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Hi-

I have a question... So as I've been growing up I have always liked animals and yeah I would make my first fur suit at the age of 4! (Plastic and cardboard materials) as when I was 10 I discovered the furry fandom but I was to afraid to tell my parents... After a while I went to Amazon to buy myself some paws but ofc I needed my mother's and fathers permission to buy it (with my money) my mother when I told her she looked at me awkward and she said, "Well, if you want it buy it is your money and is your liking" somehow I found a way to take it bad and the whole night I thought that I was just weird- the next day I told my father he said, "Well... I think it's a little pricy." I didn't get a straight answer so now I'm thinking if I should tell them. But I don't know how or is just that I don't have the courage too so I found this website a day after that and now I'm here typing! So I would love some tips.

Clover (age 11)

* * *

Dear Clover,

That is so neat that you built your own fursuit when you were 4! You and I have something in common: we were both furry before we even heard of the furry fandom. This means that we always loved imaginative play about being an anthropomorphic animal of some kind. With me, it had to do with my love of The Jungle Book. Was there some show or movie or book that made you interested in furries?

The point I want to make here is this: being a furry and being active in the furry fandom are two different things. You do not have to be in the fandom (for example, going to conventions, role-playing online, participating in social media websites) to be a furry. A lot of young people like yourself who are into things like Zootopia and Sonic the Hedgehog or anime cartoons stumble upon the fandom and think to themselves, "Cool! There are people like me who enjoy these things, too! How can I meet them?" But what you may not be aware of is that the fandom was originally created by fans who are quite a bit older than you, and the intent was to take cartoon characters and put them in more adult situations. This does not necessarily mean sex. It could mean stories about violence, prejudice, serious adult relationships, drugs, and so on, but it sometimes DOES mean sex and pornography.

Your parents are correct to be careful. You're their daughter and they want you to be safe. Good parents! Also, if they go online at all and type in "furry fandom" or something similar, they are going to see furporn. And then they might ban you from any ambitions of being in the fandom. 

Deep breath! I have been to several conventions and seen children your age or younger, sometimes in partial fursuits, with their parents having a blast. I have gone to panels and workshops to which parents were invited and heard their questions and concerns. All of this is valid and important.

The key here is communication. Openness. Tell your parents honestly how you enjoy furry characters. This is not at all a bizarre thing. Many people (even adults) enjoy animated cartoons and movies. But tell them also of your interest in the fandom and ask for their help. They should always have free access to what you do on your computer and on your phone. Ask them to learn about the fandom. Ask them if they will go to a furcon with you (they may even have a good time!) or a furmeet. Never hide anything that you are doing. Ask them to teach you (if you don't already know) how to avoid trolls and dangerous people online (this is useful information whether or not you are a furry because the internet is full of scummy people).

And do me a favor, Clover. Show them this email. And tell them to send me an email if they have any questions. I'd be happy to answer them. If they like, I will send you my phone number and they can call me.

There is absolutely nothing wrong about being a furry. It exercises your imagination, which is something we need more of in this world of machines and cubicle jobs and people who can't seem to think outside the box. Imagination and creativity are beneficial to our emotional and mental health. Whether you are a furry or an artist or a musician or an architectural designer, these are things that help enrich our lives. So, I hope you will continue to talk to your parents about furries. 

Thank you for your letter.

Big Bear Hugs,
Papabear

CONTENT WARNING – Part (1) A Killer – (2) A Trend – (3) A Watchdog

Huge platforms are letting it happen. It’s under their noses, according to this June 2021 report. National Geographic: How fake animal rescue videos have become a new frontier for animal abuse.

That’s disturbing at wide scale, because of how social media attention meets psychological escalation. Part (1) looked into the Omegle Cat Killer, where an investigator said: “Animal abusers have total power over that animal and, if someone is willing to be that cruel to an animal, evidence suggests they may target vulnerable humans as well,” said Special Agent in Charge Paul Keenan, FBI Indianapolis.” — Kokomo Tribune

Despite such a warning about the extremes, it seems like the odds are against justice. A standout example among furries was Kero the Wolf, a popular Youtuber exposed in a zoosadist crime ring. The evidence led to arrests, but child abuse was the focus and most members got away with it. Kero’s attempts to gaslight the public about his innocence made him The O.J. Simpson of furries. His presence highlights a gap in the laws.

This part covers the exploitation on social media, and Part (3) will feature someone working to bridge the gap.

A content pool with no lifeguard

In 1940, protest rose up about a horse tumbling over a cliff in a Western movie. It triggered regulation for the industry to stop using animals like disposable props. Now Hollywood movies get American Humane certification by following a 132-page guide. But tech platforms aren’t so regulated.

The internet gives unprecedented reach, and lets out the best and worst behavior on an infinitely granular level. (Washington Post: The country is being buffeted by groups that couldn’t exist 30 years ago. “My favorite example for demonstrating the power of the Internet to form ad hoc groups is furries…”) Platforms are automated and let users regulate themselves from private locations. That’s how animal abusers connect with each other like never before, and fly past local laws. “They’re accused of abusing their pets in viral videos. But laws don’t always consider it cruelty.” And: “YouTube Won’t Ban A Guy Who Crushes Animals to Death.”

Of course, animals can’t speak for self-regulation, and nobody’s watching when the cameras stop. People who control their welfare are enjoying a form of cruelty theater, like dogfighting, but tailored to individual proclivities to maximize reach. Some watch for the fake cuddly feeling of watching an animal get “saved” from busy highways or burial in mud. Some are chasing special fetish content.

In 2017, The Reptile Channel on Youtube rose out of furry “vore” fetish groups. It uses a false front about live-feeding animals for science, but it’s not for science, and it’s hiding in plain sight. In 2021, despite protest and the ban of a previous channel under the concealed owner, the channel is still growing with over a half million subscribers. (The most popular video has 33 million views!) The “educational” front is a flimsy excuse to artificially pit animals against other animals, and force-feed them after neglect or starvation to keep them hungry.

Youtube’s algorithm is hungry for the views. But when I originally tried to flag the Reptile Channel for policy violations, I couldn’t even find a category for it. Compare that with the difficulty of removing an even more obvious channel. A 17 year old Youtuber (labeled Peluchin Entertainment) beat cats to death for attention — raising widespread protest and even inspiring copycats — but it took months to take the channel down.

The cost of exploitation

Exploiting this system is easy, and it’s a systemic flaw. It’s the same gap exploited by fake news hoaxes, trolling and harassment, and messing with elections. The gap makes rising fascism and social destabilization, and the extreme result can be genocide. While we look at “just animals,” the stakes are more than we know.

Content flows through this gap like the industrial waste of Big Tech. The public pays for the damage while private owners profit. The business is built on cutting corners because “progress” means replacing human moderation with algorithms. Less views = lower stock prices, so we’re always underpowered to match the scale. Free speech idealists can debate in the marketplace of ideas, but animal victims can’t, and what’s the point in arguing about cruelty if cruelty is the point?

CW//TW: Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Animal Blood/Gore

WE NEED TO HAVE A SERIOUS CONVERSATION ABOUT @YouTube FAKE ANIMAL RESCUE RING CHANNELS.

These channels are full of animal abuse, death, and FAKE rescues.

Let's take a deep dive.

— hot cross sun bun (@sunnydancer_fur) October 26, 2020

Three painstaking videos diving into fake animal rescues. Hundred of hours of depressing and tedious research. Watching video after video of brutal animal abuse. And in the end the only channel to receive any form of punishment was mine. I feel sick

— Nick Crowley (@NickCrowleyYT) October 28, 2020

It’s time to finally address this problem @TeamYouTube … because things are only getting worse from here. https://t.co/4ngUsf0nb6

— Nick Crowley (@NickCrowleyYT) October 26, 2020

Federal regulation and Trusted Flaggers

Big Tech vs Big Government is a bigger story than we can cover here, but we can look at some developments.

In late 2019 in the U.S., a new law, the PACT Act, made animal cruelty a federal crime for the first time. It lets agencies work across jurisdictions. I found interesting info about it in a podcast about investigating animal crime.

Crimes Against Nature’s episode “The Killing Fields” talked to experts about unsolved horse killings in 3 states.

(At 15:20): “These law agencies are doing what they can with the resources they have to bring these criminals to justice. They’re working with sister agencies and sharing info across county lines, but no info has been shared state to state. With crime in multiple states, would a federal agency like the FBI get involved?

The podcaster consulted the FBI in Dallas:

“Beginning in 2016, the FBI began collecting data on crimes against animals. Acts of cruelty, according to their website, are now counted alongside felony crimes like arson, burglary, assault, and homicide in the FBI’s National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS).

By adding animal cruelty offenses, agencies and advocacy groups are hoping the results will reveal a more complete picture of the nature of cruelty against animals. The National Sheriff’s Association was a leading advocate for adding animal cruelty in the dataset. For years they had cited studies linking animal abuse with other types of crimes, most famously serial killings. They point out overlap with domestic violence and child abuse.”

To my understanding, it’s rare and challenging to make a case they’ll pursue. But down on the community level, investigators and watchdogs can work with allies you might not know of: Trusted Flaggers. They are volunteers including “individuals, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)“. The role goes to users chosen for high accuracy with pointing out YouTube violations, who get a back door to get them reviewed.

One such ally was key for catching the Omegle Cat Killer. This starts to address a need that came up in a furry news interview with criminologist Jenny Edwards, who consults with the legal system about animal crime. Her advice for when a community like furries finds abuse within:

“There needs to be a conduit – not necessarily me, but someone like me – who can put a case together and get it into the right hands.”

American Humane says if you see cruelty online, the first step is reporting to ic3.gov. For next steps, read Part (3).

• NEXT: A WATCHDOG SHARES WORK IN FIGHTING ANIMAL CRUELTY.

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

TigerTails Radio Season 13 Episode 25 Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf For a full preview of events and for previous episodes, please visit http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show.

We literally stumbled across the writer Christine Warren, whom we had not heard of before — but we found her novel Born To Be Wild at a used book sale. Since 2003 Christine has written a slew of hot adult-oriented fantasy romance novels, usually involving a human getting wrapped up with a non-human shapeshifter of some sort. Her series include The Others (as human/animal shapeshifters call themselves), Gargoyles (no connection to the Disney series but it shares some ideas), and Alphaville (specifically werewolves). Her web page at Fantastafiction has a summary for each and every book, if you like your romance explicit and your lovers of a different species.

image c. 2021 St. Martin’s Press

CONTENT WARNING for animal abuse – Part (1) A Killer – (2) A Trend – (3) A Watchdog

He had to be stopped. Someone was killing cats and posting the videos online. Internet sleuths were hunting a killer who reveled in taunting them. In December 2019, their story came out on Netflix as Don’t F*ck With Cats. It was one of the year’s most-watched documentaries.

As hard as they tried, identifying the killer wasn’t enough. They felt helpless until he escalated to killing a human victim and mailing the body parts to terror targets. Finally the authorities noticed, and Canadian man Luka Magnotta was caught and convicted. The story suggests that taking animal cruelty seriously could have saved a person, and it showed a trend for attention: “Murderers have become online broadcasters. And their audience is us.”

Months after the show, the same trend terrorized the furry fandom and made a new case for the FBI.

More than a copycat

In May 2020, the new Covid-19 situation was turning the world upside down. Stuck in quarantine, furry fans found a way to lift their spirits. They joined a regular event on the Omegle video chat service, using hashtags to meet fellow fans by random connection.

They weren’t expecting to connect to a woman in an animal-skin mask, gripping a bloody skull a little bigger than an egg. It almost looked fake, until she used a finger to pop out an eyeball like a grape.

Whoever was doing this wasn’t just shocking random targets. She knew about the event and targeted them with hashtags like #furries, #fursuit and #furryfandom. It made a trail with sightings of gory animal parts and links to Instagram and Tiktok. It was hard to document live incidents, but alarm spread and reached millions of viewers on Youtube. She got attention she wanted, but where did she come from?

The hype never told the full story. It passed like a blip and Youtubers and blogs quickly forgot. We’ll get to what happened in 2021 — but first, she didn’t just start in 2020 without warning. A path was laid much earlier.

Witnesses say the "Crazy Cat Lady on Omegle" is burning and skinning cats alive. I haven't seen fandom connection besides hashtags to gain attention, and some furries trying to gather evidence, but there's a lot of talk about trying to ID and stop her. https://t.co/4ZmEHnCz0V

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) May 3, 2020

Cautious attention after SomeOrdinaryGamers showed 2 million subscribers.

The path of escalation

As early as March 2019, furries were first to spread bewares about the trouble among them. At first it was just about art scams and harassment, but bewares couldn’t stop a trajectory to worse. A comment in November 2019 mentioned animal abuse.

Thrill killing is hard to get away with, but people who do it may start with animals. Online animal abusers may feel safely out of reach. If they’re identified, it can take high effort to prove there was crime. Police don’t take it seriously while putting human victims first. Local dog-catchers don’t do stings and forensics. There might be rare lone convictions, but nasty networks for it stay hidden. There are long odds for getting caught, and that makes opportunity.

Furries saw this with popular Youtuber Kero the Wolf. In 2018 he was caught for abusing his dog in a crime ring for animal torture. It was past the time limit for charges and he got off on technicality. The community knows about him, but what can they do about escalation when investigation goes nowhere?

Facing the odds, hunters of the Omegle killer joined forces online to save the victims.

From a Google Doc made in May 2020.

Masks and confusion

I was tipped early about the hunt for the Omegle cat killer. It gave me access to sources. Volunteers narrowed sightings down to one suspect with furry accounts. But even with a name, was there courtworthy proof?

I watched her do a video tour of her house and deny responsibility. The skin mask and gory body parts got explained with a taxidermy hobby, using roadkill, gophers or natural deaths. It might involve interest in anatomy and science, or trolling for views with a financial motive. There might be plausible deniability. It wasn’t all clear.

What about claims that pets were adopted from ads, and the ex owners were taunted with death photos later? Or headless dog carcasses were found in a cornfield near the suspect’s house? Or sockpuppet accounts were taunting investigators? Denial games could hide evidence that only warrants could get.

Sources clammed up and couldn’t be verified. Police were involved, but then the story was called a prank or hoax. That didn’t satisfy. Charges or not, it still traumatized thousands of watchers, wasted resources and hurt the community. The Furry Omegle event was canceled. I wrote a story, but many sources were pulled down and a lawyer involved agreed I should hold my story to reduce hype. It seemed to fizzle out, but there HAD to be more to it…

After weeks of silence, the FBI announced federal charges for Krystal Cherika Scott, a 19 year old in Indiana.

Here's the FBI announcement that Krystal Scott faces 7 years in jail and more for creating animal "crush" videos. Commercial profit operations with that form of cruelty got it federally banned in 2010, so she caught some serious charges here.https://t.co/hEJMvIdEEH

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) August 31, 2020

These charges weren’t publicized much.

Sources: Local police dropped the ball

She had to be stopped, but Scott escalated her crime despite alarm. Investigators were frustrated about lack of help while persisting to start cases with multiple police agencies. Telling people to let local police handle it could have led nowhere.

This source stays off the radar, so I won’t name them:

“Kokomo [Indiana] police department had absolutely nothing to do with it and were useless throughout the entire process. They dismissed it as a hoax entirely. The only reason anything happened was because the FBI in a different state got involved when the police there found it was out of theirs.”

A source local to Scott said there was alarm on Facebook about animal abuse in the previous year, but it didn’t help. In May 2020 Scott got bold enough to start livestreaming abuse. The Kokomo Police went to her house and found dead animals, but they wouldn’t do more without kill videos.

(Left:) A local source and a Fox59 news story mentions inaction. (Right:) First anonymous source.

1500 miles away in Boise, Idaho, investigators were misled by Scott to believe the acts happened there. They opened a case with Boise police, who traced her Instagram account. That made a case for the FBI to go out of state and back to Indiana.

Fox59 News said Kokomo police found evidence on 5/3/20, and kept getting reports in June. Investigators say it was treated like a hoax by local police who didn’t know about the FBI or Boise PD action. Scott kept posting animal cruelty until July 8, when a federal warrant finally led to her arrest on 7/14/20.

“This case is an outstanding example of society’s intolerance to animal cruelty and the public’s willingness to do the right thing,” said Special Agent in Charge Paul Haertel of the FBI’s Salt Lake City Field Office. “Tips poured in from all over the world, assisting in an intense and technically complex investigation to find the alleged perpetrator and put a stop to the senseless and horrific abuse of innocent animals.” — FBI press release

“Intense and technically complex investigation” by 3 agencies shows how rare it is to solve such a case. Imagine working to do the right thing, but the abuse keeps going. Injustice is all too common. That’s why it’s so troubling to suffer the presence of abusers like Kero the Wolf.

UPDATE: In May 2021, Indiana news says Scott took a deal to plead guilty. She potentially faces up to seven years in prison, a $250,000 fine and years of supervised release afterward. Sentencing is set for September, according to court docs.

The link includes a witness report that police received in April 2020, that highlights the malice of the crimes and lack of fast action:

A neighbor told News 8 he found a decapitated dog in the area months before the raid.

“It had been decapitated. The belly was slit up and down,” Brian Foster said. “After I drove down the road and I came back, the head was in the road and it wasn’t there when I first drove by.”

Scott’s motive is weird to think about. What really set her off? There were clues about her being a troubled teen who started as a victim. Maybe it’s worth reporting to inform and try to get more justice, but the attention was part of the problem. She broadcasted animal abuse to enjoy the shock.

Meanwhile, Kero the Wolf tried to come back from fandom exile like nothing happened in his case. The motive for his secret abuse wasn’t to broadcast for attention. It was to enjoy the abuse itself. Hiding it with denial might make it worse than what put Scott in prison, raising the stakes to stop it.

Final points.

• Scott started in furry fandom and used it for targets — it’s a community issue.
• She escalated to sadism after causing money and trust issues with art scams, taxidermy and bone sales, and ads for pets.
• Community bewares were the first warning, but it couldn’t be solved within. It took legal power that only came after escalation.
• Solving it wasn’t just for outsiders, because local police didn’t stop it — it took cooperation inside and outside the fandom.
• Social media attention met psychological escalation. (There were even copycats posing as Scott.)
• It’s a trend including Kero the Wolf, where crime ring members got away and deny it.

How does this start, and how can a community respond to organize and improve? It could use professional helpers in between the fandom and police. New federal laws (like the PACT Act) can help in certain cases.

Read more about this in Part (2).

Adopting animals from Craigslist for cruelty happened in this case with horses, by a woman promising sanctuary but having them slaughtered for profit. https://t.co/6zKadFqUNQ

I learned of it via a friend who lost a horse. The fraud was solved with help from social media groups.

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) August 31, 2020

(Correction: Scott used Facebook ads.)

• NEXT: MORE ABOUT A TREND OF ANIMAL ABUSE ONLINE.
• THEN: A WATCHDOG SHARES WORK IN FIGHTING ANIMAL CRUELTY.

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

So here’s something new for young readers and adventure fans: Kitty Quest, written and illustrated by Phil Corbett. “Dog Man meets the Lord of the Rings in this laugh-out-loud graphic novel debut about two aspiring adventurers who face off against startling ghosts, rampaging monsters, and bumbling wizards… Woolfrik and Perigold are two down-on-their-luck kittens in need of some extra cash, so they’ve decided to become professional monster slayers. Except they don’t knKitow the first thing about it! So when a huge beast starts rampaging through town, they are put to the ultimate test. Fortunately, the duo accidentally awakens a ghost named Earl Mortimore, who is the last not-so-living member of an ancient guild of warriors, and he’s going to teach them everything he knows.” Kitty Quest is available now from Razorbill.

image c. 2021 Razorbill

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Bearly and Taebyn get hijacked. Rayne and Lux grab the show during recording and do their take on what Bearly and Taebyn do.  Hijinks ensue! So Tune In and Bark along! Moobarkfluff!

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Thanks to all our listeners and to our staff: Bearly Normal, Rayne Raccoon, Taebyn, Cheetaro, TickTock, and Ziggy the Meme Weasel.

You can send us a message on Telegram at BFFT Chat, or via email at: bearlyfurcasting@gmail.com

Bearly Furcasting Pirate Edition S2E16 - What happened?

Just recently, one of the eight largest furry conventions opened its doors to an in-person gathering. Megaplex 2021 saw 2,889 attendees on the first weekend of August 2021, ~80% of 2019’s pre-pandemic total. $50,000 was raised for the C.A.R.E. Foundation. Staff set COVID-19 policies and required masks in most cases, doing their best to make guests comfortable while cautious of the viral crisis that plagues […]

So, My Little Pony fandom (and the Internet in general!) have been exploding now that Netflix has released the first full trailer for the upcoming My Little Pony: A New Generation. This is Generation 5, if you’re keeping count, and unlike previous generation shifts, this one actually connects to the previous one — as the storyline of Generation 4 (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic) takes place in this story’s past history. This is also the first generation of official pony that will be completely animated in CGI. Here’s what we learned from Wikipedia: “My Little Pony: A New Generation is an upcoming computer-animated fantasy comedy film directed by Robert Cullen and Jose Ucha… The film will center on Sunny Starscout, an outcast and young earth pony who sees hope in Equestria where friendship and harmony have been replaced with paranoia and mistrust, and where all three species of ponies live segregated from one another. However, when she meets a lost unicorn named Izzy, the two embark on an adventure involving musical numbers, a jewel heist, conspiracy theories, and ‘the world’s cutest flying Pomeranian’ as they travel to new lands while facing their fears and turning enemies into friends.” There’s a series planned to follow the feature film, but we don’t know much about it yet. What we DO know is that A New Generation is scheduled to drop on Netflix on September 24th.

image c. 2021 Netflix

Guest post by Gamepopper, an indie game maker and animation fan in the UK.

As a British furry who was interested in the history of the furry fandom, I couldn’t help but notice most of the subject was centred around the United States. This was the case in all the articles and convention panels I could find, and most blatantly in the book Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture by Joe Strike. This United States focus continues to this day with videos and documentaries such as The Fandom by Ash Coyote discussing the history of the fandom from the beginnings at science fiction and comic book conventions in California.

As a result, I took it upon myself in 2017 to look into my own country’s perspective of the fandom. This part-time hobby of mine culminated into a lecture at ConFuzzled 2019, The History of the Furry Fandom in the United Kingdom, which focused on the growth of the fandom from the earliest known gathering of twenty fans in 1987 to the present day conventions of over two thousand furries. I spoke about the housecons and fanzines in the nineties, furmeets and mailing lists in the noughties, and the British furry conventions and the difficulties getting them off the ground. I also allowed audience members to make comments and ask questions throughout, which you can listen to in the recorded version uploaded to YouTube.

Watching it in retrospect, I’m still proud of the amount of content in the work, in spite of a few factual errors and omissions that a few people have noted. On the day itself, it went over better than I ever anticipated, with a full room of attendees giving a huge round of applause at the end and many furries coming up to me to appraise my work. One of those people thought that the full history should be written down, and, given the amount of work I had already done, I felt up to the task.

Ever since the convention ended, I have been working on Furry Kingdom, a book about the history of the British furry fandom, discussing the earliest influences in art and storytelling, the numerous events and activities throughout the decades, and the many challenges the British fandom has faced. At the moment, I’ve finished what I want to write for the manuscript and I’m currently searching for a means to get it published.

This book allowed me to write what I wouldn’t have been able to say in the 2019 lecture due to time constraints and limited information at the time. During that period, my research had only scratched the surface, and I had few sources available. Fred Patten’s Chronology and Furry Fandom Conventions were great resources for establishing the base structure, which I then expanded upon using alt.fan.furry, UKFur Forums, various LiveJournals and contacting about a dozen furries from the early days.

Working on the book also meant refining my research methods to uncover every event and piece of noteworthy media in great detail, finding original fanzines and magazines, newspaper articles, documentaries, and contacting even more people to get the fullest picture that I can.

THE PROBLEM OF FINDING SOURCES

So how does one go about researching the history of the furry fandom? The short answer is that it involves a lot of reading and listening. Not just panels, documentaries, and wikis, but the written and spoken word from the events the days they were happening, to find out where the secondary sources got their information from as well as to find information that had previously not been recorded.

How do you go about finding these primary sources for the furry fandom? Well, there are a wide variety of avenues to finding them, but for the sake of brevity, I distinguish them into one of three categories:

1. What is currently online: Almost every website pertaining to the furry fandom is a potential source when looking for documents. Any website used to inform and promote a furry convention or furmeet, or a post on a blog, forum, or board, reporting on such events are great sources of information, particularly as the internet has been pivotal for the fandom’s growth from the late-90s to the present.
2. From people in the fandom: For my book as an example, I’ve contacted individuals who were involved in running conventions as well as furmeets in the past in order to find out what happened from their recollections and to compare with what was being discussed at the time.
3. In archives: This could be from digital archives like archive.org and the Wayback Machine to physical archives like museums and libraries.

Sounds all straightforward, right? I wish it was. The hard truth is that even in the furry fandom, which has been organized heavily online for decades, whose passion in its own legacy is self-evident by the success of books and documentaries, not everything is as readily available as one might assume.

Physical materials (e.g., conbooks, fanzines, newsletters) are incredibly difficult to obtain due to the furry fandom’s limited and often independent publishing runs, and very few of them are preserved and digitised. The best method of ever getting a chance to read most of these is to contact private collectors, but even this is a challenge.

The History of Furry Publishing, Part One: Beginnings – by Fred Patten.

I’m fortunate enough that the plenty of people who I got in touch with for the project I’ve been working on have been approachable and willing to provide any help and information they can. That doesn’t mean everyone I wanted to talk to was either available to contact or willing to respond to a random furry with an interest in past furmeets, conventions, and artworks.

It’s also not just an issue finding sources within the fandom: for instance, I’ve made several visits to the British Library in order to look for newspaper and magazine articles. Imagine my surprise when, despite its extensive collection of manuscripts, microfilms, books, journals, and even issues of science fiction fandom magazines such as Starburst, I discover that not every issue is within their archives.

Even Fred Patten had difficulties researching for his book on Furry Fandom Conventions:

“…about half the 116 conventions never replied to my e-mails, or sent a brief reply that their purpose was to have fun, not to engage in bookkeeping, and they didn’t keep any records of their previous years.… You can tell in my book which conventions sent me information, and which didn’t.”

Yet the worst challenge, however, is filling the gaps in events where information is lost forever. Anything made of paper can get burned, torn, or damaged beyond repair, or even intentionally thrown away or shredded. Digital media can also be lost, despite the phrase “Once it’s on the internet, it’s there forever”. Forums go offline, websites end up going to Error 404, servers shut down and get dismantled, and although archival services like the Wayback machine exist, not every website has a snapshot to go back to.

For example, mailing lists were one of the ways furries communicated online, sending emails to entire groups through a central email server. Although predominantly text-based, some hosts made it possible to send photos and videos through mailing lists. As usenet was used less and less in the late nineties and before web forums became commonplace in the mid-noughties, mailing lists was an efficient method of communicating with fellow furries amongst particular groups, especially for British furries. Before 2006, there was not only a mailing list for UK furries as a whole, hosted by Critter.net, but also mailing lists for each region of the UK, where they discussed their fandom interests and arranged local gatherings that led to the traditional furmeets of today.

However, mailing lists have all but vanished from the internet. Most of the original mailing lists weren’t removed due to ill-intentions, but due to lack of interest from the time. Many such as the HantsFurs Mailing List were deleted by their owners simply because places like the UK Fur Forums had become more popular by the late-naughties.

There were some that were hosted entirely by the furry fandom itself that fell victim to a more dire fate: hardware failure. This was the case for Critter.net, which hosted several mailing lists, websites, and news servers, but which suffered a catastrophic failure in 2014. The act of two drives failing and data being inaccessible, as well as backups being impossible to decrypt, leads to a bleak result. “Everything. Every database, document, photo, website, email. Gone.” as Frysco, the owner of Critter.net, described the outcome.

Yet the greatest cause of loss came not from within the fandom, but from the companies that hosted it. Although there was eGroups before it, most furries used Yahoo Groups to set up mailing lists, since it was considered the largest host of discussion boards that provided the resources to set up a mailing list for free. Unfortunately, Yahoo’s parent company Verizon Media officially announced that they were discontinuing Yahoo Groups in October 2019.

What was worse, they weren’t going to preserve all the messages, images, and videos, shared on the service forever. In fact, users had until December to archive mailing lists by themselves before the data would be deleted (they would later extend it to January 2020). After that, the only evidence of a mailing list’s existence was an empty page, until early in 2021 when the Yahoo Groups pages were removed entirely.

It’s currently unknown how many furry mailing lists have been preserved or archived. In my efforts to rescue some, I only managed to collect four. Although there was an extensive grassroots effort to archive as much as possible from Yahoo Groups, it will take more than a lifetime for one person to find out if any furry mailing lists are amongst its collection.

WHY IT MATTERS

I know what some of you are thinking: so what?

It’s no lie that I’ve had these kinds of comments from friends when I complained about the loss of mailing lists.

“I don’t want messages I posted when I was a teenager to be online forever!”
“Some things are best left forgotten.”
“Who cares about an old mailing list?”

As someone who has been on the internet for nearly twenty years, I can empathise with the embarrassment at the thought of something I’ve written on the internet when I was a kid being available to be read decades later. That doesn’t change the fact that all posts and comments, even the irrelevant and cringeworthy, are worth preserving to reflect what the culture was like at that moment in time.

To analogise, historians all over the world generally accepts newspapers as a vital primary or secondary source of information for historical research. They generally accept so much that many libraries archive national and local newspapers, either as physical copies, digitized scans, or microfilm, for people to look through.

Chronicling America, part of the United States Library of Congress, is one of the largest archives of American Newspapers, with digitized collections dating back to the mid-eighteenth century. Not only can you read the headline news, but all the columns, small articles, adverts and comic strips too. And yes, it’s definitely possible to find stories that descendants would find embarrassing.

Yet every page is preserved and archived not only for the completion factor, but also because even these little stories can tell us about the culture of the country, state, county, town, and city.

Message boards and social media tell the same thing for the furry fandom: what jokes were being thrown around, what the big issues were, whether they be local or within the fandom as a whole. Even the few I managed to archive were incredibly resourceful for my research, helping me figure out the story of how the Northern Furs and MidFurs, two of the three largest furry regional groups in the past, formed and set the standard for furmeets for the rest of the United Kingdom.

1996-2015

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE AND HOW?

The one thing I want to advocate for is that we the furries have the responsibility to preserve the furry fandom’s work, whether it be its art, advertisements, even our discussions. That’s all well and good, but that’s why we need to discuss how we should go about doing that.

One way is to talk more about our history, either through writing articles, running panels, or producing documentaries: any way to tell interesting stories about what our fandom has gone through. They don’t need to be broad; stories could be told of individual conventions, activities, or even musicals.

Another way is to support archives and archivists, to motivate them to preserve more content so that people can read through and understand more about the furry fandom’s long legacy.

Lastly, for the online sort of thing, support the non-profit archive.org and try to make extensive use of saving web pages to the Wayback Machine. That way if a website ever goes down, when an article or a wiki page has a deadlink, there should be a chance that there is a cached or saved version on the archive.

There are many more possible avenues to archiving work, although for bigger places such as DropBox and Google Drive, use caution. No matter how big the company that runs the website is, it has no guarantee of keeping data on its servers forever.

WHO IS DOING IT?

Authors and Journalists

Of course, I’m writing Furry Kingdom, which focuses on the History of the furry fandom in the United Kingdom, and I’m certainly not the only one writing about furry history:

• Joe Strike, who wrote Furry Nation, is currently working on a sequel titled Furry Planet, which aims to cover the furry fandom throughout the world.
• Grubbs Grizzly, a columnist for Ask Papabear and organiser of the Good Furry Award is also working on his own book, titled The Furry Book.
• Thurston Howl has been the publisher of several non-fiction anthologies called Furries Among Us.
• Choco Pony is slowly working on a book on convention history, which not only include furry conventions, but science fiction, anime, and brony conventions as well.
• As previously mentioned, Fred Patten did extensive chronicling of the furry fandom over the years, once in Retrospective: An Illustrated Chronology of Furry Fandom that was originally published in Yarf magazine back in 1996, as well as a book on Furry Fandom Conventions from 1989 to 2015.

Channels

• It doesn’t have to be books, as Ash Coyote demonstrated with the feature-length documentary, The Fandom.
• Culturally F’d have done numerous videos on the subject of the furry fandom, from conventions to fursuits.
• Dox, a History BA graduate from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, wrote a thesis on the furry fandom’s history and culture and has done panels on his own YouTube channel for the online convention RAMCon.
• It’s not just YouTube: users on Twitter can follow accounts that have been regularly posting classic furry art, such as the Ancient Furries and Vintage Funny Animals.

Collectors and Curators

• Some conventions have archived content from past events, such as EuroFurence, ConFuzzled, and NordicFuzzcon.
• Sylys Sable and Changa Husky have extensively uploaded several pieces of paperwork surrounding the early furry fandom, ConFurence, and Califur to the ConFurence Archive.
• Summercat is the owner of the Furry Library, which has an extensive collection of furry literature, from comics to fanzines. This one also has a Patreon in need of more donations.
• Plenty of video footage and photos, primarily of fursuiters, are viewable on the Fursuit Archive.
• Before he passed away in 2018, Fred Patten had donated his personal collection of books and fanzines to the University of California, Riverside Library, and made regular visits to organize them. Since his passing, the collection has remained in storage with no staff to carry on his work.

Academics and Researchers

Believe it or not, there is a field of study for fandoms and fan culture (as Dox pointed out in one of his panels): Fandom Studies.

Although there isn’t an academic specialist in studying the furry fandom’s history apart from Dox, Christopher Polt, PhD has been teaching anthropomorphic art and animation history at Boston College.

The companion website for my Beast Literature course is now live and public! If anyone would like to see what we're doing and follow along, feel free to browse. I'll publish the individual components one week at a time, so check back regularly! https://t.co/6uN1TTERWw pic.twitter.com/J3BLcNTVJm

— Tofte | Christopher Polt (@CBPolt) January 31, 2021

Conclusion

We live in a fortunate time where many of the pioneers of the furry fandom are still part of it, appearing and speaking at furry conventions. We are also fortunate to have the mountains of information that fandom historians have at their disposal. That doesn’t mean that it’s safe forever, or that there is no more to be found. Information will disappear if we don’t make an active effort to preserve it and share it. We should support our archives and any and all researchers creating content sharing our history.

This doesn’t just go to the fandom in the United States, I wouldn’t have been able to do a panel at ConFuzzled, let alone write a book if dedicated historians like Fred Patten didn’t lay the groundwork for me to look further. If I started later than I did, I wouldn’t have been able to save even a few mailing lists that proved valuable to my research. Not to mention that most of what I’m looking for was written in English, so there is potentially more valuable information in other languages to record the history of the furry fandom around the world. All of it needs preserving, even if some of it makes us cringe.

– Gamepopper

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

For those of us of previous generations, this might be a bit hard to follow. But we’ll let Animation World Network explain it: “What’s the kitty been smoking? Fan favorite actress Mila Kunis (That 70’s Show, Family Guy, Bad Moms) has released the new animated series Stoner Cats, by far the highlight of this past month. Kunis teamed with Chris Cartagena (The Grinch), Sarah Cole (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), and Ash Brannon (Toy Story 2) under the Orchard Farm Productions banner to create the show, which features (surprise, surprise) a bunch of weed smokin’ felines.” Here’s the fur-rub though: “Interestingly, the first episode of the series was released as 10,420 NFTs on July 28th, which sold out within 30 minutes. Each episode was sold for .35 ETH, or approximately $8 million in cold hard American dollars. While NFTs are still new, strange, and misunderstood by many, there is a huge market for those wanting to own a piece of entertainment history.” Got all that? Here’s hoping they eventually release the series through other avenues as well.

image c. 2021 Orchard Farm Productions

DISCLAIMER: The content from paragraph two to four and in the subsequent photograph may be uncomfortable for some readers. Discretion is advised. US-based convention Rocky Mountain Fur Con (RMFC) should have been held August 11-13, 2017, themed “Carnival Nocturne”. But, it was cancelled 4 months early on 10 April. This is due to a controversy […]

TigerTails Radio Season 13 Episode 24 Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf For a full preview of events and for previous episodes, please visit http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show.

All right… We’re just going to let this new graphic novel from Random House Studio for young readers speak for itself: “It’s Wednesday! Which means it’s time for Jim Panzee’s weekly Wednesday walk. He wakes up, stretches a little, grabs his stress orange, and sets off. Jim’s favorite part of the walk is the blissful silence. When he’s alone, he can hear all the jungle sounds. Until . . . his best buddy, Norman, decides to join him. And before he knows it, Jim is followed by every animal in the jungle. It’s all just too much. Now Jim and his not-so-helpful friends are on a quest across the jungle to find another stress orange before it is too late!” Got all that? Turns out there’s a whole series of Grumpy Monkey books written by Suzanne Lang and illustrated by Max Lang. Grumpy Monkey: Freshly Squeezed is available now in hardcover.

image c. 2021 Random House Studio

 

Everything happens so much.

LINKS
FDA approval comin' soon- https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/fda-aiming-give-final-approval-pfizer-vaccine-by-early-next-month-ny-times-2021-08-03/
Tenacious Unicorn Ranch is cool as hell - http://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/te%E2%80%A6
Telegram Fan Chat- https://t.me/joinchat/P2iJg8tyj-KNGaci
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/Southpawscast 

Episode 496 - Too Many Streams -   Everything happens so much. LINKSFDA approval comin' soon- https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/fda-aiming-give-final-approval-pfizer-vaccine-by-early-next-month-ny-times-2021-08-03/Tena

MOOBARKFLUFF! Click here to send us a comment or message about the show!

Pooka (goat) joins us from Columbus Ohio, Theo the Beagle calls in from England on Five Minute Furs, we chat about toast (again) read a poem from Edward Gorey, listen to furs trying to say their names backwards, and what's all this about socks? Why won't Instacart advertise on our show? So Tune In and Bark along! Moobarkfluff!

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Support the show

Thanks to all our listeners and to our staff: Bearly Normal, Rayne Raccoon, Taebyn, Cheetaro, TickTock, and Ziggy the Meme Weasel.

You can send us a message on Telegram at BFFT Chat, or via email at: bearlyfurcasting@gmail.com

Bearly Furcasting S2E15 - Pooka (goat), Story, Jokes, Five Minute Furs, Challenge Submissions, This or That

Fox and Burger Podcast #13: Thaitails Behind the Scenes, Being a Furry in Thailand + More Feat Pukan ---- In this episode of the Fox and Burger podcast, we’re going to “stay” in Taiwan because that’s where our guest currently lives! Meet Pukan, the cotton candy doggo from Thailand. Pukan has been a furry since 2010 and has joined Thaitails staff in 2018. Currently, he is studying for his master’s in Taiwan. In this week’s episode, we’ll be talking more about Thaitails behind the scenes as well as Thai public perception of furries. So without further ado, let’s give him a big awoo! ---- Time Stamps: 00:00 Section 1: Introduction 00:00 Podcast intro 01:41 Guest introduction 04:05 Section 2: Guest Spotlight: Thaitails Staff 04:13 What was your role at Thaitails? 05:24 How is Thaitails run? 07:14 How many staff members and volunteers do you guys have? 09:08 What do you think accounts for the massive growth for Thaitails? 10:09 How hard would you say you guys advertised Thaitails? 11:49 What do you think makes Thaitails stand out? 15:56 What was your favorite moment at Thaitails? 19:00 Section 3: Comparing and Contrasting Fandoms: How are furries perceived in Thailand? 19:14 How does the Thai general public view furries? 22:33 How is fursuiting in public in Thailand viewed? 26:01 How does Thailand view LGBT and how does that affect their view of furries? 29:44 What is the intersection between Thai culture and the furry fandom? 36:50 Where do you see yourself after your studies in Taiwan? 39:33 Social media shoutout 40:54 Podcast outro ---- Social Media: Our official Twitter: https://twitter.com/foxandburger Fox: https://twitter.com/foxnakh https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK9xoFQrxFTNPMjmXfUg2cg Burger: https://twitter.com/L1ghtningRunner http://www.youtube.com/c/LightningRunner Pu-Kan: https://twitter.com/PukaPukann https://www.twitch.tv/pukapukann https://www.facebook.com/pukanch/ ---- Footage Credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSL4Ow9rgME https://www.facebook.com/Lowcostcosplay/photos/a.1382107312037994/2916413051940738/ https://bcisphuket.com/ https://twitter.com/RatonTheRaccoon/status/1391332034103058445 https://twitter.com/PukaPukann/status/1370687896009674754 https://twitter.com/PukaPukann/status/1410813676232216578 https://www.facebook.com/LegendaryWargame/photos/pcb.2742927592432324/2742926862432397/ https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5917735134965817&set=pcb.5917740308298633 http://drewf.com/places.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JraSg2its7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beAzqxd9FUs https://sgfurs.com/2016/02/20/thai-tails-2016-at-bangkok/ https://twitter.com/KiyochiiThefox/status/1360208773348904963?s=20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD_9KKVibKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA8MKygVYVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0eXKvExTT0 Other pictures and video provided by Pukan, Giphy, Pixabay, and hosts' personal footage. Intro/Outro Music: Aioli by Andrew Langdon.

The furriest baseball team around is back with two new illustrated graphic novels by John Steven Gurney. In Fuzzy Baseball Volume 3: R.B.I. Robots, “The Fernwood Valley Fuzzies have a baseball game set with the undefeated and impeccable Geartown Clankees. The Clankees perform like well-oiled machines…mainly because they are robots in disguise just wanting to fit in and feel the love of good sportsmanship deep inside their gears.” Mean while in Volume 4: Di-No Hitters, “The Ferntown Fuzzies are about to face a team of Dinosaurs, the Triassic Park Titans, in a match for the ages. The blast-from-the-past team is sure to deliver a few curve balls for the Fuzzies with their vintage style, gigantic gear, and ‘un-evolved’ practices.” Both volumes are available now from Papercutz.

image c. 2021 Papercutz

Hello Papabear,

My name is Kreed and I'm writing today to get some advice on a problem that I've been having. Well it's not really a personal problem, but it does concern me.

A little back story. I got a job at Sonic back in September. A few months later this goofy looking guy comes in for a job. Well we hit it off and we become pretty close. In December his roomies kicked him out with only a few days notice, I come to the rescue and let him stay with me until he found a place. During that time we get closer, and I'm totally not complaining.

We haven't even known each other for over half a year and we're as close, as close can be. I wouldn't have it any other way. I missed the great friends I had in the Army, only to find a civi that became better than any of my Army buddies. I know he has my back, and I sure as hell have his. We talk computers, music, anything. I could have no idea what he says, but I listen, captivated to everything he has to say, because this man is a wealth of information. It's so fascinating.

Now comes the problem. This man watched his mom's boyfriend slowly die due to Covid. Watching his mom be completely torn apart by that. Now he got the bad news that his mom has late stage Lung cancer. When he told me a few months back, I knew it was taking all he had not to cry at work as he told me. Through my check ups on him I found out his mom is trying to prepare him for what seems like a very possible outcome with how advanced the cancer is. Problem is, he is not ready. I doubt he will be ready.

I know for certain he will be calling on, and needing his bestie by his side. Only problem is I have no clue how to handle this. I'm 32 years old. The only death I've experienced was when I was very young, or as an impartial party as an EMT. I don't know what to do.

Papabear, what do I do? I know this is devastating for him, especially since he's a self proclaimed mama's boy. How do I prepare myself for this eventuality, can I even prepare myself for it?

Thanks,
Kreed

* * *

Dear Kreed,

It's so nice to see a letter from a furry who is being a true and thoughtful friend, so thank you very much for your letter.

The first thing you need to know about comforting a friend who is grieving (or in anticipation of losing a loved one) is that you should not try to offer them advice or make them "get over it." And if you say, "Your mother is in a better place now," your friend has Papabear's permission to thump you on the head with a rubber mallet.

Some things to know about people who are grieving: 1) grieving people are not worried about their loved ones (especially if they believe in a heaven or other afterlife world, but even if they don't they know that the deceased is not suffering); they are sad for one thing only, and that is because they miss that person and know they will never see them again in this lifetime; they are sad for themselves; 2) grief has no deadline, no time limit. My late husband died 6 years ago, and even though I am getting along and have remarried, I still miss him and grieve for him in my heart. 

There ARE things you can do, however! First of all, when someone has recently lost a loved one it can often be difficult for them to function in day-to-day life. All you want to do--especially in the early weeks, months, and sometimes years--is sleep, cry, maybe eat, or, sometimes, try to numb your pain with alcohol or drugs. You can help by just assisting with routine things. Perhaps help with laundry, cooking meals, doing a bit of house cleaning, etc. And, of course, if you see them descending into dangerous habits like alcoholism, you need to get them some professional help (perhaps his church offers counseling, or you can go to a site like BetterHelp.com or call the government helpline at 800-622-HELP (https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline).

Now, since your buddy's mother is not dead (and hopefully won't be for a while), you can still offer similar support, even maybe accompanying him for visits (if that is possible). Let him know that you are there to listen to him talk about his mother and his feelings. You have no idea how much of a relief and de-stressor it can be to know that you have someone you can open up to about your grief without fear of judgment and without fear of getting cliché advice ("Buck Up!," "Hope you feel better soon!", "We all die sometime!" and other horrible phrases). Thing is, you don't have to say one word to be helpful. You have already shown what a good friend you are, and that is priceless. Just continue being there for them.

You should recognize, too, that being a comforter to a grieving person can be stressful for you, too! You can only help others when you yourself are doing okay emotionally and physically. So, do remember to take care of yourself as you help out your friend, and don't feel guilty about doing so. Along those same lines, one of the good pieces of advice I got from a couple of friends was that you should try and do something a little nice for yourself once a day, even if it is a small thing. You can kill two birds with one stone by doing something together. You could go out for an ice cream cone, play a favorite video game, go on a nature walk. Or whatever the two of you enjoy. Such distractions can help a person who is weighed down by grief, which is very exhausting mentally, physically, and emotionally. It is important to try to continue to eat well, get restful sleep, and to get some exercise.

I hope this is helpful. If you have other questions, please feel free to write again.

Bear Hugs,
Papabear
​

Sheesh — The Epic! imprint from Andrews McMeel definitely manages to keep coming up with interesting Furry material for young readers. Unicorn Island is an illustrated novel written by Donna Galanti, with art by Bethany Stancliffe. “When Sam arrives in Foggy Harbor, population 3,230, all she can see is a small, boring town that’s way too far from home. And knowing that she’s stuck there all summer with her grumpy Uncle Mitch only makes things worse. But when Sam discovers a hidden trapdoor leading to a room full of strange artifacts, she realizes Foggy Harbor isn’t as sleepy as it seems. With the help of a new friend, Sam discovers an extraordinary secret beyond the fog: An island of unicorns whose fates are intertwined with hers.” It’s available now in hardcover.

image c. 2021 Andrews McMeel Publishing