Fur and Loathing 🐺

Hey remember when there was a massive chemical attack specifically targeting a largely very marginalized group

Hi, welcome to Podcast Promise, the newsletter dedicated to only podcasts that truly inspire me to write something about them for real. They might be new releases, they might not. In this case, it is a newish release: Fur & Loathing by Brazen and Nicky Woolf.

And first up. Before I say anything else. I do have to point out that this podcast about furries — STICK WITH ME I PROMISE, IT’S LITERALLY CALLED PODCAST PROMISE — is created by someone whose name is both a whole animal and basically Nicholas D. Wolfwood of Trigun.

If you don’t see how those things are related, show me a single furry who didn’t love Trigun, whether the original or Stampede. You can’t.

Fur and Loathing is a deep-dive investigative podcast, closely produced and closely reported. Here’s the show’s description:

In December 2014, a chlorine gas bomb was set off at a convention for Furries, hospitalising 19 people. It’s one of the largest chemical weapon terrorist attacks in American history – and it remains an unsolved mystery. Who did it? And… why?

😻Furries are gay

Hi! Furries are gay. The furry community, like the leather community, or the Chappell Roan community, is gay. Furries are also largely neurodivergent, and largely trans. There are very few furries who are not also part of some marginalized identity. Being a furry can be a sex thing, absolutely. And what do we say about sex things that have nothing to do with you, especially if you are not even in the marginalized group(s) in question here?

It’s literally not your business.

I say this for two reasons: one, because I think you should give a shit about furries and stop being weird about them. If the McElroys could do this like a decade ago, I believe in your capability to be normal towards a demographic you do not belong to and assume that they’re allowed to do whatever they want as long as it’s not hurting anyone. And if I see a single criticism that has anything to do with “the children,” I swear to god, during pride especially, I swear to god.

But two, I say this because I think it’s important to consider when framing the story at the center of Fear and Loathing. Imagine a Chappell Roan concert or leather convention in which there was a planned, targeted chemical attack that left almost 20 people hospitalized and hundreds evacuated. We would see that and understand what it is. So why is it different with a furry convention if we know full well that furries are gay?

Fur and Loathing is an investigation — because it has to be. The police, like everyone else, didn’t seem to take any of this seriously. But it’s also an interrogation in what happens when we write off demographics we don’t take seriously.

🐲Who is allowed to be a punchline?

I was an anti-furry for a long time. It was a no-brainer, right? Especially as someone who didn’t know I was queer, having a demographic I felt I could just easily laugh at was welcome. It was nice to feel superior — sure, I had confusing and terrifying attractions to my femme friends I couldn’t explain (YOU ARE BISEXUAL, IDIOT) but at least I wasn’t a weirdo who thought I was a little kitty. (As an adult who pays taxes and is greeted daily by the miseries and the horrors, I understand the appeal of wanting to be a little kitty.)

I’m still not a furry, but I am out as queer, and I am much more educated into how respectability politics allow the State to control, oppress, and suppress any behavior they deem counter to their goals of capitalistic Christofascism. Listen, yes, I am reading that sentence too, and I know. I know. But I’m exhausted by constantly having to express how I’m not being hyperbolic in connecting Christofascism with goofing on furries. Think about the bathroom bill litter box hoax. Please don’t make me explain more. I’m so tired. Here’s my letterboxd respectability politics syllabus list if you want more exposure via film.

So when literal neo-Nazis invade the furry culture, or the brony culture (I’m so sorry for linking to The Atlantic of all things — yes bronies are also gay and often furries), or the more mainstream gay culture, we should give a shit. It’s bad when neo-Nazis exist anywhere. It’s especially bad when they exist within communities where fascist ideologies have led to hate crimes and attacks. And it’s especially bad when those attacks happen, with neo-Nazis present, and the cops go, “This one’s a real stumper!" The public just didn’t care. Why would they? Furries are a joke. Let them get attacked. If they didn’t want to be attacked, maybe they shouldn’t be weird.

But Nicky Woolf cared. Readers of Podcast Promise know that what I care about most in these types of podcasts is giving a shit about something, or someone, that has been overlooked or treated like a joke.

Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) 🖥️

And Nicky Woolf gives a shit in a real, real way. There is a hands-on approach in this podcast that displays Woolf’s journalistic bona fides, which are plentiful and deep. Not only is this podcast given the full glossy true crime treatment in post-production with its pacing, editing, sound design, writing, and music, it’s also given the same treatment in how the investigation rolls out.

The investigation eventually leads to an interview with a potential suspect that is so stressful, so suspenseful, it kept hearkening back to some of the best moments of Bone Valley, the moments in which the creators grappled with the fear of being in a room with a potential murderer.

Yeah — I listen to true crime now sometimes. Let’s talk about it.

🐰True crime with a conscience

Like being anti-furries, I have also spent a good amount of time being anti-true crime. Unlike being anti-furry, I had good reaons to being anti-true crime, and I still maintain almost all of them. This classic You’re Wrong About episode sums it up. This article I published on Discover Pods from an anonymous writer also sums it up.

But I’ve gotten back into Crime Writers On, which reviews true crime content both in terms of ethics and execution. I was late to In the Dark because I was so anti-true crime, but once I listened, it really changed things for me. I don’t feel like my Serial and S-Town era opinions have changed at all. I feel like most true crime is ultimately exploitative and antithetical to my politics and ethics.

But not all true crime is most true crime. Some true crime is anti-cop, anti-prison, and pro interogating our carceral systems. Some true crime is made in partnership with its subjects, or the families. And some true crime, like Fur and Loathing, is made with deep reverence and controbution from maligned, largely disenfranchised communities.

I think Fur and Loathing is pretty much exactly what I want in true crime. There’s no murdered beautiful white lady, no descriptions of her violent murder. There’s no autmatic deference for carceral authorities. There’s no making light of an event that likely traumatized hundreds of people, and again, hospitalized almost 20.

Instead, there is a sense of care and respect for the victims that nobody has provided with such a platform so far. There’s a sense of actual justice, seeking actual truth. There’s a focus on one specific crime, but it opens up to such a bigger conversation on who gets to be a punchline versus who gets to be a victim. There’s a bigger conversation about how we talk about queerness, neurodivergence, and again, respectability politics — without being didactic or pretentious or Girl Shut Uppppp about it like I was up above.

I want true crime that gives this glossy, deep, reverent treatment to the people the public laughs at and ignores. I want this humanization for victims we deem as imperfect, or weird, or annoying, or fucking crine or whatever.

Everyone deserves to live without the threat of identity-based targeted violence. Obviously. Everyone should get to pursue their hobby or culture or community without the threat of targeted violence. Obviously. I’m so grateful for this podcast that conssitently reminds us that this is not okay, and this is not normal.

🎙️Go subscribe!

Fur and Loathing is so fucking good. Like my previous entries here at Podcast Promise, this show would already be a big contender for a best of the year list if I did one (should I do one? do people still read these? they’re so stressful so y’all would need to really ask for me to feel motivated to write one.)

Go subscribe and listen RIGHT NOW — and then please please please please please talk to me about it when you’ve listened!

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Other recs

⚙️What I’ve been making

• Nevermorphed is my newest podcast baby, in which I read the Animorphs books for the first time ever. These books are so fucked up. It’s honestly insane. And they’re so good??? Come join me as I read this series that puts its contemporaries to shame in like 500 ways. And if you’re an Animorphs person, come be a guest!

• How to Act Fereldan is a fancast about all things Dragon Age, and it’s OUT NOW! 🎉🐲🎉 In this podcast, Anne Baird and I explain Dragon Age to the wonderful Giancarlo Herrera, who’s playing the games for the first time as we go. It’s got grief over the gaming industry, ruminations on colonization, and the best segment in the universe: What’s That Dragon Age? It also has the best podcast art I’ve ever made. Go subscribe — it’s launching soon!

• I can now announce that The Deposition is coming on the Fourth of July! The Deposition is an audio drama meets dramatic reading using Elon Musk’s deposition from the Ben Brody lawsuit as the script. Every single page of this document is unhinged and hilarious, and actually hearing it performed made me notice even more about it. (Psst . . . as a thank you for reading this far, here’s a secret link to Episode 1.)

🎞️What I’ve been watching

• Finally watched The Bear and really enjoyed it. Italian American families really do be like that can confirm. I’m so glad I didn’t go to culinary school like I once hoped to do. I would have been so good at it, and it would have been SO bad for me.

• The Jenny Nicholson Star Wars Hotel video OBVIOUSLY.

• The new Haley Whipjack Once Upon a Time video OBVIOUSLY.

📰What I’ve been reading

• Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus was tremendous. The line-by-line writing is direct, tasty, and eminently munchable like a bag of M&Ms, while the plot is an equally delicious but more gradual unfolding (a jawbreaker?) of a mystery the main character doesn’t know she’s part of until it’s far too late. It’s a supernatural horror thriller connected to a queer conversion camp, and it fucking rules. Audiobook read by the fantastic Mara Wilson, who I looked so much like as a kid and now have a weird amount in common with.

• I’ve finally started Babel, and while I’m only two chapters in by now, I’m already in love.

• 👆🏻As always, not affiliate codes, I just owe Changing Hands my life.

🎶What I’ve been singing

• Congratulations to the absolutely beautiful Illinoise for winning the Tony for best choreo! Sufjan Stevens has been maybe my single favorite artist since . . . for . . . 20 years? That can’t be right. Oh my god. Well. Anyway. If you’re not sure where to start with Stevens’s music, great news: there’s a video just for you. But know that I think “Vito’s Ordination Song” is his single most underrated song, I have a tattoo of the predatory wasp and her seven bites, and I cannot make it through “Mercury” without crying.