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Also what would you turn them into?

submitted by MRjarjarbinks
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submitted by PortableTaco
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Astounding poet and guest, Morris Stegosaurus, joins Roo and Tugs in a deep discussion about how drugs and drug use is perceived in the fandom. Is it as prevalent as one might think? What's with "HURRR it's FUR TWENTY HURR" culture? And has the attitude toward treating drug abuse as criminal instead of mental hurt or help society? We answer these questions and more, then jump right into THE GAME and some housekeeping. Awaiting you during the break this episode as well is a brand new space news, done in a new style!


NOW LISTEN!

Show Notes

Special Thanks:

Morris Stegosaurus, our guest.
Han Surnak Draco Lobos Rokan the Seventh
Phil, the Canadian.
Wolfi Coyote
Grumper Bear
Leo the Artist

Show Sponsor: It wasn't planned this way, but it wound up this way - check out our guest's book, Zebra Feathers, today at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com!

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!)
Mailbag: Eskadet – Back To Kyoto from the album “Solitudes” (Lemongrassmusic, 2010) – www.lemongrassmusic.de – Used under license.
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: Our next episode is one you've been hearing about for a while - Fur What It's Worth LIVE! from Biggest Little Fur Con in Reno, Nevada. We'll be releasing the recording on May 24, its internet debut! S4 Episode 14 – Drugs in the Fandom - Astounding poet and guest, Morris Stegosaurus, joins Roo and Tugs in a deep discussion about how drugs and drug use is perceived in the fandom. Is it as prevalent as one might think? What's with "HURRR it's FUR TWENTY

i think you guys are awesome. you know, i'm here only for like what? 2 days and i already like you people. dat rinhggar guy doe. he's smashing. He can make everything fun aknd games. but i must say that you people have gottren me hooked up on this furryy stuff. i really like the way you people communicate. When i was reading trough your stuff i laughed and ieven cried. you made a 28 year old teacher cry. oh, wait! i'm not a teacher anymore thanks to that asshat. Anyway, you guys are kah pawsome +kah*.and we should not forget about the ladies. you too are nice 8 i don't know any but still 9. yea, just wanted to say that.

submitted by randomforrfurry
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Hey fuzzbutts, Sky here! I need your opinion, wit, and thoughts for my YouTube hosted podcast, Tip of The Tail ( I know, shameless self promotion).

So my questions for you today are as follows. Which cons do you plan or want to go to? How have (if you've been to one before) your past con experiences been? My co-host and I have never been to a convention of any fashion so we're counting on you to give us the details. Answer however you'd like but please let us know what to refer to you as (i.e. pseudonyms, fursona names, your real name, pick at least one.) feel free to E-mail me at skyoath.tipofthetail@gmail.com, pm me, or just respond in the comments bellow. Thanks in advance and don't forget to stay awesome.

Edit: I think furmeets count as like a mini con so yeah feel free to talk about those as well.

submitted by SirSkyOath
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submitted by TwerkOnThatShark
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Dayligth saving times f'ed my over.

Game at 22:00 UTC, in ~1:20 hours from now!

Rules are the usual.

• Check what time is 22:00 UTC on your local time.
• Join fa_mirror's game. Link to the game
• Password is 'tumblr_otherkin' (no quotes)
• Custom cards will be used.
• You will NOT be able to log in until 22:00UTC!
• Even if you cannot join the game, stay for the chat, I promise it will be awesome, sometimes even better than the game itself

You can make your own cards! make a post below!

Example:
White: *Really* liking Digimon.
Black: Honey, I ______ the cubs.

Fuck you Cardcast!!! Where are my "antisocial justice" cards with slurs!

PyX protips:

• Play using the browser in fullscreen
• If the game starts acting funny, refresh the page (F5)
• Make the text smaller by pressing CTRL + - (Control key and dash key together)
• Be very politicaly incorrect. Nothing is too soon nor taboo.

submitted by fa_mirror
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submitted by THISISNOTLEGALTENDER
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submitted by SighingRabbit
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JM Horse wrote an article Monday titled “The Role of Criticism Within Furry, or: Buy This Article,” which described pretty well the state of reviewing within the furry community (defined both as reviewing of furry works and reviews by furries, which are more or less a perfect circle Venn diagram at this point in time). There were a couple things he missed, namely describing some of the reasons particular to the furry community that shape the state of reviews. He also only really touched on the role of reviews in the fandom, so I’d like to offer my perspective as a long-time author in the fandom.

As he wrote, furry is a tight-knit community, and most members are also creators of one sort or another (note the number of disclaimers in this post). This is why I don’t generally review furry fiction unless I think it is something worthwhile that most people will overlook (Rukis’s “Heretic” was an example). Many other authors take this tack, and we have very few people in the fandom who are, like Fred Patten, dedicated readers, not authors, and good enough writers to pen a review.

Several years ago, a friend of mine attempted to set up a review site with honest, critical reviews that highlighted the positive and negative of books (disclaimer: he published reviews of my books that were generally positive). The result was at least one angry letter from a creator and numerous refusals to provide review copies of books to him because he wasn’t “taking them in the spirit in which they were written.” He got discouraged and busy with other projects, and in the end the site wasn’t worth his energy.

This kind of response, as JM details in his article, is not unknown in the community (and outside it). It’s likely that the person reviewing your book is a friend of a friend, especially in the small furry writing community—because who outside the furry writing community is going to have the proper context to review a furry book? More importantly, where else would furry readers go to find book recommendations? I have had books reviewed on romance blogs and on SF Signal; I doubt strongly whether more furry readers than I can count on one hand saw those reviews. So if someone reviews your book, it’s much harder to just ignore them and go about your life secure in the knowledge that you’ll never run into them in person or online. On the flip side, reviewers often know or get to know the authors they’re reviewing, and when an author replies to a review with an angry or hurt letter, that can discourage the reviewer from doing more. I’m not surprised that few people have taken the time and energy to read books and write thoughtful reviews.

But to get back to JM’s article title, what is the role of reviews in the fandom? I am not sure what the readership of Dogpatch Press or Flayrah is, but anecdotally, the number of people who have picked up one of my books and told me it was because they read a review of it is vanishingly small compared to the number of people who say, “My friend said I have to read this.” In a tightly knit community like furry, where the number of books is not as overwhelming as it is in science fiction or literary fiction, do reviews really play a part in people’s decisions? I think for a few they do (and the writing community tends to be the ones who read reviews the most, again anecdotally), but for the majority, word of mouth is how people decide what to read.

(This is also not necessarily unique to furry. I have previously worked in market research, where studies have shown that the single most influential factor in persuading someone to make a purchasing decision is a personal recommendation.)

Yes, we as authors would like to have someone write reviews, to tell the world how much work we’ve put into our books. But I am not sure that most furries are out there clamoring for more reviews. And this is the second thing that is particular to the furry fandom: many furries enjoy books that reviewers might not.

To be honest, this isn’t unique to furry either. There are millions of readers worldwide who enjoy romance novels that many of us might charitably describe as “formulaic” or “unreadable.” But furries often fixate on the species of the lead character. If you’re a skunk and Amazon has a novel about a skunk on its Kindle store, you’re going to buy it, and chances are that even if it’s riddled with typos and a plot as flimsy as a skunk’s tail, you’re going to enjoy it. Because you relate to that character! She’s a skunk too!

Here, too, reviews are unnecessary. People will buy at conventions from publishers where they can see the book and get recommendations from the people working the table (both Sofawolf and FurPlanet—disclaimer, again: I have worked both tables—are good at the “if you liked this you’ll like this” game), or online where they can see the cover and read a summary of the book. Often they will get as far as “It’s the story of a fox” before clicking the BUY button.

And look, as an author who has spent years and years trying to improve my craft, I get the undercurrent of resentment that JM has in his article for books like “The Cat’s Eye Pub,” which in his words “fails to meet minimum standards for publication.” Why should this book be recommended to people when “the author [didn’t] reread and self-edit his own work”? It’s frustrating, just like artists in the fandom who spend days or weeks on a technically beautiful picture only to see it get a quarter of the faves of a sloppily drawn porn piece.

But here’s the thing: people like what they like, and all of those likes are valid. People through the ages have railed against the tastes of their community, from the people who decried Shakespeare as “common” to the people who hate “Twilight.” (I am not drawing an equivalence between Shakespeare’s plays and the Twilight saga, only the critics of their fans.) So I feel like JM thinks that the role of reviews in the furry community should be to gently or not-so-gently direct people’s tastes toward “better” books. But I’m not sure that the people he’d like to direct in that way would actually read reviews. They enjoy the books they enjoy, and furry is a small enough place that they can find the “better” books and decide if they want to read them. Heck, there are basically three sites on the Internet and three tables at conventions to browse. It doesn’t take long.

And for the record, I don’t think Fred Patten errs on the positive side in his reviews to avoid friction in a tight-knit community; I think he genuinely finds something to like in everything he reviews. I’ve seen a lot of his reviews end with “If X is to your taste, then you will like this book.” That’s a pretty good review. (Again looking to the romance community, there are several review blogs where the policy is “if we don’t like your book, we won’t review it.” In that field, little is accomplished by negative reviews other than to annoy the author; they would rather point people to books they like a lot than take out time and energy to criticize ones they don’t. I do think that there is room in furry for constructively negative reviews, especially in the writing community, because it’s such a young community relative to most other writing communities and most people in it are actively interested in learning.)

I’m not opposed to more reviewers by any means. But I think what we authors need to do is encourage our fans to talk about the books. Those are the reviews that most people listen to and the reviews that matter.

Dear Papabear,

I have met this other fur on FA who has become my first ever crush (albeit online). We’ve been sending notes to one another for nearly 3 months now, and have written to each other about just about everything, from our hobbies and interests, to our dreams and fears, to our values in life (which is where we have the most similarities). We’ve even written to one another about how we could compromise on the sexual side of it all, given he’s gay and I’m asexual. And, even though we haven’t met in the face yet, he is local (which is why I watched him in the first place) and we’re hoping to meet one another once I get my Uni studies out of the way. Just being able to write to him and read what he’s written back has been bliss!

Now, I've always been under the impression that “love is a force of nature” and that, I'd be better off letting love find me rather than waste time trying to find it. And, I've been happy thinking that way about love ever since.

Yet, after listening to what someone said on TV, I was lead to reading a few web articles which said that love was actually a “choice,” and that we as people set ourselves on our own paths to find someone we would like to fall in love with, in turn choosing to love that person. I find it really uncomfortable to think that the fact I have a crush in this guy is merely a choice of mine.

Yes, I chose to watch him on FA. Yes, I chose to respond to his journal post. Yes, we chose to be open to one another about how we felt. And yes, I chose to bring up the idea of us meeting each other. All of those things are conscious decisions I know I have made either by myself or alongside him. But that feeling inside of me, that warmth and happiness I get whenever I think about him or read one of his notes to me, that desire to get close to him and be by his side... that can't be a choice! Surely not?!

And on top of that, I use the idea that love is a force of nature to justify there being no wrong in same-sex relationships, in that no one would choose to be gay or a lesbian because, as far as I was concerned, no one can choose who they fall in love with. I believed in this even more when I started to get the crush on this guy since I actually define myself as demi-heteroromantic. Whilst I had no ambition to go and find someone to have a crush on, I was for certain that when that time came around, it would be with a woman (I have been attracted to people in the past, the vast, VAST majority of which were women, but not once have I ever been aroused by someone of either gender, nor have I become unable to push the thought of them out of my mind). So, even if I was subconsciously on the hunt for someone to be with, I certainly wasn't looking for that person to be male.

With that said, I am open to it being a man since I'm a very keen believer of Sigmund Freud's theory of innate bisexuality (although I'd prefer to refer of this as innate bi-romanticism seeing as we asexuals think of sexual attraction and romantic attraction as separate things). His theory was that we're all born bisexual and that whilst most of us become monosexual as we grow up, that little bit of bi sticks with us for life. So I have no problem with my first crush being on a man, I'm just a little surprised.

The point I’m trying to make here is that I don’t want to believe I’m getting a crush on him by choice because I never chose to look for someone to have a crush on, let alone someone of the same sex.

I suppose what I'm looking for here is an opinion more than a piece of advice, even though it does disturb me to think that the fact I have a crush on him might be a choice and not an instinct. I don’t know whether or not love at first sight exists, but I was pretty sure up until now that love was beyond our control. I think I’ve got enough ‘evidence’ to say that love isn’t a choice, but perhaps I’m missing something here and it hasn’t clicked in my brain yet.

What do you think? Is love something that happens to us as part of nature, or do we choose to love someone?

Love,

Anonymous

* * * 

Dear Furiend,

An excellent question. Before I provide my opinion, let’s define some things so that there is no confusion because it sounds like you’re combining a few different sides to attraction.

First, let’s not confuse romantic choice with sexual proclivities—that is, there’s a big difference between saying love is a choice and homo- or heterosexuality is a choice. Homosexuality is not a choice. You know that, but I just want to be clear here.

Second, asexual people aren’t the only ones who believe romantic and sexual attraction are two different things; they definitely are two different things. There are, of course, people who would say that “falling in love” is a biochemical reaction produced after getting a high from making love to someone. That’s pretty clinical, though, and I reject it.

One can say that, given enough exposure to someone, you can fall in love slowly over time. Just the other night I went to see the musical Fiddler on the Roof.  In it, there’s a song in which Tevye asks his wife, Golde, whom he married per an arrangement between their families, if she loves him after 25 years together. After a few minutes of singing, she admits, “I suppose I do.”  They have grown to love each other. 

An old saying goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” I, on the other hand, believe that as you get to know someone—really know someone—it can lead to love. Many a romantic movie comedy begins with a man and a woman who despise each other being thrown together by some crazy situation that leads them to see into each other’s hearts and fall in love (I give you just about any Jennifer Aniston or Sandra Bullock film).

Love can come from choice, and it can come from exposure over time. And, yes, sometimes there is such a thing as love at first sight, but usually that is just infatuation and fascination that can crumble to pieces once you get to know the other person. If you don’t mind another analogy, I think the Disney film Enchanted does a good job on that one. At the beginning of the movie, Giselle falls instantly in love with Prince Edward in a hyper-romanticized scenario that is played to be deliberately ridiculous. Then, Giselle is tossed into our world and runs into Robert. They aren’t in love at first, but getting to know each other, they fall in true love and Giselle realizes that Edward really isn’t the person she needs in her life.

On the other paw, people can fall in love—even be in love for years—and then fall out of love (hence today’s divorce rate). That they divorce doesn’t mean their initial love wasn’t genuine, but many times people, as they say, grow apart, become much different over time, and are no longer a match (I still tear up when Neil Diamond and Babs sing “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore”).

As you likely know, Papabear gets many letters about love and the search for true love. I typically advise them to do what they can to increase their chances of finding the right person by interacting with people out in the real world pursuing hobbies and other activities. Sometimes, too, an initial match can be made online (though 100% virtual relationships are far from ideal), which is what you have done. You have found someone who shares a lot of your same interests and qualities, and now you are ready for the next step: meeting them in person. 

There is nothing wrong with this approach at all. It doesn’t mean you are artificially manufacturing a feeling of love; it means you have optimized your chances of finding someone whom you can love.

The next test is to actually be with that person. At that point, you might discover that you really don’t click; or, hopefully, you will see that the real-life person is just as good or even better than you imagined online. Your heart will swell and you will be in love.

Am I confusing you? Let me put it this way: the people on TV are wrong. Love isn’t an ON/OFF switch that you decide to flick or not. You can, however, choose to alter your behavior in ways that increase your chances of finding people you could fall in love with. That never guarantees love, but it is the best thing to do, and that’s what you’ve done. You found someone and the two of you clicked and then you fell—or are falling—in love. You could just as easily have met the same guy and no chemistry happened.

What pushes us over that edge from merely liking someone to loving him or her? There are a lot of things that attract people: good looks, money, power, cultural similarities. But none of those things leads to real love. In fact, sometimes people scratch their heads and look at a couple and think, “What do they see in each other?” “He’s terrible for her!” “She’s a no-good bum!” But they love each other anyway. Sometimes, love has no reason. It hits you out of the blue when you least expect it, as Dean Martin once sang, “When the sun hits your eye like big pizza pie, that’s amore!” Sometimes, love at first sight does lead to something special.

Real love happens when you are able to connect to the other person emotionally, when you see past the surface and feel their heart. It is, frankly, a spiritual experience. Two souls connecting. That can happen in an instant, or it can take 25 years. There’s no telling. It is beyond our control That’s what makes love so cray-cray amazing :-D

Don’t listen to TV. They call it the Boob Tube for a reason. 

Wishing you love,

Papabear

submitted by DexFenik
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submitted by DoesDoodles
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I'm kinda new to the whole fandom thing so this is just a default beginner post. I saw a lot of people doing it, so I thought "why not?".

So, hello there!

submitted by ThunderFenixBR
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Well this is just a Hello really before I start to post on here. Just being polite. I've been in this fandom for some time and have just decided to come out of my shell a bit more and start to talk to people. Thats about it really. If you have an questions ask them and if I can i'll answers.

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submitted by FreeThinkerComic
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Album for reference, has NSFW in it so be careful.

As an added bonus for the people who write comments in this post, other users should make up insults about that users fursona! :P

I know this post seems really mean spirited but I just mean this is the jokiest (not a word) and funniest kind of way since furry stereotypes and insults have been a big topic recently.

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