Crowbar

Erma Felna and the perennial crowbar. Art by Steven Gallacci

One of the long-running inside jokes of furry fandom is that of drawing a female furry character, naked with a crowbar, which is 1920's slang for a penis.

History

The origins of the joke are said to be a convention sometime in the 1980s. As the story goes, someone asked Steve Gallacci to draw a picture of Erma Felna naked. He declined, but Jim Groat who was nearby and overheard the conversation, asked again in a whiny fanboy voice to draw her naked, and with a crowbar.

Since then, it has become something of a cliché/running joke that any artist in the furry fandom will at some point produce a picture of a female naked with a crowbar, or that any sufficiently well-known female character will be drawn naked with a crowbar (one recent LiveJournal discussion mentioned Florence Ambrose).

Some artists have done one or more pictures specifically to pay homage to the joke. It has been parodied in a few stories, including Sabrina Online: The Story, and was referenced in the NES game Nightshade, which was written by Paul Kidd.

The Titanium Crowbar Awards

On July 25, 2000, artist Brian O'Connell suggested in alt.fan.furry the creation of the Titanium Crowbar Awards for best furry erotica in the fandom. This came out of a discussion involving "crowbar" jokes, posted earlier on the group, involving the device, Gallaci's character, and sex.

Even though he wrote a ballot post on August of that same year on AFF, with category nominations, nothing came out of it, and the idea was shelved.

External links

• "Crowbar" search results on alt.fan.furry
• Crowbars, Erma Felna, and furry fandom on TVtropes.org
• "Esmerelda Nude" (with crowbar), image by Terry Knight
• "With a crowbar?", image by Bill Fortier

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