Furry Fandom


Do you enjoy reading those newspaper comics about talking animals? Or find yourself staring at dog bobble heads? If any of these are true, or if you just have a liking for animals, you may be a “furry”. A furry is someone who likes anthropomorphic animals (animals with human traits). There is a huge world of furries on the internet, some good, and unfortunately, some bad. I will talk to you about some of the better stuff.

There are so many things involved in furry fandom. One such thing is artwork, out on the internet there are people who devote all of their skill to drawing Anthropomorphic animals, from web comics to full blown masterpieces. Many art sites feature an “Anthro” section, while some are dedicated to only furry art. There is also a lot of literature made in this genre. For example, Roar is a collection of short anthropomorphic stories. Once you see how much is out there, you realize that furry fandom is huge.

I really enjoy surfing around good furry sites on the internet. There is one web comic called Faux Pas (pronounced Fox Paws) which I absolutely love. There are also some great works of art on Deviant Art that I like to browse. I also enjoy watching fandubs on youtube, these are videos from animated movies, or stuff like that, with different voices added on top. All in all furry fandom is a very big part in my life.

Athos


Who knows what goes through a 9 year olds head.

During the summer when I was 9, I was very bored. To keep myself amused I would sit out on our deck in the warm sun with a pencil and a piece of paper. On that piece of paper something amazing happened. I poured out the extent of my imagination onto the white sheet. What came out of it was Athos.

Athos is an imaginary world that I made up. On it are islands, oceans, and every kind of landform you can imagine. I also made plants and animals that inhabit the whole planet; from fish and sea monsters in the ocean to canines and felines on the land. One type of animal I made is the liber, which is basically a liger. Another thing is the culture; most of the animals are nomadic and they all speak the same language. I made this language at the same time as everything else but due to some improvements I am making on it, I’m still working on that part. I had everything I could think of, down on paper.

Over the years I added island chains, continents, cave networks, and new rivers. It was quite cool how I made so much. Soon I sort of left it for a year then I heard about NaNoWriMo(which I have mentioned in a previous blog post). It was the perfect opportunity to continue Athos. And thus my book was born.

Right now my book is 20069 words long and counting. It’s full of everything; excitement, suspense, mystery, and a few philosophical moments too. I work on it whenever I get the chance, but it is still going slowly. When I can, I like to write at the bookshelf cafe. Being there really helps the speed and quality of my writing. With any luck one day it will be published and Athos will become a series of books, and maybe a bestselling series. It all came to me when I was 9 and it all evolved from there, and hopefully it will go much farther than it is now.

15 years ago the best TV station was first aired. The Discovery Channel was started in Canada and now reaches out to 170 countries on 29 network brands in 33 languages. It features amazing shows such as Mythbusters, Daily Planet, and Cash Cab just to name a few. Discovery Channel also offers HD shows, some of them include; Brainiac: Science Abuse, Time Warp, and Austen Steven’s Adventures. Because of the amount of awesome shows, and knowledge delivered to viewers, Discovery Channel is my favourite channel of all time.

Through the years D.C. has gone through many changes; from programming to looks, to advertising. For example, in the beginning, D.C.’s logo consisted of its name and a sphere in white with a black background. Now the logo is 3D and contains a detailed earth, which to be honest isn’t much different. Another thing, the shows that appeared ten or years ago were much different. You can imagine the old fashioned documentaries. Nowadays there are more in depth and exiting science shows (Brainiac Science Abuse especially).

All in all Discovery Channel is just plain awesome in every way possible. But the one thing that I would really like to point out before I finish is why D.C. is closely related to the meaning of life. If you are reading this blog you will probably notice the big “42” above this post. Well, Douglas Adams wrote in his book that the meaning of life is 42. I’m a big fan of this book and D.C. was channel 42 on our TV, coincidence, I think not!

There are thousands upon thousands of movies out there and even more books. The chances are that somewhere among all that entertainment, there are bound to be repeats. Eragon, for example, was an amazing book, but the movie was absolutely horrible. The plot was different and there wasn’t enough action. Harry Potter was another one, I guess it was unavoidable but there wasn’t enough of the original story; they left so many things out. Yet it still is enjoyable to watch. There are many examples of this but I do find a problem with it all.


Books leave most of the story to the imagination. Movies take that mental aspect away, but they can still provide entertaining visuals. Modern CGI is just getting better and better, so for some books it helps them to be turned into movies. Another issue is length; books can be as long as the author wants, whereas movies are almost always less than 3 hours. Given less time in a movie for character development can really change the way characters are understood by the viewers. In other terms, unless the movie adaption is really well done, it isn’t very good in my opinion.

Most of the time, movie adaptions don’t live up to their full potential. Many producers beg authors for the rights to make a movie; the book writer should take extreme discretion when making the decision. Although movies made from books aren’t always that good, they can still be entertaining... enough.

Technology is progressing at an incredible rate; “by 2013 there will be a supercomputer that will be able to do more computing than a human brain”. The question that I have next would be: if there will be a computer capable of doing more than a human brain, does that mean that in the future we could download our thoughts into a computer? Just think how cool that would be, and the possibilities it would bring. Our consciousness could go on forever. And if there was an interface which let video cameras be connected, we would be able to see. It’s all very strange when you think about it but on the other hand, one day it will be reality.

Like previously stated, technology is at a “boom”. First, the internet is expanding at an exponential rate. There are over 200 million users on MySpace, if that were its own country it would be the fifth largest in he world. Second is the raw technological information. Japan has developed a fibre optic cable that can push 14 trillion bits down a single fibre optic cable every second, and when you consider that there can be many more fibre optics in a single undersea cable, it makes you wonder how much information is out there. And finally is discovery. There are university students learning how to do jobs that don’t exist, with technology that doesn’t exist, to solve problems that aren’t problems yet! If we are able to solve all of the problems in the world (hunger for example) and we get every single human being focusing on our technological evolution there is no doubt that one day we will be capable of doing almost anything.


Facts from the video "Did You Know"

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. As I write this, it’s November and I am participating in NaNoWriMo. This means that I have to write a novel in one month. That may seem like too much of a task over school and other time consuming activities, but it is very doable. And I am not the only one doing it; just last year there were 119301 adult participants. 18.2 percent of which won (that’s 21683 people!) Everybody who participated tried to write 50000 words, all in the 30 day month of November. Together, all those people wrote a total of 1.6 billion words (that’s enough to go around the moon many times.) I quite enjoy it, and I think that many other people would too.


But that is just the adults. This year there are over 1000 classrooms participating in NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program. The Y.W.P. is for children who have very little likely hood of reaching 50000 words. It lets them choose their word count goal, according to grade. This is what I am doing, not the full NaNoWriMo, and I need to reach 15000 words by November 30th. With Y.W.P. children get a chance to express their imagination in a very productive way. Both Y.W.P. and NaNoWriMo are great ways to test your imagination and endurance. I think that the next time November comes around you should try one of these word marathons.

On October 26th, I listened the best speech I have ever heard. In my humble opinion, Barack Obama is rivalled by Eva Olsson when it comes to speeches. She is a Holocaust survivor and her message is one that most people turn away from, one that they don’t want to hear. She went through something we can barely begin to imagine, and for that I think we should at the very least listen to what Eva has to say. Her message is not just one thing it’s many messages, such as bullying, hate, and even driving under the influence, all in one story.


Within her story there are many messages: Hate, something we say or feel without even realizing it, but it is hate, which led people to do such bad things. She said it is okay to dislike something but not to hate. Family, Eva’s biggest memory is of seeing her mother taken away from her and never being able to say “I love you,” to her again. Eva told us to say that to our parents because in this world you never know how long you might have to say it to them. Bullies and bystanders, if you hurt you are a bully, and if you watch this you are a bystander. Being a bystander is just as bad as bullying. Drunk driving, just so you know, DRUNK DRIVING IS BAD! Never give up, Eva couldn’t live a day at a time because it was too much, instead she lived a minute at time. In doing this, she never gave up. All of the messages Eva told us about, need to be remembered for generations to come.