FA+
Shop
A Shift
11 years ago
I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but I've noticed a significant shift in my relationship with the fandom recently. This is going to be kind of long because it covers a long expanse of time.
First off, how have I typically used the fandom? I got into the fandom through reading furry stories and, later, writing them. Never have I been too majorly into art. I'm not really a visual person--even when I have art of my characters available, I still consider my written descriptions to be more canon than the artistic rendering. Also, I don't watch that many artists. My watchlist contains 105 users and probably a quarter of those are personal friends, non-artists, pages, and writers. Half the time when someone mentions a famous artist, I have no clue who they're talking about, and that's where most of my artist watches come from. "Strype? Who's that?" "OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO WATCH HIM!" "Okay, fine..."
Point is, I got into the fandom for the prose. I just think animal characters can be much more interesting to write with than human ones. But it's been sort of shifting away from me for a while.
Reading furry stories just isn't something I do anymore. There are a number of reasons for this. Quality control on SoFurry is nonexistent and all the popular stories are just the same copy-pasted smut over and over, with the only changes being the combination of species and which stereotypical manly profession the characters fake having. Stories on FA are... wait, there are stories on FA? Throw all that together with the fact that I have to do so much scientific reading these days and, well, combing the archives just doesn't happen.
The only exception is published material, but I have mixed feelings about that. Kyell Gold is good, but he's sort of the only author with enough ethos that I'm willing to spend real money on and even him I haven't been following much in the past year or two. The community aspect of online-published stories is one of the main things that drew me to the fandom. Consequently, I have no desire to publish, and I'm sick of the writing community being so centered around Getting Published. I have a career already. I've historically just wanted to write good stories that people like; publishing limits the breadth of audience and the subjects I can cover, and I've really never gotten along well with anyone who's treated furry writing as a professional endeavor. There are people who take it seriously, but most of them I've seen spend way too much time Talking About Writing And Publishing and not, y'know, actually writing.
Heck, to even join or be involved in the Furry Writers Guild you have to be published. To be taken seriously at all in the fandom as a writer one has to do something I'm not at all interested in doing unless it's just handed to me. Which sucks because I think I'm decent enough to be taken seriously given the general standard of quality around here.
Or used to be, at least. These days, I just can't seem to make much of anything work. I sit down to write and, yes, the words come out, but the final product is not something that's worth posting. The characters, though I love them, aren't working as well together as I know they can. The pieces of my world, though precious to me, cannot quite fit together. And then I realize, even if I were skilled enough to overcome this, very few would really be interested in reading the result. Typically the pieces that I've enjoyed writing the most--like "Sweet" and "Diverging Roads"--are ignored by my current audience, whereas the confused, one-off porny nonsense stories that are honestly embarrassing to me as a writer somehow reach SoFurry top 50 or something like that. "Aria" in its non-furry form won me a $100 prize in a writing competition from an editor in NY who had pretty positive things to say about it. "Aria" received zero comments and zero favorites on both FurAffinity and SoFurry for quite some time. It has its weak moments, definitely, but it has strong ones, too.
In the past few years, I've gotten into roleplaying and made a few friends there. I thought I would hate it, but I ended up having quite a bit of fun with it; it reminded me of way back in the day when I used to do fantasy roleplays on Warcraft, just goofing around with friends and seeing what kind of crazy, creative bullshit stories you can come up with on the fly, with the bonus of being able to incorporate erotic themes, for better or worse. Unfortunately, it suffered from the same drawbacks--e.g. most of the population is really stupid--with the added ones that to most people furry roleplaying is just fursona TSing and my standards of writing are kind of outrageous for most furry roleplay sites. I've had such awful experiences that my attitude towards it has grown increasingly bitter, to where even when I'm presented with someone I know is good at it, I just don't have the desire anymore; continued disappointments have dulled me to the thrill of success.
Point is, my artistic link with the fandom is sort of dwindling. I still love the fandom, and I have a number of great friends I've met through it, but the fandom is something that you have to be either producing or consuming art in order to actively connect with, and right now I'm doing neither. Most of my activity these days is just chatting on Skype or tweeting random nonsense. I doubt I'll ever leave the fandom, but I'm becoming more and more tangential to it.
A consistent theme throughout my life is a sort of cognitive bilateral symbiosis. I cannot be a productive thinker unless I have some sort of creative vent, and I am happiest when I am creating something. Writing/roleplaying have been unsatisfying recently and I'm starting to shift more towards composing. As I get my new studio set up, I might post some of my creations on FA. "Furry music" seems sort of pointless to me, but I don't really have anywhere else to post.
First off, how have I typically used the fandom? I got into the fandom through reading furry stories and, later, writing them. Never have I been too majorly into art. I'm not really a visual person--even when I have art of my characters available, I still consider my written descriptions to be more canon than the artistic rendering. Also, I don't watch that many artists. My watchlist contains 105 users and probably a quarter of those are personal friends, non-artists, pages, and writers. Half the time when someone mentions a famous artist, I have no clue who they're talking about, and that's where most of my artist watches come from. "Strype? Who's that?" "OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO WATCH HIM!" "Okay, fine..."
Point is, I got into the fandom for the prose. I just think animal characters can be much more interesting to write with than human ones. But it's been sort of shifting away from me for a while.
Reading furry stories just isn't something I do anymore. There are a number of reasons for this. Quality control on SoFurry is nonexistent and all the popular stories are just the same copy-pasted smut over and over, with the only changes being the combination of species and which stereotypical manly profession the characters fake having. Stories on FA are... wait, there are stories on FA? Throw all that together with the fact that I have to do so much scientific reading these days and, well, combing the archives just doesn't happen.
The only exception is published material, but I have mixed feelings about that. Kyell Gold is good, but he's sort of the only author with enough ethos that I'm willing to spend real money on and even him I haven't been following much in the past year or two. The community aspect of online-published stories is one of the main things that drew me to the fandom. Consequently, I have no desire to publish, and I'm sick of the writing community being so centered around Getting Published. I have a career already. I've historically just wanted to write good stories that people like; publishing limits the breadth of audience and the subjects I can cover, and I've really never gotten along well with anyone who's treated furry writing as a professional endeavor. There are people who take it seriously, but most of them I've seen spend way too much time Talking About Writing And Publishing and not, y'know, actually writing.
Heck, to even join or be involved in the Furry Writers Guild you have to be published. To be taken seriously at all in the fandom as a writer one has to do something I'm not at all interested in doing unless it's just handed to me. Which sucks because I think I'm decent enough to be taken seriously given the general standard of quality around here.
Or used to be, at least. These days, I just can't seem to make much of anything work. I sit down to write and, yes, the words come out, but the final product is not something that's worth posting. The characters, though I love them, aren't working as well together as I know they can. The pieces of my world, though precious to me, cannot quite fit together. And then I realize, even if I were skilled enough to overcome this, very few would really be interested in reading the result. Typically the pieces that I've enjoyed writing the most--like "Sweet" and "Diverging Roads"--are ignored by my current audience, whereas the confused, one-off porny nonsense stories that are honestly embarrassing to me as a writer somehow reach SoFurry top 50 or something like that. "Aria" in its non-furry form won me a $100 prize in a writing competition from an editor in NY who had pretty positive things to say about it. "Aria" received zero comments and zero favorites on both FurAffinity and SoFurry for quite some time. It has its weak moments, definitely, but it has strong ones, too.
In the past few years, I've gotten into roleplaying and made a few friends there. I thought I would hate it, but I ended up having quite a bit of fun with it; it reminded me of way back in the day when I used to do fantasy roleplays on Warcraft, just goofing around with friends and seeing what kind of crazy, creative bullshit stories you can come up with on the fly, with the bonus of being able to incorporate erotic themes, for better or worse. Unfortunately, it suffered from the same drawbacks--e.g. most of the population is really stupid--with the added ones that to most people furry roleplaying is just fursona TSing and my standards of writing are kind of outrageous for most furry roleplay sites. I've had such awful experiences that my attitude towards it has grown increasingly bitter, to where even when I'm presented with someone I know is good at it, I just don't have the desire anymore; continued disappointments have dulled me to the thrill of success.
Point is, my artistic link with the fandom is sort of dwindling. I still love the fandom, and I have a number of great friends I've met through it, but the fandom is something that you have to be either producing or consuming art in order to actively connect with, and right now I'm doing neither. Most of my activity these days is just chatting on Skype or tweeting random nonsense. I doubt I'll ever leave the fandom, but I'm becoming more and more tangential to it.
A consistent theme throughout my life is a sort of cognitive bilateral symbiosis. I cannot be a productive thinker unless I have some sort of creative vent, and I am happiest when I am creating something. Writing/roleplaying have been unsatisfying recently and I'm starting to shift more towards composing. As I get my new studio set up, I might post some of my creations on FA. "Furry music" seems sort of pointless to me, but I don't really have anywhere else to post.
I, too, have the same need for creative output as you. And it swings both ways: if I'm working scientifically, I need to write; if I'm writing, I'll have scientific ideas that I put aside. I can't do just one or the other. But the writing, the feeling totally overlooked and ignored, is frustrating. I can't even say it's new: 20 years ago, when I used to write and post to a mailing list, it was the same way. Pictures always got the attention. Sex sells.
Please don't stop posting. I don't comment but rarely but I do read what you write. I watch very selectively, but I have enjoyed the privilege of watching you since you arrived, and I'd miss your words if they weren't here any more.
It's not fap fiction that I have a problem with. It's that the factory-writers of identical fap fiction are commonly heralded as the paragon of writing ability on SoFurry. It's just a consequence of writing more meaning more visibility and thus more popularity. Frequent, repeated mediocrity is what's popular, whereas I have very high standards these days of what goes into my gallery or what motivates me to sit down and write in the first place--if something doesn't add to my gallery, if it only repeats, then why should it be there? And why should I put in the effort to write it?
I appreciate the concern, but my post doesn't really change anything. It's not like I'm saying "I quit," but I have been writing much less recently and finding less success when I do (granted, past success is debatable--I haven't posted anything of real significance to this gallery). It's just a matter of do I get good ideas, and can I write well enough to do them justice. It's more the latter that's been holding me back.
I should take my own advice. *wry grin*
As for editing... I edit all the time. Though my writing method is usually more one of transcription (I hear/see the characters and write down what they do), I'm editing as I go, even for stories I'm just throwing at the page. Though some of those get posted unedited to begin with (especially the Thursday prompt ones), I'll re-read the stories several times to pick up errors. *shrug* Editing is necessary, in my belief.
It can be a bit of a challenge to find good new authors on SF, I'm not even sure how I found many of the ones I like. A couple of series I'm really enjoying on there right now is Born This Way by Kalan and Blood and Water by Faora (https://www.sofurry.com/view/646662 and https://www.sofurry.com/view/649159 respectively). The first series is about gender identity and survival in a society where predators are second-class citizens and home is not a safe place to be. The second series is a kind of experiment where the author isn't planning an overall plot and is letting the story form chapter by chapter. The setting for that one is magic fantasy in a medieval time period where homosexuality is very much illegal.
If you compose something a post it here, I think I'll go ahead and give it a listen. Furry music is an odd term to say, but I am a fan of Fox Amoore.
I don't know Kalan, but I know Faora a bit. One day I should give the series a read, I suppose. The problem is that even when I find authors I like, for some reason I have difficulty sitting down and reading anymore. My brain always says "you should be reading X or Y instead."
I've posted a few compositions here, but I'm doing a major software update and should be able to get things sounding a lot better once I get some time to practice with the new studio setup.
With regard to the general quality of the writing in the fandom: sex sells, and some stories are mostly written as fap fuel for those who may not be able to get their fetish in many other forms. However, there are some genuinely good writers out there, you just gotta sift through the crap. I'll also throw some kudos to Faora's "Blood and Water" which is finishing up.
And I just can't sift through the crap anymore. I have to sift through the crap with astrophysics papers on arXiv > astro-ph, and that's all the sifting I have the capacity for.
I've known of Faora for many years, though I haven't read any of his/her stuff recently. I should check it out sometime.
"like "Sweet" and "Diverging Roads"--are ignored by my current audience,"
I dunno about that. I enjoyed both of them a while back enough to +fav them. I'm not too good at commenting on stories, I ran someone off with a single good-natured spelling correction a while ago. Really does not help with the situation described above.
But yeah, check that guy out, he does reader contribution stories pretty regularly, and has some very strong stories posted.
I wasn't expecting much from Sweet, TBH. Too many layers, too stylized, and lots of misinterpretation. And I was speaking more of a general trend than from the standpoint of single individuals. It's just a small subset.
Well, the crowd is here for the porn. It's just something you learn to ignore. I find myself scrolling through the dick'n'ass bits more often than not.