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[Live] FurCats
Overrun with cats, we do a short roundup then get side tracked a lot.
Link Roundup:- Annual furry convention in Mesa mixes art, animal costumes and Zumba
- CBSN Documentary about Non-monogamy & Polyamory
- Migrating Russian eagles run up huge data roaming charges
- Awesome protogen feature
- Furpoclypse moves venues as Halloween convention’s hotel became ghastly
- Ferdinan Mythical Meteorologist Unicorn Calgary
- US Stops Using Floppy Disks to Control Nuclear Weapons
- Blue Bioluminescent Insects
- Plants Panic when it Rains
- Despite Their Spooky Reputation, Vampire Bats Keep Life-Long Friends
- Suspicious package turns out to be suspicious package reporting device
Infurnity 2019 : Atlantis
Con video for the Taiwan based Infurnity 2019 [1]! I just love seeing furry conventions spread across the globe. We gotta make the word fuzzy. [1] https://infurnity.com/en/
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Kids and Beasts Got Each Other’s Backs
Happy Halloween! Be safe, and watch the sugar. Recently we came across Beastlands, a new independent fantasy comic book series written by Curtis Clow and illustrated by Jo Mi-Gyeong. “Beastlands is an action adventure story set in a beautiful medieval fantasy world, where some people have companion beasts known as ‘Keepers’. In Beastlands you’ll go on an adventure with a group of 3 teenage friends, Mac, Ava and Ping. They’re on a journey to find out what Mac’s father, an explorer, was trying to discover before he disappeared. On this quest their friendships will be put to the test all while a tyrannical King looks to outlaw Keepers from the land.” The comic got quite a lot of chatter going when its Kickstarter campaign topped its original goal in just a matter of days. Check out the interview and preview video over at Comic Burst.
image c. 2019 To Infinity Studios
Happy Halloween
Crow
Here is a thesis film by Sonja von Marensdorff of the School of Visual Arts [1]/ as for the ecology of this world ... I have all the questions. [1] http://www.sva.edu/
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On hiatus with a house move
Furry news, reviews, interviews and more will be back after a while. The site has been active since 2014 with 1115 articles published. It will be nice to get going again with cool plans in the works, and more than 100 possible story projects kept on file. Check back later and thanks for reading. – Patch
C’mon
Dammit! Chatah Spots makes me want to run out and get a fursuit and a cinema camera. (But that road leads to madness and VERY empty wallet ...) "Do Everything, Regret Nothing C'mon by Panic! At The Disco, Fun."
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TigerTails Radio Season 12 Episode 07
Best of Fur What It’s Worth – S8 EPISODE 2 – MOM! MOM! MOMMY! MOMMY! MUM! MUM! MAMA! MAMA! - Roo and Tugs have this week off. Instead, we present a re-airing of our fabulous episode with the Moms of Furries! - NOW LISTEN! - See the show notes right here!
NOW LISTEN!
See the show notes right here! Best of Fur What It’s Worth – S8 EPISODE 2 – MOM! MOM! MOMMY! MOMMY! MUM! MUM! MAMA! MAMA! - Roo and Tugs have this week off. Instead, we present a re-airing of our fabulous episode with the Moms of Furries! - NOW LISTEN! - See the show notes right here!
[Live] Gay Bull In The Stable
The audience votes for our trashy pumpkin carvings, plus lots of news.
Link Roundup:- Pumpkin Contest
- Pumpkin Contest Results
- Celebration as Northern Ireland wakes to legalisation of same-sex marriage
- Telegram SEC hearing delayed a year
- The problem with the endangered species list
- Durham’s famous 5 foot 8 bridge will be raised
- ‘BoJack Horseman’ Season 6 Part 1 Review: The Final Season Kicks Off with Consequences and Contemplation
- Elon Musk sends first tweet through Starlink system
- Japan Approves Scientist’s Plan to Create World’s First Humanimals
- Most Expensive Camera Unboxing Ever | $400 000 Chronos Ring
- Furpock Hotel Tweets
- An Anonymous Company Will Pay $128,000 For The Rights To Your Face
- Cows are Painted to Look Like Zebras
- Incredible Invisible Shielding
- Would you use this see-through toilet?
- Iowa Family Blood Soaked Basement
Temper, Temper!
And now thanks to Animation Scoop we find out about Dino Girl Gauko, a new collection of anime shorts by director Akira Shigino (Osomatsu-kun). “In this Netflix original comedy series set in Japan, Naoko Watanabe is a typical 14 year old, except that she possesses a strange gift and curse. When her anger exceeds a maximum level she turns into Gauko the fire breathing dinosaur girl!” Look for it to premier on Netflix this November the 22nd.
image c. 2019 Netflix
Hothouse 10 – All the Rage
This short if from the National Film Board of Canada's Hothouse 10 [1] where they challenge filmmakers to use found sounds as the basis of their shorts and make something in 3 months subverting the sound's meaning in some way. This short reminds of an old Emo Philips joke: "I think fur looks better on an animal than on a human being. So I dress my dog in a mink teddy." "A mink walks into a fur store. Fantastic Mr. Fox meets The Shining in this stop-motion cautionary tale of what happens when we don’t think enough about what we buy." [1] https://www.nfb.ca/film/inside_hothouse_10/
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Mickey Go Local – Rainforest Hunt
Disney Southeast Asia [1] has a new Mickey Mouse web series that draws heavy inspiration from Paul Rudish [2]'s rather brilliant series [3]. While not at the same level of budget they do seem to manage well with what they have and the character designs are rather cool. Quite cute. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Channel_(Southeast_Asian_TV_channel) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rudish [3] https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Mickey_Mouse_(TV_series)
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The Shadybug
Another cute animated commercial for the Netherlands based ASN bank [1] where they highlight the idea of not taking money from dictators. I gotta say this would be an interesting sequel to bugs life ... just saying. [1] https://www.asnbank.nl/home.html
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Rukus movie review
This unusual movie got 5 support articles before I was ready for a personal review. It’s hard to nail down, so the work got really labored over, but it deserves the effort. – Patch
Rukus was an artist from Florida who committed suicide in 2008 at age 23. He was a mercurial muse to his friends. Linear storytelling about him could make a sad movie, but Rukus comes from many directions. It overlaps documentary of him, with his boyfriend reflecting on their relationship, and his friendship with film maker Brett Hanover. His enigmatic presence weaves through Hanover’s personal life, which goes from trouble with OCD to finding completion in relationships and art. The life of Rukus becomes points on a trajectory of escape from pain.
The directing style frames lo-fi video with dramatized memories, daydreams and fiction from Rukus. They’re re-enacted by younger and older stand-ins for him, and voiced with animation. It’s one of those arty movies that doesn’t easily boil down to one commercial line, but it’s directed with purpose. When the pieces don’t fit together neatly, the negative space holds a chewy assortment of themes.
There’s repressed abuse, disconnection, and love outside of hetero norms. It touches on conflict with anti-gay religion in the Southern US, but it’s more involved with a setting in furry fandom. Furries have a loveably eccentric subculture of fans for talking-animal media that appears in fantasy art by Rukus, internet role-play, a hotel convention, and a stage play. Those feed the human connections in the movie. You also get to see a costumer called a “whore bear” and a moment of tender toes-in-nose contact that turns into crosswired love.
The movie is outstanding for merging fiction and documentary while drawing from a subculture rarely seen in any feature film. It premiered at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, where furries came for group fursuiting (with full body costumes that make unique “fursonas”). That’s sort of like how Comic Con cosplayers emulate Hollywood superheroes, but those don’t keep their powers when the movie ends.
Rukus casts animal shadows behind misfits who play muses for each other, and delivers bittersweet satisfaction. You can see it now on rukusmovie.com.
Just watched Rukus on Vimeo – an intersection of the furry world and the indie film circuit I never expected to witness. But I loved it! https://t.co/rKOvjsLJGv
— Apollo (@Apollo_Wolfdog) October 17, 2019
Lots to process tonight. I still miss him.
— Vulp-o-Matic 3000
(@triadfox) October 19, 2019
More reading between the lines — Figurative bridges and liminal places
There’s 6 bridges crossing the San Francisco Bay. The Golden Gate is in the most movies. Outside my window, the Richmond-San Rafael bridge is glittering with traffic. In 1964, a troubled woman stopped her car in the lane there, got out, and leapt to her death. A journey cut short like that changes those left behind.
She was the wife of sociologist Erving Goffman. He focused on microsociology (personal relations between individuals) and symbolic interactionism. That’s about the theater of everyday life, and how people manage impressions they give to others. It can involve not feeling at home in your own skin, hiding insecurity or depression behind smiles, or role-play that helps make bridges to other people.
Goffman avoided publicizing his life, but the loss led him to write crypto-biographical work. He studied insane asylum inmates for a paper about stigma, mental illness, and institutionalization called The Insanity of Place:
Although the author does not make direct references to himself, he appears to be drawing on his own painful experience… It is hard to avoid the impression that we are dealing with a “message in a bottle” intimating how the author coped with a personal tragedy at a crucial junction in his life.
Brett Hanover described Rukus as happening in liminal space between people: social media and virtual worlds, punk houses in the south, and furry fandom hotel conventions. They’re temporary sanctums of liberation. Contrast with what Goffman called a total institution (a place cut off from the wider community, where people lead an enclosed, formally administered life.)
Rukus brings sanity to displacement felt by it’s subjects. Hanover gives his own biographical view that puts heart in the transitions from view to view. In one scene, the boyfriend of Rukus tells how he was found dead. It segues to a child stand-in telling his fantasy story to Hanover, which pulls out to show the movie crew. It lightens what came before, and loops back to where the movie started. Friends and animal shapes become ushers for Rukus to cross a bridge, and the hole he left is filled with elegaic spirit.
A critical look at the spirit of the movie might ask if it has to do with the zeitgeist. Maybe a little, when current news and politics has so much struggle about border walls and who belongs in places.
The insanity of place came up on Nextdoor, the neighborhood based social media platform. For the bridge outside my window, a pedestrian-bike lane was attacked as a waste, like everyone would be happy with just cars. The theme was “stay in your lane.” That drama fuels Best of Nextdoor, a misanthropic comedy channel with 8 times more followers than the company’s (and an ironic PR thorn in their side). When neighbors are jerks on social media, sometimes all you can do is laugh.
That ties to one of the year’s most talked about movies, Joker, with a sad clown who’s isolated and powerless in a degrading city. There’s a key scene with subway traffic where he violently fights bullies to gain his power, leading to media sensationalizing. The movie’s budget and PR force it to power over public notice, unlike Rukus with it’s intimate use of role-play.
The media ties to one more ingredient about the furries in Rukus. They’re shy about exposure from a history of tabloids exploiting them as freaks. It’s a small movie that dignifies with politics of caring, instead of forcing a message. We need more personal media like this about people crossing bridges together and finding their place.
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Werewolf The Apocalypse: Earthblood
Finally a video game version of White Wolf Publishing tabletop RPG: Werewolf the Apocalypse [1]! I have all the questions about this but at least it looks more like the original version of the game where the pack is fighting against the forces of the Wyrm [2] and corporate environmental disaster. "With his former pack in danger, Cahal returns to find Endron, the energy arm of Pentex [3], installing an extraction site and destroying the forest around his Caern." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf:_The_Apocalypse [2] https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Wyrm [3] https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Pentex
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Oh Fiddlesticks! Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra looks to hire fursuit creator for mascot costume
Winter Weight
These bear based commercials have been an ongoing ad campaign of SCANA Energy [1] that's been going on for a few years and here are the latest. I really dobelieve more companies should use spokes-bears. https://youtu.be/bU2Ui7CcRNY [1] https://www.scanaenergy.com/
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