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I did have big plans for those wrestling characters
4 years ago
General
I have to get something off of my chest. I'm going to be very inflammatory in this journal. I hope you understand.
I've got this uphill battle where you've got the normies, the non-wrestling fans who associate all wrestling with like 1987 and just assume it's this stupid redneck thing that's beneath them (Despite being programmed to love the everloving FUCK out of anime or flock to Marvel films, which tell stories in the exact same way and are no less stupid than wrestling), but you've also got the absolute god damn weirdos on this website who essentially reinforce those thoughts because there's apparently some unwritten rule that you can't be interested in both wrestling and furry art and display any modicum of social development.
Most who follow me know that I'm a big fan of character work. Well actually, most of you probably wouldn't know that and are just waiting for me to post a sequel to the "Try Again?" animation but trust me when I say, I've actually got a weird interest in legitimate art. And I was thinking that it'd be neat to develop some wrestler characters that came off as actual people with personality traits on and off camera that one could theoretically care about and invest in. Now, yes, even without the wrestling context, this is foolhardy on my part for the aforementioned reasons but even so, it was an intriguing idea for me. And I admit that as something of a fatalistic human being I probably didn't put enough out there before getting discouraged but it was becoming kind of apparent that the early goings were doing little to peak the interests of those who could stand to have their view on the subject updated, and the people who were faving it (faves are useless, by the way, I hate them, they tell me nothing) were also faving shit like this:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44542890/
Or this:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44372544/
Or this:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44580768/
Now what does that tell me? Well, it strongly indicates that A) they think that the art I'm doing is gonna go in that direction or B) even if they don't, that's how they're gonna choose to interpret it. And thus, why should I bother with the character work at all? Or as one of them put when I posted Zane:
"I'd Romero Special him lol" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA GET IT?! BECAUSE THAT'S MY FETISH!?!?!?!?!?!?! BECAUSE THAT'S ALL I'M CAPABLE OF CARING ABOUT HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
But you know what's also frustrating about these guys and their wrestling fetish? The characters and themes they use for their kink AREN'T EVEN ACCURATE DEPICTIONS OF MODERN WRESTLING FUCK. Like so not only am I get lumped in with these people, but my attempt to portray what modern wrestling is and what a modern wrestler looks like is undermined by the fact that everything most people see when it comes to furry wrestling is dumb bara meatheads who look like they've had a frontal lobotomy, wearing the tightest possible speedo because haha so sexy.
And DON'T GET ME STARTED ON MASKS JESUS EFFING CHRIST. See because first of all, masks invariably look stupid on anthros, they ALWAYS look dumb. But second, masks are LUCHA LIBRE. For the most part, you only see those kinds of masks on Mexican wrestlers, wrestling the luchador style, You mostly only see them stateside in older wrestling clips where American promoters wanted to add a cheap essence of mystery to one of their workers, or who do occasionally see it in modern times on non-luchadors for the sake of being ironic, but they're generally not prevalent beyond that.
HAHA BUT HOW ELSE WOULD WE KNOW THEY'RE WRESTLERS?!
Oh I dunno, the attire? The fact that they're standing in a fucking ring?
And you name you fetish characters shit like "Bruno the Crusher" or "The Mad Dobie" or shit like that and fuck, they DON'T NAME WRESTLERS LIKE THAT ANYMORE. For the most part, if they don't use their real names, they use a ring name that might sound a little more dramatic but otherwise reasonable or if they do go with a more over the top name it's not so dunderheaded. And yeah, okay, Luchasaurus is definitely a thing right now but that's another example of something done intentionally for the sake of humor. It's not a trend, it's a novelty. And it's not that I'm against over the top characters, I love them in fact, it's what makes wrestling fun, but there's generally going to be more nuance than "I SHOUT AND AM STRONG AND SWEATY RAWWWRRRRRR."
And so that tells me that in addition to lumping me in with all of the stupidest content available in furry wrestling, the people doing it aren't even...fans? Like maybe you are but you make no attempt at representing the product as it currently stands, and has for many years now, you just dip into like...80's Mid-South tapings (Actually no, because that wouldn't be mainstream enough, probably just Hogan-Era WWF) and look for the biggest, dumbest, hairiest looking guys to paw at yourself over.
So it gets to this situation where I'm like, what chance do I have to associate these characters with any respectability when as soon as I attempt to draw Zane performing his finishing submission hold I'm probably get those stupid ass "Ooh, does he wanna go a round with me...?" comments. It's hard enough to convince the normies that maybe I can portray these characters with some legitimacy without them seeing it, looking at whose also enjoying it and how they're enjoying it, and being like "Oh, so this is just one of those weirdo fetish drawings."
And that's the other thing and I've thought a lot about how I can most sensitively say this but I'm just gonna say it: They're always so fucking weird. There's no other way to put it, and I'm not just talking about what they're into because like, I've been able to talk to people just fine who are into some shit. Some into diaper pissing. Some want to have their heads cut off and mounted to the wall. Hell, I got my modest following by drawing rapey shit for pervs. But the furry-wrestling guys, in particular, always come off like they've had maybe 3 human interactions in their entire life. Like these...man-children drop outs who might be nice guys but just really...seem like there's one or two crayons missing from that box. 100% of the time, this is how they come off when I interact with them and I don't understand why. And that's best case scenario, because half the time you end up with the ones who are in it for the "RAWR MANLY!" shit and bring all the rightwing, chauvinistic bullshit that comes with it. So you not only end up with a numbskull, you end up with a Nazi-numbskull.
*exhale*
I'm not saying I won't eventually attempt to return to those characters, like I said, I had a whole ass story arch mapped out for Zane and Ariel and it was gonna be epic and hard but super cool if I could pull it off but it just felt like it'd be far, far too much work for a result I didn't really want. But it could still happen, or some amount, after a period of re-evaluation. I was super excited for those characters when making them (I dropped $500 on a keyboard to finish Zane's theme), and it's just too bad that like every other non-porn thing I do, the reality of the actual fandom I'm in hit me hard.
And before you even think about it, do not, under any circumstances, fucking tell me "Oh, you just gotta do it for you." DO NOT FUCKING TELL ME THIS YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKER. This ONLY gets said by people who have no god damn clue what goes through an artist's mind and no idea what the motivation for art is. "Is he calling ME the dumb motherfucker?" Well if you were thinking about saying that to me or ever have in the past, then yes I'm talking. About. You. I fucking hate that, it's useless advice, and completely misses the point of what it is that I or anyone else tries to do when expressing themselves. Fuck all the way off.
Okay...I've said all that now. Thanks for listening. Well, you probably didn't get this far but that's probably just as well.
Peace.
I've got this uphill battle where you've got the normies, the non-wrestling fans who associate all wrestling with like 1987 and just assume it's this stupid redneck thing that's beneath them (Despite being programmed to love the everloving FUCK out of anime or flock to Marvel films, which tell stories in the exact same way and are no less stupid than wrestling), but you've also got the absolute god damn weirdos on this website who essentially reinforce those thoughts because there's apparently some unwritten rule that you can't be interested in both wrestling and furry art and display any modicum of social development.
Most who follow me know that I'm a big fan of character work. Well actually, most of you probably wouldn't know that and are just waiting for me to post a sequel to the "Try Again?" animation but trust me when I say, I've actually got a weird interest in legitimate art. And I was thinking that it'd be neat to develop some wrestler characters that came off as actual people with personality traits on and off camera that one could theoretically care about and invest in. Now, yes, even without the wrestling context, this is foolhardy on my part for the aforementioned reasons but even so, it was an intriguing idea for me. And I admit that as something of a fatalistic human being I probably didn't put enough out there before getting discouraged but it was becoming kind of apparent that the early goings were doing little to peak the interests of those who could stand to have their view on the subject updated, and the people who were faving it (faves are useless, by the way, I hate them, they tell me nothing) were also faving shit like this:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44542890/
Or this:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44372544/
Or this:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44580768/
Now what does that tell me? Well, it strongly indicates that A) they think that the art I'm doing is gonna go in that direction or B) even if they don't, that's how they're gonna choose to interpret it. And thus, why should I bother with the character work at all? Or as one of them put when I posted Zane:
"I'd Romero Special him lol" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA GET IT?! BECAUSE THAT'S MY FETISH!?!?!?!?!?!?! BECAUSE THAT'S ALL I'M CAPABLE OF CARING ABOUT HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
But you know what's also frustrating about these guys and their wrestling fetish? The characters and themes they use for their kink AREN'T EVEN ACCURATE DEPICTIONS OF MODERN WRESTLING FUCK. Like so not only am I get lumped in with these people, but my attempt to portray what modern wrestling is and what a modern wrestler looks like is undermined by the fact that everything most people see when it comes to furry wrestling is dumb bara meatheads who look like they've had a frontal lobotomy, wearing the tightest possible speedo because haha so sexy.
And DON'T GET ME STARTED ON MASKS JESUS EFFING CHRIST. See because first of all, masks invariably look stupid on anthros, they ALWAYS look dumb. But second, masks are LUCHA LIBRE. For the most part, you only see those kinds of masks on Mexican wrestlers, wrestling the luchador style, You mostly only see them stateside in older wrestling clips where American promoters wanted to add a cheap essence of mystery to one of their workers, or who do occasionally see it in modern times on non-luchadors for the sake of being ironic, but they're generally not prevalent beyond that.
HAHA BUT HOW ELSE WOULD WE KNOW THEY'RE WRESTLERS?!
Oh I dunno, the attire? The fact that they're standing in a fucking ring?
And you name you fetish characters shit like "Bruno the Crusher" or "The Mad Dobie" or shit like that and fuck, they DON'T NAME WRESTLERS LIKE THAT ANYMORE. For the most part, if they don't use their real names, they use a ring name that might sound a little more dramatic but otherwise reasonable or if they do go with a more over the top name it's not so dunderheaded. And yeah, okay, Luchasaurus is definitely a thing right now but that's another example of something done intentionally for the sake of humor. It's not a trend, it's a novelty. And it's not that I'm against over the top characters, I love them in fact, it's what makes wrestling fun, but there's generally going to be more nuance than "I SHOUT AND AM STRONG AND SWEATY RAWWWRRRRRR."
And so that tells me that in addition to lumping me in with all of the stupidest content available in furry wrestling, the people doing it aren't even...fans? Like maybe you are but you make no attempt at representing the product as it currently stands, and has for many years now, you just dip into like...80's Mid-South tapings (Actually no, because that wouldn't be mainstream enough, probably just Hogan-Era WWF) and look for the biggest, dumbest, hairiest looking guys to paw at yourself over.
So it gets to this situation where I'm like, what chance do I have to associate these characters with any respectability when as soon as I attempt to draw Zane performing his finishing submission hold I'm probably get those stupid ass "Ooh, does he wanna go a round with me...?" comments. It's hard enough to convince the normies that maybe I can portray these characters with some legitimacy without them seeing it, looking at whose also enjoying it and how they're enjoying it, and being like "Oh, so this is just one of those weirdo fetish drawings."
And that's the other thing and I've thought a lot about how I can most sensitively say this but I'm just gonna say it: They're always so fucking weird. There's no other way to put it, and I'm not just talking about what they're into because like, I've been able to talk to people just fine who are into some shit. Some into diaper pissing. Some want to have their heads cut off and mounted to the wall. Hell, I got my modest following by drawing rapey shit for pervs. But the furry-wrestling guys, in particular, always come off like they've had maybe 3 human interactions in their entire life. Like these...man-children drop outs who might be nice guys but just really...seem like there's one or two crayons missing from that box. 100% of the time, this is how they come off when I interact with them and I don't understand why. And that's best case scenario, because half the time you end up with the ones who are in it for the "RAWR MANLY!" shit and bring all the rightwing, chauvinistic bullshit that comes with it. So you not only end up with a numbskull, you end up with a Nazi-numbskull.
*exhale*
I'm not saying I won't eventually attempt to return to those characters, like I said, I had a whole ass story arch mapped out for Zane and Ariel and it was gonna be epic and hard but super cool if I could pull it off but it just felt like it'd be far, far too much work for a result I didn't really want. But it could still happen, or some amount, after a period of re-evaluation. I was super excited for those characters when making them (I dropped $500 on a keyboard to finish Zane's theme), and it's just too bad that like every other non-porn thing I do, the reality of the actual fandom I'm in hit me hard.
And before you even think about it, do not, under any circumstances, fucking tell me "Oh, you just gotta do it for you." DO NOT FUCKING TELL ME THIS YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKER. This ONLY gets said by people who have no god damn clue what goes through an artist's mind and no idea what the motivation for art is. "Is he calling ME the dumb motherfucker?" Well if you were thinking about saying that to me or ever have in the past, then yes I'm talking. About. You. I fucking hate that, it's useless advice, and completely misses the point of what it is that I or anyone else tries to do when expressing themselves. Fuck all the way off.
Okay...I've said all that now. Thanks for listening. Well, you probably didn't get this far but that's probably just as well.
Peace.
But yeah I think I can understand your frustration in that you're doing a niche within a niche. Professional wrestling is no longer the juggernaut it once was and I don't think the "Furry Fandom" will ever gain true mainstream appeal.
So trying to find people who are both in the furry fandom and fans of professional wrestling is a pretty daunting task. It's even more difficult when you're also trying to find furries who also take professional wrestling more seriously than just fetish material. Yeah, it can be really annoying when you search "Professional Wrestling" and all the results show some random fetish character with no personality or character to them.
I know I'm one of those semi-lurker accounts without a profile pictures that you despise, but I do like following your non-porn content more than your porn stuff. I don't really post any artwork, but I do have a tiny YouTube cannel where I upload gameplay from a very niche wrestling game from Japan that you may or may not have heard of: Fire Pro Wrestling World (here is the link if you want to see for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/@hanzkidz/videos)
I like to make a lot of Create-a-Wrestlers (CAWs), and some of my most "popular videos" (6 LIKES WOW LOOK AT THOSE NUMBERS! *Sarcasm) are CAWs based on this equally obscure furry wrestling comic: Furry Fight Chronicles (if you remember who I am, you already know what comic I'm referring to)
You know how lucky it is for me to find one furry who not only plays this very obscure game from Japan, but also actually knows how to work the "Parts Craft" well enough to make the parts needed to make my furry wrestlers? Judging from his own youtube channel and other content, you most likely won't like this guy since he is one of THOSE furry wrestler creators that you hate. But I don't have the luxury to pick and choose, no one else is going to make the furry parts for me to use to make my wrestlers.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that we’re both working in a very niche market, our audience is very sparse and few. So, the best we can do is just take whatever likes and views we can get on our creations (6 LIKES ON MY VIDEOS! WOO! *Sarcasm). But that’s kind of the beautiful thing we have going for us; no one else is going to create and do what we are doing!
On a side note: would you give me permission to create some of your OC wrestlers into Fire Pro Wrestling World when I have the free time to do so? I'll upload the video of them wrestling and send you a link. I'm one of the few people out there who are obsessed with the game enough to understand the complex AI logic system of the game well enough to try and put on more interesting performances.
With that all said, I want to let you know that there is at least one person out there who actually cares slightly more about not just your wrestling stuff, but also your non-porn stuff (I remember that time you had a bunch of rat rappers that was kind of cool). I know it's not the thousands of people you wanted, but that's the sad thing about niche and obscure genres.
Thank you for your time.