Month: May 2016
“Flicker” – FWA 2016 Music Video feat. Rahne Kallon
This is NIIC: The Singing Dog!
FA is down Yet Again
I have completely lost track of how many times FA has been down over the last 3 years. But yet furries keep coming back, worse yet they are surprised when someone steals what they got posted. Usually by copyists claiming they created it. I know a bunch has said this in the past. It is time to think about posting your stuff on another site.
Official Report: as originally posted on the FA Forum
It was brought to our attention last night (May 16) that someone had obtained a copy of Fur Affinity’s source code via the recent exploit in the ImageMagick library (a common server-side image processing software). This exploit was patched earlier in this month, but not before a malicious user was able to download a copy of our source code, and later actively distributed it via USB drives at a convention.
We managed to get a hold of one of the USB drives and started to analyze what was distributed. While we were investigating, somebody launched a second attack against the site using information gleaned from the source code.
This attack targeted the site’s database by deleting user information, submissions, and watches. It was stopped before any further damage could be done. Other information such as journals, notes, passwords, and personal information was not affected. We’re currently in the process of doing a security audit on the existing code and closing any loopholes which may be accessible from the source code.
We are also working to restore the deleted data. Our most recent full backup is from May 11, so approximately 6 days worth of new user registrations, account watches, and new submissions have been lost due to the attack. We are still trying to evaluate the scope of the attack.
We apologize for the inconvenience to the community, and are working to rectify the issues. If anyone has any knowledge/evidence as to who perpetrated the attack, or who was distributing the USB drives containing FA’s source code, please privately contact Dragoneer on Twitter (@Dragoneer) or via email at dragoneer@furaffinity.net.
We are working to restore FA as quickly as we can, but want to make sure we take proper steps to prevent any further issues. We will keep the community updated on our progress.
Uncle Kage Assaulted Rumor
There is this big rumor going around that Uncle Kage was assaulted at BLFC. Let me go on record saying it was a hoax, started by someone claiming to be Uncle Kage on Twitter. Who is perfectly fine.
Kiba’s Furry Weekend Atlanta 2016 Con Video (FWA2016)
Mascot Fur Life – Teaser trailer – 2016 – Fursuit Film Project
REVIEW OF BARSK by Thurston Howl
REVIEW OF BARSK, by Lawrence M. Schoen
Barsk follows a similar thread to Adams’ Watership Down or Clement-Davies’ Sight trilogy. While it is not exclusively a furry story, it deals solely with anthropomorphic animal characters, predominantly the Fant.
This story is generally science fiction, taking place long after humans are gone, and many animals have become standing, intelligent beings with their own culture, history, government, and religion. Barsk itself is the world of the Fant, the anthro-elephants of this universe. Through a drug known as koph, certain Fant are able to communicate with members of the dead with whom they were close. The two main characters, Jorl and Pizlo, find themselves trying to survive amid the many intergalactic forces who are trying to mine Barsk for the secret of koph. While Barsk had once been completely safe from outside forces due to their constant exportation of the drug, with many parties now desperate to understand the drug and possibly manufacture some of their own, Barsk and its inhabitants are no longer safe.
The plot is certainly emotional as we see Jorl speak with dead family and friends frequently throughout the narrative. However, what this book excels with is its incredible imagery and world-building. We are immediately immersed—but not lost—in new languages, mythologies, politics, and social structures. While, again, this level of culture is typically seen in Watership Down and The Sight, it was a pleasant surprise to see this applied more to science fiction, as opposed to fantasy. I hear some fans in the background calling, “What about Star Wars?” A valid point, but, at least with the mainstream canon, that universe is typically devoid of the rich mythos and deep immersion prevalent in Barsk. It is refreshing to see an anthro-animal sci fi novel that makes the characters the perfect blend of human and animal: they are completely relatable while still being highly animalistic. That is, we can connect with the characters without ever thinking they are not animals.
With the plot’s emotional developments and high level of action, one would expect an intense ending. However, that is just not the case here. As is my frequent critique of anthro-animal literature, the ending seems incredibly rushed, with the author struggling to tie all the loose ends in twenty pages or less. I won’t include spoilers this time, but the ending comes off as too mechanical, losing much of the mystic quality that pervades 90% of the plot.
A further issue I take with this novel is the downplaying of the secondary characters. Many of the secondary characters become mere caricatures or cookie-cutters, rather than actually deep individuals. With such a rich world at the author’s disposal, I would have expected a more serious consideration of characters besides the two primary protagonists.
Even with the critiques regarding the ending and secondary characters aside, this is definitely a book that I would recommend to any furry reader or fan of Richard Adams or David Clement-Davies. The world-creation in play with this novel is on point at best, and it would be a real treasure to see Schoen not only continue to delve into the world of the Fants but also into more of the other worlds of this universe. A stellar read!
Danger Mouse Review
A brand new series of Danger Mouse is currently available on Netflix. Let me tell you the series will not disappoint. It plays homage to both the original classic series which ran between 1981 – 1991 and today’s audience. Of course there has been some major changes…which I think make the series more enjoyable. In the original they shared the world with humans and there size often varied in scale. But in the new series Danger Mouse lives in a world of anthropomorphic animals. The faster pace really helps the series…as the original could sometimes drag. Their M is now a woman who speaks her mind. She doesn’t hold back if she thinks something stupid is going on.
Other than that and new stories obviously, the new Danger Mouse series is quite fun, I am happy to see they kept the sometimes silly interaction with the narrator in the new series and the voices are almost an exact match of the original series.
One last thing I thoroughly get the joke. In the original series Danger mouse lived in a pillar box IE Mailbox. Except he and the organization he belongs to now works out of an office building size pillar box. It’s silly, funa and great all at the same time. All I can say if you have Netflix of have access to CBBC go check it out. It’s furry friendly.
Saluting Our Muslim Furries
Why is it that even mentioning the word muslim freaks people out. Just look at the number of incidents on airplanes. One even included a Math Professor who was asked to leave a plane, because someone thought what he was working on as he was waiting on the plane to take off looked like Arabic. Get a life, not all Muslims are Terrorists. In fact my landlord is Muslim, and the janitor to my building is also a Muslim. I have the greatest respect for them. So please don’t freak out about this post. It’s just a post.
Furry Times 