I miss the days where you could just walk into a convention and set up shop off to the side somewhere, show your art off, draw, and make a few sales on the side.

I stopped going a while ago, for many reasons. The lack of actual artists lately has been one of them.

I feel you. only a small handful of OG's get let in. The usual bunch, Michele Light, Terrie Smith, Dark Natasha et al. They don't even want to let us old timers who helped spread the fandom in. Just Anthrocon. I have so many people at Anthrocon tell me "it would be great if you would be at more cons, your stuff is so hard to find" and I have to tell them I do apply but every other con has turned me down. It's a shame, especially since I am seeing more and more people becoming interested in furry history and works that you can't find on the internet from the self same OG's that keep getting turned down.

What's worse, is the damned disengenuity of the con staff. They acknowledge the issues and claim to want to change things, and don't do jack shit. Too many hypocrites involved with cons. The last good ones in California were ConFurence and Califur.

Man Mia, and Nynaeve, I feel everything in this journal so. so...so much.

More often than not it seems like I go to furcons now and the Dealers Room is completely lacking in what I'm wanting. I come rearing and ready with sketchbooks to hand out, and the Dealers are just...lackluster.
Everyone peddles the same physical merchandise shit. Keychains, acrylic standees, collars, harnesses, leaches, furry clothing companies, prints, rugs, books, FUCKING PINS, and very few actually seem like they want to take sketchbooks anymore. And if they do, they're very few and far between sometimes not even advertising such services on their list of wares.

Anymore it sure seems like furry artists would rather go to a convention, build a waitlist of scheduled commissions, and then go home to work on them at leisure. To me this just doesn't define what a convention should mean. It should me a rampant outpouring of creative energy staying up into stupid hours of the night and by the end of the con you go "damn that was awesome".

But if an artist just takes art home, that to me is the same as commissioning them online or something; there's a disconnect in the process. When I bring a sketchbook out to a con, I'm looking for something deeper than a piece of disposable physical merchandise. I'm seeking a memory. Each and every page of my sketchbook posted here to FA is a memory of a time, and a place, and a person I interacted with that I then get to share with everyone. Even now I can look back at an art piece and go "wow, yeah that actually happened".

There just sure seems to be a lot of negativity in this fandom anymore, to where brief glimpses of what it should be like come few and far between. I still go to cons because there's an enjoyment to the atmosphere, there's a joy in setting up travel arrangements, seeking roomshares, making things work and executing the plan, sometimes there's panels and friends that I want to go to.

But seriously one of the negatives is this overwhelming insistence that your stupid ass gender pronouns and transgender shit should take the forefront of existence being in the fandom, when there's so much more than that and the creativity should come first rather than a persons excess baggage of some lore in their head that they want recognized as truth or something. More often than not at cons now I see a table heaped with gender pronoun preference tags and I just walk past it and carry on, and have to tell people that I don't play that game because I came from a time in the fandom where something like that didn't matter. And to me, it never will.

It took me a while of discussions with friends to realize how it was I felt, but I think I got it.
The fandom has lost its airlock of security from the real world.

When I joined, inside the con there was a wealth of creative expression that was still riding on the coattails of its origins as a science fiction focused fandom; so you got a lot of that real hardcore imagination at work wondering if furry was viable and how societies would function or develop with that as the end goal.
Inside the con, the real world was kept outside the front door and not allowed inside.

Now, new furs bring all the real world shit in with them. There's no separation between "real world" and "fandom" anymore because people are so mentally fucked and incapable of having that fantasy versus reality airlock that real world social issues are brought straight inside. "I'm trans- and its a problem that's affecting me, and so should also affect everyone in the fandom that thinks similarly! Anyone who objects should be risen up against and exiled from the fandom!"

Seriously, that's the overall impression that I get anymore. Nevermind that when I joined in everyone just got along swimmingly regardless of beliefs. We could agree to disagree and move on with life. Now, furs are such hostile shitbags that telling them you disagree with them gets you blocked from contact online, risen up against, and told you need to leave the fandom. Motherfucker I was here first.

I'm doing what I can whenever I go to cons now. Trying to put in for panel submissions for the things that I like in the hopes that it garners some interest around 'taurs, hybrids and multifurs because I feel like its the least I can do to try and right the ship against the serious levels of stupid out there. Besides, what else am I going to spend my annual leave hours from work on? So I keep going to cons and hope the fandom comes to its senses.

--Mozdoc

I have to admit, I'm kind of part of the problem there as I sit here surrounded by Protogen plush.

I think a big part of it comes from the advent of digital art taking over, it's become pretty easy to distribute commissions, galleries, etc that most people already have what they want by the time they get to a con. But people DO still want that joy of something physical and meaningful to take home with them from a con, so the market shifted to products over commissions. Makes it harder on the artists, unfortunately, because that's an expensive proposition starting out and artists have to rely on (mostly) offshore manufacturers that don't really give a darn about the artist, either.

The main issue I see, and this isn't unique to the fandom, is that digital *everything* means the socialization aspect of leisure and business has gone away and that seems to be the source of the "deteriorization" you're witnessing. Without small interactions, small gatherings, small business, there's no way for that "charm" or personality to flourish.