From: xela@phaucksie.net   
      
   On Friday, October 24, 2003 at 3:58:57 PM UTC-7, MHirtes wrote:   
   > Just to keep you goons from eating up CYD's bandwidth:   
   > Journey To The Center Of Mark Merlino   
   > Author: Computolio   
   > When one looks at the tremendous mess furries have made of not only   
   > themselves but a small chunk of Western culture (to say nothing of the   
   > internet), the idea of this disaster having occurred even partially by   
   > design is difficult to fathom. The "furry sub-culture" is one of the   
   > great unsung geek tragedies of the Western world, utterly destroying,   
   > ruining and ass-raping everything it touches.   
   > After all, nobody sane could have actually WANTED TO CREATE a safe haven   
   > for people such as Dennis Falk, Sarah Wheeler, Kinberliegh Ann Keister,   
   > Bart "Nekobe" Bakovets, Karl "Xydexx" Jorgensen, every single   
   > alt.lifestyle.furry poster and whoever the fuck Kajima Frostfang is to   
   > get together, right? A "community" for people who absolutely should   
   > never get together under any circumstances lest they form a relatively   
   > small but destructive cancer on the civilized world? Wrong.   
   >   
   > Pictured: Mark Merlino and Rod O"Riley at one of their conventions,   
   > fawning over the monstrosity that lies before them.   
   > Many furries (especially the disgruntled ones) will tell you frankly   
   > that Mark Merlino was the man who started the ball rolling, the man who   
   > helped to nudge the furry scene around the U-bend into where it is   
   > today. He's been with furrydumb for a long time; reportedly he boasts of   
   > having helped create the modern furry culture. We might just give him   
   > that credit. Before he came along, what we now call furry was scarcely   
   > more than just some sort of primordial gaggle of geeks made up of the   
   > fannish fallout of both Richard Adams and Robert Crumb. Back then they   
   > called the object of their interest "funny animals". Relatively   
   > speaking, these people were fucking saints compared with their modern   
   > equivalents. After all, there was no internet in sight and that tiny,   
   > tiny population of proto-furries could still be called a legitimate part   
   > of geekdom - rather then the fetish-culture-in-denial we have to deal   
   > with today. When Merlino met up with this group, he helped to change it   
   > forever, molding it to fit his own image.   
   > Although today he enjoys a moderately high standing within the group,   
   > Merlino is not really the leader of the furries. The phenomenon is as   
   > decentralized as the internet itself. No, Merlino is a boss, a kingpin,   
   > a Mr. X. Like a videogame and possibly also action movie villain, he   
   > sits behind the scenes, pulling strings and manipulating his inner   
   > circle of end-level bosses close friends and lovers to effect some loose   
   > control over a vast army of palette-swapped street punks furry   
   > lifestylers.This is the story of his rise to power, as best we can   
   > decipher it from approximately 10,583 useless Usnet posts and anyone   
   > who'll tell us anything.   
   > We've heard two slightly different versions of the beginning of the   
   > story. Both say that he was part of (in fact the cofounder of) a general   
   > animation fanclub in Texas. Both say he eventually parted with it and   
   > went on to do his own thing. They differ as to why. One account says   
   > that he was basically kicked from the club for being gay, another says   
   > he quit when the club decided to place a bigger emphasis on Japanese   
   > animation. It is said that his goal was to create "a gay-friendly   
   > fandom", but in reality it's become more of an embarrassment for the gay   
   > community.   
   > Mark Merlino arrived on the furry scene (even though the term "furry"   
   > had yet to be coined) during the early 1980s and started a couple of   
   > fanzines. That in itself wasn't anything particularly special, but   
   > within the space of a few short years he made a shocking and prophetic   
   > move: the recruiting drive. He tried to "recruit" new people into the   
   > "fandom" in a way that fitted him and his own interests. Of course, the   
   > idea of recruiting anyone into a fandom is absurd, but that was only the   
   > beginning of what Merlino had in mind. The purpose of these recruitment   
   > packages was to attempt to get more people into the sexual side of   
   > furrydumb, something which almost didn't exist back then. He wanted to   
   > lure closeted fetishists out with handouts of early furry porn and the   
   > promise of more( 1). This was done at various sci-fi gatherings; if (or   
   > when) he was kicked out he'd just move on to the next. "Artwork" for   
   > these handouts came from the pioneering furry "artists" of the era,   
   > either Ken Sample or Dave Bryant. Other stuff (mostly non-pornographic,   
   > but pressure was applied to take it as far as possible) was also   
   > commissioned by Merlino and friends. Some of it went towards the   
   > development of a furry-themed tabletop RPG called "Other Suns", which   
   > Merlino and his friends worked on from time to time. (An overview of one   
   > of it's descendants is here .) It featured convoluted rules lifted from   
   > a few other games plus a space travel system with classic Derek Smart   
   > levels of brokenness and needless complexity.   
   >   
   > The "skilltaire" was some alien weasel cat thing Merlino came up with   
   > for his own role-playing sessions or something.   
   > Sometime during this time, Merlino bought a home in Southern California,   
   > which he dubbed the "Prancing Skilltaire". It was often called a "fan   
   > commune" and served as the home base for at least one early furry BBS   
   > and several early gatherings. The new subculture Merlino was promoting   
   > needed to increase in size or at least look bigger, and our best guess   
   > is that conventions were seen as the best way to do this. After all,   
   > they had always been an important part of Merlino's agenda. The first   
   > "furry party" was said to have been organized by him, held at WesterCon   
   > '86 in Sacramento, California. After a few of these, he expanded into   
   > full-blown conventions with the beginning of "ConFurence" in 1989.   
   > By the early 1990s, MUDs were beginning to take off among BBS and early   
   > campus internet users. Furrydumb (and Merlino with it) snapped the idea   
   > up as soon as it was practical; role-playing has seemingly always been a   
   > cornerstone of the furry existence. When it emerged, FurryMUCK would   
   > later take up most of the slack after the BBS-hosted stuff fell into   
   > disuse. The people who set it up are another commune, and perhaps   
   > another story. It may not have been the first or even the raunchiest,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)