TK Tiger

TK Tiger is a UK furry who was probably the first tiger to be a signed up member of the Tae Kwondo Association of Great Britain (TAGB). He is also a self-confessed "Steam Enthusiast", and a lover of the video game Dance Dance Revolution.

Fursuiting
Tae Kwon-Do Tiger was born after being a fancy-dress costume for the Southern TAGB Christmas Party in 1999. TK (at the time known as 'Housey') had been a member of The Lion King mailing List (TLK-L) for around two years, and jumped at the chance to rent a fursuit. Housey's original plan of renting a lion failed when the shop only had a tiger available. Undeterred, he rented the tiger and the character Tae Kwon-Do Tiger was born on Friday the 3rd December 1999.

Tae Kwon-Do Tiger went out and about his home town a lot in the last month of 1999 - even seeing in the year 2000 in front of BBC South's broadcasting studio (which became a regular thing until 2006). After 8 months without fursuit, TK went to the shop he had rented the tiger costume from, and purchased one for himself. The new Tae Kwon-Do Tiger fursuit made his first public appearance on the 9th September 2000 at a small gathering of furs in the home of Kashy Fox.

The new look Tae Kwon-Do Tiger fursuit saw in 5 New Years, went to a preserved steam railway, went bowling, played DDR, and even appeared briefly on ITV Play's program "Play DJ Late". This TV appearance won TK and Blaster Hedgie a Play DJ mug, and brought happiness to the presenter Greg Scott. The new costume was retired on 3rd July 2007, on the 26th birthday of his performer, though was dug out of retirement briefly to lark around in the snow on 02 December 2010. There are no current plans to commission a replacement suit.

History of the name
Early in the month of January 2000, Housey started writing a story revolving around the character of Tae Kwon-Do Tiger. This story was named "Trials Of A Tiger", and was posted infrequently to The Lion King mailing List (that was at zazu.lionking.org). While Tae Kwon-Do Tiger might be a suitable name for a costume character, Housey decided that the name wasn't suited to text. Thomas King was the answer to that problem, shortened to T.K., with the tiger part tacked on when needed.

This was to cause a minor problem when Housey became a fully-fledged member of the furry fandom in March 2000 (having sat on the edge since 1999). Housey wanted to adopt the Tae Kwon-Do Tiger character for himself, but the person was quite different from the character on paper. To reduce confusion between the person and the character, Housey dropped the dots between the letters and became TK Tiger, with the tiger part dropped in casual conversation soon afterwards.

Writing
TK would continue writing about T.K., not only in the story "Trials of a Tiger", but in a second tale with the working title "T.K. and Tyger". Both stories feature T.K. and anthro versions of his real-life classmates and teachers. Currently, neither tale is complete.

Recently, other projects have forced TK to place writing to one side, though he still tinkers on a couple of projects sometimes. He also only updates his various blogs and journals only when he has the time (and energy) to do so, which is why there are often long gaps between updates.

TigerTails Entertainment
Over time, TK wrote various bits and bobs and eventually compiled a website for them all. He decided as they had been tales told by a tiger, he would call the site TigerTails (domain tigertails.co.uk).

In a collaboration with Blaster Hedgie, the 20th July 2004 was the first date of airing for a new ShoutCast radio show TigerTails Radio. The TigerTails website was rebranded TigerTails Entertainment and the writing section was renamed to "The Tiger's Tales". TigerTails Radio ran every single day for exactly one year before TK canned the project. Season two ran for 36 shows before hitting major technical failure and going off-air. Season three ran for 52 shows, as did seasons four and five. Season six is currently live, and runs every Monday at the normal time of 9PM, UK time.

The TigerTails Entertainment site's latest update has introduced "staff" to the site, with short biography texts and contact details for the cast of TigerTails Radio and the website administrator Thomas King. The site also contains links to the writings of the cast, a photo gallery, and a video gallery. All sections are off-site, hosted by Posterous, Picasa, and YouTube respectively.

TigerTails Entertainment has also been requested to submit designs for websites. Potential clients have included a Chinese restaurant, a local Bridge players club, and a video games arcade/casino chain.

Con and meet attendence
April 1st 2000 saw TK attend his first LondonFurs meet, and a few months later he joined the HantsFurs. A few years later, Slycat handed control of the HantsFurs to TK, who then placed Dark Lordess as the list's first female admin member. In early 2011, Slycat resumed control of the HantsFurs website, leaving TK with the Yahoo Groups mailing list. At the time of writing, TK is still the leader of the list.

TK also attended his first (and, as of July 2007, last) con at Eurofurence 7, in 2001. He took the Tae Kwon-Do Tiger fursuit, and briefly bodypainted as his second character, Spots Dalmatian.

June 2009 saw TK co-organise and host a two-day meet for listeners to meet the cast of TigerTails Radio, aptly named The TigerTails Radio Meet. The meet was attended not only by the cast of TigerTails Radio but other BritFur FM staff, including Stuart Otterson and the host of BritFur FM show Virus Core Radio. A single-day repeat event was organised by radio co-host Xavier in the summer of 2010 as well as a video-gaming meet earlier in the same year.

TigerTails Entertainment
TigerTails Entertainment is the parent company for a group of websites running under the TigerTails banner. Based in the United Kingdom, TigerTails Entertainment is responsible for creating TigerTails Radio, which is an internet radio show that started in 2004 and to date continues to air on a weekly basis.


 * Address: http://www.tigertails.co.uk/
 * Founder: TK Tiger

Origins
TigerTails Entertainment started out in April 2002 as a website for TK Tiger to upload stories and other writings after positive reaction to his tales posted to the The Lion King mailing List (TLK-L that was at zazu.lionking.org). The site was named The Tiger's Tale, as the site contained tales written by a tiger. This name was to remain until July 2004 when TK teamed up with Blaster Hedgie to create TigerTails Radio. As the website now contained more than just writing, TK decided a re-brand was in order, and TigerTails Entertainment was born. The website remained primarily as a writing site until 2008, when TK pulled his older works from the internet and turned the TigerTails Entertainment website in to a portal for sites under the TigerTails name. In 2010, the site was updated to reflect the addition of "staff" and their contributions.

Content
TigerTails Entertainment is broken in to a collection of smaller brands:

TigerTails TV
In 2006, TK gained access to video editing software and began posting videos to YouTube. These videos cover many topics, from experiments with diet cola and mints, to videos of reactions to popular Internet gross out videos. Videos for events covered for TigerTails Radio are also created by TigerTails TV but are separated in to a dedicated TigerTails Radio playlist.

TigerTails Library
The library was introduced in the 2010 update as a replacement for the old TigerTails Entertainment site as the writings were removed in 2008. Powered by Posterous, the library contains writings by the three main cast members of TigerTails Radio, including information on the Sunday Night Role Playing Games that take part in the TigerTails Studio buildings before each episode of TigerTails Radio. The radio cast also take part in a group writing challenge, the results of which are also available to read.

TigerTails Gallery
This section of the site is still in early development, but is powered by Picasa and contains many photos taken by TK.

Thomas King
The TK in name TK Tiger had to stand for something, and once TK had stopped doing tae kwondo, he decided to change from being Tae Kwondo Tiger, and adopt the name of Thomas King. This name would be the pen-name he'd put to all his writing and it became his "real life" persona. This confused listeners of TigerTails Radio, for the website would refer to TK as TK Tiger, while everything on the site was written by Thomas King, leading them to assume that they were two separate people instead of "fursona" and "persona". This amused the cast of TigerTails Radio, so TK decided to continue running with the idea of keeping the character of TK away from the character of Thomas King. The 2010 update to the TigerTails Entertainment website lists TK and Thomas King as two people, one being the head of the group, and the other being the anonymous website administrator and blog writer.

Should TK ever write anything that gets published, however, it will be published with Thomas King as the author.