Category Archives: Heard Online

Financial Problems and Deceptive Practices Ground FurFlight

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FurFlight won’t be leaving the ground again soon, if ever.

FurFlight is marketed as a way for furries to fly as a group to selected conventions, and travel in their fursonas.

Yes! Enjoy being an animal before you arrive at the convention! We have officially sanctioned costuming permitted post-security and onboard from both SFO, Boston and Seattle.

 

Dogpatch Press says the arrangement was successful for a group that flew to Midwest FurFest last year (“A financial fuss about FurFlight – can it fend off a fandom fiasco?”)

FurFlight bundles furries together for group air travel from highly-active fandom regions to highly-attended conventions, most notably from Seattle and San Francisco to Midwest FurFest. The idea is to improve the boring parts and the endpoint arrangements. It happened successfully in 2017.

Unfortunately, Mike Folf, the organizer and principal of Canis Vulpes LLC, which operates FurFlight, couldn’t meet expenses and reportedly was selling 2019 events to try and fund FurFlight’s remaining obligations for 2018.

Now those who signed on for the group trip to Midwest Furfest (Nov. 29-Dec.2 in Rosemont, IL) will be scrambling to cancel their reservations and make other plans.

When the story came out last week, Folf did not respond to contacts, something he has now explained in an apologetic post “Regarding Midwest FurFlight, Mental Health, and Future Trips” which says in part —

I have wronged you all and I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted it to be and I want to make things as right as possible for you all.

Long story short: I will work hard in early November to salvage what we can of the flights to ensure you all can go to Midwest Furfest. If this isn’t logistically possible, I will refund all guests and then some to ensure you all can book a flight to the con. If this can’t be done in time, I’ll add an extra sum to cover the damage of a lost convention time. This isn’t ideal, but it’s better than silence and doing nothing.

Also until further notice, all 2019 trips are suspended and everyone who signed up for TFF, BLFC, or FWA will be refunded ASAP.

A little transparency as to what has been going on these past few days:

On Wednesday October 24 I got an email from Alaska Airlines saying that the flights were suddenly unpaid for. That evening, the journal post came up. Overwhelmed, I spoke to the exec team about the issue and my own stress before being forced to remove telegram and social media for my own personal well being. At 11:30 that night, the police came and I was placed on Psychiatric Hold, isolated from society, until Friday October 26 due to concerns about suicidal thoughts. At that moment, I felt I had lost everything and was an emotional mess. That Friday, I was taken to a safe location for the weekend and was otherwise disconnected from the online world while I figure out with close persons what to do about the situation.

There is the idea that no matter how much good you do in the fandom, one bad slip and you’re forever reviled as an enemy. This is a mentality that I have held close to myself and have done as much as I can to cover my tail and prevent any kind of darkness from going public. Needless to say, this also prevented me from asking for help when it came to FurFlight, as I’ll detail below….

Financial and Management Transparency

Canis Vulpes, or FurFlight, was in the red from the get go. I was still paying off the $5k debt from last year and initial set up costs would inevitably bite into the income. If we had zero operational costs, Midwest FurFlight would only garner $2.5k in profit. In reality, marketing (twitter ads and physical items that unknowingly cost upwards in the thousands) and additional set-up costs (funding for SkyCollies, setting up the network infrastructures and other formalities) took a severe bite on the funds. We had zero capital so I assumed that I could keep this within the $2.5k margin. I was wrong, and again was afraid to ask for specific help and loans due to the aforementioned furry drama mentality. I was promised a capital investment over the summer that failed to materialize which also had an effect on the marketing spending.

Prior to getting the notice from Alaska Airlines, Folf borrowed over $35,000 from Robert Johnson (“Alohawolf”), ostensibly to secure the tickets. When he recognized FurFlight’s financial situation and his own exposure, Alohawolf went public:

I wanted to ensure that the event was successful and that everyone would still make their flights. In doing so I made the mistake of trusting him; I processed $35,631 in airline tickets on two credit cards to cover all of the flights from SEA (Seattle) and SFO (San Francisco) to ORD (Chicago – O’Hare). This payment was made directly with Alaska Air and Mike supplied account information needed so I could process payments to cover the transactions.

After realizing the extent of this situation over the weekend, I realized that this is not sustainable. I began reaching out to other furs over the weekend to determine the best order of operations to proceed to start unwinding this transaction on the very next business day, which was Monday, October 22.

Currently, I’m out over $35,000. If I’m very lucky, I’ll come out whole. I have disputed the charges and made both the airline and card issuers aware of the details of the fraud. As a result, they may have begun to act to cancel the transaction and the tickets for the 2018 MFF FurFlight date.  As this case includes such a large amount of money, on the advice of a lawyer, the police and FBI both were also contacted and informed.

I am making this public statement to make those affected aware as soon as possible. For those who purchased FurFlight 2019 tickets, I highly recommend you reach out to your credit card issuer and request a refund (or use travel insurance if your card has it), as the company that sold you flights is insolvent.

And the incident prompted the Boozy Badger, a lawyer with a blog, to write a study of all the California regulations that Canis Vulpes LLC may have violated — “FurPlanet’s Furry Friday: FurryAir – At Least It’s Not Pet-Screwing” – an effective advertisement for start-ups to hire legal counsel. BB’s analysis leads to this conclusion —

So…they’re crooks?

I’m not saying that.

I am saying that there appears to be a situation where an LLC was formed for the purpose of selling travel, including travel to residents of California. That this LLC took a substantial amount of money from people to obtain flights to a specific event, both in and outside of California. That for some reason, whether it be exemption from the law or ignorance, this LLC did not submit a legally required registration as a Seller of Travel to the State of California. That now it appears the same LLC has confirmed that they reached out to another party to pay the debt for the travel which should have been paid with the passenger funds already submitted, as those funds are technically trust funds (not property of the seller of travel) until the travel is actually paid for entirely. That as a result, and individual paid $35,000.00 on assurances the money existed, and it apparently did not from what has been revealed. And that, in these circumstances, there is a very specific California law that, if applicable, makes this a very serious criminal and civil penalty.

I’m also saying that, while out of compliance with the law from what I can see, Canis Vulpes customers who reside in California may be able to seek restitution from a fund specifically created for this…but they may not. Likewise, customers in other states (Including, I should note, Washington) are or may be protected by similar

I am not, however, saying that money was “stolen” or anything of the sort. Idiocy and ineptitude is not the same as malfeasance, and people starting businesses screw up all the damn time.  Especially when they rely on LegalZoom instead of a real goddamn lawyer to give them advice.

Which really leads to my last lesson:

It is so fucking important top understand the legal requirements and ramifications of what you do that a lawyer, at least one to help you form and start-up your business, isn’t optional.

Alohawolf says that the other people working on Furflight were kept in the dark, too:

FurFlight has released its own message of apology, telling customers to request refunds of their airline tickets.

This may not be as simple as it sounds:

[Thanks to ULTRAGOTHA for the story.]

Saint Chesterton?

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G.K. Chesterton in 1909.

It’s not just Tolkien – there’s a move afoot to make author G.K. Chesterton a Catholic saint, too. The Word on Fire Blog questioned the president of the American Chesterton Society about his prospects: “Saint G.K. Chesterton? An Interview with Dale Ahlquist”.

BRANDON: I know many people are excited about the possibility of G.K. Chesterton being named saint one day. Why do you think he’s a saint? And can you give us an update on his cause?

DALE: First the update: the Bishop of Northampton, England, Peter Doyle, appointed a priest, Fr. John Udris, to be the investigator for Chesterton’s potential. Father Udris is completing his report to the Bishop within the next month, and the Bishop is expected to approach the Congregation for Saints in Rome to officially open the Cause for Beatification. If that happens, Chesterton would be declared a Servant of God, and a postulator would be appointed. And the real work begins, with a thorough examination of Chesterton’s holiness and his cultus. The cultus is us, those who are devoted to him. And that is the answer to the first question. I think he’s a saint because there is a universal cultus devoted to him, finding in him a model Christian, especially a model of lay spirituality, and a friend and companion. That’s what the Communion of the Saints is all about.

Chesterton is already remembered liturgically on June 13 by the Episcopal Church, with a provisional feast day as adopted at the 2009 General Convention.

His influential essays and nonfiction are the foundations of his case for sainthood, though some of his views have led to charges of antisemitism.

Among fans, Chesterton is known for fiction like The Man Who Was Thursday. Neil Gaiman has stated that he grew up reading Chesterton, whose The Napoleon of Notting Hill was an important influence on Gaiman’s Neverwhere, which used a quote from it as an epigraph. Gaiman also based the character Gilbert, from the comic book The Sandman, on Chesterton.

Horror Show Telethon Will Benefit Charity

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By Dann Todd: Brian Keene intends to double last year’s success.

In January 2017, The Horror Show with Brian Keene podcast held a 24 hour telethon to raise money for the Scares That Care. Scares That Care is a 501C(3) charity that helps children with cancer, women with breast cancer, and burn victims. The telethon coincided with their 100th podcast episode.

The Horror Show podcast started out with the objective of raising $10,000 for Scares That Care in 24 hours. They exceeded that goal…barely.

The Horror Show podcast announced that they would be repeating their telethon effort on behalf of Scares That Care in 2018. The details of this year’s telethon were announced on a recent Horror Show episode. This year’s fundraising goal is $20,000.

The telethon will take place beginning at noon (EST) on May 11, 2018, and ending at noon (EST) on May 12, 2018. As with last year’s telethon, the show will be livestreamed via YouTube. It will be free to listen to all of the telethon related mayhem.

For those wanting to attend in person, the telethon will take place at the Courtyard Marriot located at 2799 Concord Road, York PA 17402. Seating is limited to 80 people. Tickets to attend the telethon in person will cost $25 and can be purchased via Ticket Leap.

From the news release:

(All proceeds raised from ticket sales will go directly to the $20,000 goal). Your ticket guarantees you 24-hour admission to the telethon — come and go (and sleep) as you please. Please note that by purchasing a ticket and attending, you are granting The Horror Show with Brian Keene permission to broadcast your voice and/or likeness live on the air.

For Your Consideration: Disney Story Origin Podcast – The Black Cauldron

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By Dann Todd: After a year-long sabbatical motivated by personal health concerns, mystery/thriller author Paul J. Hale is back with episode 10a of The Disney Story Origins Podcast.

In this most recent episode, Paul focuses on Disney’s The Black Cauldron movie. As has been the case with his past podcast episodes, Paul presents a thoroughly researched comparison between the source material and Disney’s movie. His purpose is not to criticize the choices of Disney filmmakers. Instead, his focus is on illustrating the differences between the source material and the movie. His analysis ends up having the movie illuminate the source material and the source material illuminate the movie. As is his habit, Paul includes a complete bibliography at the page for this podcast that formed the basis of his research.

One interesting sidelight on the movie is that Jeffrey Katzenberg, then a new studio chairman with Disney, feared that the original version of the movie was headed for a PG-13 rating from the MPAA. That concern was after the movie’s director and editor had already removed material to avoid a suspected R rating. Mr. Katzenberg then attempted to personally undertake the process of editing the movie to remove the offending material.

The source material for The Black Cauldron was Lloyd Alexander’s series The Chronicles of Prydain. The movie uses material from books 1 and 2 of the series; The Book of Three and The Black Cauldron.

Lloyd Alexander won the Newbery Medal for the fifth and final installment of the Prydain series, The High King, in 1969. He received the World Fantasy Award – Lifetime Achievement in 2003.

Octavia Butler Presentation at Altadena Library on 2/12

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A special presentation, “Octavia Butler’s Story”, will be hosted by the Altadena (CA) Library on Monday, February 12, 2018 at 7:00 p.m. as part of their program centered around one of her novels, “One Community, One Book: ‘Kindred'”.

Join Altadena Library for this special look into the life of science-fiction author and Altadenan Octavia E. Butler!

ABOUT THE PRESENTER:

Presenter Natalie Russell is the Assistant Curator of Literary Collections at The Huntington Library, and curator of the recent exhibit “Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories.” She has been at the Huntington for over 11 years. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema-Television Production from the University of Southern California and a Masters of Library and Information Science from San Jose State University. She is a native Californian, and a member of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses.

25 COPIES OF “KINDRED” AVAILABLE BEFORE THE EVENT!

The Friends of Altadena Library have generously donated 25 copies of Octavia Butler’s powerful novel “Kindred” for patrons to borrow prior to the event. Stop by the Main Library or Bob Lucas Branch Library after 1/10/2018 to pick up your FREE copy — we encourage participants to return the book before the presentation so that others have a chance to read the book as well!

Patreon Cancels Fee Changes, Will Find A Different Fix

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Patreon’s Jack Conte has walked back the controversial new fee structure that was scheduled to go into effect later this month, with the implied promise the company will find a solution to its problems that doesn’t hurt creators.

Conte’s statement, “We messed up. We’re sorry, and we’re not rolling out the fees change”, says in part —

Creators and Patrons,

We’ve heard you loud and clear. We’re not going to rollout the changes to our payments system that we announced last week. We still have to fix the problems that those changes addressed, but we’re going to fix them in a different way, and we’re going to work with you to come up with the specifics, as we should have done the first time around. Many of you lost patrons, and you lost income. No apology will make up for that, but nevertheless, I’m sorry. It is our core belief that you should own the relationships with your fans. These are your businesses, and they are your fans.

I’ve spent hours and hours on the phone with creators, and so has the Patreon team. Your feedback has been crystal clear:

  • The new payments system disproportionately impacted $1 – $2 patrons. We have to build a better system for them.
  • Aggregation is highly-valued, and we underestimated that.
  • Fundamentally, creators should own the business decisions with their fans, not Patreon. We overstepped our bounds and injected ourselves into that relationship, against our core belief as a business.

We recognize that we need to be better at involving you more deeply and earlier in these kinds of decisions and product changes….

Although Patreon folded on their proposed fee changes, the damage to creators’ income has already been done. One author offered this analogy to describe the moral effect of today’s announcement:

Webcomic artist Zack Morrison voiced what must be a lingering concern for many creators:

Here are some reactions tweeted by people in the sff field:

  • Kameron Hurley

  • Catherynne Valente

  • Seanan McGuire

  • M.C.A. Hogarth

  • Kevin Sonney

  • Patrick Rothfuss

  • Aidan Moher

  • Fireside Fiction Company

[Thanks to Dann and Mark Hepworth for the story.]

Sci-Fi Video Roundup for October 16

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Compiled by Carl Slaughter: (1) The case for Gul Dukat

(2) Honest Trailers:  Next Generation series

(3) Discovery: Spore travel technology explained

(4) Discovery is really about Section 31

(5) Discovery is being heavily pirated  — Ars Technica says the first two episodes of Discovery are both among the 20 most pirated TV shows.

(6) Orville is Star Trek

(7) Majel  Roddenberry

(8) Batman’s greatest failures

(9) Honest Trailer:  Burton’s first Batman movie

(10) How McDonald’s got Tim Burton fired from Batman

(11) Marvel’s seeming plot holes

(12) Dark side of Star Wars

(13) Why we will never see an Ender’s Game sequel

Bradbury Bonus Roundup

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Ray Bradbury’s 89th Birthday Cake. Photo by John King Tarpinian.

“All Bradbury, all the time” — one of File 770’s mottos. (The other is: “It’s always news to someone.”)

(1) LOVE AT SECOND SIGHT. Ray’s version of How I Met Your Mother – from the Goodreads blog, “How to Find the Love of Your Life in a Bookstore: The Ray Bradbury Method”.

If you want to fall in love with a reader, go where the readers go. The late Ray Bradbury met his future wife, Marguerite McClure, at Fowler’s Bookstore in Los Angeles when he was 22 years old.

It was not love at first sight. McClure, who was clerking at the store, accused Bradbury of shoplifting. “He carried a briefcase and wore a trench coat on a clear day, so I was immediately suspicious,” she remembered later. “I expected him to slam his briefcase down on a pile of books and make off with a few. Instead, he told me he was a writer and invited me to have a cup of coffee with him.”

(2) PROFESSIONAL OPINION. The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies documents that Ray Bradbury was asked to review the Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back script before it went into production.

(3) WATCH YOUR PHRASEOLOGY. Gabrielle Belot holds forth “On the Dark, Wondrous Optimism of Ray Bradbury” for Lit Hub.

At a glance, Bradbury can seem excessively cheery, his fiction bursting with a simple positive bombast that stretches, at times, into naiveté and clichés about good and evil, gender roles, religion, and science. When I recently reread Something Wicked This Way Comes, I was struck by how, in one breath, Bradbury could go from perspicacious, precise imagery to ham-fisted, trite moralizing. And the great chronicler of Martians himself sometimes emphasized this saccharine self-portrait. “I believe we’ll be immortal, seed the stars and live forever in the flesh of children,” he declared in 1975 with the death-defying assurance of a transhumanist. His “job as a writer,” he continued, was “to show man his basic goodness… I reject the doomsayers!” Yet there is more than a little dusk beneath this sprightly veneer.

The visions of the future in some of his best-known texts, while sanguine, are quietly bloody in another sense. Ambrose Bierce—who appears as a character in The Illustrated Man—described pessimism in his delightfully perverse Devil’s Dictionary as a natural response to “the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile”; Bradbury was a rosy smiler, like the charming scarecrow in Howl’s Moving Castle, but no mere romantic idealist. Instead, he was a darker optimist, an optimist of the evening. We all have, need to have, a piece of night in us. Bradbury’s pictures of his era and his prophecies for the 21st century were as hopeful as they were quietly horrifying, and, unexpectedly, they helped me find a language for loss.

(4) EVERYONE’S A CRITIC. Space.com celebrated Ray’s birthday in a strange way, by analyzing one of his failures: “On Ray Bradbury’s Birthday, Revisit His Rejected Planetarium Script”.

As a writer, Bradbury is known and respected for his poetic language, honed over a career that spanned seven decades. But in 1981, Bradbury’s flowery prose describing cosmic phenomena failed to impress [National Air and Space Museum] exhibit developers, whose remarks about the script were incorporated into the files that Romanowski uncovered.

“Many of the phrases are crude and devoid of meaning. Some of it flows nicely, then suddenly it changes and becomes awkward,” a reviewer noted.

Other comments proposed that Bradbury’s words did not accurately represent the science of the Big Bang and the formation of stars and planets, Romanowski reported. One reviewer scoffed at Bradbury’s line about “suns that must birth themselves,” saying that his description “reeks with misunderstanding,” while another pointed to the phrase “life cooking itself,” identifying it as “a poor way of describing/summarizing evolution,” according to Romanowski.

(5) MORE 451 CASTING. Deadline reports “‘Fahrenheit 451’: Martin Donovan, Andy McQueen & Grace Lynn Kung Cast In HBO Movie”.

Donovan will play Commissioner Nyari, a leader in the ministry. McQueen plays Gustav, a member of the resistance, and Kung plays Chairman Mao, a member of the resistance. In addition to Jordan, they join previously announced Michael Shannon as Beatty, Sofia Boutella as Clarisse and Lilly Singh as Raven.

(6) FAUX BLURB. A fiction writer’s web of lies started crashing because, amongst other things, he had blurbs from dead people praising his book Stealing Indians. The SF connection: one of them is Ray Bradbury: “Fiction Writer Is Being Accused of Weaving a Breathtaking Web of Questionable Achievements”.

Praise for journalist Rich Smith’s article on The Stranger, “Meet John Smelcer, Native American Literature’s ‘Living Con Job’”: a profile of a fiction writer who starting claiming a strong Alaskan Native identity as early as 1994 and then appears to have run with a twenty-five-year string of inflated credentials and biographical details so elaborate that the resulting tale itself should be up for an award.

Jamoche posted the link in comments with this clarification:

[About] the Bradbury quote- the Jezebel article missed the line above it, so they report it as being for the new book; it’s actually for the writer’s 2013 book:

Praise for Lone Wolves:

“A beautiful and moving story of courage and love.”—Ray Bradbury

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Porter, and Jamoche for these stories.]

Cosplay, Charlottesville, and Trump

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Charlottesville: Attention-seeking fans attracted to media hotspots don’t always get the kind of reaction they want. Bleeding Cool News, in “The Supergirl Cosplayer Who Went To Charlottesville – Guess Whose Side She Was On”, reports that celebrity cosplayer Alisa Norris (aka Alisa Kiss) marched with her partner and other white supremacists last weekend. She was not there in costume, but drew attention to her participation by complaining on Facebook about how the media had portrayed them.

Once the negative reaction set in she denied being in the march, however, Bleeding Cool has video showing her walking hand-in-hand with her partner while he shouts anti-Semitic slogans.

Even the webmaster of her “adult entertainment” site is outraged and has taken it down in protest. The website, AlisaKiss.com, now only displays a message denouncing Alisa Kiss for promoting racism.

Phoenix: Cosplayers on the other side of the culture war are being called to protest Donald Trump’s appearance in Phoenix on August 22. The organizer of a counter event, Cosplayers Rally Against Hate, urges fans “to help drown out the hate groups that will make an appearance by showing up to the rally in cosplay.”

Notes:

1) We are not an official organization, but a rag-tag diverse group of creatives and costumers.

2) We plan to be as safe as possible. I encourage folks to plan exit strategies, and we will be following the main protest groups for updates and recommending staging/protesting areas.

3) Keep your messaging positive – dont react to hate. Also, PLEASE do not wear military-themed cosplay. Wear “safe” looking cosplays, and comfortable cosplays in case of the weather. Signs encouraged (some examples on the page).

[Thanks to JJ for the story.]