Historical debates
Retrospective: Seymour Eaton's 'The Roosevelt Bears'
Posted by Fred on Sun 30 Sep 2012 - 04:14
From 1905 for about the next twenty years, Seymour Eaton's anthropomorphic bears were the subject of some of the most popular children’s books in America. Their topical popularity was due to the tie-in between the bears and Teddy Roosevelt during the 1900s when TR was President of the U.S., and the 1910s when there was widespread speculation whether he would try to run for a third term.
But Eaton died in 1916 and Roosevelt died just two months after World War I ended. The publisher tried to keep the series alive with reprints in 1921, but by the Roaring ‘20s American pop culture had moved on, and TR and the Roosevelt Bears became quickly passé.
Furry Movie Award Watch: May
Posted by crossaffliction on Mon 14 May 2012 - 17:58Now seems like a good time to do the “we got snubbed at the Academy Awards” article that every niche-genre news-and-review site must run at least once a year by law. Okay, so it's not exactly forging ahead into 2012, but not much is happening.
Fur Affinity changes thumbnails; more updates promised
Posted by Rakuen Growlithe on Fri 6 Apr 2012 - 02:16Fur Affinity has just released a new thumbnail system and promised further updates for the site over the coming week. As I've criticised FA for not providing updates, I can't very well ignore this development. So, first off, congratulations to FA for doing basic site maintenance. However, the promised updates appear little more than a coat of paint to distract from the real problems.
Flayrah's top stories in 2011
Posted by GreenReaper on Sun 25 Dec 2011 - 21:57
2011 was a busy year for Flayrah, with over 80,000 front-page visitors. More than half went on to read a story; others jumped directly to them. But which of our 350 stories did they like, and what might occasional readers have missed?
Furry Movie Award Watch: October
Posted by crossaffliction on Sun 30 Oct 2011 - 01:47This is an opinion column, but this month I’m using that tag a bit more than usual, as I discuss the Academy’s bias against animated movies.
I’ll then tell you what’s wrong, not with the Ursa Majors, but with me covering them.
Lastly, I might actually have something to say about the Annies. Maybe.
Review: 'Sixes Wild: Manifest Destiny', by Tempe O'Kun
Posted by Fred on Fri 29 Jul 2011 - 19:13
Sixes Wild: Manifest Destiny by Tempe O’Kun. Illustrated by ShinigamiGirl. St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, June 2011 Paperback $15.95 (vii + 147 pages)This slim volume is described on the Sofawolf LiveJournal as "a straight western crossdressing romance." It is more a straight Western, except for steamy interludes where the crossdressing hare gunslinger and the fruit bat sheriff lose their clothes and get into each other’s fur.
Sixes Wild is intended for an adult audience only and contains explicit sexual material of Male/Female nature. It is not for sale to persons under the age of 18.
This stereotypical Frontier drama, set in a small town in Arizona, is an unusual mixture of funny animals and anthropomorphics. Most of the folk of White Rock are typical funny animal characters who could just as easily have been humans: Six (Six Shooter), the hare outlaw; Doc Richards, the fox saloon-keeper; Harding, the bloodhound deputy sheriff; Morgan, the squirrel farrier; the ’yote native Americans; Morris, the villain’s marmot henchman; and so forth.
And then there is Jordan Blake, the fruit bat sheriff.
Nintendo announces Super Smash Bros. 4
Posted by crossaffliction on Fri 10 Jun 2011 - 23:54Surprising no one, Nintendo announced at this year’s E3 that it will release a new Super Smash Bros. for its forthcoming Wii U console. The fighting series includes furry Nintendo characters such as Fox McCloud and Lucario, plus guest character Sonic the Hedgehog.
Series creator Masahiro Sakurai has not ruled out the possibility of a release on the 3DS, which would be the first installment of the series on a handheld video game system.
The game or games, though definitely coming to at least the Wii U, are not yet in production. Sakurai’s studio, Sora, is currently working on the 3DS game Kid Icarus: Uprising, and may defer Super Smash Bros. until its completion, giving furry gamers plenty of time to petition for inclusion of their favorite characters.
FA user suspended over alleged 'password harvesting'
Posted by Rakuen Growlithe on Thu 19 May 2011 - 08:07Fur Affinity user Xaevo was suspended from the main site and banned from #furaffinity after being accused of password harvesting and insulting Summercat, a support administrator.
Xaevo posted a link in the chatroom to a site that he claimed would allow people to see their FA stats regardless of who they were logged in as. Summercat criticised the site asking for users' FA passwords and requested that the site be taken down as it was phishing.
[14:18:14] <Summercat> Xaevo, please take it down.
[14:18:23] <Xaevo> no, i see no reason to take it down
Xaevo continued to protest the accusations of phishing, saying that phishing only applied when you were masquerading as a trustworthy entity. He maintained that his source code was public and did not save any passwords. When Summercat called it password harvesting, Xaevo called him a 'noob', and was banned from the chat room and suspended from the main site.
Update: 45 minutes later, Xaevo's suspension was lifted.
Brooklyn Anthropomorphic Taxidermy class sold out
Posted by Higgs Raccoon on Fri 18 Feb 2011 - 06:36A class on Anthropomorphic Taxidermy was held last Sunday in Brooklyn, New York, suggesting that the hobby is far from a historical pursuit.
Run by taxidermist and tattoo artist Susan Jeiven, the $45 class assumed no prior experience, and supplied each student with a deceased mouse obtained from a snake-feed store. The 15 places quickly sold out.
Furry Study 2011; participants requested
Posted by Furry News Network on Wed 9 Feb 2011 - 17:01To better help understand the "Furry Fandom" - the mindsets of the participants, and how we compare to and differ from other fandoms (i.e. sci-fi and fantasy based fandoms), the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York, are conducting an international online survey of the Furry Fandom.
Conducting the study is Courtney "Nuka" Plante, a furry social psychology graduate student at the University of Waterloo and Dr. Kathy Gerbasi, a social psychologist at the Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York.
Dr. Gerbasi and Courtney (Nuka) have been studying furries through the use of rigorous scientific methodology in the hopes of understanding furries and their fandom. There is a lot of bad media and misinformation about furries, and they hope that by scientifically studying the furry fandom they can do away with misconceptions regarding the furry fandom.
Continue reading at Furry News Network, and see Flayrah's prior coverage of Dr. Gerbasi's work.
Update (20 Feb): The survey has concluded, with almost 7000 responses – wildly exceeding the 250–1000 anticipated. Now the analysis begins!
