30 Second Reboot
Article #1: An idea and a pencil
June 2, 2008 (Rev #3)

I started writing an article, introducing myself, saying a bunch of meaningful crap. Then I realized, that wasn't the greatest place to start. It was nice to feed my ego a bit though, such a starved little creature.

Anyways, I'm an artist, I like to talk about things, I like to pretend I'm smart and I can notice things as well. So I'm going to get this show started by talking about artisty stuff. I'm going to make an effort not to rant about stuff you hear every day. Do everyone a favor while you read though, and do not forget that these are my opinions and observations.

Today, for my first article, I'm going to tackle a big topic:

Furry Porn!

.... I just actually typed that.

It made me giggle as well, I'm an artist, no matter what kind of crazy mood I'm in, wether I'm admitting my participation, or profession personal exclusion, I'm a furry. It should be of no surprise that I draw furry porn. The definition varies widely, so don't just assume the moment you see a nipple it's furry porn (even though in my books it is). People get away with showing their nipples in our day, ask a grandparent from the 1930's what they had to say about showing anything above the knee.

I've drawn a lot of it, I'm a testosterone influenced artist. I'm not a sex freak though, like anyone else who has a hobby, art is an escape from the daily grind, artist are lucky and they get to choose the content of how they relax. I'm side tracking, I wanted to relate some of my personal observations about being a novice artist in the community, and an amateur at offering commissions.

Furry porn is a lot of things beyond just some fuzzy tits on a canvas. The explicit content has it's pros and cons, and it's all very general. I will not try to argue specifics, I'm sure anyone reading has a vague idea of what furry porn is. Simply put, it's not entirely bad, and it's not entirely good, that's subjective.

After about three years of practising on my own, I decided to take a shot at offering commissions at large in the spring of 2007, on FurAffinity.net. This was different from my earlier attempts, offering them only to people who approached me directly. I was putting myself out there, with a big sign that said 'Give me your money!'.

Surprisingly, it worked, my performance was lackluster, in my own opinion anyways, and that's probably shared by quite a few people. I learned so much though, it's taken me the better part of a year to properly digest it all.

The first and foremost thing about furry porn I've come to appreciate it, is that it is a common thread throughout the community. Love it or hate it, everyone has an opinion about furry porn, and the dozens of different flavors it comes in. A generalization really, but as a common thread, it has a lot of neat wide ranging impacts. Things I'll discuss specifically in other articles so I can really devote a lot of time to them.

I got the chance to interact with a lot of different people in that first batch of open commissions. In my opinion, there's three large groups with a lot of sub-sections. There is the group of us furries who treat furry porn like a playboy magazine, it's porn, keep it discreet, high quality, and professional. The second group of furries, are the kind to be loud and proud about it, we'd be the type likened to the college frat boy who puts up a giant poster of a naked babe with her tits right in your face. The third group in my mind, we're the group that's rather extreme about anything and everything furry porn related, what we're doing, how we're doing it, when and where, so on and so forth.

At that point, I had already come to terms with the fact there's a lot of weird, crazy and down right disturbing variety of furry porn out there for your normal person. The experience though, helped me to break down the invisible wall being on the internet builds up between people, it helped me, start putting names, faces and voices (when available) back to the names on the screens. Crazy that furry porn made me realize and understand that we're not all just assholes on a computer screen.

Seriously, think about it yourself, how many people online, do you know as well as you do someone in real life. How many of them do you rationalize as a real person in your mind, and not just another name on the screen? It's a sub-concious thing really, if you've worked in a call center, you're familiar with the mindset, you know their name, you know their needs and wants, but they are not really a person to you, yet.

That's where the whole furry porn, being a common thread, becomes the common thread to this article of mine. There's a rampant amount of furry porn out there. So much so, that we're desensitized to it, leaving us more open minded then before. It's a little strange really.

Now, don't fool yourself, I talk about furry porn as if it's the only thing that makes up this community. It simply isn't, I'm just taking these articles one thing at a time.

I guess the moral of my little opinion and observation story here is, don't forget the names that show up on your screen, sometimes with praise, sometimes with insults, are real people. We're all people, we're all human.

I really appreciate all of you who wade through my rambling.

Thoughts? Opinions? Email them to kaelross[at]gmail.com
FurAffinity Account: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/jkross/