I don't usually write journals. Also I tend not to read them.

Tonight is just one of those nights where your brain needs to settle a moment and work things out in reality instead of fantasy.

Usually when I set my head down to sleep I have a mental activity that I enjoy when I'm not quite ready to actually nod off. This activity tends to involve picturing a few of my characters in a drama packed scenario and seeings how they all play together. Its something I love to do. Something I feel I'm really really good at. Sometimes it all takes place in the world from which the characters are intended to be, but often I enjoy injecting my assortment of players into whatever other universe has been occupying my thoughts. This can be anything from a roleplay I'm engaged in, to a tv show.

Guilty secret time -> Some of my old standby universes for character injection are DBZ related. Its hard to get away from your roots and that show is firmly entrenched there for better or worse.

Its something I do personally in my own head. It's not something I'd ever inflict on the world in art or writing or RP primarily because I recognize it'd be a frankly terrible concept. I don't like the idea of mary-sues (hardly anybody does if they recognize it), and though I don't consider any of my characters to be me (more on this later too) the concept is so blatantly unavoidable as to make it unthinkable to share.

I was accused once of power tripping in RPs. Not so much that I would cheat whatever rules or concepts in place and make myself overly powerful, but that I was afraid to play a character who wasn't special because of some important power. I'll make no secret out of striving to hit a pleasant chord between unique but plausible characters... and admittedly sometimes more unique than plausible. I try to be mindful of the other players, their characters, and the world to make someone who fits in and stands out all at once.

When I'm playing my little mind game just before going to sleep though? I've got nobody to please but myself. Red is secretly an abandoned wish granting dragon from DBZ? Done it... and had a blast. Another character's mind was the model behind Gundam Wing's Zero System? Why not! Most recently I've even had fun injecting Red into the new Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle's world as a western martial artist mutant (where curiously he fits a bit better than in most other places!).

I share this to make my point. These inner fantasies, as fun and enjoyable as they are to me, are disgusting mental debauchery. Its offensive to good taste and mature sensibilities which I like to subscribe myself to.

Tonight my mind, instead of faffing about in this mental playground, was drawn to the idea of why I respect 'good taste' and 'mature sensibilities' when its perfectly obvious that when left to my own devices I turn into a 10 year old kid playing with action figures without much concept more complex than 'I am the strongest thing there ever was. Prepare to get your butts kicked'.

Am I secretly pretending to be someone else? Worse, am I POORLY pretending to be someone else such that everyone else can see through my facade but me.

Something that I respect in the furry community, and in fact something I am deeply jealous of, is people's ability to BE their fursonas. While I don't really respect people who have disconnected themselves from reality (those who believe that, their true souls/forms are those of animals). Whether they are accurate to their real life/offline/human selves or not, when you engage with them online in that furry context... they ARE who they are. There is no line between roleplay and who they are online. There is no exhibited shame in their own actions and therefore they are happy.

That is something I can't do. I play at it sometimes, pretending that Red my fursona and that its easy as pie and completely natural, but any time I find myself actually making a conscious decision: "Today, in this chatroom, I am me... and I am also a dragon" I end up not being me almost instantly, and then looking back upon my true self and not liking what I see.

I don't have the world's most fantastic self esteem. I pride myself in generally being a happier person than many of the people I know (it is through such a mechanic that I can offer to help my friends emotionally when they need such help), but a lot of that can be put to favorable environmental circumstances. I'm not living hand to mouth, I have a job, people who love me, I'm not dying right away etc.

Its hard to state the following without sounding immensely self serving so I hope you can forgive me. I care about what other people think about me. I care a LOT. Not necessarily in some vain way, oh they think I'm fat, oh they don't like my hair or my clothes or my life decisions (though of course I do care about those things and I think most people do at varying levels). What i care about is if people like me. If they like to be in my company. If they find me funny, or honest, or reasonable, or useful. In short, I like being friends.

As a platitude its pretty lame I'll admit. Friends are awesome, nuff said. What sets me into a rough state though is when, despite my best efforts, I can't make friends with someone I want to be friends with.

I like to be friends with people who excel in things. Be it art, or music, or science, or writing, or physical prowess, or roleplaying, or model airplane flying, or non-linear (from my perspective) thinking, or whatever. people who are good at what they do earn a pretty high base level of respect from me. I tend not to aim for sort of hero-worshiping stalkership. I don't get in a tizzy because Will Wheaton isn't my friend despite the fact that he's a totally awesome dude and I respect the stuff he does.

I don't know if its a common thing for people... or if its even fair, good, or correct... but I tend to use my friendships a bit as a personal yardstick for how I'm doing. I know that sounds a bit selfish and sociopathic and that maybe I'm over-thinking it, but I'll explain my logic: "I like these people. Thereby if they like me, their liking me is justification for feeling good about myself as I have earned the respect of those I respect." or shortened "Having the respect of those I respect is awesome and makes me feel good,"

Its partially because I value the opinions of others so highly that I have a personal montra of "Moderation in all things." I try hard not to lean into extreme viewpoints. Even if I feel strongly about a topic, I'll try to soften my words so as to make them less offensive to people who don't share my feelings. (ex. of unsoftened language in prev. sentence: "When I feel strongly about a topic I always soften my words so people don't get offended") Its nearly impossible to share ideas with someone whose already offended so it works out nicely anyway.

There is a less nice side about the montra though. I don't think I get out of my shell and get in people's faces very often (even my own) which is something I both respect and dislike when others do. Sometimes the feeling manifests as cowardice. Sometimes its restraint. More often than not it manifests as serially apologetic and self-demeaning and thats the thing thats been keeping me up tonight instead of totally awesome Red vs. Michelangelo banter.

I'm worried about offending people... appearing annoying to those who I wish to talk to but then later perceive as not wanting to talk to me (a particular problem when I start apologizing about being annoying which undoubtedly is annoying in itself).

Its an insecurity. I know it is because I can look at the clock and see that its 3:40 and I should be asleep. Peeving a stranger is often upsetting to me. Accidentally peeving a person whom I'd like to know better is painful. Accidentally peeving off an established friend is nearly crippling.

It's compounded again by the fact that I perceive that others find my often apologetic nature to either be insincere or just additionally annoying because then I'm left with... well no recourse. I can't say I'm sorry for being sorry without making the situation worse now can I?

I don't want the point of this journal to be passing judgement on my friends, current and future. I love all of you. If the tone of this comes off all weird and psychopathic and selfish, like I'm only friends or want to be friends with you because of XYZ, thats not it. It may have been what first made you interesting to me, but of every person I've ever called my friend know that I admire each of them on many levels and you as well.
((Hey look that was an apology/softening wasn't it! check me out while I self analyze my self analysis))

The correct thing to do would be to drop it and either let time heal the wound with the friend, or shrug my shoulders and say, maybe this new person wasn't worth being friends with anyway, or I'll try again later. It's hard for me to do that however as I have the greater concern that my self perception may be vastly different than the perception other have of me.

After all, if you feel pretty good about yourself, thinking your decently witty, not completely ugly, honest, good at what you do and whatnot, and then somebody you respect drops a mirror infront of you by telling you what they think of you... and you don't like the picture... its not just that you're not witty... its that you didn't even KNOW. It's not just that you aren't being nice... its that you thought were TRYING to be and had failed.

I spend a lot of effort trying to be someone who i think the people I like will like (and as previously mentioned I don't always make it). I'm a bit jealous of people who 'are themselves' and are the sort of people who don't care what others think.

Of course you might say "Just be yourself then! The people who gravitate towards you will respect you for who you are!". But that kind of misses the point. This is who I am. I am the kind of person who values friendships and worries over people liking him, even acquaintances and strangers. Especially if they are the kind of person I'd like to know better.

Back to good taste vs. childhood male power fantasy and the whole impossible fursona thing...

It used to be that I thought I couldn't/wouldn't manage a fursona because I'd seen and been burned by people crossing the RP line too many times. For those unfamiliar with this concept... when I RP... I'm playing a character, not myself. That means that character can experience a whole range of emotions in a tidy little sandbox while my own person is free to empathize with the character or not depending on my mood. In an ideal world, the other people in the RP are playing in a sandbox too. Not playing themselves, merely characters whose feelings and characteristics are different from themselves. Things are not always like that however. People like to RP themselves (often glorified, sexualized, suped up versions, but themselves never the less) and this can lead to problems when someone who is playing themselves plays with someone who's using the sandbox... particularly when characters fall in love or get into fights (both verbal and physical). That leads at least one person to being angry or emotionally attached to someone else who is oblivious to the real world emotions that are brewing. That leads to awkward conversations and apologizing at best, and broken hearts and broken friendships at it's worst.

To protect myself from such scenarios, whenever things start heating up emotionally in an RP... I make it VERY VERY clear that these are characters and don't represent my personal feelings, and if they can't cope with that it's time to talk about it and work it out.

I've come to realize after a few experiments, I don't think that blurring the RP line is the reason, or that it is the only reason why I don't have a fursona. Rather I think it is more to do with self reflection.

All fursonas are idealizations on some level. For some reason, we all think its cool to anthropomorphize that sort of being the basis of the entire fandom. Even if its not extremely idealized and you are every bit as fat or thin, as beautiful or ugly, as talented or talentless as your fursona, the furry version still has been anthropomorphized and presumably you didn't do it because you felt you needed to represent yourself WORSE but rather BETTER.

To me, Red who is my oldest and most dear character and most suited for the job doesn't work out as my fursona. He was initially designed by me to be everything I wanted to be. He was specifically designed to be likable to anyone he set his mind to (sound vaguely familiar?). Charming, light hearted with a rough past. Not too intellectual, but wise. Flawlessly flawed in his adherence to honor and virtue. He was and sometimes still is Mr. Miyagi wearing a clown nose in a dragon fursuit. He's a great example of the product of an immature character design too, full of obvious tropes.

Over the years he's changed and split into many forms. There is Red the lovable prankster and Red the stoic hero and Red in this world and in that world with that backstory and blah blah blah. One of his best features was that with just a little manipulation, I could stuff him into almost any story and predefined world (even ones that in no way featured anthropomorphic dragons). Red picked up the trait of being a nomad between worlds (part of his backstory that exists to this day).

To consider him like an imaginary friend though, separated from his canonical backstory, Red contains and represents an idealization of my own personal values and platitudes. He sticks to them when I can't. Honesty, passion, love of life, dedication to friends. His resolve in his values in my mind is crucial to his definition as much as his tail or wings are.

I'm not Red. Red is an impossible goal that I want to strive for especially if it means I'll never make it (because if I can make it then the bar wasn't set high enough). If I use him as a fursona, I feel like I lose who I really am in terms of values. The apologetic moderation in all things human being behind the characters. By putting on a dragon mask, I stop acting like me and become someone superior.

Thats great in some ways. Back when Red was literally only a few days old, a real life friend of mine asked me why I wasn't more like him in real life. It was a huge moment for me personally, looking back. I made a conscious effort to bring a little of him into me from then on. If I do too much though, and I start wearing the Red mask when I'm supposed to be being myself I start running into ugly comparisons where Red's values that work in his fantasy world and my values that have to apply to reality conflict.

Red basically gets a chance to hold up the mirror and comment about me, and sometimes its not what I want to hear. Its a way of self reflection.

So I'm a little jealous of people who don't have this weird existential problem and can just BE who they are. Jealous (and not proud of the jealousy), but happy for them.

So it comes down to both my opinion of myself and the opinions of others about myself. People loved Red. I'd say they love him now but he's been sort of collecting dust lately as far as his public appearances go. But when people loved Red, it just sort of reminded me about how I wasn't him and really never could be and thats a bit damaging on the ego.

So, for fursona Red we just do the hybrid... give me the tail and scales and all that, leave off the value system... but thats not me. I don't have those things (wishing for them sometimes might be a different matter but I digress). So sometimes I feel a bit dragonish and play at having those things in a chat (and sometimes privately by myself). And if people like to imagine me as a dragon, well that brings warm fuzzies (scaleys?) into my heart for some reason... I can't explain why it does... so if you want to do that I encourage it ^_^. But I don't think of myself as a dragon, not really. I have to focus on me as a human, a guy with a job and a life and bills to pay. A guy with loved and loving friends, a loved and loving family, and a loved and loving girlfriend, so I guess its not that bad, even if sometimes I think I'm screwing it all up without realizing or intending it.

Now to post this or not... eh... fuck it.