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We would all like to say that no matter what we never gave up, that we can do anything we push through, but sometimes, for one reason or another, you just can't. So what do you do to deal with it?

submitted by swankysandals
[link] [27 comments]

Hi, 

I am dating this girl but my mother doesn't want me to date anyone. She tells me to date when I'm older but I think it's unfair. I don't want to keep her a secret. I speak to her on Skype but my mother is always around so I tell her I'm speaking to a friend.

Zozo (age 16)

* * *

Hi, Zozo,

There is tremendous pressure for people your age to date and have girl- and boyfriends. There’s probably also a lot of pressure at your school to have a girlfriend, yes? Do some of your friends make fun of you because you don’t have a girlfriend?

You’re no doubt aware of the risks taken when young people get together alone and things get a bit carried away. I’m not going to give you a birds and bees lecture, but you’re mother is no doubt concerned about this. Of course, you’re likely confident that you can date a girl without having sex. Not knowing anything about you, I can’t predict how well or how poorly you control your hormones, but one could imagine that if an opportunity afforded itself where the two of you were alone, the kissing became passionate, and the condoms absent, trouble could ensue.

Another factor here is your mother’s past, believe it or not. If she, for instance, became pregnant at an early age and/or the man who got her pregnant abandoned her and her child, she’s going to try her darndest not to let the same thing happen to you, whether or not you feel such fears are justified.

Sneaking around will get you caught, eventually. Your mother is likely suspicious and will be closely monitoring you. Her house, her rules, as the saying goes. But please look upon her actions as being motivated not to be a controlling jerk to you but, rather, because she loves and cares about you and wants you to have a happy future, which can be very difficult if you have children when you are a teenager.

The solution is the opposite of your current strategy: instead of secrecy, you should be completely transparent about your behavior and activities. This will help build trust, and with trust, generally, comes a loosening of the leash. Key to this is to have an open dialog with your mother and to establish ground rules about dating. As a conversation breaker, here is an excellent article from Parenting magazine about allowing teens to date and what to do (some quizzes are included).

I know you’ve had a conversation before, but it was probably more confrontational than constructive, am I right? Something like, “Mom, all my friends are dating; why can’t I? You’re not being fair!” and so on. In your conversation, acknowledge right away that you recognize your mom has only your best interests in mind and that you know she loves you and that you love her. Ask her to have a conversation with you and to discuss her fears and hopes for you. Listen to her; don’t argue at this point. Show her the linked article, and just ask her to talk with you about it.

As you progress, discuss rules about dating that she will be comfortable with, such as curfews and, perhaps, checking in with her by phone occasionally. Also, start with your going to group functions such as parties where girls will be allowed and that are supervised by adults. Approach things gradually and give your mother time to become comfortable with the fact that you are a healthy soon-to-be-adult who needs to learn the ropes of having a relationship (can you imagine being an adult of 30 or more and not knowing how to date properly?) Have her recognize that allowing you to date is part of being a good parent and that her participation in it is not only expected but appreciated. Ask her for advice on dating, and don’t ignore what she says. She is, after all, a woman and knows what women are looking for.

My parents didn’t give me much input on dating, and boy was I bad at it! You have the opportunity to learn from your elders and be good at dating! Take advantage of it while you’re young.

Good luck!

Papabear

submitted by TakeMyKnot
[link] [15 comments]

Wouldn't most furries have some kind of speech impediment due to their mouth shape and teeth? Part of what allows humans to talk is the fact that humans have very strong facial muscles and toungues. Doge faces etc... do not have this. I imagine we'd all sound incredibly silly in reality, like we have a mouth full of mashed potatoes while attempting to communicate.

submitted by Sixray
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submitted by BrillWolf
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submitted by TobiasAmaranth
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submitted by ToddDog
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Since we had a PC thread yesterday, let's talk consoles. For the sake of simplicity, you can lump in Handhelds and any arcade stuff you may have as well.

As for me, I'm a collector that plays their collection, so you can see what I'm actively using here.

Consoles:

• Super 8-bit (a newly-built NES)
• SNES
• RGB-modded N64
• Orange Gamecube
• Wii U
• Coleco Gemini (Atari 2600 clone)
• Commodore 64C
• MSX2+ (Panasonic FSA1-WX)
• Sega Mark III
• Sega Genesis CDX w/ 32X
• Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast (in a translucent blue shell)
• Playstation 1-4
• Orignal Xbox
• Xbox 360
• Xbox One
• Atari Jaguar
• PSP Go (TV out and Dualshock support)
• Two PS TV (One US and one Asia)
• Ouya
• Mad Catz Mojo
• an Intel NUC (that I treat like a console for VNs and Touhou :P)
• Neo Geo CD
• PC Engine Duo-R
• PC-FX

Arcade:

• There's a Consolized Neo Geo MVS hooked up to the TV. The coffee table is both a SuperGun and a setup for a Sega NAOMI mainboard. It's still a work in progress because I want better kick harness support and an amp for my Ninja Baseball Bat Man board.

Handhelds:

• Two DMG Game Boys
• Two Game Boy Pocket
• One Game Boy Color
• One Game Boy Advance
• Four Game Boy Advance SP (Four swords colors :D)
• Four Game Boy Micro
• Four "Phat" Nintendo DS (Three with the USB video capture mod)
• One DS Lite
• 3DS XL
• 2DS
• New 3DS XL
• Two PS Vita (Different colors for my two accounts)
• a Mario's Cement Factory Game & Watch
• a Pokemon Mini
• a decent collection of Wonderswan Systems (A couple B&W, a few Color, and one Crystal)
• a few Gameboy clones (GB Boy, GB Boy Colour, K101 Revo)
• a refurbished Game Gear
• GP2X
• GCW-Zero
• Neo Geo Pocket Color
• PSP-3000
• Nvidia Shield

tl;dr: What game consoles do you have?

submitted by IcyAthene
[link] [33 comments]

I.. am.. Kit! I started Fur the 'More three years ago, and have worked in various levels of positions at most of the other "geeky" type conventions in the region for the last 10+ years. I've seen a lot of stuff and have a lot of experience, but Im always ready for new ideas. I'm ready to answer your questions about Fur the 'More 2016. Heres my proof: https://twitter.com/kitdrago

submitted by KitDrago
[link] [28 comments]

Well, this is it! We've reached the end of Season 4! Morphy and Charm come back to help Roo and Tugs wrap up the season in this truly double length episode. Sure, we know it's a long episode (it could have been a special), but we had so much fun this season and wanted to make sure each moment had its due. So sit back, relax, pop a drink open, and prepare for a fun trip down memory lane as we recap Season 4 of Fur What It's Worth!



NOW LISTEN!

Show Notes

Special Thanks

Morphy Tiger and Charm Husky, our guests
Firebreath and Koru, our supporting cast
Kira the Fox...kitsune....person
Leo the Artist
Captain Chibi
Degens
Miski
All our guests this season, since our show really wouldn't exist without you.
All YOU listening! You are why we do the show.

Art Submissions:



Music:

Opening theme: 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!)
Closing: 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: The next episode will start Season 5 - Video Games in the Fandom, Cubed! What games do you love the most? What made you a furry? Send your emails by August 22, 2015! S4 Episode 20 – Season 4 Recap - Well, this is it! We've reached the end of Season 4! Morphy and Charm come back to help Roo and Tugs wrap up the season in this truly double length episode. Sure, we know it's a long episode (it could have been a special),

So there an artist that has taken over 50 commissions which they never started; At this point they've taken 5,000 USD. Keep in mind they did not do this over a day. They did it over years.

Basically they post offers for commissions. Take a few, delete the post. Do a few of them. But not the rest.

They're do stream. They take some commissions. They'll get a few people to line up and pay. Do the first 1, and then log off.

Out side of the ninja posts. they wait a months at a time. and like I said they do take and complete some commissions. They've created and dropped side accounts. again to do the same thing.

There are people who payed them 5 years ago, and still haven't received the art they payed for.

At this point I wounder if this is just one of several accounts they may be using. In which case the amount they ow could be much higher.

submitted by dm18
[link] [10 comments]

Hey! You clicked my link! Yay!

Read the post before you request anything, please.

TL;DR If you're new to the fandom, you don't draw or are new to drawing, and/or you don't have a fursona at all yet, please let me know! I will do a request for you. I start at 3:30 (half an hour from this post). Also, if you are the person I pick for the first request, and you aren't watching, I probably will pick another. OR I can do it when you are able to watch if you ask nicely! :D

Link(HYYYAAATTT!): https://www.picarto.tv/live/channel.php?watch=EssjayC

I will be streaming starting at 3:30PM EST, and going probably until the wee bonnie lass hours of the morning. So don't worry if you have to go to bed/work/school/temple/synogogue/mars.

By the way, I'm hanging out in the chat now if you want to... chat.

Alright, so yesterday I finally got the courage to stream my art for the hell of it. I figured no one would watch anyway, so whatever why not. I had like 5 people watching for like 10 hours or something crazy! I met some really awesome people, had a LOT of fun, and even got some incredibly useful help while doing it too!

So, that being said, I absolutely adored streaming, and had a blast.

Anyway, yesterday I was streaming me drawing my comic (I will probably show you guys on Tuesday!) which was really... easy. Time consuming but easy. This time? I want to draw WHAT YOU GUYS LIKE. Draw an avian? How the hell do I draw feathers? You want a neon-blue-and-green coloured macro furry wolf fursona with insanely huge muscles with wings wielding a lightsaber and oh he also has superpowers? Uhhhh. Alright? Let's do it! (I don't want to actually do that, as awesome as it'd be.)

I want to help people! If you don't have a fursona yet, or have an idea of what your fursona is but want someone else to draw a really bad version of it, LOOK NO FURTHER! I also don't mind making icons (though it'll be like the one I did earlier, a high-res version of it). Or forum signatures maybe. But I'd prefer to draw something you guys want.

I'm going to lean towards newer furs who don't have a fursona yet, or can't afford a commission (because I used to be so broke and I totally get the feels) from your favourite artist. Yay! I'll be your second choice!

Anyway, here's the link:

https://www.picarto.tv/live/channel.php?watch=EssjayC

I want to give back to you guys. You guys are the reason I've found a new passion in life, and you've given me the strength to beat not only my depression and the worse effects of my bipolar disorder, but you've also managed to help me make new friends I'd never have otherwise met!

Seriously. I love you guys.

PS: Post your requests in this thread, the ones in the stream chat I will ignore because if there are a lot of people requesting (seems like you guys like this request stuff) it will get confusing, and I also want to make sure I'm helping those furs who will benefit the most!

submitted by Essjay-C
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Click This link to find out

submitted by Vexthra
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Quick edit: I don't bash other furs, just was afraid of associating as a furry online! Uncle Ruckus kind of... makes an extreme and aggressive example here... lol

Not an overly dramatic post, but someone somewhere said something about how Uncle Ruckus from the Boondocks (a show that will heavily inspire my artwork forever) bashed the very thing he was. I can't remember why he was making the point, but that it was kind of like a defense mechanism for being I guess afraid (for lack of a better word) or rejecting what they are.

It kind of opened my eyes, because while I want to draw realistic-ish anthropomorphic people, I was afraid of lumping myself in with everyone else. But recently I decided to say "fuck it".

...kind of the same approach to cleaning my dog's sheddings off of my furniture. It just keeps accumulating and it never seems to go away.

Apparently I'm a furry. I guess maybe I don't want to be one of those people who uses that one thing to identify themselves, and become kind of like "the furry guy" to people, analogous to "the gay guy" at the office, or the person you know.

I dunno. I honestly don't care that much. While I have a strong love of the community I've engrossed myself in here, as well as animals in general and the art, I don't have a fursona (and still don't understand that! Why is this a thing?).

Maybe this is all because I'm new to this, and literally haven't bothered to make friends who discuss this stuff until literally last night.

Sorry if this all seems so dramatic! I really just wanted to hear what people thought and kind of had that realization the other day, and no one to share it with. I just found it funny that someone opened my eyes to a kind of bias like that!

submitted by Essjay-C
[link] [8 comments]

Savrin and Fuzz run through a ton of emails this week. Anons from tumblr, Jeeves chimes in, best and worst con memories, and Fuzz's mundane life! Also, 2016 is the Year Of The Furries. Beware, ye normies! Like the show? Support us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/knotcast Episode 290 - What's In A Name?

I'm pretty sure their is a limit..like..once you go fast enough you hit plaid..then everything is uninspired fox oc's and lotion bottles.

submitted by soundwave145
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submitted by KarlPilkington
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• DracoSyndrome ($35-$70): http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3329986/

• Almasy ($25-$75): http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3825277/

• Wolfthings ($30-only 2 slots left!): http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6963109/

You guys know the drill! And if you guys have any feedback whether you like/dislike the new date, just let me know!

And I've noticed that the past couple ones have been somewhat expensive, so I wrote myself a note to find cheaper ones for next week!

submitted by LeatherHog
[link] [3 comments]

The Rise of the Red Shadow
By Joseph R. Lallo
Cover Art by Nick Deligaris
439 pp., $2.99 (ebook), $16.00 (trade paperback)
Amazon Publishing Services/CreateSpace

From the 1950s up through the 1980s, the paperback original dominated genre fiction. Some became undeniable classics—the Ace Science Fiction Specials included the first publications of Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Wild Shore—but most aimed less at dazzling critics than at presenting rousing adventure tales. They might rarely be your Favorite Book Ever, yet if you got hooked on an author—or a series—you’d grab title after title.

Unless you’ve got the next Dresden Files, though, major publishers aren’t interested in those kinds of titles anymore. This has opened a gap for self-published and small press ebooks to fill. Series like Annie Bellet’s The Twenty-Sided Sorceress and, closer to home, Phil Geusz’s David Birkenhead septology would fit beside 1980s stalwarts like Diane Duane and Alan Dean Foster. Amazon and Goodreads are full of well-loved series—far more than there were in the paperback’s heyday, and once inflation is accounted for, at lower prices.

One of those series is Joseph R. Lallo’s The Book of Deacon, a trilogy starting with a novel of the same title. The Rise of the Red Shadow is a standalone prequel described as “Book 0” of the trilogy, telling the origin story of one of Deacon’s side characters: a “legendary assassin and mythic hero” named Lain, a malthrope—an anthropomorphic fox.

The story opens as slavers tracking down a runaway discover his body next to that of a female malthrope’s, evidently having killed one another in a struggle—likely to protect her young kit. Humans consider Malthropes to be monsters:

Stories told of them carrying off children and raiding livestock. The creatures were the villains of more than their share of bedtime stories, and were always a safe thing to blame for your problems if you weren’t happy with your lot in life. One of the few things that the north and south halves of the continent could agree upon was that wiping the creatures out would be an improvement. Thus, a price had been put on their heads—or, more accurately, their tails. Slicing the tail off an adult and handing it in to the authorities would net you a small fortune in entus, the silver coins that lined the pockets of the more well-off Tressons.

This passage simultaneously reveals both a virtue and vice of the writing. The milieu has been extensively developed, its breadth and depth rivaling sword and sorcery classics. (Lallo’s Tressor is more reminiscent of Lankhmar than Middle-Earth.) But in countless passages like the one above, the story pauses for a moment to give us background. While introducing readers to a complex and unfamiliar world is always tricky, it sometimes feels like Lallo has avoided the “As you know…” problem by constantly stopping to hand us reference cards.

The reward for young malthropes calls for capturing them alive; the slavers give the baby to a plantation owner as a “discount” on an older, sightless slave. Over the course of the novel’s first act, Blind Ben finds himself the de facto caretaker and defender of the “mally” as the young fox rapidly grows and, to anyone paying attention, shows himself to be at least as smart as any of the humans around him. When the plantation passes into the hands of the original owner’s incompetent son, he takes his own business failings out on his slaves—including the aging Ben. Stricken by sorrow that turns into rage, the nameless malthrope becomes a one-fox revolt against his masters.

Without delving too much farther into spoiler territory, the rest of Red Shadow follows the malthrope through distinct episodes in his life as he seeks his purpose in life, focused on the words of his mentor Blind Ben: “without a purpose, there can be no worth.” Sorrel, a female malthrope he meets shortly after his escape, teaches him about his race and how to survive outside of human society in feral fashion; a network of legally-sanctioned assassins who act as bounty hunters affords him work, but also sets up a nemesis in the criminal kingpin Duule; a mysterious land of refugees hidden behind a cave of legendary danger leads him to the perfection of his fighting talents. Along the way, Teyn—as Sorrel names him—picks up both his new name and his nickname, the “Red Shadow.”

Some of the supporting characters—most notably the volatile Sorrel, but also Ben and the fairy Fiora—pop off the page. The stoic and emotionally stunted Teyn is well-drawn, but while he develops tremendous prowess and gains important insights, his character arc doesn’t have much curve to it. The villains are appropriately mustache-twirling but stay flat, with one exception: an early scene introduces two generals in “the kingdom formerly known as Vulcrest” and tells us of prophesies that clearly set them in opposition to Teyn. This is a great sequence, defining their characters quickly, setting up intrigue, and priming us for a fantastic faceoff. If that faceoff arrives, though, it doesn’t happen in this book. The novel ends without Teyn being aware of their existence.

The disappearing villains—presumably major players in the full trilogy—signal a problem for anyone coming to Red Shadow cold. The novel’s payoff is clearly meant to be Teyn coming into his role as Lain for The Book of Deacon. To readers who are already fans, this may be enough, but that payoff isn’t in this book. Each of Teyn’s adventures has its own set of tensions and thrills, and each ends with an important epiphany that shapes his outlook. Yet there’s little urgency to the whole affair. He does what he does until events make it impossible for him to keep doing that, then he does something else. He has long-term goals, but he’ll get to them when he gets to them. The story is less a quest than a picaresque; you’re curious what happens next, but you rarely feel like you can’t put the book down until you know.

While this makes it hard to recommend The Rise of the Red Shadow on its own, it’s good enough to inspire interest in The Book of Deacon itself. Lallo’s prose is solid—infodumps not withstanding—and, again, the worldbuilding is impressive. (Tressor may not be a world you’d want to visit, mind you; while it may not qualify as “grimdark,” not a single character in Red Shadow has a happy life. Teyn’s circumstances may give things a more dire pall, but the opening scenes of The Book of Deacon don’t paint any more a hospitable picture.) Even though I found the novel slow, it brought back fond memories of going through fantasy paperbacks like popcorn during my high school and college days.

submitted by Verok_the_Dragon
[link] [5 comments]