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Been awhile and I got a lot to get off my chest
2 years ago
This is going to be somewhat of a long, rambly, venty post here, but thank you to anyone who takes the time to read it.
It's been a long time since I've posted here or commissioned anyone, so I figure I should explain what's going on. It's not that I don't enjoy furry art anymore — far from it, I still love it, browse through art frequently and have plenty of ideas I want to bring to fruition — but my depression, mental state and life circumstances tend to keep me from working towards those goals for a number of reasons.
First off: Honestly, a fair amount of my initial interest in the furry fandom was sexuality-driven. I consider myself to be sapiosexual — that is, I'm primarily attracted to intelligence. Looking back, in school I always would have a crush on the smartest female student in my class, and I generally had a thing for anyone I perceived as smart. I also had no problem extending this to fictional characters, and never regarded the species of a character to be a major factor in whether I felt attracted to them or not. Over the years circumstances and experiences in my life generally led me to feel like humanity overall isn't as smart as we believe we are, which only pushed me further to preferring anthropomorphic characters over human ones. It's also why I'm especially fond of dolphin and Andalite characters, as I came to view them as more intelligent than real people.
Toxicity in the community and artists leaving due to it (as well as leaving for other reasons) are big points of frustration for me. Over the past few years I've seen several of my favorite artists quit for various reasons, and it seems like there aren't new artists replacing them. One extremely talented artist in particular who I had hoped to commission was bullied out of the community a few months ago by people upset she drew a human x feral piece. And in general I hear those types of people getting louder and louder, those saying things like anthro characters shouldn't have non-human genitalia and that adult feral art should be banned altogether — things I don't have a problem with myself. IMO as long as the participants are intelligent, consenting adults who are capable of clearly communicating with each other — traits that are usually impossible to judge just from a drawing of a single moment in time — there's nothing wrong with the characters being different species or body types. It's disheartening and makes it harder to find capable artists willing to do those types of art.
Imposter syndrome: At the same time I look at the community's output and feel more like maybe I don't belong anymore. I like cetacean art but I don't care much for vore outside of unbirthing. Yet it feels like 9 out of 10 "adult" cetacean works these days are straight vore. Likewise I personally have a strong dislike of anal, but it feels like that's what the majority of anthro adult art is these days, even when it's not a M/M pairing. I also just turned 41 last week, which I know is pretty damn old for a community like this. I want to believe I still fit in to this community, but I just don't feel it a lot of the time anymore.
G-rated vs Adult content: I talk about adult content a lot, but I honestly do love non-adult stuff that everyone can enjoy as well. But over the years I've noticed that adult content just gets far more likes, views, and attention in general than clean stuff. I've meant to keep a balance between adult vs. non-adult stuff in my commissions but I feel I really haven't been successful in that, because I want to have things that the most people will enjoy made, and because I've just had times where the opportunity to commission someone that I wanted for a specific piece comes up. And as I mentioned earlier, people are leaving all the time, so I feel like I need to jump on it because the opportunity may never come up again.
Lack of motivation: I take medication for depression and often it feels like it doesn't help all that much. Between how much the world has gone to shit in the past few years and my general poor diet and lack of exercise I frequently just want to shut out the world and find it increasingly difficult to do things I enjoy. I have ideas for writing that I'd love to actually put out but the effort and energy involved just feels like it's too much. Last year I commissioned Dolorcin for a piece based on a story I intended to write on the thought that actually having the companion piece ready to go would motivate me to actually finally get the story out of my head and into words but it didn't. It feels like a massive burden getting started and I'm constantly obsessing about missing an important detail or rushing through parts. I've given thought to just posting the piece and saying the heck with writing the story but I really don't want to do that. At some point I need to just buckle down and do it and be happy with it even if it's not perfect. Heck, even just writing this journal entry took me over a week to actually come back to and finish after I started it...
Family commitments and the state of the world: I have a brother with cerebral palsy who needs daily nursing care which I frequently help out with and that eats into my free time. On top of that my mother fell and broke an arm and leg last month and I've been doing a lot to help her through the healing and recovery process. While I know it's not completely true it feels like I'm stuck in this situation in life where I can't go out and have a life of my own because I'm needed too much. At the same time, I feel like I wouldn't go out and have a life anyway because of how much random violence there seems to be nowadays. Back in 2019 I was already in the mindset of "I have to go out and make a life for myself" and had made it a goal to attend Anthrocon and the Pinburgh pinball tournament in 2021. Then Covid came and messed everything up. Pinburgh is no more for the forseeable future since not being able to hold events for years led to them having to sell all their machines and shut down. And while Anthrocon and other conventions are coming back, violence has ramped up so badly in the past couple years that I don't know that I'd feel safe.
I do still get watches and favorites on my gallery and I can't express enough how much I appreciate it. Hopefully I will start slowly getting back into things in the coming months... it would probably be therapeutic for me mentally tbh... Any advice or words of encouragement would be really helpful. Thanks for letting me vent for a bit. UwU
It's been a long time since I've posted here or commissioned anyone, so I figure I should explain what's going on. It's not that I don't enjoy furry art anymore — far from it, I still love it, browse through art frequently and have plenty of ideas I want to bring to fruition — but my depression, mental state and life circumstances tend to keep me from working towards those goals for a number of reasons.
First off: Honestly, a fair amount of my initial interest in the furry fandom was sexuality-driven. I consider myself to be sapiosexual — that is, I'm primarily attracted to intelligence. Looking back, in school I always would have a crush on the smartest female student in my class, and I generally had a thing for anyone I perceived as smart. I also had no problem extending this to fictional characters, and never regarded the species of a character to be a major factor in whether I felt attracted to them or not. Over the years circumstances and experiences in my life generally led me to feel like humanity overall isn't as smart as we believe we are, which only pushed me further to preferring anthropomorphic characters over human ones. It's also why I'm especially fond of dolphin and Andalite characters, as I came to view them as more intelligent than real people.
Toxicity in the community and artists leaving due to it (as well as leaving for other reasons) are big points of frustration for me. Over the past few years I've seen several of my favorite artists quit for various reasons, and it seems like there aren't new artists replacing them. One extremely talented artist in particular who I had hoped to commission was bullied out of the community a few months ago by people upset she drew a human x feral piece. And in general I hear those types of people getting louder and louder, those saying things like anthro characters shouldn't have non-human genitalia and that adult feral art should be banned altogether — things I don't have a problem with myself. IMO as long as the participants are intelligent, consenting adults who are capable of clearly communicating with each other — traits that are usually impossible to judge just from a drawing of a single moment in time — there's nothing wrong with the characters being different species or body types. It's disheartening and makes it harder to find capable artists willing to do those types of art.
Imposter syndrome: At the same time I look at the community's output and feel more like maybe I don't belong anymore. I like cetacean art but I don't care much for vore outside of unbirthing. Yet it feels like 9 out of 10 "adult" cetacean works these days are straight vore. Likewise I personally have a strong dislike of anal, but it feels like that's what the majority of anthro adult art is these days, even when it's not a M/M pairing. I also just turned 41 last week, which I know is pretty damn old for a community like this. I want to believe I still fit in to this community, but I just don't feel it a lot of the time anymore.
G-rated vs Adult content: I talk about adult content a lot, but I honestly do love non-adult stuff that everyone can enjoy as well. But over the years I've noticed that adult content just gets far more likes, views, and attention in general than clean stuff. I've meant to keep a balance between adult vs. non-adult stuff in my commissions but I feel I really haven't been successful in that, because I want to have things that the most people will enjoy made, and because I've just had times where the opportunity to commission someone that I wanted for a specific piece comes up. And as I mentioned earlier, people are leaving all the time, so I feel like I need to jump on it because the opportunity may never come up again.
Lack of motivation: I take medication for depression and often it feels like it doesn't help all that much. Between how much the world has gone to shit in the past few years and my general poor diet and lack of exercise I frequently just want to shut out the world and find it increasingly difficult to do things I enjoy. I have ideas for writing that I'd love to actually put out but the effort and energy involved just feels like it's too much. Last year I commissioned Dolorcin for a piece based on a story I intended to write on the thought that actually having the companion piece ready to go would motivate me to actually finally get the story out of my head and into words but it didn't. It feels like a massive burden getting started and I'm constantly obsessing about missing an important detail or rushing through parts. I've given thought to just posting the piece and saying the heck with writing the story but I really don't want to do that. At some point I need to just buckle down and do it and be happy with it even if it's not perfect. Heck, even just writing this journal entry took me over a week to actually come back to and finish after I started it...
Family commitments and the state of the world: I have a brother with cerebral palsy who needs daily nursing care which I frequently help out with and that eats into my free time. On top of that my mother fell and broke an arm and leg last month and I've been doing a lot to help her through the healing and recovery process. While I know it's not completely true it feels like I'm stuck in this situation in life where I can't go out and have a life of my own because I'm needed too much. At the same time, I feel like I wouldn't go out and have a life anyway because of how much random violence there seems to be nowadays. Back in 2019 I was already in the mindset of "I have to go out and make a life for myself" and had made it a goal to attend Anthrocon and the Pinburgh pinball tournament in 2021. Then Covid came and messed everything up. Pinburgh is no more for the forseeable future since not being able to hold events for years led to them having to sell all their machines and shut down. And while Anthrocon and other conventions are coming back, violence has ramped up so badly in the past couple years that I don't know that I'd feel safe.
I do still get watches and favorites on my gallery and I can't express enough how much I appreciate it. Hopefully I will start slowly getting back into things in the coming months... it would probably be therapeutic for me mentally tbh... Any advice or words of encouragement would be really helpful. Thanks for letting me vent for a bit. UwU
Us Gen Xers need to stick together.