Mental Illness In A Half-Shell (Bleak Ramblings Of A Depressed Furry) by Perri Prinz

The time has come for more self analysis. In all the talk and arguments about Furry Fandom recently, I’ve begun to wonder if I’m still a Furry fan or if my tastes have significantly changed, as it seems ages since I have felt any enthusiasm at all for watching cartoons, reading any Furry novels or even working on my own story.

Some of this I suppose could be attributed to my near suicidally depressing home life, but then my life has always been fraught with pain and difficulty. If anything living a hard life has, in the past, just fueled my need to escape into something cute and pleasant.

Yesterday I was over a friend’s place, and the friend left me alone for an hour or so with nothing to do but watch My Little Pony on his TV, which is a lot bigger than my set and gets High-Def cable. But no pony cuteness rush was forthcoming. The High-Def just made the outer lines of the characters easier to see, which was a constant reminder of what a cheap cartoon I was watching. Not only that, but it was just like solid blocks of colors everywhere, like a coloring book filled in with digital paint instead of crayons.

And I was thinking constantly, “How can adults watch this with the same enthusiasm they’d give to something like Star Trek or Doctor Who?” But what do I care why others watch it or what they see in it? It was so much easier back in the 80’s when I didn’t have to care what adults saw in MLP because I was the only adult who gave a care about it.

Now it’s a whole other ballgame because I’m connected to this whole internet full of people watching the same stuff I’m watching, seeing things in it that are different from what I see, and arguing that this is some kind of artistic breakthrough, rather than just something I watch to get my cute fix. And it didn’t help that these were Spike and Pinkie Pie episodes I was stuck watching, which didn’t have all that much gratuitous cuteness for me to get off on.

The thought has crossed my mind that I’ve just grown out of this stuff, like I grew out of Anime. Maybe what I need is something Furry that really isn’t made for kids. Something with the adult-minded sophistication I look for non-Furry works. I’m sure such stuff exists in the fandom, but I’m not really up for the challenge. I’m sure it would just put me to sleep, as everything else seems to do these days.

Anyway, what does it mean when watching animation becomes a useless dwelling on the nature of the art to the detriment of getting caught up in the illusion the art is supposed to provide? It means one has grown up to the point of becoming technical minded. Or, more likely, my mind is elsewhere, dwelling on some “Adult” BS I’m currently involved in; somebody I’m arguing with on the net about a fandom I continue to feel responsible for, even though I find it difficult to show where I’m still participating in it or getting any enjoyment at all out of it.

Always people want to argue about the fandom, what it’s for, what it’s supposed to be about, who it’s supposed to serve, and who should somehow be locked out of this thing that is supposedly based on someone’s taste in entertainment, as apposed to some kind of virtual community with theoretical rules as to what makes one belong there.

It’s all just kind of falling apart; the ideas no longer having enough logical glue to hold themselves together, leaving me with this overwhelming feeling of wasting my life on something with no reality at all.

It was different back in the days when I was all alone in these interests, when I alone cared what a Furry was, because Furry was just a word I made up to describe the genre I wrote in, which nobody else cared about, because nobody else realized there was some kind of relationship between Bambi and Watership Down, or would have thought it the most useless bit of information to point out.

Come to think of it, has “Genre classification shared by Felix Salten and Richard Adams” ever been a question on Jeopardy? And if it was, would some word I made up to describe that genre be considered an acceptable answer? Even to this day when so many people have adopted the word I chose, probably not.

Why? Probably for the same reason everyone I seem to meet through this community wants to argue with me about it. They all consider it their word to define as they will, their community to support or tear down to their heart’s content, their fantasy of some intangible non-reality where they conceive themselves as holding some kind of power over other people.

No, it isn’t any of that crap. It’s just a matter of do you care enough to see that there’s a relationship between Bambi, Watership Down, Bugs Bunny, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, My Little Pony, Spice & Wolf and Zootopia. The mundane world does not. If you even notice there’s a relationship between these things, you are not mundane. And the mundane of this world would regard that as some kind of illness one should seek treatment for.

That much hasn’t been changed by all these thousands of people who now share my original discovery. The existence of a Furry Community has not made me seem more sane. It just makes it seem like I’ve found a lot more crazy people to hang out with. And admittedly, when I was younger I thought hanging out with crazy people would probably be fun.

But you know what? It’s not. Because a lot of these people are not only genuinely crazy, they’re downright mean. They want to hurt each other, because this word “Furry” has been elevated to some sacred religion-like status. It’s something people are expected to build a lifestyle around. It’s something that’s almost achieved the status of being an alt-sexuality one has to come out of the closet about. It’s literally gotten to the point of there being so much craziness involved that I don’t even want to be bothered trying to keep up with it anymore. It’s just lost all interest for me.

As a means of describing the genre I write in, Furry was useful. As a means of YouTuber A calling out YouTuber B for saying things he never said which prove he’s a pervert trying to deny the sexual motivation of the fandom, it’s worse than useless. It does nothing to maintain my connection to the titles that fall under the Furry genre. It doesn’t keep me involved with them, having a reason to care about them, or even to remember why I thought it was worth building my life around them.

In these most essential things, Furry Fandom provides no support at all. It just runs around in circles like a crazy thing trying to convince itself it’s something of such outstanding social importance that it shouldn’t even be bothered about justifying itself as a fandom. And after 40 odd years of this insanity, I don’t even have a clear memory of what was supposed to be so all-fired great about this business of talking animals.

I do remember that it all started with Bambi, and that the moral of the Bambi novel could be interpreted as meaning, “Don’t join a fandom, because fandoms are for idiots who prattle and pontificate all day about things they don’t have the slightest understanding of. Instead, keep to yourself, in order that the purity of your perception and understanding should remain uncluttered with the insane twittering of idiots.”

Sadly that’s all we do in the internet age. We expose ourselves constantly to the tweets of the most unknowledgeable, imperceptive idiots on Earth; each in search of a following for their own peculiar idiocy. That chattering, narrow minded flock of seagulls whose life is nothing but fighting for scraps of fish, or in this case, scraps of self-validation to justify their existence. So Jonathan Livingston Seagull illustrated, leaving it’s protagonist no path to self-development but to get away from the squabbling flock.

Hmmm, let me see. What was Watership Down about? That was about starting a community, wasn’t it? Or was it about breaking away from crazy totalitarian societies to go live in seclusion from enslaving ideas on top of a big hill?

What about The Rats Of NIMH, what was that about? Oh yeah, going away from humans to live in an isolated valley because human ideas were not moral enough for enlightened rats.

One might get the impression that the concept of Furry in the days before the internet was rather anti-Twitter. I can see an over arching theme in the stories that started all this for me to the effect of, if you don’t want your life to be dominated by BS, you must get yourself far away from the major sources of BS. And unfortunately, that is what the society inspired by these stories developed into; a source of so much BS that any Furry with a capacity to think for his/her self wouldn’t come within a mile of it.

This means that anything I add to the cacophony becomes just as much BS as anything else, because what we’re talking about is an illusion; a pipe dream that exists only in our heads as we individually define it. An no description of an individual’s perception of Furry Fandom can have any relevance to anyone else’s, because everyone is dreaming it up independently.

This is why we see people like Green Reaper with such a drive to push a particular conception of Furry Fandom. Doesn’t matter whether he personally believes in it or not. It just seems good for the fandom that individual dreams of this total unreality should be unified as much as possible by imposing a narrative, a biblical list of begats that starts with Fred Patton and ends with himself begetting Wikifur and Flayrah, where he now sits enthroned as the laid-back dictator of fandom perception.

What a pity that people like me who prove that narrative is BS just by existing won’t go away and allow him to organize the perception of all these squabbling Furries into the image of his own thinking. Maybe in a few years when all the voices that can attest to Furry having some kind of presence before 1980 have been silenced, Green will become absolute dictator of Furry history. And you know what? I don’t give a damn what fantasy this fandom eventually endorses as canon, or whether it includes me or not.

I don’t think I’ve contributed anything of lasting value to the world that anyone should cry if it was lost. I don’t think the fandom has either. I think this current incarnation of the fandom will eat itself alive with intolerance, threats of violence, unreasonable infighting, and a total failure to maintain the foundation of what all this is built upon. It will all devolve into chaos and eventually just fizzle out as people find better things to do. And it will eventually be as forgotten as the Funny Animal Fandom of the 1940’s.

Maybe, in 60 years or so, old people will sit around reminiscing about their glory days on the internet, trying to recall all the long dead sub-cultures they trolled and bullied. Maybe in passing they’ll try to remember Furries. But by then all the old sites will have been deleted. Hell, even now I can’t take you back to drama sites that existed just 10 years ago. They’re wiped out without a trace.

All that will remain is the commercial media, which will still be popular, but will have passed back to the Disney and other such fandoms. And people will just be fans of it. They won’t think themselves part of some all inclusive sub-culture that couldn’t stop fighting over who to exclude. They won’t build a lifestyle around what they like. They may still FAP to it, but hopefully not in public.

Though maybe even this is wishful thinking. Some say the unique conditions that created Furries by inundating children with anthropomorphic animals during crucial times of development can never be duplicated. And who knows what hardships the future may hold that will eliminate the freedoms necessary for any fandom to exist?

Ah, yes. It could be that we are living in the golden age of BS. And it will be my posthumous satisfaction to have the world that exists now be as dead and disrespected as the world I grew up in is now.

Heck, I expect the disrespect coming to this era will be far worse than mine. The music of my time will probably still be played on radio, if it has not taken on the status of Classical Music. The music of this era may not even survive, as it was preserved mostly on perishable media with a shelf life expectancy of 20 years. Not to mention there is nothing classic to the music itself that people who weren’t inundated by it at the time of its popularity will be able to relate to. That is, assuming the world survives in such a state were people can even enjoy music, or if they don’t end up in some dictatorship that judges all music made after 1955 to be subversive, or under inaccessibly expensive copyrights; leaving The Ink Spots on the cutting edge forever after, like in Fallout.

Actually, if things go that way, Furry media will be banned as well, if for no other reason than the state will be able to point to the idiocy of Furry Fandom and determine that Furry media creates maladjustment in children. It’ll all be burned in big bond fires when the Communists take over, assuming Trump or whoever takes over for him doesn’t initiate some nuclear holocaust that will leave nothing but cockroaches alive to see whatever media we leave behind as nothing but good places to build nests in.

No matter how hard I search I can’t find a positive note to end this on. The human race is a total failure at working together as a unit towards the goal of its own survival. Everything it builds is doomed to eventually fail. And one of the things I used to like about Furry was that it pointed stuff like that out, hopefully to the end that we would realize our folly and do something about it. But no such luck.

It seems we’re fully aware that the human race is totally off the rails insane, but nobody cares, because insane people spend ridiculous amounts of money on impractical stuff that does nothing to feed or stabilize the world, giving a few of the nutters a chance to live out their lives in luxury, while the rest of us pull our hair out over totally useless politics that gets us worse than nowhere.

And nowhere is where I think I’m going to leave this, because I don’t have anymore time to try to resolve it. I’m just crazy. My needle can’t track the record humanity expects me to play. It just keeps skipping from one depressing thought to the next, never being able to find a hopeful passage. The only way to bridge the skips is to make up more totally fabricated BS that will justify everything and make the whole record sound like “The Wall,” a beautifully depressing work of art. But I’m trying to be honest here. And nothing real I can find in my pile of honest realities is in any way beautiful.

Furry Writer Guild the Complete Truth

I think it’s finally time to tell everyone the true story of what happened between me and the Furry Writers Guild.

I was originally told about that site and Flayrah by one of it’s members. In fact when I registered for the site, there was a bit of a wait before I was allowed on. But really it was less than 40 mins.

I know what some have said about the membership rules, that you had to have publish a certain number of books or articles. Really I have no idea why I was approved. All I remember is talking to the forum’s boss shortly after who really seemed like a nice guy. He was eager for me to report on my blog of my experiences at the FWG, so they get new members. I told him of my own goals to eventually get one of my stories published, but to find guidance to help make my blog even better, and he wished me the best.

Overall the Furry Writers Guild Forum is not a bad forum, in fact I got some really good advice. Also leads to stories I eventually posted.

But being always curious, I decided to check out there chatroom. It seems the only ones that would even speak to me was the other newbies, those who had been there for a while simply ignored me. Then I made that fateful post on Rainfurrest 2015. That was when things started to go bad for me, I was insulted, my post ridiculed, I was even told it was even wrong to ask anything about the fur con that killed the fandom in the NW. Mind you this was on the actual thread. A couple even said I should be punished for asking such a question, while I was in the chatroom.

From then on it got worse, no one would even had anything to do with me. My posts ignored, and while in chat being totally ignored. Finally after a couple of weeks of this. Another member told me of the cliches, also called discussion groups. Unless you were apart of one, no one would have anything to do with you. I did not assume that, I was actually told that…directly. It was repeated the 2 other times I tried to use their chat…and I did try to join one. Oh boy, did the shit hit the fan afterwards. There was a few who ripped up my blog, tearing at what they saw was a constant series of repeating the same mistakes repeated over and over again.

I been online for roughly 10 years, I have shared possibly 1000s of links. But with some members, it isn’t allowed. I found out they could kick you out if you shared a link of a fellow member…without asking 1st.

I think that is crazy too.

I could go on about how some of the members took delight in making me the target of their hate. But I am taking the high road when it comes to this post.

In short I have no idea if this was an isolated case or the norm with some of their members, all I know is I am never going back to their site ever again.

The Cancer That Is Killing Furry Fandom by Perri Prinz

On second thought, I really do need to write something in depth on this censorship issue, if just to get the silenced perspective on it out there. So, let me put a little historical perspective on it.

From the beginning (The 80’s & 90’s) The Furry Community consisted of two factions. There was the fandom, which were non-professional people who enjoyed anthropomorphic animals, and there were professional cartoonists who drew anthropomorphic animals for a living, often for adult titles that included NSFW content; everything from the gratuitous sex scenes of Omaha The Cat Dancer to the lite risque issues of Shanda The Panda. That stuff was part of the scene from the beginning. Before the beginning, really, considering the “Underground Comix” scene the fandom grew out of. It wasn’t something the fans brought to the table.

There was, in fact . . . I don’t want to say a thriving adult oriented Funny Animal comic industry, but at least a very active one at the time, spitting out hundreds of fly by night titles of varying quality, trying to capitalize on the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And all these artists being considered professional, because they were getting paid for their work.

Past the mid 90’s, these Funny Animal artists where riding on the coat-tails of Anime Fandom, which was also spitting out a plethora of titles that were only moderately successful, and had the same intent of appealing to adults by any sordid means necessary, but generally through an over concentration on sex and violence. And it seemed as if they might actually be going to get somewhere with this when Pokemon came along, which kicked comic sales up to what was then an unheard of level of mass appeal. But then, just as suddenly, the comics market crashed.

Actually, there’s an eerie parallel there with how Zootopia seemed destined to blast Furry Fandom into the mainstream, and now it’s crashing. But I’m getting ahead of the story. Just remember to refer back to this.

What happens when a moderately successful market crashes is you get a lot of people who were looking forward to stable, well-paying jobs suddenly finding it difficult to stay in business. Add to this that the internet was taking over at this point, which was giving fan artists a better opportunity than those working for professional publications.

This left a number of commercial artists, who may have been unstable to begin with, pulling their hair out as they attempted to find somebody to blame for their dwindling demand. And rather than blaming comic book speculators, as everyone else was doing, these Funny Animal cartoonists thought it was the fandom that should be blamed for all their hardships.

At the time, I was an Anime convention dealer, specializing in comics, among other things. And I regularly stocked what were then just starting to become known as “Furry” comics. But there were only a handful of these titles that appealed to me as a life long Furry fan. And I can tell you for a fact why I wasn’t collecting most of them.

Try to imagine this. These comics cost a ridiculous amount of money, they weren’t cute, they were black & white line drawings, and the stories had no appeal. With the exception of rare titles like Shanda The Panda which broke that mold, there was no reason for anyone to want to spend twice the amount being charged for comics that were speculated to go up instantly in value on comics that everyone knew would be in the clearance bin forever after. It was a very cheap product that took no consideration of its target market.

But suddenly comic book sales had fallen off a cliff, comic book companies and comic stores were closing right and left. And suddenly here was the internet, providing content for Furry fans by Furry fans in full irresistible color, for free.

So a number of the unstable disenfranchised artists began a trend towards abject hatred of the Furry Fandom, because they couldn’t make a living off of it. And to them this was the most evil thing. Something just had to be done about it.

And this was how you got your Burned Fur War. Contrary to popular misinformation that has come down through the ages, The Burned Fur War was not about porn. It was about Pro vs. Amateur. And the Pros were not squeaky clean Disney artists by any stretch of the imagination. Porn was part of their stock and trade.

What they wanted was the ability to control the fandom so that they would have a market that would sustain their crap. And when the fandom had the audacity to fight back against such proposed tyranny, these lunatic artists lit the fandom’s logo on fire and became The Burned Furs.

By all historical accounts, The Burned Furs were a lot like Antifa. They were unreasonably aggressive and antagonistic, attempting to accomplish their goals through intimidation. I’ve had the misfortune of meeting some of them. I still encounter some of them to this day. And they’re still scary as all hell.

The issues that were made out of Fans vs. Lifestylers were just as much a smokescreen for what was really going on as the porn; a tactic for dividing the fandom and increasing its vulnerability. They wouldn’t have been a problem if not for the unwarranted attention that was forced on them. And in time they would have been dealt with sensibly. But The Burned Furs made sure that no form of good sense would ever be allowed to thrive in The Furry Community.

After the initial conflict was over, The Burned Furs seemed to subside without having accomplished their goal. They didn’t get control of the fandom or the anthropomorphics market. But they had managed to devastate the fandom. At the height of the conflict Furry was all over the media, and The Burned Furs made sure Furry Fandom made the absolute worst impression on the world of any fandom ever. Kind of like what Flayrah and Dogpatch Press are trying to do right now. But, again, we’ll get back to that.

History tends to record that The Burned Furs went away. That is not true. Some changed their screen names. Some fell to near invisibility. Some realized the error of their ways and joined the fandom. But those that remained filled with contempt formed sites like Crush, Yiff, Destroy and became regular contributors to sites like Something Awful and Encyclopedia Dramatica, from which they continued to attack the fandom and keep its reputation hopelessly stained.

To make matters worse, old Burned Fur fighters like Xydexx lived ever after in a state of shell shock, never being able to accept that the war was over, making damn sure that everyone who came into the community had to take a side and be prepared to be at odds with the side they didn’t choose. Thus you had people on both sides of the fabricated issues equally dedicated to seeing that the fire was never completely put out.

Meanwhile, the true issue of the conflict, Professionals vs. Amateurs, has continued to bubble beneath the smokescreen all these years, with the supposed victors of the war doing everything they can to crush any aspirations a fur might have in regard to commercial success. In other words, throughout the 2000’s, those in power in the fandom, from Green Reaper all the way up to Uncle Kage, were actively resisting the commercialization of the fandom.

This is evident in the many diatribes that remain on the net that Furry Fandom is about things made by Furries for Furries, and that if you go commercial you can’t be part of the fandom anymore. And furthermore, if you’re part of the fandom, you must accept that the world will always regard you as the scum of the Earth, and any attempt that you make to help the fandom rise above its image of scum will be crushed by the fandom.

See, that’s not The Burned Furs talking. That’s the people who supposedly beat The Burned Furs. And that is how both victors and vanquished merged into a single horrible oppression which has been eating this fandom out from the inside ever since.

However, in the current decade, it has been difficult for that miasma to maintain it’s potency. Furs have been kicking it to the curb and daring to be ambitious. They have dared to appear respectable. And the world has been responding positively to them, all the way up to the point where Disney thought it was worth marketing a movie to them. And just like with Pokemon 20 years earlier, Furry Fandom stood on the edge of it’s big mainstream breakthrough. We were finally going to prove our point to the world that we were a fandom for something everyone could embrace and see the value of.

But did you really think old timers like Patch Packrat and Green Reaper were going to let that happen? Hell no. Not when they hold absolute power over the fandom’s main news services, and can thus project whatever image they want onto the fandom, censoring or blacklisting anyone with a contrary vision, and feed the worst possible image of the fandom directly to the mainstream media.

And right at this crucial time, Antifa surfaced. Should Antifa have meant anything to Furry Fandom? Absolutely not. But it was worth it to some trouble maker to insure an article would appear tying Antifa to Furry Fandom. And Antifa is useless if there are no Nazis around. So, if there are no Nazis around, Nazis have to be created.

So we ended up with this same faction of old timers from the Burned Fur days, now in power at conventions and news sites, looking for people who would make good targets to vilify as Nazis. 2 Gryphon, easy target. Furry Raiders, also an easy target. Useful as points of division for the fandom in duplicating the same unreasoning hostilities that fueled The Burned Fur War, with one major difference.

This time the battles are not fought on Usenet where both sides have an equal chance of being heard and considered. This time all attempts for reason to be heard have to be submitted for approval to the very elitists who are out to hold this fandom down, creating a situation where absolute suppression of truth is possible, and any alternative view, such as you’re reading here, will seem so far off the commonly accepted track that most people will just dismiss it without even thinking about it, saying to themselves, “This must be another one of those Nazis. And who cares what a Nazi has to say?”

And that is where Furry Fandom stands right now, in absolute control of those who carry the infection of Burned Fur – the elitists who finally have it within their power to rule without opposition, or to ultimately destroy the fandom if it won’t knuckle under to them. And you can see the success in their endeavor by the number of conventions that are suddenly closing, and how these news outlets are determined to tell you what to believe about why they’re closing, shutting out the more obvious reasons the con people themselves are stating.

Now, this is where I have to say a word about Ahmar Wolf. You might think he’s a little rant happy at this point. And you could say his perspective and emotions are more than just a bit distorted from his head injury. But he’s not wrong that he’s being persecuted by elitists. In particular, The Furry Writers Guild.

Now, some of you who know me, and how involved with Furry writing I am, might assume I’m probably a member of The Furry Writers Guild. Care to guess why I’m not? Because you have to have physically published something to join that group. Dig it? I’m a person who provides quality anthropomorphic content, in color, for free.

Same old same old, right back where this story began. You have people in the Pro market, desperate to save a dying business model, trying to crush people experimenting with new modes of distributing their work. Plus, we see that Furry Writers Guild is supported by both Flayrah and Dogpatch Press, which both focus on commercial titles, while someone like me who has 8 novels worth of content on a free site not only can’t get a review from them, but all my comments are hidden on Flayrah, and just straight up blacklisted on Dogpatch.

There’s another obvious target for the elitists riding on Antifa’s coat-tails, and that’s The Furred Reich, who is the only one on the scene who really looks like a Nazi, and actually has something to do with Nazis. But he doesn’t get hardly any exposure at all to the hate-mongering spotlight of the elitists. Why do you suppose that is? Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that The Furred Reich is a hard copy published author? That would make him eligible to join The Furry Writers Guild, if he has not done so already. And thus he does not occupy the same position of loathsomeness in the eyes of Flayrah as we who think continuing to publish on paper is a waste of perfectly good trees.

Now, I’m not going to say that Ahmar doesn’t have some problems that impair the quality of his blog, but whoever said a blog has to be perfect? That’s no reason for these elitists to treat him like he’s so beneath them that he has no justification for existence. All of us out here in the blogesphere do our best. And maybe in time we get better at it. But the point of blogging is to provide an alternative perspective to the mainstream or dominant influences on world belief.

Sites like Flayrah and Dogpatch are unashamed in their determination to have absolute control over the way the world perceives us, and the way we perceive ourselves. And being as they seem to support the Antifa perspective, which is once again allowing them to flood this community with unreasoning hate, do we really want to have no alternative to them? Don’t we need our independent bloggers to tell us its ok to give the elitists the middle finger when they tell us to see Nazis where there obviously are none?

The Reality of Ethics on Furry News Sites

Literally to find anyone with a blog that doesn’t violate any rules of ethics you can think of is just as rare as finding $100 bill on the sidewalk. This is perfectly understandable, since we pay for and maintain our own sites, we don’t want anyone telling us what we can and can not post. And frankly anyone who thinks they can shame someone into doing this is really out of their minds. I swear the 2 sites I see mention of an non existent code of furry ethics are the 2 biggest violators of them, namely Furry Writers Guild and Flayrah. Literally a week doesn’t go by that they don’t break their own rules. If you ask what proof I have I invite you to check out both sites and compare the post to this list of ethics I will go on record and fully admit I have violated 1 or possibly 2. But I am a blogger and we have the right to say what is on our minds. This also extends to the comments, why not my site my rules. How would you like someone to tell you exactly what to say, do or even think. Once when I was on the FWG site someone sent me a supposed guideline and one of the rules that all my posts had to be preapproved. Shades of a dictatorship…

Free Speech is still allowed in this country and I will continue to say what is on my mind, even though I will admit sometimes my view is slanted.

But that is my opinion.

Flayrah and Sonious

I think anyone would go through SHOCK, FEAR and OUTRAGE when you know a site is nailing your hide to the wall and you really can’t understand why. Then something hit me on my way home from work yesterday…how dumb this really is. Think about it, the 4 videos, the post and the 100+ comments over just 1 comment that I did not allow. I really found myself laughing out loud.

It is really the silliest thing I ever saw and I have seen some really dumb stuff in my life.

Let me answer his criticisms

Why do I limit comments?

One word SPAM originally, now include trolls. Honestly I get so few comments that aren’t done by bots. It makes more sense to me to approve everything. Besides they are just comments, not the bill of rights.

Why the limit on how long you can actually post a comment?
For the very same reason as above, for 2 years I opened my blog to anyone who wanted to make a comment. Everyday I would find myself deleting spam once I went beyond 50 in one day that is when I imposed the limit.

By limiting comments do I limit FREE SPEECH?
There is a fine line between free speech and hate and I do my best to weed out the hate. Over the years I have gotten some really insane comments. So basically I allow comments that are positive, have a valid counter view, or add to the discussion. Insulting me, this site or any author who I can beg to post something here will not be approved. In other words hate is a no, disagree post someone where on social media I could use the views.

So why was Perri Prinz’s article changed?
A question no one has asked me or Perri Prinz. I had permission of the author, and I got messages and I want to make this very clear (2) TWO people, 1+1=2. One was a friend of the author who didn’t not want their name mentioned, and later the author agreed. The other a mod, a person who actually ID’ed themselves as a mod for flayrah threatened me with a C&D if I didn’t take Flayrah’s name off of the article. What choice did I have.

Besides how many of you have posted a comment somewhere and frankly not even thought twice about it later. I would very much doubt if any of you can remember the 2nd to last comment you ever made. I can’t I doubt if anyone reading this can. It’s just something we throw at someone and hopes it sticks.

Not this Sonious it seems they never can let anything go. I found his YouTube channel yesterday, and checked out a couple of the vids. All I saw was someone who has a really difficult time letting things go. Meanwhile while watching these, I thought that this person must be a nightmare to be one of their neighbors. One of those neighbor’s from Hell.

Taking The High Ground

I fully admit acting like a kid with all the troubles recently. But at least I have an excuse I am recovering from a concussion, unlike the other parties involved. It took Perri Prinz latest article before I even saw it myself. I want to openly apologize to my readers for my behaviour, and give a chance to explain certain factors. Also my reasons behind them, like how do I choose to which comments to actually post. I admit I don’t take criticism all that well. But not treating someone with respect is an even bigger issue with me. I don’t like being belittled or sworn at. In fact no one does, and someone constantly obsessing on something I said say on Facebook, Twitter or even YouTube has no place here…in other words Trolling is not allowed. I was also bullied as a child, and let me tell you that does effect you as an adult. Per the reason I will never return to certain sites. I am also a strong believer in the truth, as some of you might find that hard to believe. Unlike others I will admit my mistakes, and then move on. In fact this year alone I have corrected too many issues to mention here. But the truth is the truth, if someone is having legal issues they should say they are and move on. Not just hide it than play a game of denial afterwards.

The Fatal Flaw Of Furry Fandom by Perri Prinz

I have been debating with myself whether I wanted to write something about the censorship drama going on between three major Furry news outlets, or the drama I have recently been inundated by on Second Life. But the more I think about it, the more I do not dare write critically about drama for fear of offending someone involved.

Of course, everyone involved in these dramas is of adult age. Some are even older than me. And you’d think people of significant age could handle a little offense gracefully. But that is not the case. In fact, the very reason these dramas are happening at all is because none of the participants seem to have the maturity of a 10 year old.

But then, seriously, what can you expect from people who dress up as living plush animals just to run off at the face about their pet peeves on YouTube? And while doing so go so far as to say, “Such and such fur offended me because of some accessory he had on his fursuit. I therefore insist that not only must said fur get rid of his accessory, but he must kill his fursona and change his name while he’s at it. And if he doesn’t do this immediately, I will buy him a one way ticket to Auschwitz.”

And this same fur is so immature that, when he gets banned from one site on a charge of hate speech, he goes over to another site and writes a whole article about how the site that banned him is guilty of censorship. But, at the end of the day, all three of the news sites involved have some form of censorship in place, and all defend their right to their particular brand of censorship to the death. So not one of them has an inch of moral high ground to look down on the others.

Then we have another fur who likes to troll, and while doing so frequently catches his own personal information in the screenshots he posts, and then cries “Boo-hoo you bullies doxed me” when somebody makes use of that information.

Yet another fur has decided that Babyfurs are an abomination upon the Earth and must be scourged by his initiating a drama blitz at the hotel housing Califur, just like the one that killed RMFC, to the effect that they are housing a pedo con. Indeed, now that the “disenfranchised furs” contingent of the fandom has seen how easy it is to kill a con with tweets, we can expect them to be tweeting their fingers off at every hotel that houses any con.

Meanwhile, in Second Life, I kind of live on the border between two sims that are part of the Sunweavers conglomerate. And there are a couple of furs that the higher ups in one of those sims have decided they don’t like, and will inflict drama on them at the drop of a hat – if some of their reasons even amount to that. But these same people are prominent land owners in the other sim, and are reasonably well liked.

So, you’d think that these significantly aged furs who do not get along would have the sense to just stay on their respective sims and not put themselves in situations where somebody might drop a hat, or otherwise create oceans of drama by doing practically nothing but just being there. But, noooo. Every time I take a week off from SL I’m hit with the drama from all sides the instant I log in. And, I swear, it sounds for all the world like, “Mommy he’s touching me,” followed by “Tell her to stop touching me.” And back and forth ad nauseum.

And all this without adding to the mix the new contingent of Communists we have in the fandom who insist that everyone who doesn’t agree with them is a Nazi.

Are you starting to see the undeniable abundance of immaturity here? I swear I think Furry Fandom is some kind of unruly pre-school sometimes, where people of even slightly differing opinions couldn’t get along to save their lives.

Meanwhile, I don’t even bother watching cartoons and other forms of anthropomorphic entertainment anymore, because after 15 years of this, it’s pretty much sunk in that The Furry Community is all about the drama, and it’s no asset at all to people who just want to enjoy Furry entertainment. So much so that people just naturally start forgetting what drew them into this mess in the first place.

Well, I started to throw up my hands and ask the wind, “Why is this fandom so hopelessly immature?” And the wind just blew the question back in my face, as if to say, “What do you expect from a society of people who never grew out of watching cartoons?”

I want to personally thank Perri Prinz for allowing me to repost articles from her own blog which can be found here

Also allowing me to move on

A Dose Of Reality by Perri Rhoades

In the interest of being unbiased, I think it is time I wrote something negative about the Furry Fandom, or just fandoms in general, since I don’t see anything real that sets the Furry Fandom apart from other fandoms I’ve been in.

The people who are actively involved in any particular fandom will, of course, look at it through rose colored glasses and think it’s just the most wonderful thing they’ve ever experienced, and if only the rest of the world could be like this, world peace could be achieved. This, even as bricks of the most incredible asinine drama are flying about their heads.

Yes, being in a fandom is a bit like being in a cult. It involves a good bit of brainwashing and screwing around with the logic of one’s core beliefs. This is why fans of anything tend to appear bats—t insane to anyone who is not in a fandom, or even someone who is in a different fandom operating under a different set of screwed up core beliefs.

Not that it’s always a bad thing to screw with your core beliefs. Reality doesn’t offer much to live for or get excited about. Indeed, even people who are obsessed by the idea of reality have to join cults to screw with their core beliefs. Else the constant dwelling on a reality that is never going anywhere good would depress them to death. And these more common cults of thought fall under the categories of politics, religions and philosophies – all of which are designed to make you see something that isn’t there in order that life might continue to seem worth living.

Considering how badly religious and political cults can screw you up, getting into a fandom cult might seem a pleasant and benign alternative. It basically sets you to believing you’ve got this big family of wonderful people who are all drawn together by a shared interest in one thing. But even that’s a lie, because interests, interpretations and resulting beliefs tend to vary widely within any given fandom, making the political landscape of a fandom just as diverse, divided and antagonistic as any other political or religious arena.

This reality, as it applies to Anime Fandom, is well reflected in the episode of “Martian Successor Nadesico” where the protagonist is confronted with the reality that not everyone believes the point of Anime is to inspire a deeply held belief in love, justice, honor and heroism. Rather, those in power, who also worship Anime, see it as inspiring an imperialistic right to conquest, the joy of blowing things up, and just in general being total murderous bastards.

A similar revelation fell upon me towards the end of my own stay in Anime Fandom. Not that people hadn’t been trying to tell me all along, in any nasty, unfriendly and otherwise hostile manner they could come up with, but it finally started to sink in that the core beliefs I had developed around Anime were not shared by a hell of a lot of Anime fans, and that wonderful, magical world of acceptance and tolerance I was always harping on existed exclusively in my head. While the reality that swarmed around me, propelled into my awareness by the advent of 4chan, revealed the cult breaking truth that I was in fact surrounded on all sides by intolerant idiots of nasty disposition who got off on violence and trolling people in other communities; particularly The Furry Community.

During my early days in The Furry Community I would encounter these people, trolling and putting down Furries as degenerates, and I was like, “I’ve been in your fandom. I know all about your shelf of Hentai child porn doujinshi and your rape simulation video games. Furry Yiff is tame compared to what you do.” And they would come back with statements to the effect of, “Yiff is unrighteous and unclean. How dare you compare such things to our pure and beautiful Japanese smut?”

This would be funny if they weren’t serious as all hell. They’re so screwed in the head they think they ought to be able to order child porn from Japan, through the mail, which is totally illegal, and not get arrested when the customs officer opens their package and totally freaks out. Yes, crap like that happens in that fandom, because they are under the influence of a cult that leaves them with no perspective on reality.

But are Furries any better off? Of course not. Furries do the same stuff in their own way. They get stoked on this totally false belief in a community that is tolerant and accepting to such an extent that they should be able to display their most private and off the wall fetishes in public with pride, and not expect to get any backlash for it. And even when they get boatloads of flack for it, the core belief is not shaken that the community not only supports what they do, but it also has some kind of obligation to share the stigma for it.

This, of course, has had Furries at each others throats practically from the beginning of the community. And still you get people like The Furry Raiders turning up speaking longingly of the good old days when the fandom was accepting and tolerant, and everyone was nice, and it was just this paradise where everything was perfect. I hate to burst anybody’s bubble, but that was never a reality. The history of this community is of non-stop drama, hatred, rebellion and mockery of off the scales insanity, as exemplified by such LOL Community stars as Crusader Cat and Insane Kangaroo.

It’s also a history where the people who go out of their way to do good for the community, like 2 Gryphon and Uncle Kage, end up being constantly vilified, probably because they are seen to be challenging some core beliefs about the fandom that are held by some, in complete disregard to the harm those beliefs do to others. Thus you have a fandom where you don’t dare try to be a hero, because people will automatically hate you for it.

At least if you’re a Crusader Cat you get laughs and are seen as part of the entertainment value of the community. But if you’re an Uncle Kage people just outright hate you, with no amusement factor at all. One person went to the trouble of making an entire movie, just to be a vehicle for spitting hate at Uncle Kage.

As for myself, from day one I’ve gotten hate from this community for being more into the entertainment aspect of anthropomorphics than the social aspect, for suggesting the development of programs that would help writers find illustrators, or to encourage Furry creators to consider the commercial potential of their talents, and to strive for higher goals.

Why are there furs who hate me for that? Because there are furs who have developed core beliefs to the effect that this is a cheap underground fandom that exists primarily to produce smut, that one can not be commercially successful and still be considered part of the fandom, that Furries are meant to be loathed by outsiders and therefore should embrace stigma rather than trying to rise above it, and above all, Furry is all about sex.

Such people hate folks like The Furry Raiders with a passion, because they hold to the idealistic acceptance and creative freedom core beliefs. And there-in is held the basic right and left of Furry politics. And when these two factions get together, the community becomes a virtual flame war zone. That’s how we got the Burned Fur situation. And it’s what’s fueling the current turmoil, with a little outside help from Anitfa, who know well that these political differences exist in all communities, and that all you need is a little drama to bring them together and get both sides going nuts with moral outrage as their core beliefs are threatened.

No need for black outfits and curb stomping. Just get one side calling the other Nazis, then sit back and watch the fun as we beat each other to death with words, until the entire community lies in ruins. All because we’re such a loving, accepting, tolerant, open-minded fandom. In a pig’s eye.

Fortunately, all this is easily avoided, as I eventually took to doing, by hanging out in closed environments like Second Life, where it is easy to join a small isolated island of furs who mostly agree with your core beliefs. But even in that situation I find my life is non-stop drama.

If it’s not forces from the degenerate left seeking to force their vices on the creative right (see Perri’s Xanadu vs. Peach Fuzz) it’s conspiracy theorists in the group coming to blows with the Relay For Life organizers, or something equally beyond the scope of rationality. Basically we’re all but family in my Second Life group, and we still can’t get along without the group moderators fielding a boatload of drama, assuming the mods themselves are not the instigators.

Which brings me to another bloody awful thing that tends to happen in fandoms, namely the biggest left wing nutcase ending up in charge of one of the key sites that influences core beliefs in the fandom. Yes, that is what has happened at Dogpatch Press. But there’s nothing at all unusual about this. That is pretty much what happened at Progressive Ears, which ended up ruining the entire Progressive Rock revival, because the moderates who didn’t want ungodly depressing music to dominate the scene weren’t allowed a voice. Neither were those who sought to set up some relatively sensible genre terminology, resulting in nobody being able to find the music they’re actually looking for because any genre term used in a review can mean literally anything.

But this is not new in Furry Fandom either. For years the fandom was overshadowed by sites like Crush, Yiff, Destroy and it’s still existing legacy site Vivisector, where you may expect to find a large congregation of the leftists in Furry politics, spitting ire at those of us who are actually out here trying to create good stuff for the benefit of the community, because they don’t think the community deserves good stuff. They think the fandom is a dirty joke that exists for nothing but fueling they’re contempt and their LOLs.

This is the reality of the fandom I’ve been dealing with for the last decade and a half. It can be beautiful. You can avoid message boards, you can handpick your friends, you can block the sourpusses who never have a nice word to say to you, and you can end up having such a good time with your friends that you end up thinking this fandom must be God’s paradise established on Earth. But that’s only happening in your little bubble of experience. It’s not the reality of the fandom as a whole. The reality is that there are, and always have been, some seriously nasty people here. Why do you think we need all these “Beware” sites? And these nasty people don’t care how they hurt you. They get off on it. They go on TV and cheerfully portray us all as sexual deviants who have sex in fursuits, never mind that most of us don’t even have fursuits.

We’ve got one right now who’s working to sensationalize us as a fandom of extremists who physically attack and murder each other. While yet another is planning to get another convention shut down by sending false accusations to the hotel and stirring up another storm of drama. Like Twitter isn’t already ablaze with hateful, intolerant Furries spitting out poison towards one group or another. And that’s the reality check everyone in the fandom is having to come to terms with at this moment.

Now, I should end this by saying what’s good about the fandom in spite of all this negativity. But, seriously, I’ve done a 10 page essay on what’s so great about anthropomorphic animals and the fandom there of, which a lot of people in this fandom have rejected and denounced. For every compliment I get on it I get five comments to the effect of “How dare you portray this fandom in such a positive light?”

I will just say that, in spite of all I have said above and all the negative experiences I neglected to include for space, I still love the anthropomorphic arts, I believe in its potential to express socially significant ideas, and I would not want to be creative in any other field.

I love all the friends I’ve made in the community. And I love experiencing the creativity of my fellow furs. In that sense, Furry Fandom is a wonderful thing to be a part of. It’s just not the ideal utopia we sometimes like to imagine. And part of the reason it isn’t is because so many of us get this idea in our heads that the fandom is how we dream it to be, and anyone who seems to be threatening or defacing that dream must be destroyed.

But in reality, there’s no paradise here to be lost. It’s just another fandom community that is only as good as the people within it can be bothered to make it. And if you’re busy hating somebody or trying to tear down a group of furs you’ve got some unreasoning prejudice against; if you go calling the police telling them this con is a Nazi con or that con is a pedo con, you’re not really helping to make it a better place.

What you need to do is just take a step back and realize that you’re dreaming. You’re in a cult, and your sense of reason is not subject to reality. So that bunch of furs whose Facebook group you can’t be bothered to join, or whose con panel you can’t be bothered to attend, might just possibly not be as bad as you’re thinking they are. And maybe it’s actually not worth causing an embarrassment that will reflect badly on every single member of the community just to get rid of them. Maybe, in a reality that exists beyond the scope of your rose colored glasses, you actually do owe it to those in the community that support and care for you to not be a hateful, thoughtless idiot.

Shameless Fear Mongering and Yellow Journalism by Perri Prinz

I see now that I should have added something to my article for Furry Times about the continuing shameless fear mongering and yellow journalism of Dogpatch Press.

I hate to come down on them because Fred Patten is there. And I have nothing but respect for Fred. But when you look at the Dogpatch Twitter and you see how frequently the posts alternate between Patch Packrat and Deo Taz Devil, the source of the extreme bias flooding their articles becomes pretty obvious.

Currently they’re on their 4th article in a row with an extreme bent towards demonizing The Furry Raiders, 2 Gryphon, the staff of RMFC and anyone else they think they can whip up some hate against. The third article was strictly about rumors, and this latest article isn’t about anything except reinforcing myths and reminding people who they’re supposed to hate.

Seriously, if this keeps up, Dogpatch Press is going to devolve into the new Crush, Yiff, Destroy. And with people going out of their way to make the fandom look as bad as they do operating from within the fandom, we won’t even have to worry about how badly the mainstream press is going to fry us.

Sadly, I’ve no idea what we could do to get Dogpatch out of the hands of The Antifa Furs, who might just as well be called the latest Burned Fur revival.

There can be no doubt that they are out to spread hate and divide the fandom. They want us at each other’s throats to the point where the networks will be making cop shows about us killing each other again.

But I don’t think anything can be accomplished by challenging them and getting into fights with them. That would just be playing into their hands. I think the only thing a conscientious fur who cares about the fandom can do is just boycott Dogpatch. And any other site that promotes fear and hate.

Furry Fandom allegorically mirrors real life to an incredible extent, even to the point where we can’t trust our main news outlets. There’s just no respect for truth and reason out there anymore. We’re just going to have to get used to the fact that any news we see is likely calculated to deceive more than it is to inform.

It’s all calculated to force us to share somebody else’s opinion of matters that probably aren’t any of our business in the first place. But what ever you do, don’t ever let them trick you into hating people, just because they tell you you should. Don’t ever hate somebody without a damned good reason. And a long page of totally unsubstantiated opinions, glued together with a spin that all but twists your head off, is not a good reason to hate people.

Keeping Clear Thoughts – FURRY DRAMA RAMPANT

This RMFC nonsense is making what use to be good sites down to the National Enquirer level. I admit I use to admire and sometimes borrow off pieces from other so-called furry news sites when I thought the piece was fair, and I did link to the original material. I mean original post not crediting a link to a link. Mine you this is despite being called “View Concuss” by some of them. Who never told me, despite me asking them countless times what numbers are YOU getting? The only reason I mention this, is the mess that is going on in the furry fandom and that is RMFC, 2 The Ranting Gryphon and let’s not forget the Furry Raiders…supposed killers of RMFC.

Normally all of these are important but they have been brought to a point beyond what even I could not imagine. Enough so it is turning what are good sites down to the level of tabloid journalism. Hey I got an excuse for the mistakes I make, and that is I am only 1 man. But these sites have actual staff who can check things out. I fully believe all of these sites and anything that has been said…is made up as they go on. I personally believe they are doing this so they can get the views. I actually invite anyone check out this site and see what I have been posting. Oh sure I made some mistakes but at least I am big enough to apologize for them, and not compound them. And at least I did ask, was anyone really there, and what really happened. Not like any of those sites. I have also not made post after post essentially saying the same thing over and over.

I have no respect for any of them.

Editor’s Note: The reason I don’t mention any of those sites by name, are because some have threatened legal action against me for ruining their reputation. Which to me is a laugh, considering their sites have been taken over by those who only want to make a name for themselves and nothing more. Without naming names just ask yourself 1 question, “Had you heard of any of these players before all of this started?” My guess the answer would be no and therefore you already answered my question.