion, are seen as lesser beings compared to humans. Furry is subversive because it marries human traits with animal ones, creating hybrids that remove once human traits and place them into animal mixes; it deprivilages essentialist ‘human’ traits. In doing so, this redefines our conception of what is exclusively human, expanding them into universal traits any sentient being can hold – a move which reduces the speciality, and thus the superiority of humanity we see today.
In conclusion, the question is not whether Furries should ignore the media. That’s a futile question because unless Furry was to move offline and live in a cave (like the badger man), it would probably still gain media attention. So should Furries be concerned with the media? No, for the reasons that have been given – misrepresentation, justification of adult content, pressure to appear acceptable, misdefinition, simplification, and being ahead of the times. To pick one reason above all as to why Furries shouldn’t bother about the media, it is that Furry is individual. How you express yourself matters more than what people say about it, and if no harm is done, what justification do other people have to tell you how to express yourself? Furry is creative, and that imaginative expression should not be diluted, simplified, or made to toe a standard line* for the sake of pleasing others. Just as some in Furry may find ‘sparkledogs’ or Germanic warrior wolves in mead-halls their anathema of Furry, the principle remains the same. Express your individuality, celebrate it.
*with thanks to Patch of Dogpatch Press for catching a typo
BF Needs Time to Figure Out His Sexuality
I’m having trouble accepting my significant other's possible sexuality. You can refer to my boyfriend as Skittles, his fursona name. We're actually engaged but I’d rather call him my boyfriend until we're married. Anyway, just the other day I found out he thinks he may be asexual. He was homosexual before, and I myself am bisexual with a preference for men, but I consider myself homosexual. I love him more than anything and vice versa, and do not really care what his sexuality is, but I feel like he's more confused than anything. I don't know what has caused this seemingly sudden change. and as much as I don't like mentioning it, we ourselves have “explored our sexuality” one time before. With everything I know about him, it just doesn't make sense. Don't get me wrong, I want to support him, but I don't think that's the right thing to do in this case.
Unfortunately, I'm all he has to really talk to. He has a dark past. Both of his parents are dead, and his mom was very abusive, an alcoholic, and a literal whore. He currently lives with his grandparents, who he simply just doesn't trust. I can't go to my parents for guidance about the situation because they don't like him ever since they found out about that one time when we "explored our sexuality.” They don't know we're together, or that I proposed to him. We've been secretly communicating through email for the past several months. However, they do accept me for who I am and have nothing against homosexuality. I fear that both his past and lack of guidance may be interfering with him.
Kaleb Fox (age 17)
* * *
Hi, Fox,
Okay, first let me point out a contradiction here: you say your parents “have nothing against homosexuality” on one paw, but that they don’t like your boyfriend because you “experimented” with sexuality (meaning, I gather, had homosexual intercourse). So, they can’t have it both ways, and I’m guessing they actually don’t like homosexuals, though it’s nice they seem to be trying to be supportive of you.
While you might be wrong on the above point, I think you’re likely correct about your suspicion that Skittles is confused. He has had a rough life so far, and he is no doubt struggling with his sexual identity. (I’m one person who can certainly vouch for the fact that we sometimes don’t figure out our sexuality as teenagers.) Perhaps he is asexual, but this bear’s instincts tell him that Skittles is just going through some phases as he tries to figure himself out.
Therefore, the best thing for you to do is to be patient with him and don’t push him in any direction when it comes to sex; let him work on it himself. There are many many many other aspects of a relationship that you can explore and share in the meantime. In fact, if I were you, I wouldn’t even broach the subject of sex unless Skittles does first. If he does, let him talk, just listen, and bite your tongue to prevent any reflexive verbal reactions. Think carefully before you speak.
More important than sex right now is your relationship as a whole. You need to work on not having a secret relationship, which might not fully happen until you are both of legal age, but if your parents are understanding, as you say, it might work for that half of the family. His half, however, sounds like they will be more difficult to deal with.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Papabear
Cat Crimebusters and Other P.I.s on Paws, Part 4 – Book Review by Fred Patten
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
Cat Crimebusters and Other P.I.s on Paws, Part 4
Three series that are not “cat cozies” (and one which is), that do feature cat P.I.s who really investigate, are the Manx McCatty Adventures by Christopher Reed, the Sam the Cat Detective novels by Linda Stewart, the Buckley and Bogey Cat Detective Capers by Cindy Vincent, and the Cats on the Prowl books by Nancy C. Davis. These are fantasies where the cats do all the detecting, mostly in feline societies. The first two are hard-boiled P.I. pastiches set almost entirely in the feline world.
A Manx McCatty Adventure: The Big Scratch. November 1988.
Manx McCatty, a streetwise San Francisco feline P.I., is hired by “respectable cream-lickers” to break up Gato Nostro crimelord Tabby Tonelli’s racket of snatching gentle, comely female housecats to sell into prostitution abroad.
Reed apparently considered this as the first in a series, but the Ballantine original paperback didn’t sell. A sequel was written, but wasn’t published until October 1996, and then only in Germany as Der Fluch der Weißen Katze: Ein kerniger Katzenkrimi. Translation: The Curse of the White Cat: A Polynuclear Cat Crime. The Big Scratch was translated as Die Katzen-Gang the previous year; both by Bastei Lübbe Verlag.
Sam the Cat: Detective. February 1993.
The Big Catnap. August 2000.
The Maltese Kitten. December 2002.
The Great Catsby. September 2013.
The first of these is a broad satire of the whole Chandleresque hard-boiled P.I. genre. Sam is the Russian blue resident cat of a mystery-theme bookshop. When three flats in a luxury New York apartment house are robbed, sultry penthouse housecat Sugary hires Sam to find the real human burglar to keep Max, the custodian (and friend to all the apartment house’s cats) from being framed. Sam the Cat: Detective was a Scholastic, Inc. Young Adult paperback original, but it became an MWA Edgar Award nominee. It is reprinted as a Chelsea House Books all-ages title.
Stewart’s next two novels, original Chelsea House paperbacks, were The Big Catnap and The Maltese Kitten; specific parodies of Raymond Chandler’s 1939 The Big Sleep with P.I. Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 The Maltese Falcon with Sam Spade.
In the first, Sandy, a star of TV catfood commercials, disappears. There are two human suspects. One demands a ransom, while the other wants to replace Sandy with his own cat actor. Sam must find which is the actual kidnapper, and enlist the help of the neighborhood cats to rescue Sandy before the villain can dispose of him.
In the second, sexy, slinky Miss Wonderful asks Sam to retrieve her beloved kitten whom her human companion gave away for adoption. Sam guesses the truth is more complex when the trail leads to burglarized houses, unconscious humans lying next to empty cat carriers, and a tough cat gang orders Sam to drop the case. It definitely helps to have read The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon before reading The Big Catnap and The Maltese Kitten.
Stewart seemed to have run out of hard-boiled P.I. mysteries to parody, but after more than ten years she came out with The Great Catsby, a parody of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 The Great Gatsby. That is not a hard-boiled P.I. novel, but Stewart made do. When the proprietor of Sam’s mystery bookshop goes on a vacation to ritzy East Ham (instead of West Egg) on Long Island, he takes Sam along. Sam visits the neighboring estate to see his cousin Pansy, the housecat of mystery author Rex Trout. Pansy fears that she may be murdered by a human gangster as a warning to Trout. Pansy, a languid female playgirl, is a friend of Georgia, a housecat of mysterious millionaire J. J. Smythington who also owns Catsby, an old acquaintance of Pansy who is also mysteriously wealthy, with unlimited catnip and fluffy balls. Sam attends rich parties at Smythington’s mansion where he treats his human guests lavishly and Catsby does the same to his feline guests. When Trout’s mansion is shot up and he disappears, Sam investigates seven human suspects who each have dirty secrets that their cats know. As with the others, it helps to be familiar with The Great Gatsby to get all the literary references. One wonders which literary work Stewart will tackle next.
The Case of the Cat Show Princess. November 2011.
The Case of the Crafty Christmas Crooks. October 2013.
The Case of the Jewel Covered Cat Statues. September 2014.
The Case of the Clever Secret Code. October 2015.
Most of the other cat-detective series are for adult readers, or for “all ages”. The Buckley and Bogey Cat Detective Capers are for juveniles; officially 8- to 12-year-olds, although I would put the age rating as for 6- to-10. Since they are for young children, this is the only cat-detective series that does not feature solving murders; nothing stronger than robberies and hidden treasures. Buckley and Bogey are two black cats belonging to cat-loving Abigail and Mike Abernathy and their 12-year-old daughter Gracie. Bogey is named after Humphrey Bogart as P.I. Sam Spade in the Warner Bros. movie of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, while the larger but younger Buckley is his hero-worshipping acolyte. Together they have started the BBCDA to solve cat-related crimes, using their human Mom and Dad’s home computer when the humans aren’t looking to impersonate humans in phony e-mails. As in other novels in this sub-genre, all the cats understand human language but they aren’t revealing it.
But the Buckley and Bogey Cat Detective Capers are excessively simplistic. The cats don’t just understand English; they speak it except when any human is within earshot. Then they meow in their secret cat language of feline. Bogey knows the difference between English, French, and Spanish. All the novels contain blatant clues that tell young readers that something is wrong; the cats realize this immediately, while the humans supposedly never do.
In the first novel, international cat shows are entered by an arrogant Austrian Count and Countess with a pampered white cat-girl with a diamond necklace upon a silk pillow. Only the cats know that the Count and Countess brutalize their show cat regularly. (And isn’t a “Count and Countess” from a country that’s been a republic since World War I a clue that something is fishy?)
In the second novel, somebody is burglarizing the homes in the Abernathy’s town at Christmastime and stealing all the presents. The police are clueless while Buckley and Bogey solve whodunit, and lay a trap to make the robbers reveal themselves to the other humans.
The third novel presents hugger-mugger in the dinosaur exhibit at the local museum, and a parade of suspicious characters after a long-missing treasure.
The fourth novel features a famous Hollywood mega-star who comes to the Abernathys’ small home town in a limousine with his entourage of secretaries, writers, stunt men, makeup artists, etc., and announces that he has decided to make a blockbuster hit movie there – with no mention of any studio or other actors. All of the other townsfolk including the police are star-struck; only the Abernathys sense that something feels wrong, while their cats know that this isn’t the way that movies are made. Summary: the Buckley and Bogey Cat Detective Capers are not recommended even for children, despite some glowing reviews from cat-lovers who think that they’re too, too cute.
The one that is a “cat cozy” is Cats on the Prowl by Nancy C. Davis, each marketed as an “Exciting New Cat Cozy Mystery told from a Cat’s perspective”. This is unusual as being presented as different volumes of the same title.
Cats on the Prowl, Book 1. August 2015.
Cats on the Prowl, Book 2. October 2015.
Cats on the Prowl, Book 3. November 2015.
Willow, a fluffy white Persian cat, comes to live at the Nelson Police Station. She is quickly taken under paw by Nat, the station’s tabby tom veteran police cat. Nat, Willow, and the town’s alley cats do their own sleuthing.
In Book 2, Nat and Willow attempt to investigate a new human murder, but they are sidetracked by gang warfare between the Thorndale and Stevenson alley cats.
In Book 3, the two police-station cats investigate the murder of the owner of a luxurious Cat Hotel for pampered pussies. One suspects that the very short time between these three novels means that the publisher (Collins Collective) stockpiled them before publishing any. Books 1 through 3 were published between August and November 2015, then nothing. Will there ever be a Book 4?
Ep 61 – Slice of Romance - In this episode, we talk about time travel! Lots, and lots of time travel. Approximately two weeks of time travel. Enjoy hearing Voice, Yanarra, and Roland talk about romance and slice of life. Listen to amusing anecdotes, life
In this episode, we talk about time travel! Lots, and lots of time travel. Approximately two weeks of time travel.
Enjoy hearing Voice, Yanarra, and Roland talk about romance and slice of life. Listen to amusing anecdotes, life experiences, and our take on romance sub-genres and slice of life stories.
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Ep 61 – Slice of Romance - In this episode, we talk about time travel! Lots, and lots of time travel. Approximately two weeks of time travel. Enjoy hearing Voice, Yanarra, and Roland talk about romance and slice of life. Listen to amusing anecdotes, life experiences, and our [...]