I frequently find myself going through my friends' favorites because they often +fav things that I am also inclined to like. It would be superb if there was some way of pooling the favorites lists of select people, say, into a meta-favs list. So for example I could have Cameroo, Ness, Zho and Flir's combined favorites. Maybe it could have another tab in the message box that's not Submissions. This would be GREAT for finding new and interesting stuff.

Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing linked to a post on Avatar Forums named Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangiable and it will, of course, be a familiar sentiment to many of you. On BB the topic was approached in a LOL kind of way, which is not the tack I wanna take here because It's Been Done and really it's not very challenging to go OH OTHERKIN so please leave that shit at the door.

So I mentioned in another journal post that Avatar's huge missed opportunity was that it didn't focus enough on the background stuff that could inspire fantasies. In light of that, I think the link above proves me wrong. And honestly, who didn't see this coming? People have fantasized about living in worlds created with much less passion and (noble savage tropes aside) creativity, so why not Pandorakin?

There's 72 pages of this stuff which is impossible to slog through, but I read some of it so you don't have to, and already on page 2 there's some profound stuff:

ElequinL Thats the problem, even if you wanted to strive to be more like the Na'vi you would be eaten alive in this world. It really hurts thinking that... you know. It really would take a complete new fresh start somewhere un-corrupted.

Now, I don't agree with this, but I sympathize. This is the apocalyptic mindset of depression. Things would only be better if I could leave this body forever and live on Pandora/Jesus would come back and cleanse the earth of sin/America and the West would disappear and the rest of the world could be free/there were no such things as rap and country music. They're all ridiculous on their surface, but really, they're all symptoms of a greater malaise that we SHOULD take seriously.

cimrk01: Fanfiction.net does wonders. Some great stories up on that site, certainly helped after I saw the film.

Fan fiction! Man, that is a thing that does not get its props quite enough. Later on, someone mentions working on a tabletop RPG, and someone else asks them to share. Creation, community. Same reason FA here is so popular!

These people aren't crazy or delusional or dumb. Everyone is picking up on the fact that the movie is intentionally escapist. Which makes me wonder why Cameron didn't make it explicitly about escapism—people in the thread are bringing up WoW a lot—and made an interesting point directly rather than kind of incidentally, haha. Like, WHY do people want to be the baddest dude with the baddest dragon? What fuelled the concept of the Noble Savage, or Orientalism, or other exotic othering? Why do people get addicted to WoW? Why do people dress up in fursuits? Why do people want to be the Alpha Na'vi?

AlphaNavi: Meet with fellow NA'VI's trapped in our human bodies and relate. I believe I am a Na'Vi trapped in this human shell.

And why does this kind of statement drive people crazy, when we can all sympathize with it in some form or another?

I guess "sometimes your entire life boils down to one insane movie"!

Oh hey everyone has a hankering for bovine teatbags all of a sudden. Hooray!

I know FA is kind of a snack art site and that voracious readers of what could best be described as yiffy fiction are hard to come by. HOWEVER, I am totally ahead of this whole mammary trend, and wrote a story about udder growth and cow-person tf that you should probably give a squeeze if you are interested in such matters!

Not to tug my own teat here, but I am pretty proud of that story. Stories like these have a habit of going pasteurize without you noticing them. ;)

This is just about the best thing ever.

It's so wrong it has to be right.

So I saw Avatar and I guess I'm not going to talk about the movie much beyond what's obvious from the trailers. See, my favorite characters of the movie were actually the plants. I loved Pandora, it was a really cool planet with some very convincing flora and fauna, even if it was technically space horses and space wolves. But the plants really took the cake and made Pandora a world I would have loved to explore.

The problem with the movie is that it was all about some dumb war I didn't care about with a facepalmingly stupid McGuffin in the form of UNOBTANIUM, as well as SPACE MARINES, which are only the second most intolerable type of marine after actual U.S. Marines.

Anyway. There's a lot of stories where the universe they're set in is functionally a more interesting topic than the story itself. The world of Harry Potter is a great example. I could go without the teen angst, but I certainly wish I'd gone to Hogwarts. I'm sure we all do... c.c

This genre gives you the building blocks of a universe and lets you recombine them in myriad ways toward logical outcomes (even if we're talking about dream logic). They hint at what's beyond the curtain to the point where you're not at all surprised once the lights hit your eyes on the other side. I've always envied this ability to create a believable window into a plausible other world, and I've always been frustrated when precious storytelling time is wasted on an uninteresting and predictable story... as it was in Avatar. Sorry y'all.

As someone who has a habit of getting lost in fiction, I appreciate a well-crafted and inviting world, or even just an intriguing object whose function seems obvious despite being forbidden by the laws of reality as we know them. Or documents that purport the existence of same. Or fragments that hint at a whole you can only imagine would be awesome, if it existed. Or characters that you'd like to have encounters with. My point is that these images inspire fantasies rather than focusing on the money shot. In fact, they deliberately obfuscate certain details to make it easier to imagine yourself exploring that world, or using that object, or meeting that character.

This all means pictures and stories that are dense and full of potential, where the main character is the McGuffin for the world, rather than the other way around, have an effect unlike the traditional porno pic. It makes for a much more enjoyable creative experience for everyone, even if it's kind of... avant-garde? I dunno how you'd describe it. Nevertheless, it suits erotica exquisitely. Think not about your illustrations as self-insertions, but rather as denizens, unrelated to yourself, of a world you'd like to inhabit. I think we should be doing more of that sort of thing. Let's explore!

Whatever happened to Andrew Wesley? I used to ape that dude's style a lot, and his style is still unique and eye-catching, and I really dig it. Now he seems to have dropped off the face of the universe. He was on VCL, on Yerf, and a bunch of other places. Now? Gone, with barely a trace. Where to? Who knows?

I've developed a bad habit of trying to track down people who never knew me but whose work really germinated my visual mannerisms. To me, their names were fixtures in my artistic regimen. I followed them semi-religiously, tried to understand what stylistic devices they used that I so admired, all with the intention of learning to control this flow of awesome for my own nefarious ends. Someone who has inspired you to take action, even if it's just imitation, prompts a different sort of relationship than simple fannishness. And yet I still get starstruck, intimidated, because after a while of following someone I build this really weird and usually Wrong idea of what they're going to be like. I can think of a few people I've done the awkward DANG I ADMIRED YOU IN SECRET FOR ALMOST A DECADE thing with who ended up being pretty cool peeps. It's still, like, kind of socially unnavigable. Most friendships are based on mutual interest, growing together as people. These friendships involve a lot of fretting about whether or not I'M interesting enough to make up for years and years of unintentional creative support and merriment.

Not to be angsty or anything, I think everyone has this sort of problem when they get to talk to the people they admire. I just wonder if it'd be flattering or kind of creepy to have some cartoonish furry you don't know e-mail you out of the blue saying HEY MAN I REALLY DIG YOUR STUFF IT WAS REALLY SIGNIFICANT TO MY LIFE WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED GIVE ME A STATUS UPDATE.

It fills me with anxiety just thinking about it.

I love when people do a clean version of a dirty picture by sticking underwear on their character. I just love that it's a Thing that people do. It's a bit silly, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Someone will upload a picture of a vixen looking sultry in her underwear, and then upload a "dirty" version where her boobs are all hanging out (in the exact same shape as they were w/ bra, scientists were baffled) and her camel-toe transmogrified into a hot and bothered labia.

Even though it's obvious that the dirty picture was done first and was the primary focus of the artist's attention, and they're both posted in the same gallery so it's not like it's fronting or anything, I sometimes wonder what the point of the clean version is. We're talking pinups here, it's not like TF or something where it's whimsically enjoyable on some level even if you're not into it, and where the nether regions can actually be visually and mentally distracting.

Anyway I've officially thought about this TOO MUCH. It is 3 AM oh god why am I not asleep.

EDIT: Another option for the clean pic is to literally erase the naughty bits, as in this fchan thread. Natch, it doesn't help that I already find nulled-out groins to be a sign that some other force of evil may be at play... I think it's hawt. :)

Yeah... okay FA, you need to either not tell me when someone unwatches me, or you need to let me know who it was. That way, when I get four simultaneous unwatches, I can know whether or not I should care.

Especially after a stint of posting things that are, measurably, less horrifying to the average person than my usual wtfery. What on earth is going on here.

(EDIT: Okay, I get it now. It's when someone unwatches you before you've cleared their watch notification from your inbox. That makes way more sense!)

FA went down at the perfect time to not be a distraction as I finished up some last minute crunchy type work. So hooray, FA's back!

So do any of you use Google Wave? Do any of you WANT to use Google Wave? I have a plethora of invites, enough to invite basically anyone who asks. I'm using it to solicit feedback on stories, which it is amply good for. You can add me at swatcheroo@googlewave.com. If you want an invite though just note me with your address on account of I don't want your e-mails to get spammed any more than they already are.

Have any of you seen this article in the University of Idaho Argonaut about furries? No? That's because nobody gives a shit what people in Idaho think about furries except apparently Xydexx and Perri_Rhoades who got their panties in a bunch enough to reply. Can we please stop doing this? It's embarrassing. Really.

In lighter news! I'm working on a pretty ambitious pic I think you'll all really get a kick out of, even if you're not into TF. Expect many things from me between now and the new year. :)

Sexy:
- No holds barred wish fulfillment—including be-careful-what-you-wish-for literal interpretations
- Personality/appearance mismatches (unexpected personalities for archetypal bodies... e.g. a sensitive brute)
- Stuff that freaks people out being played off as if it was totally normal
- Narcissism
- Intellectualism and philosophizing
- Fish-out-of-water situations
- Cartoonishly exaggerated bodies (even humans!)
- People being aroused by something they don't want to admit to
- Sincerity despite shame
- Wacky clothes and costumes
- Reality-breaking whimsical surrealism

Not sexy:
- Those impossibly perky sphere-shaped breasts that too many male nerds draw presuming that they are sexy to everyone
- Inept anime style—especially those dead-fish anime eyes (ARGL) and hatched-line blushing
- Incestuous relationships
- Pornstar makeup on animals
- Taking pride in vapidity
- Irony, cynicism, and general trollish behavior
- White-void backgrounds
- Pedantic justification for details that leaves nothing up to the imagination
- Crying (NEVER)

Oh man. Check this guy out.

He's kind of a generic Marvel baddie but he definitely pushes all sorts of buttons. :3

AWESOME. Don't hide yourselves away!

Unless you're under the legal age of consent, in which case you shouldn't be having sexy interactions with strangers on the internet, period. You're going to get yourself in a sketchy situation, or else you're going to get whoever you interact with in LOT of trouble and Chris Hansen will show up and it will be 100% bad news.

SERIOUSLY GUYS.

No but really the secret fetish accounts are awesome.

I can't sleep... I gotta exorcize a few vague ideas so they stop bugging me.

Nose Stuff:
Someone getting swallowed whole by a cartoony canid. They get pushed down a long tube, and their head pops out of a narrow hole. The opening, it turns out, is at the end of the predator's snout, making the prey's head the new nose. To match, the prey is now black (or pink) and shiny.

Also, an image comes to mind of Swatcher's nose crawling out of his muzzle, attached to a body with arms and legs. This is completely normal. Didn't you know that Swatcher's nose was a symbiotic creature?

Character nonsense
Drew a combo Swatcher/Bookeraux, which kind of looks like Swatcher but with evil eyebrows, horns, a pointy chin, and two mouths b/w big lips. I'm kind of gay for my own characters. SOMEONE DRESS UP LIKE THEM SO I CAN GET ALL AWKWARD AND MUMBLY AROUND YOU.

Looking weird in public
Pathetically trying to hide a sudden onset of surreal and obvious disfigurement in public, with moderate success. Especially stuff with the face. Like putting on shades to disguise the fact that you have mouths for eyes. Generally, disguising or hiding away some sort of awkward physical trait is pretty hawt, especially when the secret is just about to announce its presence.

The usual surreal bullshit
Speaking of hidden secrets, characters with unusual insides who think it's hot that you want to explore them. Being "vored" into someone else's body, I find that it's quite nicely decorated inside. Or else, passing through their body, I find myself transformed when I emerge on the other side.
Unmasking is only hot to me when there's a serious weirdness factor to it (see here, here, here and here) and the shift is that I'm thinking of involving someone else in it. Someone else is wearing a mask, maybe they don't even know they're wearing one, and I gently tease it off their heads, presuming they even have a head underneath it. Or maybe they're some grotesque snaggle-toothed monster, and they're all embarrassed that I'm getting to see the real them because they're SO UGLY, but I think they're cute and then we make out. :3

I guess it worked because halfway through writing this I lay down and went ZZZZ almost immediately. Now it's tomorrow morning. Hooray!

I'm getting a lot of submission deleted notifications in my submissions box. Which one of you is up to shenanigans?

Furries who draw "vanilla" furry porn need to stop hating on "fetishes".


Because GUYS:

If you get turned on by the idea of furries having sex

you have a furry fetish.


Basically everyone in the world thinks you are a laughing stock freak of nature; you think animal-human hybrids doing the nasty is sexy. You are a pervert. It's all fucking Sixth Sense in here, perverts walking around like normal people only they don't know they're perverts.

If you draw furry porn, and you're turned on by it, you're a pervert.

It's extremely frustrating because SOME PEOPLE just do not realize this.

 ilovecritique

It seriously still mystifies me why people bother. It's not even real critique. Real critique has breadth and depth. The only reason you would add yourself to I LOVE CRITIQUE is because you want to draw more photorealistic lizard anal sex.

If you want honest to god good feedback rather than random criticism from the peanut gallery, you need to have a rapport with the person who's giving you the feedback. They need to know where you've been, where your head is at, and where you're going to be steering your ship (which is a weird mixture of metaphors) in order to effectively help you "improve". Not everyone's idea of improvement involves doing more lifedrawing.

To be completely honest, I think if some people want to improve, and they want real feedback, FA is a ridiculously misguided place to go for it. I love furries, don't get me wrong, but the best outcome you can hope for in FURAFFINITY ART SCHOOL is maybe drawing sparkly dragons for some Magic the Gathering ripoff. We're dealing with an unimaginably shallow pool here for such a diverse community.

If you're going to grow as an artist, critique of your formal elements (your style, use of color, whatever) is only going to take you so far. Critique of your ideas, your concepts, and your point of focus is going to make for much more interesting images, whether your drawing style kind of sucks or whether you're flippin' Raphael. So many furries are excessively talented at drawing brain-meltingly boring pictures. Criticizing boring subject matter is kind of a no-go zone, though, for some strange reason, and when people slap up that icon on their frontpage, the last thing they expect to hear is "draw something less boring than endless parades of foxes wearing combat fatiques holding M-16s".

I normally don't pay too much attention to my FA stats, but I took a look today and it seems like I'm approaching 10,000 comments! Holy crow! I'm also nearly there with favorites too. So, uh, thanks. :)

Talked a bit about fursuiting in my performance theory lecture today. The prof asked if I had heard the term "furverts". :D

This was in the context of my previous journal about fursuits being a way to improve the self, by the way. That's why I asked, 'cause I wanted to bring it up in class.

On the same topic, someone brought in an example of a viagra ad, and a girl in the front row, who has a tendency to, to be polite, take things very much at face value, said it was beautiful. In it, an old couple get out of a car in a romantic European alleyway, and go up to a bedroom, getting younger and younger as they go, until they're both teenagers.

This girl says that it's beautiful because she always thought of Viagra as being something kind of raunchy, but IT TURNS OUT that it's actually ROMANTIC.

And me, not being able to leave well enough alone, tried to explain that all Viagra does is give you a boner that lasts four hours, and that having a perma-boner doesn't necessarily IMPROVE your sex life.

She gives me this total ignorant glare and asks, "How DOESN'T it?"

To which I snap back, perhaps with a bit too much passion and familiarity, "You don't need to have a boner to have sex!"

This totally confuses everyone, and they laugh uncomfortably. The girl is just mystified by the concept. "What do you mean?" she says, furrowing her brow and smirking. My friend taps me on the shoulder and shakes his head. "Just let it go." he says. He does this a lot. I'm grateful for it. And I do.

Man, I feel like a total alien most of the time.

(here's the ad, btw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW54ZW5y1PU)

This is kind of theory-heavy, but it's not complicated and I think there's a lot to relate to here. Those of you who really dig this theory shit, rejoice! Because holy crap.

So this question applies to anyone who roleplays as a furry, really, but I'm asking this specifically of fursuiters because unlike RP, fursuiting is an embodied act. What's that, you say? Ahem! An embodied act takes advantage of the physicality of the body, shining a spotlight on its weight, the fact that it can be touched, that it can touch back, that it has a smell, and makes noises unintentionally, and gives off that weird vibe of body heat that you get being near something alive. Embodiment is the difference between a real hug and me just typing *hugs* for you to read and imagine. I mean, I can only hug one, maybe two people at a time, but by typing *hugs* I'm hugging everyone who's been following up to this point, and you can even get as many virtual hugs as you care to if you reread this sentence a bunch of times. When you read *Swatcher hugs you*, you can even get a very affectionate hug from me while the real, physical meatspace me slumbers peacefully, which I hope to be doing in a few minutes. That's the significant difference between embodiment and virtuality.

So there's a few things that follow from that. Costuming is an embodied form of roleplay, where the texture and tightness of the costume, the way it might modify the way you stand, and the subtle change in the way other people act around you all factor into the creation of an alternate identity. There's a desire to physically manifest a (sometimes very abstract and archetypal) character.

But that's a very general view! It applies to all costuming, and doesn't say very much about fursuiting specifically. Yet, we have fursuiters who adopt the guise of anthropomorphic animals, but may be very disinterested in period clothing, or in the clothes of the opposite gender, or in over-the-top decorative runway fashion, all of which we can off-handedly class as "costuming". Some fursuiters' interests may lie strictly in portraying a single character. So I ask... why the preference for fursuiting, over every other form of costuming?

But don't answer that question yet! I have a theory, and it might be a bit of a swing at the fences, so don't take this the wrong way. I'll explain what I mean after this:

Fursuiters have body issues, and fursuits are kind of like prosthetics that allow them to achieve a more ideal body.

By body issues, I mean that the desire to act out in costume, being wacky, and cuddly, and the centre of attention, is hindered and undermined by the look and feel of a real, imperfect human body doing the same goofy, silly things. The human body is bad at getting that kind of affection, and the fursuit acts as a prosthetic, augmenting the human form to something greater and more desirable. It's not that fursuiters don't like their human bodies, but rather that they're not quite there yet and need a boost made out of upholstery foam and fun fur. :)

So the question is as follows: does anyone see their fursuit as a way to improve their human body?

Not everyone is going to answer yes to this, natch, and I'm interested in everyone's thoughts, but it's something that's come up recently that I'm curious about and I want to come to you guys before I talk about it to people who aren't furries.

When a character seems to stand out from the crowd, everyone is drawn into their spell. They go to great lengths to stick out, and people ogle. Not so much because they're a freak show, but because they are the ringmaster. Characters that, by the way they look, dress, and behave, exude an intoxicating aura of charisma that's impossible to resist. They're conspicuous, they know they're conspicuous, and they're using it to full advantage.

I love the trappings of these sorts of characters. Loud suits and ties, iconic props, distinctive hairstyles. They're archetypal, quotable, merchandisable, often imitated and never quite duplicated. They're reducible to a color swatch.

They're thoroughly unrealistic.

But I have such a crush on for them.

So you get those "oh no my fursuit/halloween costume is suddenly real/alive/taking over!" stories? I love them. But they always seem to follow the same pattern: innocent costumer gets caught in the crossfire of an area-effect spell, unintended gender-bending, speech impediments, and personality adjustments follow.

Which lead me to wonder... what if someone, say, at a small party, decided to cast this costume real-iffication spell with the full foreknowledge of the guests, who had dressed appropriately?

And on first blush, everything would LOOK like it had worked, but upon closer inspection, all sorts of flaws would emerge. The spellcaster wasn't quite as competent as everyone had thought.

I can't think of many ways in which this would play out.

Anthony Schepperd's video for Ape School’s “Wail to God.”

Toony stretching and boob towers. I'M OKAY WITH THAT!

UNREASONABLY

when people on FA say they aren't furries on account of it being "a hobby" and not "a lifestyle" or some bullshit like that. It's a moving goalpost! They are not furries on account of they have no interest in fursuiting or believe they are truly an animal inside or any of those things, and yet they participate in (by uploading their furry drawings to FA) and hang around the fandom and they have an anthropomorphic animal alter ego.

I don't know precisely why it bugs me so much. I know major, well-known furries that don't own fursuits OR think they're animals inside OR could even be qualified as "lifestylers" in the broadest sense (what is the definition of a furry lifestyler and who fits that description is my question). People who don't own fursuits can be furries!

I just think it's ludicrous how many excuses people can make to avoid inclusion in the fandom. If it looks like an anthropomorphic duck and quacks like an anthropomorphic duck, then it's probably an anthropomorphic duck. Why not just embrace the label and enjoy the benefits?

It's a dumb thing to be bothered by, I know!

Physiologically, man in the normal use of technology (or his variously extended body) is perpetually modified by it and in turn finds ever new ways of modifying his technology. Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth. One of the merits of motivation research has been the revelation of man's sex relation to the motorcar.

Marshall MacLuhan, in "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man". Chapter 4, The Gadget Lover: Narcissus As Narcosis specifically. I pulled this quote out because I thought it would be relevant to many of you, and I'm wondering what all of y'all's thoughts are, especially with the quote out of context.

Yup, filled up another one.

I have more sketchbooks full of porn than I have regular sketchbooks now.

Uh, that's because I keep losing the non-porn ones. What can I say! I bring them around with me and leave them places by accident! I leave my porn sketchbooks at home where they are safely put away. So they accumulate. c.c

What kind of stuff should I be drawing, anyway? It's been a while since I've drawn anything, and I've kind of lost the touch. I have lots of very vague, disjointed concepts, but nothing draw-able. I need to get my mind back into shape. Until then, I need help coalescing my interests into some pics I can actually color and post in my main gallery instead of in scraps. ^^

Help!