I've kinda been thinking (or at least, the thought came to me as I've been idling around xP), the main reason I even really latched onto 'squirrel' as my fursona species was because of a "crush" I had on a silly computer-animated character who happened to be coded as one.

Lately bunnies have been appealing to me, though…bunny alt maybe? xP

I don't think my "main" squirrelsona is going anywhere anytime soon, but idk, I guess I've grown an affinity for buns now, too. :T

(and for those wondering why the sudden drastic shift in tone from my last journal entry…I'm doing alright, still kinda uncertain how things are gonna go though. I'm mostly just trying to stay some semblance of positive here; I know that last journal entry was kind of a doozy…)

This will likely be VERY TL;DR for most of you who come across this, but here goes...

I'm in (what my anxiety-ridden brain tells me at least) a bit of a bad situation.

My mom's SO lost his job recently (as in within the last few days), and he's basically been the breadwinner for she and I; we've both been living essentially as dependents. x.x We both have somewhat distinct reasons for doing so, but either way, this is *not* good, and I'm not sure how long we'll be able to last before things get desperate for the three of us. I am panicking a bit right now...

I hate how it seems like every time I want to reach out for help/advice, I feel like I have to hold back because I know I probably won't take it. Any time I get advice along the lines of "oh wow you know a lot more than I do!", praising me for what I already know and how I could Make It Big if I just Took The Chance and put myself out there, I get all cynical and tell myself that they're only saying that because they don't know how the industry works...but then I don't either; I'm just assuming based on what I've read/heard from other folks who *do* have tech/IT-related jobs and have been in the field(s) for years...I tend to assume that they're basically godlike compared to me and any sort of "experience" I might have is a joke compared to what anyone in the real world is looking for. v.v

On the other hand, when people tell me I just need to hustle up and get moving, at any and all costs (possibly including my sanity x.x), that I need to work on those skills, that I could be better if I'd just do more with what I have, etc., I tend to see nothing but an endless uphill climb, a Sysiphean effort that's doomed to always be terrible and uncomfortable and never fun at any point. I always anticipate that any effort to improve will be an eternal slog, never getting better or easier no matter how hard I try and no matter what I do...

I feel like a worthless, trash human being, honestly. Hell, just writing this thing makes me feel like some "whiny, privileged, spoiled-brat millenial" begging for help continuing to live like a goddamn child. I don't feel I really have much in the way of discernible skills. Knowledge? Sure, maybe about some things. Passion and interest? Oh yes, definitely, for a lot of things...mostly computer-related, but many things regardless. Practical, marketable skill? Basically none. Motivation? Also basically none. It's this self-feeding cycle that I don't know how to break of:

10 PRINT "oh god I haven't done anything with myself and I'm already getting close-ish to the big 3 0 oh shit I must be a worthless piece of garbage"
20 DISTRACT SELF WITH (SOCIAL MEDIA) AND (GAMES)
30 GOTO 10

My proverbial keyboard seems to lack that ever-important BREAK key, or at the very least, I can't seem to reach it. x.x

I know I probably can't ask anyone to let me stay with them if things do get bad, and I don't feel right setting up a crowdfunding account or something; I think I'd need a more "legit" reason like having lost a job *myself* and needing a way to stay afloat until finding another to justify that. All I know right now is that things are looking rather uncertain right now, and I'm really hoping I don't have to end up becoming the new breadwinner or something, needing to work three jobs and running 10-12 hour days 6 days a week just to keep the house afloat. I mean that's a worst-case scenario, I think, but I just don't want to have to be forced into being 100% independent (and possibly then some) literally right out the gate with no room to grow a career or even recollect myself after a day's work. x~x

I know that last bit probably just makes me sound like a whiner; someone who's so privileged and used to a cushy, spoiled lifestyle, living rent-free etc. I think that's *part of the problem* for me...I *have* been way too goddamn comfortable, and any attempts at "pushing me out on my own" have been met with passive resistance. v.v I think my biggest issue has been the fear that any job I get will immediately suck up ALL my free time, I won't be able to do ANYTHING else with my life, it'll consume me as a person, I won't have any other sense of identity aside from what I do on the job, I'll barely be able to make ends meet, etc. I've always had this impression of the working life as a slog that literally everyone resents having to go through, and the idea of being in a position where I'm doing something I actually enjoy for a living to this day feels like a pie-in-the-sky fantasy.

I'd always told myself that since I *do* have so much free time and ability to play to my interests, I might be able to get my foot in the door of an industry I wanted to work in or find a way to employ myself. Obviously that hasn't ever come to pass; I've spent 90% of my goddamn time wasting it, distracting myself from the constant feeling of worthlessness and guilt that I wasn't fully independent shortly after turning 18. x.x I feel like nothing I like to do is worthwhile, and most of the things I used to have a genuine passion and fully developed interest in have faded to a point where I'm just a cynical bitch about most of it now. I've become a curmudgeon when it comes to programming, ranting about how no one cares about the low-level things I've always been fascinated with anymore and are more than content to just let software bloat to infinity. I've basically talked myself out of seriously pursuing art, because I feel like my ideas for my little fantasy world are silly and implausible and terribly thought out, and somewhere in the back of my mind I think I'm afraid of losing the ability to distinguish between fiction and reality. x.x;;

I'll try not to get into it too much here, but when I was going through that time in my life (as I'm sure many do at *some* point?) where I started seriously asking big philosophical questions, having not been raised by particularly religious parents. I vaguely remember Sunday school when I was reeeeeally little, but not enough to remember details. At this point, my mom had gotten hugely into some mystical new-agey pseudosciencey beliefs, and sounding juuuuust plausible enough at the time to seem believable to me, and being warmly comforting and reassuring that all my dreams would come true, that I'd be able to become things I wanted to become (physically speaking >.>), etc., I ate it up. I took it hook, line, and sinker...at least, until I started talking about it with other people on the internet and they gave lots of disagreeing points of view, and I started thinking critically about the whole thing, which of course sent me into some pretty bad depressive spirals when I came to some nasty conclusions. I like to think I've at least somewhat made peace with some of them by now, but all the old emotional trauma from that time still lingers, and I think that at least is part of what contributed to my huge deficiencies in terms of getting employed etc. x.x;

If you've ever wondered why I'm so bloody hesitant in discussing the details of some of my fantasies, that's partly why. I'm afraid that by seriously and genuinely exploring that "universe", I'll just revert back into that old mentality and revisit all those feelings and find myself believing in some pretty batshit insane stuff. x.x; It's also why I'm somewhat afraid of genuinely researching real-life science/biology/physiology topics, because then it would provide a firm, likely contrary grounding to what vaguely little I'm already aware of, and I just don't want a repeat of those emotionally harsh times when I started de-wooifying myself. I worry that such painful disillusionment would make it very difficult to keep interest in furry and related things. I'm doubtful and "skeptical", sure, but I think knowing for sure would put the nail in the proverbial coffin for me if it turned out I was right to doubt and criticize. x~x;

In regards to my whole low-level obsession in programming while at the same time having all these grandiose ideas for games and the like, I feel like that most recently comes down to a lot of philosophical disagreements I've had with people in the past on what's Good Actually when it comes to coding. x.x There's an IRC channel I used to frequent that I actually got *banned from* because of all the headbutting that would nearly always happen. I'm not sensitive about a lot of topics, but boy oh boy, when it comes to the Programming Language Wars, it's one of the hills I will legit fucking die on...at least, mostly. :/ I like to think I'm getting better about it, but seeing people make Cool Shit in Unity while I'm sitting here struggling to make Project Euler programs work in C makes my goddamn blood boil. I want to be able to do that kind of stuff, too, while also bringing back some of the performance-minded sensibilities from the days of yore when you didn't *have* several gigabytes of RAM to spare or billions of CPU cycles or thousands of SIMD units on a GPU. It seems to me like all that performance-mindedness has been relegated to the tool developers; the people who make the stuff that people use to make their stuff. :B That is to say, I feel like if I want to get "seriously" into writing "low-level" code in C/C++ or the likes, I'd basically be limited to boring genericised busywork that enables people to make things, but doesn't really make anything neat on its own. I feel like people would laugh if I announced that I was gonna try to make a game (as in an actual *game*, not just an engine) from scratch in C++...without the use of a preexisting framework like Unity or Unreal engine. They'd tell me that I'm doomed to never complete it, or that if it ever is completed it'll be so riddled with bugs people will point to it as the #1 example of how NOT to write a game, etc. x.x

In any case, I think I've written enough here to bore just about anyone to death...I practically put half my life story in stream-of-consciousness format in here, and I doubt most people are even actually gonna read it, let alone respond to it constructively. :/

I guess TL;DR I feel like a wreck who's putting out too little, too late, and who's gone through more emotional trauma than he's been aware of because he's been provided for in all the basic ways and then some, and feels like this very document is just a whiny crybaby sort of thing where I'm just begging for mommy and daddy to make the boogeyman go away so I can continue living at others' expense and I just....I dunno, I feel like an abusive sort of person who doesn't even think of themselves as abusive but at the same time I dunno how to make something of myself and I dunno what to do and this whole situation has me in a panic and it's nearly 5 AM as I'm writing this and I'm choking up with anxiety and I just don't feel right.... >~<

I think lately I've been sloooowly coming to the realization that a lot of the problems I was having before was, frankly, failing to properly compartmentalize fact and fiction. Fact and verisimilitude/realism/etc. help to *aid* artistic expression, but they don't replace it. At some point, if you keep trying to justify more and more of your ideas and try to take them as literally as possible, you stop expressing what you want to and end up just writing a schematic/datasheet for something that probably won't work for one reason or another.

I've discussed this little "dilemma" I've been having WRT feeling like I need to justify as much of my fictitious "tech" as possible with various friends, and the general takeaway I've gotten from it seems to be that…I need to feel like my ideas are valid and okay, regardless of plausibility or a lack thereof. :/ I need to start going in with less of an attitude of needing to prove something to myself and/or others, and more of an attitude of seeking knowledge to aid expression.

I think a lot of what's been tripping me up is having this sort of childhood dream of "making cartoons real" or what have you, and feeling that expressing that desire in art, in a way that's sort of meant to be taken seriously, at least in-universe, will be met with mockery and/or derision. It's hard for me to find the confidence to just put the ideas out there, no matter how silly or implausible they may seem to others, because I want people to share my hopes and dreams I guess, I dunno. :/ Any way you slice it, though, I think the solution to it is just putting the ideas out there, no matter how ashamed I am of them or how silly and implausible and generally Bad™ they seem, and seeing what people's real reactions are.

It's okay to have dreams, and even to work towards bringing them closer to reality…just don't confuse the two, or it'll just make things unnecessarily difficult, as I've started to find out the hard way, I think.

Disregard last journal entry…I'll probably regret having written it when/if I actually do start getting into 3D stuff. I dunno what I was thinking when I wrote it TBH…

I mean I suppose at the heart of it the concept isn't that terrible? …but "basing it on CGI rigging" is almost certainly not gonna work, since I'm sure a lot of the trickery involved in 3D animation can't…really…be justified with something physically analogous. The idea of "toonbots" (Roger Rabbit through technology basically :B) might not be terrible as a story concept, but…I need to stop thinking in terms of "the way the animation works can inform the fictional internals". It's just not gonna work. I got too caught up in how apparently the visual design of the Portal 2 co-op robots was informed by the process of 3D animation rigging or something and used that as an excuse to say "oh well this can apply to anything~, right?" …yeah no, it almost certainly wouldn't work with something more "organic"-looking like my 'sona or something.

Anyways, I know it's weird how I seem to alternate between positive and negative journal entries here, but it seems like with every new idea I have, the more I look at my descriptions of them and the more little things I see here and there about How Stuff Works, whether it's IRL mechanics or animation stuffs or whatever, the more I end up regretting the wording and exact details of them. I think the basic concept is still there; I really want to do a story involving these ideas, but…I'm so caught up on doing it convincingly. It's like I can't give myself enough artistic liberty to just leave stuff to the imagination; I feel like I have to justify every thang ding about the design and motion of the things in terms of some 100% consistent set of physical rules, whether they even apply to RL or not. x.x

TL;DR I've become highly cynical of my own ideas and their validity ever since I started actually paying attention to real-life details of things rather than just making it up or handwaving it. x.x People tell me I need to stop hating my own ideas for nor being Real and Gritty enough or whatever, but I dunno…I guess I've internalized this whole stigma against cartoons/silly fantasies and it's hard for me not to feel like I could be judged as dumb or ignorant or immature or such for dreaming up such things and actually having a genuine desire to see something analogous to it IRL… x~x

Basically, the whole reason I get so antsy about this is because a lot of the animation used for cartoon animal characters involves anatomical bending that may or may not even be consistent; I have NO idea how complex the typical rig for a CGI character is, and 2D animation can do whatever it damn well pleases, within reason. :P

In essence, the core idea behind the "implementation" of these "cartoon robots" is that at the "core", there's a base skeleton which looks and moves sort of like the rig would on a CGI character, assuming it's rigid enough to do so, at least (designs and necessary augmentations/alterations may vary...a lot xD)...the limbs and such might need to have some amount of sliding articulation, in that the'd need to be more like pistons than solid limbs, if that makes sense. >.> On top of that might be a layer of some kind of nanite-based artificial musculature, which would ideally be the primary means of articulation. Considering it's nanites, which honestly seems like it's treated as the scifi equivalent of a magical polymorph agent or potion...you could go a lot of directions with this...literally. :P I think in terms of the "properties" of these magic nanites, they'd be able to cause their neighbors to expand/contract in arbitrary directions, which would...presumably allow for some amount of contraction even when the limb is stretched or squashed? Basically it'd need to be able to pull in the right direction from any orientation...toonimals do weird things with their bodies, even just moving around "normally", barring any silly gags or expressive exaggerations (ridiculous faces, being hit hard with a heavy object, being stretched between two things pulling apart, etc.), so the range of required force application is uh...pretty wide, or so it would seem. xD Barring that, there could be some form of direct, silent motor-based actuation (or near enough silent that surrounding "flesh" would muffle it or something), and the only thing the flexy-contracting nano-stuff would need to do is adjust for elasticity to keep a consistent shape, avoiding folds, etc. (unless it's part of the design >.>)

I am NOT an engineer; I don't pretend that any of this stuff is actually feasible in the real world today; I know it's almost certainly full of "armchair physics". (I invoked nanites for cripe's sake xD ...while I'm aware that nanotech is a thing, it's nowhere NEAR the level of what's depicted in science fiction AFAIK) The only thing I'm going on is what little "mechanical sense" I have and what I sort of know about how cartoon animal anatomy "works". :P I wish I could draw this stuff properly; it's hard to translate what I see in my head to the written word without it being significantly "lossy". xD There is, of course, some vague hope in me that there's a possibility this sort of tech could roll around in my lifetime, but honestly, I really doubt it will, if ever. :P As much as I tell myself I'd love to see these things, I don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon. (3

Not only that, but the range of aesthetic styles, both 2D and 3D, is so diverse (yes! really!) that trying to account for all cases would require...so much time and thought put into "mechanical details" like this if I wanted to make them "work" in my own little personal mindscape, and some of them just plain wouldn't "work" at all, to be brutally honest. xD

I don't just do this stuff with character designs; I have ideas for various tech and vehicles and fantasy weapons and such based around forms of (hopefully) mostly consistently-behaving unreal materials...this is part of why I want to set it in a sort of "matrix" world. If your matter is being simulated and is in-system programmable, anything's more or less possible, right? ...just as long as you know what you're doing. :P

I guess when I get all weird and awkward about these ideas and the "feasibility" or lack thereof they have, it's mostly that I'm worried that people will get on my case for having even so much as a glimmer of hope that there could be real-life parallels to the ridiculously floaty/lofty "tech" I dream up in my head to sort of "explain away" the issues...and it doesn't even explain them all away! One thing that comes to mind that I doubt could really be addressed well with any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is the potential issue of fur coverage: when the anatomy *does* bend on a CGI character such that an area of skin/mesh has to expand or contract significantly, does fur appear and disappear to fill gaps and prevent bunching from happening? >.> I seriously haven't scrutinized things closely enough or done any 3D stuff myself to know for sure...I'd tend to think there's SOME consistency with that, otherwise it wouldn't look right...right? xD

So...there's stuff I still don't really know a lot about animation principles, let alone actual physical/mechanical engineerging ones...that ought to tell you how much I "know" about this stuff. xD

I think what I should maybe do is just...get to know the lay of the land in terms of pure design and animation tricks, which probably will involve learning aspects of real-world animal anatomy etc. to see exactly where rules get broken etc., and then I can worry about basically making new "rules" for the cartoons to abide by which could possibly be used in this vague, probably already-done scifi concept I have. xD Maybe then I can actually expand upon it with knowledge I glean from that experience... :o

Anyways, I hope this comes as a nice, more positive changeup from the last couple negative things I posted...it's been hard for me the past week and a half or so-ish, but I think I might be finally starting to come to terms with myself... ^.^;

I apologize in advance if this gets anyone down; I'm just expressing feelings I've been having probably for the last 5 years or so without even really realizing it…

I think I've found that I have a hard time just enjoying things unless I can rationalize some scifi-ish way of making them "work", even if the "tech" involved in said rationalizations is barely on the edge of plausibility from my POV. I think the more I learn about things and the more I analyze cartoons and such, the harder it becomes to justify said rationalizations, and thus the harder it is for me to enjoy them. :/

People I've talked to in other places about this tell me it's because it comes from an almost subconscious feeling of obligation, like I "have to" make the things seem Real Enough, or at least consistent enough, to not get made fun of by Real Grownups for still enjoying cartoons as an adult or something. I feel like it's become more than that, though; maybe it always has been more than that… :/

My very first journal entry here was about whether or not I "take the fandom too seriously", i.e. desperately want the things depicted in furry art and cartoons etc. to become "real" somehow, or at least justifiable in the context of some science-fiction narrative that could have RL parallels in some hypothetical future…I think I do. :/

I have these goddamned screenshots of movies and shows and whatnot and I tell myself that I keep them as art reference, but I find myself analyzing them far deeper than that, trying to come up with actuation mechanisms, skeletal structure, etc.…I keep thinking "I can make it work" when honestly? cartoons might as well just be made of pure infinitely elastic, topologically ideal, constantly reforming phlebotinum and have done with it. I have a hard time just taking it for what it is; I have to make it Believable™ somehow. x.x Oh hell, I never actually draw or write any of it down or anything, because I feel that if I did, I'd just look at it later and be all "…this is BS :|" promptly followed by deletion or something, and never considering the idea, or anything like it, worthy again.

I keep talking about a scifi concept of my own where I'd build said "toonbots" out of materials that are "real" in the sense that they operate in a consistent fashion in-universe, and exploring potential consequences of that, but anymore I feel like that's a hopeless pursuit. I keep trying to suck all the artistic liberty out of everything and it hurts…it feels like I'm trying to make a round peg fit in a square hole, and dreaming of how one might bend the peg out of shape without breaking it somehow in order to force it to fit, and not accounting for all the unused space left behind even if it were somehow made to fit. :/

I guess maybe it really does come down to feeling like depicting arbitrary things is wrong somehow…like, there's this western cultural expectation that if you enjoy cartoons, you're either a child or you're unintelligent for one reason or another. It seems like there's this idea that if you enjoy things that aren't actually physically feasible or otherwise possible in reality, you're a lesser person because "you should know better" and "that stuff's for kids", etc.

Do we really have full control over our innate preferences though? Sure, we can make a fuss and cover them up, pretending that we're Better People™ for "leaving behind" all the things that we found ourselves enjoying from a young age, just for the sake of keeping up appearances? Sure, some people genuinely do find that their tastes change as they get older and they find cartoons and such just "meh", but I don't think that's the case with me. I think in my case it's this desperate childhood desire to "make them real" combined with this feeling that it all has to be done in a literal fashion; that it has to Actually Exist in some form or another. I have a hard time even working on art without feeling like I'm "cheating"; it feels so much like I need to have the assurance that the thing I'm depicting is at least consistent if not literally possible (yet), and most of the aesthetic I enjoy, I suspect, breaks pretty much all the rules WRT consistency. Facial features too large to actually fit well arranged the way they are, body proportions that would result in serious balance issues if they were given proportionate mass, and most recently leg structure that would result in very very odd stretching of the groin if forced to walk bipedally while maintaining consistent elasticity.

I actually have no idea how much of a Problem™ these things are; for all I know, I'm just massively overthinking this and many of the issues actually are work-aroundable and consistent in some fashion. The thing I'm afraid of doing, though, is going forth and doing research on real animal anatomy, analyzing the real physical constraints, finding out what the real limitations are in the body proportion and/or articulation department, and finding that all the "rationalizations" I had come up with for "justifying" some kind of artificial implementation of the 'toons are no better or more "realistic" than the 'toons themselves…I'm afraid that they'll literally all turn out to be just as arbitarary and farcical as the "toon physics" themselves, having no more basis in reality than if I'd proposed a set of Chuck Jones' Laws of Motion or something.

I'm taking these things too seriously, and it's taking a toll on my mental health, it would seem. x.x I feel like there's so little point in anything else though…I feel like I'm either basically doomed to a life of meaningless and joyless toil in the name of "getting a life" i.e. actually becoming an independent human being, or I have to escape to bloody Toon Town and get away from it all permanently somehow. I guess I feel like this BS rationalization routine is like my way of "meeting halfway", and it doesn't even do that much for me anymore as I learn about how the Real World works mechanically. x.x

I just want to be able to enjoy the things for what they are without this feeling like I need to escape to that realm; I've lived in my head mostly for the past 25 years or so, and it's hard for me to come out without feeling like it's gonna involve a lot of pain and suffering and Uncomfortable Truth that won't ever relent. x~x

Maybe I really should get a Tumblr or something…these past couple entries have become really really long.

EDIT: I think part of this whole need to feel like my desires are "justifiable" and/or "real enough" is because I grew up with a mom who got really into the whole "new age" movement right around the time i was becoming an impressionable, existential, angsty teenager, and she sucked me into the whole thing, with me using that whole baloney framework of crystals, quantum magic, "higher dimensions", etc. to "justify" my personal desire for "toons IRL", genuinely believing it would be real someday, somehow. I guess this desire to make it as Gritty and Edgy and Real as possible while still somehow maintaining the aesthetic I like so much is just as a sort of reaction to that mysticism…but I suppose I'm slowly realizing that my own rationalizations were/are no better than the new-age mysticism, and that's what hurts, I think… x~x

I think the following is my best attempt to somehow describe the predicament I've been finding myself in when I talk about it "interfering with my ability to enjoy toonythings". Keep in mind that this is just a general overview/coredump of my thoughts on this matter. It's by no means 100% complete, and I often find myself reflecting on the details whenever I get in moods like the one I was in when I wrote this thing in the first place. Apologies for any grammar weirdness and the abundance of runon sentences. I did do some edits to clear things up, correct some odd grammar, and give some more context, but it's still largely a work of "raw" emotional output, in a sense. All I ask is that if you do have criticisms, please, please don't lean into me too hard; try to keep it constructive, and realize that even if it seems silly and ridiculous to you, to me it's a rather sensitive issue, even if I don't express it all the time (I only tend to get moody about this stuff when I'm already in a mood to begin with, or for whatever reason I start down a chain of thoughts relating to it).

Basically, this is something I've brought up elsewhere and have been trying to articulate properly for the past several days since it started really bothering me, and beating around the bush because I get so embedded in details and embarrassment over the whole concept to begin with. The basic idea is that I want to make these toon things I enjoy Real™ in the sense of being able to like, directly and physically interact with them like I did when I was young and had a far looser grasp on the constraints of reality.

The problem with this, of course, is the fact that as I've grown older and started actually learning more of the basics about how internal human anatomy is structured, how at least the *external* anatomy of the animals commonly anthropomorphized in cartoons is structured vs. the cartoons themselves, and how certain aspects of the aesthetic of these things that I latch(ed) onto so tightly as a young kid and still cling to to a large degree now deviate from reality, I've started doubting the possibility of these things ever becoming Real™. By "Real™", I mean brought directly to the senses as a form of firsthand experience, with few to no compromises or limitations.

People keep telling me that if I really want to make the things Real™ then maybe I should get into animatronics and do study on how those things work, maybe do some real intensive study of the real anatomy and figure workarounds for the basic geometric issues (eyes too large to fit in the character's skull being built as partials, etc.), and actually like, go build something, or at least design something that could be built, feasibly, with current tech.

But no, that's not fucking good enough for me, because I'm still about 12 years old emotionally or something, and I'm afraid to do the research. Here's why, in as many words as I hope will get the point across:

The first and most obvious issue is proportions. We all know cartoons are what they are because they're a more "pure" and abstract form of artistic expression; archetypes and aesthetic are conveyed largely through exaggerating the proportions of anatomical features of characters such as the eyes/eyebrows, mouth/lips, nose, hands/feet, legs, etc., and this is all just fine when you're working in a medium that places no restrictions on how things can fit together and move, such as traditional 2D drawings and animation or the world of 3D computer models.

The problems arise when you try to bring these things into the physical world as actual things that move and look as they would in the original representation: overlarge features need to be physically trimmed and possibly limited in articulation by comparison to the original design simply because you can't have it articulate like the original design unless you use fancy science-fiction nanomaterials or somehow invent a means of generating a little pocket of non-Euclidean space for the things to fit into. If it's too big to fit and involves intersections or requires clip planes or what have you in the 3D model implementation, or would invoke such if it's a 2D design being translated, chances are any real-world approximation is going to be highly limited in its articulation and possibly the appearance, depending on just how far the original character design deviates from what's physically plausible as-is.

The other main issue is that of the articulation itself: most animated characters tend to be depicted pulling facial expressions and performing gestures that would literally require the entire skeleton and musculature of their body to be able to squash and stretch freely. Of course, this isn't a problem in the original medium and is in fact desirable; it conveys the emotion or action they're portraying/performing with much greater clarity in most cases. The problem with this when translating a design to the physical realm is that...well, as far as I'm aware anyway, there exist no animatronic frames/"skeletons" or the like that are sufficiently articulated to allow for that level of bending and stretching and expressive exaggeration. Anything you could possibly build in the real world would be limited to whatever basic articulation the character has to begin with, which again, depending on the precise design, may even in itself rely on some degree of expressive squash and stretch and hence require the real-world implementation to be toned down even further from the original.

This leads me to my third point: the uncanny valley. Even if you could single-handedly take massive strides in mechanical engineering to make the above somehow actually phyically possible, how good would it really look in a real-world setting? Would it actually be pleasant to physically interact with such a perfectly cartoony and expressive and lifelike work of mechanics? Part of what makes the exaggerations and aesthetic work is suspension of disbelief; the audience knows the character isn't real, and the setting they're in doesn't starkly contrast with their overtly cartoony and exaggerated nature, because the setting itself is meant to blend with the style. Those I've talked to about this in the past know I've mentioned frame rate being part of an aesthetic and how animation "smears" are sometimes used as a shortcut for motion blur at a low frame rate in animation, mostly in 2D but it's sometimes subtly applied in 3D/CGI as well. The thing about such "smears" is that they tend to look odd at high frame rates, since one no longer has to compensate for a lack of frames to convey the same feeling of quick motion. I think certain expressive exaggerations i.e. squash and stretch can have this same effect at a high frame rate; it just looks odd and unnatural when a character suddenly is able to e.g. raise their eyebrows so high that it requires the entire top of their skull and eyeballs to stretch upward when they do it at 60 FPS...or at least it can. Again, it highly depends on the character design, and this may just be a personal quirk of my own aesthetic preferences. In any case, real life has no frame rate; motion is fluid and continuous, so basically you'd be dealing with not only the obstacles of articulation themselves, but also the tough decisions of what and how much articulation to even bother including in the first place.

Also relevant is the puppeteering and "personality" of the character. Even assuming *both* of the above hurdles were somehow overcome, there's the question of how deep you want to make the character seem in terms of its portrayal in this real-world physical form where there are no inherent constraints on actions taken by the character or those interacting with it. Would it really make sense for a cartoon character, with a personality as described in the work of fiction they "hail from", realized through some form of AI or the like, to actually exist in this world of ours, so full of subtleties and imperfections and social issues and general chaos? Again, part of what makes a character work is their setting; when the character is removed from the setting and placed into a different one, *especially* when said transition is going from a generally idealized and simplified cartoon world to the real world, they generally seem out of place and possibly even creepy, depending on how the situation is handled, and/or how far the boundaries are pushed in terms of keeping up the facade of the character.

Real life has no predefined narrative or plot or premise to the actions people take except the ones they individually create for themselves, so attempting to craft some sort of AI that appears to have been "raised" within a naturally simplified fictional setting gives rise to some potentially very strange and creepy edge cases, Then you have the issue, assuming the thing possesses a Turing-test-passing "strong" AI, of personhood: what measure is a toon? At what point does this artifice of semiconductors and plastics and nanomaterials gain the same rights as a human? This is something I've thought about addressing as part of a scifi story in a hypothetical setting where these things do exist and have come about as another form of "animation" similar to how we've gone from 2D to 3D, but that's its own can of worms that I probably shouldn't try to open here. All I'm going to say is that IMO at some point it does become a person, but seeing as how "intelligence" and "consciousness" are still somewhat roughly defined AFAIK, it's hard to say where exactly that point is. :B

Now, the main reason I don't really do research on actual anatomy and the like is, I think, because of just how deeply I'd likely find myself diving down the rabbit hole. I'm afraid that if I went to go looking up real-world anatomy of humans, squirrels, rabbits, etc. at various levels (skeletal structure, muscle groups, etc.), started re-watching some animated films I previously enjoyed while scrutinizing the details of the animation (literally all I have right now is still screenshots and the occasional GIF/clip I see on the internet), and really tried to put 2 and 2 together to see how it could all fit together ~somehow~ to ~some~ level of approximation in a real-world context, I'd find myself encountering even more problems than the ones I hypothesized would exist, even assuming technical advances that bypass or alleviate some of the immediate mechanical constraints. I'm afraid that by going and actually studying things, I'd find that I'm constrained in even more ways than what I've described above, or that in elucidating myself about the specifics of the issues mentioned above, I'll discover exactly why these things don't already exist as I imagine them, or why maybe no one takes the idea seriously of "bringing toons to life with 99.99% similarity to the original character".

This is what I mean when I say I worry that "maybe these things just aren't physically possible at all and the universe just sucks and/or I might not really want the things anyway"; I'm afraid that I'll come to find out that the limitations don't simply consist of technological advances that have yet to be made, as I often like to reassure myself for some temporary relief from the angst I have over this whole thing, but that there are certain iron laws of the universe that simply prohibit these things from existing exactly as I like to imagine them. Depth perception and/or FOV, proper articulation of human speech, ability to stand for long periods and walk bipedally on hind legs that bear more resemblance to haunches than human legs, etc. They're all things that even in the very best-case scenario where all the mechanics were worked out, would likely require some serious adaptation in terms of making the things even remotely autonomous, or perhaps, in some sense, "becoming" one's fursona via some voodoo involving "mind uploading", which has its own set of dubious and disturbing questions on its own in general.

I guess TL;DR I wanna have actual huggable, lovable fuzzies to snuggle with etc. etc., and I feel like it might be possible through high-tech mechanics, but I'm afraid of running into hard constraints of reality and/or conflicts in my own mind resulting from the potential dissonance between expectation and reality, even if all the details were somehow executed to perfection...

I dunno, just...this whole thing makes me think and feel about it too much, it's hard for me to focus on much else when my mind does drift on it due to feeling generally like a failure in most aspects of my life, and my brain hurts from the stress... :/

I was originally just gonna call this account dead, but someone (*COUGH* *COUGH*) got me to finally do the password-reset thing; $DEITY help me to remember this damned new password… x.x;

It's not like I do much on here anyway aside from taking a look at what people post and sometimes leave comments, so activity here is likely to remain rather low.

I honestly have no idea anymore…I know this will probably come off as just another whiny "furry drama" journal entry, but I'm just kind of feeling terrible and like a whiny mooch right now. v.v

I'm on two furry art sites, follow a bunch of artists on Twitter, can afford none of them for commissions, and I have basically zero discernable art skill of my own, so like, what am I doing here, anyway? x.x I feel like I'm just mooching off the work of these artists by faving, savi

I honestly have no idea anymore…I know this will probably come off as just another whiny "furry drama" journal entry, but I'm just kind of feeling terrible and like a whiny mooch right now. v.v

I'm on two furry art sites, follow a bunch of artists on Twitter, can afford none of them for commissions, and I have basically zero discernable art skill of my own, so like, what am I doing here, anyway? x.x I feel like I'm just mooching off the work of these artists by faving, saving, and moving on to the next round of submission notifications like they're nothing. I feel like I need to actually give back somehow if I'm to be considered a "real" part of this community.

Don't get me wrong; when I say "moving on to the next round of notifications like they're nothing", I don't mean to say I find the majority of the things I find bland or uninteresting, it's just that…well I do take "favorite" very literally, and I've become increasingly picky about what I add to that list/archive. I just feel bad right now because I'm basically coming to terms with the fact that hey, this is essentially an entire ecosystem of artists and commissioners here, and I'm like, not even a part of it because I basically have no life, and no self-confidence to get started on building one for myself, either.

Another discouraging thing is that I tend to be more interested in building fictional worlds than creating individual "pieces" that represent discrete ideas or suchlike. I mean, I definitely like discrete ideas when they're apropos, but I just get the feeling that if I were gonna "bring a world to life" it'd get exhausting and/or expensive really fast (depending on whether I went the DIY or commish route, or both).

Basically, TL;DR: I feel bad for being poor/broke and not being able to do much in the way of actively participating in a community full of artists; I feel like I don't belong and that I'm just here to mooch. :/

…and I liked it. :B

inb4 "I Kissed A Girl (And I Liked It)" parodies. xP

Well, I should say I liked it for the most part. The only major thing that bugged me was Gangnam Style, but that was tolerable at least; it didn't ruin the whole movie for me, anyway. :P Of course being nitpicky I think I also spotted some animation weirdness in a couple places, but that's probably just me, really. The character designs were adorable IMO, and *yes*, the squirrels are very reminiscent of Hammy from Over The Hedge, but honestly, that was a positive point for me rather than a criticism. Make of that what you will. :I

(*ducks from all the possible incoming hate comments* >:T)

On a side note, most of the reason you haven't seen (m)any journal entries from me is because…well, I don't really have much to say, as evidenced by this one. I just don't feel that most of what I "do" with myself is all that noteworthy. :/

…not leaving, just trying it out because a certain few artists whom I like a lot have moved their energies there due to all the hooplah that's been happening here lately. :B

EDIT (after literally months…): https://www.weasyl.com/~codesquirrel

I've been thinking…maybe it's time for a bit of an overhaul as far as my character is concerned. As of yet he's mostly just been a toony squirrel version of myself that likes to wear geeky T-shirts (:P), at least around here.

In my imagination, though, he's often quite different, usually inhabiting an almost Matrix-like "virtual universe" in which physics are bendable and matter is (to a certain extent) programmable. He's often found building cyber-enhanced tools and small arms, as well as driving/piloting various craft in many places (including space)…

There's just…a lot that goes on up there. I dunno how I should describe him without it sounding like some cheesy Mary Sue-ish attempt at sci-fi fanfic or something. xD

Here, have a screenshot thingy:

SDL thingymajigger of lameness

…so yeah, I've sorta gotten back into programming. Not that it's particularly relevant to FA, but hey, the journal entry that was here before was grossly out of date, so I figured I should maybe…iunno, update things. :| :P

EDIT: updated the screenshot.

It's still technically in beta, but yep, Valve finally ported Portal over to Linux, and it's free for Linux users, too, AFAIK (at least until it comes out of beta :P). Aside from GLaDOS dialogue occasionally not resuming after unpausing, and the rare event not triggering, the game is mostly rock-solid for me.

As such, I shall now likely be on Steam a lot more often… :P

…and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing! \:D/

Seriously, though, I'd like to think it's a step in the right direction…right? O.o;;;

I've looked through the course catalog, but everything that stands out to me either has a seemingly long chain of prereqs, or it seems like it would be below my level…or something. v.v

There's also the matter of paying for this thing, of course… <.<;;

Long story short: registered, but a long way from actually attending. o3o;

Yes, that's right, I'm now offcially on that Valve thing that everybody uses. :P

 kaposa had to practically twist my arm off in getting me to do it, because I generally don't like having 32-bit things installed alongside 64-bit things (if you don't know what that means, don't worry…it's just a sign of how stuck up I am about these things v.v), but I sucked it up and took the plunge.

I have TF2 installed and working, but I've hardly touched it (Steam tells me I've logged a total of 19 minutes :P) for a couple reasons: a) this is a laptop, and I can only really play FPSes well with a real mouse, rather than a touchpad, and b) I just generally don't game that much anymore…not like I used to, anyway.

My Steam name is MrCode64, if you're interested in chatting or whatever. Just keep in mind that I may not be online all the time. :P

…because I need something happier (or at least not depressing) to put here on my user page. x.x

I've kinda also been thinking of making my character less "toony" in a subtle way: I'm thinking that rather than just having a closet full of "teh fork();" shirts (:P), he should basically just wear a geeky T-shirt of some kind; anyone wanting to draw him (possibly myself included o3o) would basically have artistic freedom over exactly what kind of "geeky" T-shirt he would be wearing. The only constraint I would place is that a) it not be blatantly self-deprecating (unless it's clearly sarcastic), and b) that it be something computer/tech-related (bonus points if it has to do with programming :3).

…so yeah…"teh fork();" is still definitely an option (and might remain his primary garb :P), but I just wanted to put it out there that that's not the only thing he can wear. (3

(yaaaay, "baww me" journal :V)

…and I don't deserve what I have, because of all the shit I've put others through just so I can live a cushy, royal lifestyle. :U

I ought to be out on the streets eating dumpster shit, because I'm 21 years old, STILL jobless (volunteering isn't good enough :U), and use anthropomorphic animals as an "escape" from what I should be facing head-on, and to fuck with how I might feel about it, because in the real world, no one, not even your parents, really give a shit about things so petty and meaningless in the wider scheme of things… ;~;

If it's not earning you a profit, drop it…and never come back to it. :U :V ;n;

I'll probably regret posting this, and I may lose what few people I have watching me (for reasons I don't know, aside from being the sort of FA equivalent of "friending" someone on Facebook; it's not like I post art regularly O.o), but if that's what happens, then I deserved it… v~v

EDIT: Just as a little disclaimer: please, please don't take this too harshly…I really, really try not to use places like FA as my personal angst dump, but sometimes (like today) I feel like I just need to be heard. ;n;

...and it's a pain in the ass to be typing this entry on. xD

It's a Samsung Captivate Glide, and has a full slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard, which only makes typing this marginally easier, considering the charger is plugged in, and it's getting in the way...

Blah...this thing is obviously not suited to typing for long periods. "Mobile takeover" my ass...I need me a real keyboard for shit like this... x.x

You would not believe how hard it is to enter BBCode tags: I have to hit the "Sym" key and select the square brackets from a touch menu...that's right, a fucking touch menu...it's even worse in T9 mode. x.x;;

EDIT: just as a disclaimer, this is an otherwise awesome phone. The above rant was mostly just centered around difficulties with web browsing; everything else is totally awesome. SMS messages are organized into conversation threads between contacts now rather than having one big global "Inbox" and "Outbox", there are of course "apps" to screw around with (if I ever get around to installing anything other than the default ones that came with the phone :P), and it has those "ZOMG it's a capacitive touchscreen!" and "wow that's a dense display O_o;" cool factors to it. :P

After recently being in an art stream chat (won't name names; I don't want to start drama <.<), I've been feeling rather cynical about the general attitude many in the fandom seem to have. Call it generalizing, blanketing, or what have you, but I've been given the impression that a lot of furs seem to take the "LOL, internet :V" stance when it comes to colloquial communication. In other words, snarky sarcasm and (possibly rude) teasing is considered perfectly normal and even expected. :U

Also, since I do browse FA with all the smut filters turned on, I've basically been living under the delusion that there are a decent number of furs who actually like and draw SFW art. Well, after having been in this stream chat, I think I'm starting to finally see that little bit (read: shit-ton) of selectivity bias in my thinking, and am beginning the process of (painful) disillusionment/disenchantment.

I'm beginning to feel my interests in this fandom wane… ;3;

I really don't mean to hurt anyone personally here, and for all I know I may just end up deleting this journal entry a week from now (or sooner), but right now I just feel rather jaded and depressed…

…so yeah, I think FA has become like Facebook to me. Unhealthy much? O.o

Most of my "social networking" is done here (what little of it there is :\), and I hardly touch the real Facebook (for a number of reasons). All's I can say about it is that I feel a little stupid now, since I probably visit this site way too much, and for all the wrong reasons… :T

I think a good part of the reason for this is because I don't know any furs IRL, and I'm a pretty lonely person in general, so I don't get a whole lot of social interaction to alieve that. Of course, that's probably just due to me being too shy for my own good. v.v

I've thought about trying to meet more furs, both online and in the meatosphere (I've even shouted on the Oregon Furs page about it), yet when someone notes/shouts me to ask if they/I could hang out sometime, I usually have to decline the offer. One, it's because I'm so shy around new people, especially furries (since I've never met one IRL before O.o), and two, as I'm sure is the situation for many a fur around here, my parents don't know about it, so I'd have a hard time explaining what I was doing leaving the house for a while for no apparent reason. O.o;

At this point I'm starting to think the only way I'm gonna get any time to hang out/meet other furries (or just other people in general) is to do it when I have my own place…if that happens anytime soon. v~v

Anyways…hopefully this journal entry wasn't too depressing.

(In case you don't get the subtle, geeky "joke" in the title: in C, "++" is the increment operator; I'm adding one to "A", thus turning it into "B". :U)

I'm bored, it's 4 AM, so I thought I'd do a little FA meme for shits 'n giggles… :| x3

Found on  scooter_squirrel's page:

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find line 4.
- N/A, since there aren't any books within arm's reach. :D

2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What did you touch?
- A small container with a few of my DS games in it. :\

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?
- Big Bang Theory

4. Without looking, guess what time it is:
- ~4:00 AM

5. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time?
- 3:51 AM (…and I have to be up at 7! Why am I doing this again? O_o; >.<;;)

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
- Nothing; wearing headphones/listening to music :p

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?
- Headed out to "work" (I volunteer; still don't have a paid job yet, and I'm 20… <.<;;).

8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?
- scooter_squirrel's journal entries (where I found this meme :p).

9. What are you wearing?
- Typical-ish blue jeans with a huge rip in the left knee, and a black T-shirt with the text "Sarcasm: just one more service I offer." on it.

10. Did you dream last night?
- Yes, but I don't remember enough clearly to describe it well. :\

11. When did you last laugh?
- Is it sad that I can't think of a recent instance? O_o

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?
- Nothing. Apparently I'm very minimalist when it comes to room decor. :|

13. Seen anything weird lately?
- …not really.

14. What do you think of this quiz?
- Blah; I'm only doing this because it's late, and I'm bored. :p

15. What is the last film you saw?
- IIRC, "John Carter".

16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy?
- I really have no idea what I'd do with that much money… O.o;

17. Tell me something about you that I don't know.
- The only stuff I can think of to put here is private (then again, when wouldn't it be if it's something "[you] don't know about [me]"? O.o), so I don't care to disclose anything here.

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
- …can't be arsed to think of anything to put here; I'm not a very political person (yet :U).

19. Do you like to dance?
- LOLno. I'm a computer/Linux geek; geeks don't dance. :|

20. George Bush:
- O.o; ?

21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
- N/A; no kids…and I'm not making it a hypothetical question, either… <.<

22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?
- ^[[A

23. Would you ever consider living abroad?
- Uhm…no? <.<

24. What do you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?
- LOL, religion… <epic face>

Yep, another avatar. This one actually took a little more effort to put together… :o

I typed out the frames in XChat (the font is Terminus 9 BTW if anyone is interested :3), took a screenshot, clipped/saved all the frames individually in GIMP, and used gifsicle (a command-line animated GIF creator) to put the frames together with the right timings and everything. :3

It's small, but cute. x3

…aaand it took me all of about 30 s to whip up in GIMP.

At least it's a break from the old generic "cup of paintbrushes" icon.

It's supposed to be what my 'sona's T-shirt says across the chest (he's almost always wearing it), in the proper font face and everything. x3

I'll spare the technical blabber of how I came up with this sort of "catchphrase", unless someone's curious. :p

…like my fursona, at the very least. I have a pretty good idea of what I want him to look like (I think :-\), but I just lack the skills/motivation to do anything with it…for now, at least.

I've never really considered myself much of an artist, but I suppose at least I could practice on paper, then I could work my way up to GIMP/Inkscape (or maybe even Blender; a semi-realistic 3D model of him would be awesome ;3). I know that if I do, though, it's going to take tons of time, and that's part of what discourages me from it. I'm just too damned impatient to get much of anything done. v_v This applies to a lot of things, really; it's not just art.

Anywho, I suppose I should wrap this up before it turns into another pity-party post. :p