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Here’s news from Joe Strike – you may have seen his recent piece for Flayrah about “stealth fur.” Joe’s Furry Nation book got a lot of love here. He seems to have a sequel in the works (not sure how much I’m supposed to say, but there may be a chapter from a certain dog’s paw!) Joe saw an article making fun of furs in MAD magazine, and sent this piece. With so much going on in the news, I think it’s a bit refreshing to get gentle joking. Honestly, I want outsiders to just laugh a little while we can be like this… (- Patch)

From graphic designer Chris Piascik (I don’t think he’s a furry… yet. The outfit got us right though.)

MAD Magazine and the “Lighter” (?) Side of Furries

By Joe Strike

NOTE: This article contains a spoiler, if you worry about that sort of thing…

It only took three issues, but the re-launched MAD magazine took note of us in the final chapter of “Boonies Burbs and Burgs,” a short-lived feature charting the travels of three young cousins. If you thought MTV’s Sex 2K or CSI gave us a hard time…hoo boy, you’ve got another fershlugginer thing coming!

MAD articles always begin with an imaginary department heading. If you needed a tip-off, this installment came from the “Let the Fur Fly Department.” The story begins with a mystery: why is one cousin’s surly dad so eager to take the trio to the “Pop-Con” convention? (“A dad can’t do something nice for his rotten kid and his rotten kid’s even rottener cousins?”)* At the bottom of the first page the threesome come face to face with a blobby guy wearing a cow-themed leather get-up, complete with black leather udder. (“This the line for the Leashes ‘n’ Lashes confurence?”) Sure enough, top of the next page shows a female chicken and donkey pair asking, “this the confurence?” and being told by an overweight Darth Vader “Hall F, as in furvert.”

Trouble’s afoot, judging from the animal noises (“MOO…OINK…SQUEE”) coming from Hall F. Finally the wall gives way and an avalanche of fursuiters—giraffes, dragons, kangaroos and more, oh my!—tumble into view. (“Furry orgy tsunami!” a fleeing spectator shouts.) In the final panel a rat in the middle of the furpile removes his head, revealing himself as (SPOILER DEAD AHEAD!) surly dad—the furtive furry is a grumpy greymuzzle! “Today was frickin’ awesome!” he exclaims, wrapping up the tale. Way to go, dad!

It wasn’t hard to track down Bob Fingerman, the story’s artist and writer and give him a piece of my furry mind…

On behalf of all the furries in the world…thanx a lot buddy! (As if CSI wasn’t bad enough.)

We’re coming for you with an adorable pink French poodle suit (with EXTRA sph’s) and a giant size tube of Krazy Glue. Once we suit you up and seal you in we’re gonna drop you in the middle of the skankiest furpile we can find and post all the videos on YouTube for your friends and relatives to enjoy…

Seriously, I laughed my tail off at the comic—thanx much for the “kind” attention. BTW not sure if you’re aware that ConFurence was a real thing, the very first furry convention that began in 1989 and ran for a goodly number of years. You can read the “hole” story in my book Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood [because of creeps like you] Subculture. Wish I could send you a copy but they go for $18 a pop—cheap!

-Joe

Bob was cool enough to write back:

Hey Joe.

Thanks for reaching out. I definitely find humor in the Furry phenomenon, but in the MAD strip I think they come off far more lovable than the comic con attendees. They’re just trying to have a good time (and succeeding). Hell, it’s the only time the dad is happy in the strip…thanks for having a sense of humor. Those seem in shorter and shorter supply these days. When we need them most. -Best, Bob

PS: I can look forward, now, to my Facebook wall being inundated with Furry links from looking up your book on Amazon, so consider your “revenge” achieved. Ha ha.

I took another look at Bob’s website – bobfingerman.com – and saw something I’d overlooked, which necessitated a follow-up email to the guy:

I just noticed the first thing on your website is a cartoon of you…as a rat! Representing yourself as an anthropomorphic animal character makes you a furry, you do realize that? Thanks for making Dad a furry in the strip too, nice to know he and I have something in common.

Unfortunately, in my eagerness to see the world through furry-colored lenses I had misinterpreted the image…

The character on the homepage of my website isn’t me, it’s a character for a graphic novel I didn’t get to do. Probably won’t get to do anytime soon. But follow your bliss, sir.

To which I could only apply by way of apology…

Sorry ’bout that. (I guess the resemblance confused me. )

( * All words in bold type are reproduced as they appeared in the magazine.)

Like it says above, Joe Strike is the author of Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood [because of creeps like Bob Fingerman!] Subculture. Find out more about this great book at: www.furrynation.com

Okay, follow us here — this has several layers. Stacy Hinojosa is a well-known YouTube personality who has created a popular series of fantasy Minecraft videos called “Dogcraft”, under the name Stacy Plays. Well now, under that same name, she has spun off one of those Minecraft stories into a new fantasy book series, Wild Rescuers, written under the same name. The first book in the series, Guardians of the Taiga, goes like this: “Stacy was raised by wolves. She’s never needed humans to survive and, from what she sees of humans, they’re dangerous and unpredictable. For as long as she can remember, Stacy’s pack of six powerful, playful wolves — Addison, Basil, Everest, Noah, Tucker and Wink — have been her only family.  Together, Stacy’s pack patrols the forest to keep other animals safe, relying on her wits and each wolf’s unique abilities to accomplish risky rescue missions. But as the forest changes and new dangers begin lurking, are Stacy and the wolves prepared for the perils that await them?” The book is available in hardcover now. Harper Collins has more information, as well as an interview video with the author.

image c. 2018 Harper Collins

Ok, this eco-system in these shorts raise so many questions that I just don't know where to begin.
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Lo and behold, it looks as if one of the original anthropomorphic role-playing games is digging into making a come-back. Frog God Games have opened a new Kickstarter campaign to try and bring about the 3rd Edition of the venerable game Bunnies & Burrows. We’ll let them tell you about it: “It’s not easy being a rabbit. Dangers abound in a hostile world of forests, fields, and farms. You and your woodland companions — rabbits and friends of rabbits — are a tough band of protectors and explorers, ready to take on the challenge. This tactical role-playing game views the world from a unique angle, with different goals and approaches than any kind of traditional role-playing game. Rich and complex mechanisms allow you to cover any angle of rabbit life — including war-gaming — if you choose to expand the game beyond the basics of role-playing woodland animals in a world where nature is red in tooth and claw. Frog God Games has partnered with Dr. B. Dennis Sustare and Dr. Scott R. Robinson to return a venerable and influential piece of tabletop role-playing games to print. This tactical role-playing game weighs in at approximately 200 pages of full color adventure in the style of Redwall and Watership Down.” With just under a month to go (as of this writing), they’ve nearly reached their funding goal.

image c. 2018 Frog God Games

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This original showed up about 4 years ago [1] looking more pixel art video game than TV show has finally turned up. Now looking more like a tv show and produced for the brand new Nickelodeon South Africa. Here is more direct info including a full animatic here [2]. [1] https://furry.today/2014/09/26/moosebox/ [2] https://www.mikescottanimation.com/moosebox/
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Music video by @mmmatches [1] that does make me wish I went to Furry Migration. "Shot at Furry Migration 2018. A cover of "Say Amen (Saturday Night)" by Panic! At The Disco." [1] https://twitter.com/mmmatches
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Content warning: extreme animal abuse

Since 2010, US states have begun trying to implement registries for abusers. Take action here.

With no fanfare, public attention was riveted by a leak of private data spread by a Twitter account linking to a Telegram channel. It held compiled .rars hosted on Mega, containing chat logs, images and videos exposing years of activity. It was sourced from secretive chat groups connected to furry fandom.

The data implicated a ring of users sharing fetish material of unspeakably sadistic animal abuse. It was graphic evidence of rape, torture and murder of animals for enjoyment. The briefest skim of the Telegram channel was gut-wrenching. Among plain text chats and links, there was a thumbnail of a tied-up dog being raped with a baseball bat. The public response was tremendous shock and disgust.

There’s a list of some of those videos.

I have never once vomited from READING about something, not once has a trigger warning bothered me but this.......this has me crying and gagging among other emotions.....How can people do this and sleep at night????!!!!

— Mocha Puppé (@McBittypaws) September 20, 2018

Most furry stuff is harmless creativity, and Dogpatch Press shares positive news about it. But the site also has an established presence for exposing hidden stories, so I was tagged with some highly followed furry accounts and asked to spread the leak. Essentially I was a “first responder” on the scene. Tips came in immediately before the public was even aware, and people were scared about this coming out. It was the focus of an intense smokescreen and I saw it coming from the start.

As it developed, denial and conspiracy built up a highly sensitive and conflicted story. Evidence came out in pieces, got swiss-cheesed by deletions, then pushed back by dishonesty. Of course anyone personally involved would lie their asses off. But then there were ambulance-chasers and hucksters cashing in on fake “debunking”, and deluded fools manipulated by misplaced loyalty.

The task for anyone looking at this is to try to figure out just what the heck is going on; the size and shape of the network, who was complicit but not inside, who did content sharing but not creation, who was directly responsible for uploading toxic files, and who committed crimes.

IMPORTANT PSA, PLEASE RT

If you have information on the Zoosadism Ring, please forward it to myself or @DogpatchPress. Avoid making it public. At this point, posting more leads just reveals more of what we know and gives them time to tie up loose ends! Let the FBI, etc. work!

— Yago Xiten (@YagoXiten) September 24, 2018

Bullshit for views

It’s easy to expose a story when evidence is easily found, but fame and attention totally distorted it in this case. Public awareness went FUBAR when everyone focused on one implicated party, because they were the one with a huge following: Kero the Wolf, with over 100,000 Youtube subscribers. Many others in the leaks got little notice because they had few followers.

Those followers were the base for emotionally-fueled defenses and “stand with Kero” efforts. They focus on a supposed conspiracy by mystery hackers with no discernable motive and extremely convenient timing for what would take magically astronomical labor to pull off.

The most popular defense I looked at reached no insight more profound than “HTML is editable”, missing the fact that evidence of messaging exists server-side inside Telegram, not client-side. Then there was absurd garbage-takes about screenshots having usual .jpg compression as if that showed “editing”. Others tried to shoot down decontextualized fragments – such as how a single video attributed to one person wasn’t him (it actually came from sharing, but not being in all videos wouldn’t clear someone of deep complicity.) These were such reaches, they made things look worse.

There's YouTubers defending Kero who don't even know what HTML log files are...

They're analyzing screenshots of logs instead of the log files themselves.

If you see misinformation, call it out and don't let it spread confusion.

— Chip Foxx (@chipfoxx) September 21, 2018

The story was muddied by defenders having just enough knowledge to be dangerous, and an audience of passionate and impressionable young people. Let’s be clear: the instant contrarian reactions are full of shit, and people are milking them for views and money. If they don’t focus on the animal victims and an undeniable ring of guilt, a decent course is to shut up and perhaps expect those accused to get lawyers instead. And definitely not gain from the attention.

A proper investigation also should avoid depicting any single participant as the number one guy, and explore the other people caught up in it to establish the existence of a network. That would build the tightest story. The bleak alternative is seeing all the bogus denial prevail, fueling fake news and slimy Youtube careerism built on sexually tortured puppies. You couldn’t write satire as pathetic as this cheap, debased idolatry.

Supposedly, someone invented a giant ring to frame one guy? Let’s cut the crap. Attempts to retcon this into a conspiracy are refuted by the breadth and depth of the evidence. The preponderance of it says there isn’t one – just people who got exposed and want it covered up. The heinous things they did must not be denied.

Vid dates PM's discussing meeting in person to 2 years/9months ago. Multiple chat relationships. Other chats line up with tweets, and the chats were made before the tweeted content (using a time machine, or just same owner using Telegram and Twitter? Those werent hacked tweets.)

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) September 19, 2018

Issues for investigation

The “real animal” zoophilia line has long blurred the edges of subculture. Stuff like role-play, costuming with consenting adults, rubber fantasy dongs, or enjoying plain TV documentary seem like someone else’s business. I’ve usually left it distinct and needing case-by-case pro handling. I’m not a pro, a cop, a prude, or an outsider. Being an insider to fandom is why I’ve been asked to weigh in with perspective that won’t come from pros.

I’m also not a techie, but spent years of membership with a hackerspace. I sat in the audience at a federal trial and saw how network use hidden by VPN proved a case of hacking with no direct evidence. It’s far-fetched to believe conveniently-timed hacking claims, but you don’t need direct evidence for circumstantially overwhelming proof of participation in a network.

The more time you spend online, the more familiar you may be with the catalog of Nasty Internet Shit, from shock and gore to illegal CP.  I’ve previously covered animal abuse by “RL vore”, plus some meta-narrative about how this stuff circulates:

• Youtube’s popular Reptile Channel has a history of banned animal abuse by JonahVore.
• R.C. Fox arrested for child pornography, furries question fandom connections.
• Furries vs. Evil: Habits in geek social spaces

This story makes a new wrinkle. Necro-zoo and zoosadism/”hardzoo” are words I’d never imagined using in years of writing. (Yeah, it makes me barf, how about you?) I wouldn’t be surprised to see new laws made about legality of such files, like when crush fetish files were outlawed in 2010. It’s that unprecedentedly bad.

But so far sharing files that leaked appears to be legal. I’ll bet last century’s laws haven’t caught up to networks connecting individual abuse cases in scattered jurisdictions. They will get hidden. These networks might also have a lot of passive viewers who may not know of the extreme abuse, and some may be many peoples’ friends, causing conflict of interest about info sharing. So, suppose professional investigation happens, but given the nature of the material and how it came out, it gets stymied by the disinformation, geographic dislocation and inadequate laws. What should happen short of findings by cops and courts?

The prospect of all of this getting brushed under the rug is, of course, the reason why it may have been spread in public in the first place. That’s a solid reason to dismiss denials based on it not being handled by law enforcement first (it was reported) while sources duck backlash.

“Innocent until proven guilty” is a standard for court, not life. It’s a legal construct for if you’re charged with an offense by the State. Courts aren’t perfect and let people off on technicality all the time; and employment, public opinion or politics (like do you believe this candidate?) are some of many situations where judgement lands in between getting off completely unscathed, and being convicted of crime and sentenced to prison. Documenting and seeking change can help.

Ignoring the evidence is part of the story, so is the fact that laws don't cover many of the events in it as crimes, yet. That requires actively updating the laws. Until that happens it's beyond the capacity or responsibility of police. #metoo is a similar movement

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) September 24, 2018

This is crucial: Animals can’t talk, so their abuse may never come out (especially if evidence is disposed or untraceable). Authorities may consider this too low level for followup that would go to human abuse. But we all know this is horrible beyond words. And for people who did it, it’s part of a spectrum that can eventually lead to much worse, the “dark triad” of behavior. If that sounds like a slippery-slope or thoughtcrime type argument, ask yourself if you would let people into this stuff babysit your pet. No? Then we have an issue beyond a crime issue. It’s not a disagreement, this stuff is universally scarybad. So this isn’t just for cops. It’s a social issue.

How this fandom handles members remorselessly raping animals to death – or gives them a pass – will be a test beyond any other that has ever happened here.

I am not in the business of pulling punches, Kero the Wolf is not an isolated incident he is part of a grander problem with the image of the furry YouTube community that needs to be addressed. pic.twitter.com/wQZpDQrHv1

— The Hunt for Reh October (@GrapeNutHero) September 20, 2018

Instead of the usual link to Patreon that goes at the bottom of these articles, please share the story and don’t let it die.

Somehow we missed this when it came around last year. Team Taekwondo is a black & white graphic novel series for younger readers, published by Rodale Kids. The first volume is called Ara’s Rocky Road to White Belt.  It goes like this: “Ara is the odd turtle out in his family, preferring his rock collection to new or wild adventures—until he meets Baeoh, a confident tiger who practices martial arts. Unsure if he has what it takes to join Baeoh’s taekwondo team, Ara must learn how to come out of his shell, persist through failure, and accept the help of his new friends to complete the Tiger Fitness Challenge.” They go on further to say, “The Team Taekwondo series combines the appeal of graphic novels and martial arts to deliver action-filled, character-building stories. Each book also includes one free lesson at any participating licensed ATA Martial Arts location.” Each book in the series is written by Master Taekwon Lee and Jeffrey Nodelman, and illustrated by Ethen Beavers. Now the second volume, Baeoh and the Bully, was just released to stores as well.

image c. 2018 Rodale Kids

Patreon: www.patreon.com/thedraggetshow www.draggetshow.com Be sure to check our website for all Things Dragget Show! Podcasts, videos, merch and more! Also, don't forget we stream the D&D sessions Sunday at 7pm Central on YouTube! YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/DraggetShow 206 - Viking Funeral - Patreon: www.patreon.com/thedraggetshow www.drag…

A Wasteful Death is a cross between a murder mystery and a love story set in a city populated entirely by anthropomorphic animals. While the main characters are two Registered Investigators, sort of like police, this story is nothing like Zootopia. Instincts remain, and everyone in this world is acutely aware of the distinction between predator and prey.The main characters are Marlot Blackclaw, a wolf, and Trembor Goldenmane, a lion. Both are Registered Investigators who, unusually for their territorial profession, work together. What exactly is a Registered Investigator? Their job is to investigate unclaimed kills and track down the person responsible. Unclaimed being the key word here.In the world of A Wasteful Death, predation is legal and, with a few exceptions such as students or anyone in a hospital, everyone is a potential target. Once someone is killed, there is a tax that the hunter must pay which is scaled according the value the kill had to society. The tax on a homeless drunk would be low but the tax on a wealthy CEO like Aiden Spottedfur is massive, and it falls on Marlot and Trembor to find out who killed her.Most of the investigation is fairly routine and would be familiar to anyone that has watched an episode of CSI or any of the many similar series. Parts of the investigation are interesting—though as it's a mystery I will not reveal anything here—but I found it was let down by Marlot and Trembor not being particularly good at their job. There were many clues that they should’ve paid attention to and many people that they should’ve focused on more. Luckily, there is also a subplot.Marlot and Trembor are not only partners in investigating unclaimed kills, but they are also romantic partners. The only problem is that Marlot has issues with his sexuality. Homosexuality is legal in their world, but that is a fairly recent development and homophobia still exists. There is a lot of tension, both internal and interpersonal, as Marlot wrestles with trying to reconcile his love for Trembor and his fear of people knowing the real him.The romance and fear of discovery allow Sylvain a lot of room to explore the characters, something he does really well. During their investigation, time spent together and time alone, we get to understand the way they think and what drives them. Because of all this, their romance and insecurities came to the fore for me, and the investigation faded into the background.Beyond the storylines, there is something else I want to mention: world building. Honestly, I would recommend this book for that alone. Sylvain does it perfectly. Nothing felt forced as, bit-by-bit, he introduced us to the world. We learn a bit of its history, some of its politics, day-to-day life and catch glimpses of the way technology is adapted for anthros, all of which makes you want to know more. The way it is introduced, usually without explicit explanation, could be confusing, but he manages to put in enough information that you can come to the conclusions yourself and then get the confirmation later.A key feature of the world is the reality of predation. This could’ve perhaps been explored more philosophically, but instead we are shown the world as it is and left to ponder it at our leisure. We know there is a political movement to end predation and that fake meat is available, but they are mentioned only in passing, teasing the expanse of the world. The reality of predation means that species matters here in a way that is often neglected in furry fiction. Scents matter. Body size matters. The taste of flesh matters. A Wasteful Death moves beyond just using ear and tail movements to emphasise emotion to truly using the animal aspect of the characters in a meaningful way.A Wasteful Death is a novella, only lasting about 100 pages, but it will leave a long-lasting impression. The murder mystery aspect of it is average, but Sylvain St-Pierre’s ability to take us into the minds of his characters in their romantic struggles is engrossing, and the way he built the world and used the animal aspects of his characters should probably set the standard for future furry fiction.

Cheimon joins us once again for a fully packed episode.

Download MP3

Watch Video Link Roundup:

• Cool tabletop game kickstarter with taur characters
• Making A Musical Tail – TRAILER
• Verge: Meet the world’s first domesticated foxes
• Howlr Labs – Multigram
• Vice reporter tweets having fun with furries
• Local furries explain the oft-misunderstood community of their clawed, pawed and feathered friends
• EU ends daylight savings in 2019
• Technology shows “everyone’s brain knows how to use a tail”
• Adler Animates – Episode 3 – Entrance
• Super Lucky’s Tale
• Space Observatory Suddenly Closed Because of Child Porn Investigation, Not Aliens, Authorities Say
• AnimalInYou.com

News:

• Distressed Shoes Sell for $530
• Spiders blamed after broken siren played creepy nursery rhymes randomly at night to UK townsfolk
• Colorado Football Mascot Chip Shoots Self In Groin With T-Shirt Cannon
• Ig Nobel win for kidney stone removing roller-coaster
• London Police Outfoxed, Abandon 3-Year Search For Serial Cat Killer
• Octopus Ecstacy Experiment
• Pot Shop Robbery
• Italian Doctors Invent New Tool To Remove 23-inch Dildo From Man’s Rectum

Emails:

• Severely introverted and shy – Silver Moonshine

FC-307 Involuntary Escape Room - Cheimon joins us once again for a fully packed episode.

Cheimon joins us once again for a fully packed episode.

Download MP3

Link Roundup:

• Cool tabletop game kickstarter with taur characters
• Making A Musical Tail – TRAILER
• Verge: Meet the world’s first domesticated foxes
• Howlr Labs – Multigram
• Vice reporter tweets having fun with furries
• Local furries explain the oft-misunderstood community of their clawed, pawed and feathered friends
• EU ends daylight savings in 2019
• Technology shows “everyone’s brain knows how to use a tail”
• Adler Animates – Episode 3 – Entrance
• Super Lucky’s Tale
• Space Observatory Suddenly Closed Because of Child Porn Investigation, Not Aliens, Authorities Say
• AnimalInYou.com

News:

• Distressed Shoes Sell for $530
• Spiders blamed after broken siren played creepy nursery rhymes randomly at night to UK townsfolk
• Colorado Football Mascot Chip Shoots Self In Groin With T-Shirt Cannon
• Ig Nobel win for kidney stone removing roller-coaster
• London Police Outfoxed, Abandon 3-Year Search For Serial Cat Killer
• Octopus Ecstacy Experiment
• Pot Shop Robbery
• Italian Doctors Invent New Tool To Remove 23-inch Dildo From Man’s Rectum

Emails:

• Severely introverted and shy – Silver Moonshine

[Live] Involuntary Escape Room

The King of Birds is a new hardcover graphic novel, written and illustrated in full color by Alexander Utkin. It’s published by Nobrow Press: “The King of Birds has victoriously defeated the King of Animals, but he is left gravely injured. He promises a merchant a great reward if he can nurse him back to health. Upon his recovery, they travel far across the land to the domains of the King’s three sisters to claim the merchant’s prize… but can his sisters overcome their greed and give up that which is most precious to them?” This is the first story in the new Gamayun Tales series of Russian folk tales — hosted by the titular Gamayun, a human-faced bird who tells stories. Check out the review over at Broken Frontier. The book is available now.

image c. 2018 Nobrow Press

@LondonFurs are a large community of creative artists, costumers, and fans of anthropomorphised animals. “We host bi-annual seasonal events, too!”

If you’re anywhere near the UK, get ready for their Furry Invasion event at the Heart of Gaming, in Croydon, London. It’s an evening of tournaments, VR, arcade, and e-sports with prizes, and it’s sure to be the highlight of the LFG Online community.

“I’m super proud of the team involved in the set up and am really excited to be able to promote and support gamers in the furry community”, said Londonfurs chair Ani Boxer. The group has just bolstered its committee with new members. It’s currently run by 20 volunteers and is soon to have it’s 300th furmeet. Whatever game brings you to this meet, everyone’s a winner with dedication like that.

For #FursuitFriday we have a lion playing "His Theme" from Undertail.
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This was written as introduction for a planned series. I edited it to stand alone in response to recent events of bad things being exposed. Expect to see it reposted in the future to fit a series. It’s kind of a thinkpiece to provoke open ended conversation. Let’s start with a weird question… (- Patch)

Q: How are furries like Catholic Nuns? 

Aside from silly headgear or being anthropomorphic penguins… this isn’t about being moralistic, but it involves contrasting black-and-white appearances.

Do nuns make you think nice thoughts about The Sound of Music or Mother Teresa, with harmless ladies playing guitar and taking care of orphans?

For a huge contrast, now think of scandals with abusive priests, where churches shift them from diocese to diocese to cover it up. It’s easy to assume nuns don’t do abuse like that. Until news comes out that they do, but the church hasn’t been accountable. This news may be loaded with a certain counterintuitiveness that increases the WTF factor. But in both cases, it’s dishonest to blame individuals for an institutional problem.

Furry fandom is made of loose federations of groups. Almost all of them are super positive and friendly and it would be gross exaggeration to suggest an institutional problem like above. It’s not a church with a pope. At worst, dramatic stories like a ring of abuse in Pennsylvania was limited to personal friendships that didn’t go as far as alleged. (Lupinefox, who was accused of hosting it at his house, was found not guilty on all charges in court.)

Art: Technicolor Pie

Like anywhere else, fandom has a section of wrongdoers. They may get away with it by moving from group to group with little documenting. Fandom has no single leaders, just volunteer organizers or mods who may passively tolerate bad members by saying: “it didn’t happen here, it’s not our problem…” 

If nobody claims responsibility, is everybody blameless? You can say of course “it’s not our problem” when it’s just individuals.

But then comes a group habit of flipping blame at those who speak out (which will be a followup topic to this article.) People dismiss serious and well-founded problems as drama. That’s where “not our problem” becomes a problem itself, especially if it’s a pre-programmed habit.

Habits aren’t just for nuns. (See also):

• Geek Social Fallacies – individual principles don’t work the same on group level.
• The Missing Stair – A group may excuse an untrustworthy member by working around them, rather than dealing with them.

Complicity is a good word for a group habit of harboring dysfunction and dismissing accountability. Let me emphasize that I don’t think it’s a fandom problem (fandom has the solution too). It’s a human problem that happens with sub-groups of this subculture.

A followup article will look deep into sub-groups that aren’t just passive, but exist to manipulate these group habits. They straddle a line of individual deniability for members. To cover up complicity, they claim “guilt by association” as a two-faced tactic. They even project on others, like throwing grease on the stairs and accusing people who point out broken stairs.

More and more, fandom is no longer buying excuses for complicity.

More about truth, denial, and complicity in geek spaces.

Recently I brought some friends to the movie Blackkklansman. It was worth comparing to Sorry To Bother You (a movie recommended to furry fans for certain reasons I won’t spoil). They told stories with comic-book-lurid content but socially aware smarts. They’re fun with a point.

After the movie, we took time to digest it. I mentioned how the director of Sorry To Bother You had feedback about Blackkklansman that could change the understanding of what we saw.  It’s based on some real happenings but the story uses a made-up conflict for dramatic effect. Basically it pits law and order against racists for a simple hero/villain Hollywood fairy tale. But in real life, the good guy of the movie wasn’t such a good guy. You have to read outside the movie to learn the story-behind-the-story.

• Movie story: good guys vs. the KKK.
• Criticism:  Police were infiltrating and undermining activists that the KKK also hated (Martin Luther King was target of attempts to smear him.)

Furry relevant but no spoilers!

Our conversation jumped to Spotlight, the movie about exposing the scandal of child abuse by the Catholic Church.  This powerful, conservative institution hid pedophile priests by shuffling them from diocese to diocese, concealing records and the trail of victims. Confronting the church with lawyers made victims play David vs. Goliath. The church’s defense strategy was mainly saying “it’s too old” and relying on statutory limits (because they concealed evidence beyond the limits). That isn’t a real defense, it’s a deflection – and they just couldn’t avoid stone-cold facts. Justice hadn’t happened, so whether the law accommodated it or not, the social confrontation brought out a story-behind-the-story.

My movie watching friends included someone of an older generation, who had studied to be a Catholic nun in the 1960’s in the Northeast US, the millieu of these happenings.  They commented “You never hear about nuns doing that, it tells you about who should be in charge”. Sure, nuns look like harmless old ladies, but harm is contextual. I answered “you don’t hear about it because people think they aren’t capable, and that’s how they get away with it.” (My reference included the “Magdelane laundries” of Ireland, and the residential school system of Canada where horrifying abuse was covered up.)

Like a voodoo prophecy come true, a week later, a journalistic expose was published about abuse in orphanages by Catholic nuns in the northeast US. It’s extensively documented by the article, but it was harder to expose than the Spotlight story – because they didn’t just shuffle abusers around to conceal evidence, they didn’t keep records at all. The reporting relies on testimony. The institutional response was to not just rely on statutory limits, but also portray victims as old and confused despite “a vast and horrifying matrix of corroboration”.  It took social confrontation to bring out a story-behind-the-story.

• We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage

If you read it, you may notice this example of dishonest both-sidesing:

When the system enables this kind of institutional complicity, it changes from an equal both-sides disagreement to a David vs. Goliath battle.

Goliath straddles lines. In the first example (Blackkklansman) it looks like a good vs. evil story, but the lines become blurry when you look deeper. In the second example (Church abuse) it is a good vs. evil story, but the church wants to hide it by making blurry lines.

Sometimes truth benefits from a tug-of-war across blurry lines, but sometimes that’s dishonest. The issue is when to dismiss reactionary contrarianism and keep some basic things crystal-clear, black-and-white. It’s easy with institutional child abuse. Same for hate groups who have no legitimate reason to exist.

A productive discussion can benefit from a variety of perspectives. Not all are legitimate. They must reject bad faith and complicity with it. That’s why a supposed division about “both sides” about nazis or child abusers isn’t a legitimate disagreement, and isn’t about right vs. left. It’s about lying vs. truth.

For differing perspectives in good faith, from people who value individualism (perhaps conservative or libertarian), I’ve learned to appreciate that no individual is a statistic. That’s how you can look at nuns as responsible for abuse (no matter whether women or powerful men run the church.)  From the type of person concerned with “social justice”, the kind who doesn’t excuse institutional abuse, I’ve learned that you can only bend statistics and facts so far before they break from reality.

Having a certain narrative or side isn’t a problem as long as some things are commonly held to be non-negotiable, with no “centrist” compromise or “alternative facts”, they can’t be deflected and aren’t “fake news” or “not our problem”.

A fandom has a real community, but little top-down power. It makes a group dynamic where it’s hard to get accountability and easy to fall into denial and complicity. That can be both a strength and a weakness. Abusers don’t get protection of some pope somewhere. But there’s also few watchdogs with enough vision to easily catch them manipulating it.

There’s just everyone. Each member who claims any part in the group has the power to demand better from others. When everyone expects better, there’s nothing that abusers/trolls/enablers can do to call that a division, dismiss it as drama, demand centrist compromise with bullshit, or call bad faith a matter of individual freedom. That’s when you get a united community of individuals all wanting one thing – a good place to enjoy what brought them there.

Very well said. https://t.co/Myzd7Xdkcj

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) September 19, 2018

Good thread linked within

TL;DR: "Fraudulent ideas" are toxic goods that destroy the "marketplace of ideas"

(and that's why you don't play the debate me game with altfurs and alt right hate groups, and it doesn't matter what convenient label they use)https://t.co/sS82ynlXwn

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) September 6, 2018

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With a name like Taco, this rodent is gonna be different… maybe even difficult. “This is a squirrel . . . ‘Hey, I may be a squirrel, but my name is Taco! And I don’t eat nuts and tree bark — blech — I prefer tacos!’ The natural predator of squirrels is . . . ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! Who is writing this book? I do not like where this is going.’ This hilarious send-up of a children’s nature primer teaches kids that the most important story is the one you write yourself.” This Is A Taco was written by Andrew Cangelose and illustrated by Josh Shipley. It’s available now from the Cubhouse imprint of Lion Forge. Check it out at Barnes & Noble.

image c. 2018 Cubhouse

It's well known fact that bears are really into natural gas so they are good spokes-bears. https://youtu.be/-J4WWzkf92E
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