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Furry

Furry fandom is a fandom devoted to anthropomorphic animal characters. Since the 1980s, the term furries has come to refer to such characters. Members of the furry subculture are known as furry fans, furries, or simply furs.

Fictional work celebrated by furry fandom typically attributes high-level intelligence, human facial expressions and anatomy, speech, bipedalism, and clothing to otherwise animal characters. Work in any medium that includes such characters may be considered part of the furry genre, although they are most often seen in comics, cartoons, animated films, allegorical novels, and video games.

Key topics: Furry convention • Fursuit - Lists: Comics • Conventions • Role-playing games

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Fursuits are animal costumes associated with furry fandom. They range from simple tails and ears to full costumes cooled by battery-powered fans. They allow the wearer to adopt another personality while in costume, and can be worn for personal enjoyment, work or charity.

The standard fursuit is a full body costume consisting of a head, forepaws (hands), hindpaws (feet) and a body with an attached tail. In some cases, the tail is connected via a belt to the wearer and hangs out through a hole in the back of the body. Many suits include special padding or undersuits to give the character its desired shape. Due to their delicate nature, they require special handling while washing.

Fursuits are comparable to costumed characters and are similar in construction to the mascots and walkaround characters used by theme parks and stage shows. The concept is similar to cosplay, despite the latter's focus on Japanese culture.

Fursuits are usually sold at conventions, or online by commission or auction. Prices typically range from US$500 to $3000, but can go far higher depending on complexity and materials used.

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Frederick Walter Patten (born December 11, 1940) is known for his work as a historian in the anime, manga, and furry fandoms, where he has made contributions to both print and online books, magazines, and other media. He has received honors from several fandom organizations, including the LASFS Evans-Freehafer Award, Westercon's Sampo Award, Inkpot Award, Ursa Major Award and the Worldcon Life Achievement Award.

Patten learned to read with comic strips in the Los Angeles Times and Examiner. At age 9 he began to collect books from Ace Books, Ballantine Books, and other science fiction publishers of the time, as well as magazines such as Astounding, F&SF, and Galaxy Science Fiction.

Patten entered the University of California at Los Angeles in 1958, and its graduate School of Library Science in 1962. He became active in science fiction fandom on discovering the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in 1960, starting to publish his own stories and write for sci-fi fanzines. He received a Master's degree in Library Science in 1963 - his thesis was on the books of Andre Norton - and worked as a technical catalogue librarian from 1969 to 1990.

In 1972, Patten partnered with Richard Kyle to create the Graphic Story Bookshop in Long Beach, California. He discovered manga at Westercon in 1970, and began to import it from Japanese publishers through the bookshop. He was a founder of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization in 1977. Over the years he contributed to several books on animation history, and wrote dozens of articles for publications such as Albedo Anthropomorphics, Furrlough, and the Comics Buyer's Guide.

From 1991 to 2002 Patten was employed at anime production company Streamline Pictures, where he acted as writer, translator or publicist for over twenty animation films. He subsequently wrote Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews, and edited Best in Show: Fifteen Years of Outstanding Furry Fiction.

In March 2005, Patten suffered a stroke which left his right arm and leg paralyzed. No longer able to keep his collection, he donated almost 900 boxes of comic books, records, tapes, paperbacks, fanzines, anime, manga, convention programs and T-shirts to the Eaton Collection.

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Did you know?

...that the first volume of printed strips from the furry "Slice-of-life" webcomic A Doemain of Our Own won the 2006 Ursa Major Award for "Best Anthropomorphic Other Literary Work"?
...that the creators of stage musical Furry Tales were inspired by Anthrocon, the world's largest furry convention?
... that Kyell Gold, a furry homosexual erotic literature author, has won six Ursa Major Awards, equaling Usagi Yojimbo author Stan Sakai?

...Archive/Nominations

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Newshounds is a satirical, furry webcomic drawn and written by Thomas K. Dye. The strip is in two parts. The first version, sometimes called Newshounds I, ran between November 1, 1997 to December 8, 2006. A sequel, Newshounds II, started on July 2, 2007.

Newshounds I is set in a fictional news broadcasting company in America called KPET, staffed by one human and seven anthropomorphic animals (five dogs, a cat and a rat). The strip satirizes many aspects of news companies and news stories of the day. Although sometimes strips are separate, most of the stories span several weeks, sometimes months.

As well as news gathering, Newshounds satirizes politics, sport and pop culture, with many of the characters satirizing one particular area. Newshounds covers controversial topics such as the war on terror, gay rights, and there are future plans to make a series of storylines about abortion.

Newshounds is one of the longest running furry webcomics (longer running examples include Kevin and Kell (1995) and Sabrina Online (1996)). It is hosted on the Internet by the online comics syndicate Keenspot. According to The Webcomic List, it is listed in the top 1,000 webcomics on the internet. A collection of strips entitled All the Newshounds Fit to Print won the Ursa Major Award for "Best Anthropomorphic Literary Work", and it is currently on their "Recommended Anthropomorphics List".

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