Okay! So a couple of changes to Dusk Day's format.

Firstly, I decided to change the naming convention for the chapters. The original convention was a confusing mess born of my indecision. The idea was to have main chapters and 'interlude' chapters, the former focused on storytelling and the latter focused on smut. The idea was to keep major story beats separate from the smut, in a way that would be easy to identify, and people could follow along with one or both depending on their preferences.

Somehow that morphed into a confusing number/letter thing that I never fully committed to.

So I've scrapped that. The chapters now run linearly, no more 'extra' chapters. I am still alternating between Narrative-focused and Smut-focused, but now I'm just tagging the smutty chapters as 'After Dark' and leaving a line in the description explaining what that means. I think this will make it less confusing. I'm also scrapping my original idea to keep major story beats away from the 'Smut' chapters. You will start seeing more impactful story beats in the smut. It was a restriction that I don't think came with any benefits, and I think dropping it will make for better writing overall.

Secondly, I am dropping my weekly release schedule. I didn't post last week, and I am not posting today. I have a chapter in the can ready to go, but I realized I wanted to spend more time editing it before publishing, so I'm just going to scrap my schedule.

Yeah this means that story stuff will come less frequently. Honestly, if anyone is out there disappointed to hear that, it would make my day to hear that. But I don't think anyone is really reading this regularly, so I'm just gonna post when stuff is ready.

I realized that I'm writing this for me, not for anyone else. The truth is that I have all these characters, this little world I built with my spouse and my bestie, and I want to write about them. There are stories that I want to tell about them, about who they are, how they became who they are in my head. And part of that is because my memory is getting worse as I get older, and I desperately want to immortalize all of these ideas in a way that I could, when I am older, go back and read. So that these characters and their kinky escapades live forever.

So, by no means am I stopping. I hope the above really hits it home that I am in this thing for the long haul. But it's important to me that it's good, and I have more bad weeks than good weeks, creatively, so I don't want to rush it, or force it, and end up with something I don't feel really strongly about.

Anyway, if you're reading, thanks!
Harle

I am still away on vacation and posting a chapter on my phone feels like a hassle, so the story is on break this week.

Just as well honestly, as I mentioned in my last journal, my backlog is pretty dried up anyway, so I would probably end up having to take a break next week anyway, if I posted today.

Anyway, apologies to anyone waiting for it. The chapters will resume next Friday.

It occurred to me before I started Dusk Day that it was going to be really hard for it to gain any traction. So I resolved to not let it be about that. That even if not a single person read it, I would keep going as long as it brings me joy and I have things to say.

Thankfully that remains true! I can't see me wanting to stop anytime soon. So the story will keep coming. I hope it garners some readers - if anyone is reading it, I'd love to know.

However the chapter per week thing is going to be hard for me to keep up. I'd like to, but I don't want the writing to suffer because I am rushing to meet some self-imposed deadline, when I doubt that anyone is actually waiting every Thursday night for me to post.

I am traveling this week. I have one more chapter in the can. I will probably post it this Thursday night, but after that I will no longer have any backlog, so I may start allowing myself to skip weeks, to try to catch up and to keep quality high.

Anyway, if anyone is reading this and reading the story, thanks so much! If you haven't, why not consider checking it out? It's smutty, it's got hot trans women in it, it's got queer people of all sorts, it's got bad decisions and sexy consequences. What's not to love?

Anyway, that's all.
Harle <3

Hey people! If anyone is watching this space. XD

I've had a smutty, queer story kicking around in my head for years now, and it finally grew enough in scope and urgency that I felt compelled to start writing it.

I want to keep this as brief as possible, so here goes:

Dusk Day is a weekly slice-of-life story about a garage band in a small coastal town called Cara de Roca, near Santa Cruz. It has a number of PoV (point of view) characters, following some of the band members, as well as the various people who get pulled into their orbit as their local fame grows.

The goal is to tell many interconnected stories about sex, kink, and unusual relationships within a world, rather than build a broad arc with a defined end state. People will grow and change, relationships will form and perhaps end, there will be conflict, even some challenging themes, but no major plot. Just... the wild lives of some horny young adults, chronicling the trouble they get into and the adventures they have.

Sexual themes include (among other things): power dynamics, light to moderate BDSM, and (semi) public sex. Content warnings will appear at the top of every chapter.

The story will be released in core chapters and interludes. The core chapters are for telling stories. Sex will happen in them (often) but will be kept brief for the sake of pacing. Interlude chapters will typically be short asides for the sake of character development. 'After Dark' chapters are the real smut of the project, and are full chapters dedicated to describing sex scenes in detail.

(This format has changed. The story is being released in linear chapters. 'Smutty' chapters are tagged in the title as 'After Dark.'

It will be released weekly on Fridays, starting this week. I've already got four chapters in the buffer that I'm quite pleased with! So hopefully I can keep up the momentum.

(My brain unfortunately can't just be creative enough to write chapters regularly, so I've decided to scrap a release schedule and just release chapters whenever they're ready.)

Thanks, and I hope you will check it out!
Harle~<3

Most of my social media presence is on twitter. I often forget that this is a place that exists where I can express my thoughts.

Black Lives Matter.

We cannot avert our eyes from the injustice and suffering of black people in our nation and around the world. Their mistreatment, the unfairness and fear they live in every day must end.

Furries, I see, often say that the fandom is a 'safe escape' from the problems of the world. I understand this impulse, but understand two things.

First, we have many POC in our fandom whose lived experience of racism against them is not something they can turn off, especially our black friends, community members, and chosen family.

If we treat the fandom as a place where their real struggles and suffering are things to hide from, we alienate them. We tell them that this is not a safe community for anyone but white people. I refuse to do that and I encourage anyone who has tried to avoid 'taking sides' to look deeply inward, and look deeply at the people around them, who need support, and consider that their continued silence does, in fact, send a message.

Secondly, the act of averting ones eyes from that which makes us stressed, and afraid, and uncomfortable, is something we've modeled as 'self-care.'

Certainly, it's not my intention to shame people who have chronic mental illness, into not caring for their mental health. However, the awful reality that we live in right now, one where black people are targeted with police violence, whose rights are trampled as a matter of course - that reality is in large part caused by our tendency to avert our eyes from it. Because it's easier to not look at it, to not think about it.

When society averts its eyes, black people are murdered. History has shown this to be true time and time again, and right now it is happening before our very eyes.

And so we cannot look away.

We have to demand justice. Loudly, forcefully, until real change happens.

Not half-hearted concessions.

Not one conviction of one murderer, just to be followed by another thirty years of murders of black people that go cruelly unpunished.

Real change. Fundamental, foundational change.

Black Lives Matter. This is not up for debate.

Thank you if you're reading.

An impression I get from a lot of people who aren't deeply familiar with Second Life, is that there is an assumption that furries on Second Life are merely buying their avatars more or less stock, slapping a hat on them, and calling it a fursona. They don't feel like there's a lot of effort or creativity that goes into furry avatars on SL, on the part of the person wearing it.

Now, I want to be clear about one thing: I don't think it's fair to invalidate people's fursonas merely because they found their fursona in an avatar they purchased on SL. It can be empowering to wear your first avatar and have it start to feel like you. It's not less-than merely because other people might have a very similar avatar.

And the reality is, for most furs on SL, the process of developing a fursona via avatar is much more complicated than that, even if it might start with a simple stock avatar.

I'm going to try to keep this brief, but there's a lot, so here we go:

1. Base Avatars
There are two kinds of base avatars in SL furry. I'm going to be making up some terms here because I don't know that the community has really decided on anything, but bear with me.

The first are 'stock' avatars. These are kind of what you'd expect - they are avatars that work out of the box. If you just want to be a fox without any fuss, you'd probably buy a stock avatar. They are designed to be immediately recognizable, often have built-in features that are associated with that animal, like options for slitted fox eyes or whatever. Usually you can pick from a variety of skins, if you'd rather be a red fox or an arctic fox or whatever.

The second are 'modder' avatars. This is a broad category of avatars that are either designed from the beginning to be 'adaptable' to modders, or have been adopted by the modding community because its features make it easy or appealing to modify. They can appear similar to stock avatars in that they are typically sold as an out-of-the-box species that you can wear immediately, but they usually emphasize the ability to change the shape, make adjustments, and have built-in modding capabilities to dramatically change the shape and skin.

Some are sold almost as blank canvases on their own, such as the kemono, which technically comes with a skin and a head, but you'd be hard pressed to figure out what exactly it's supposed to be, or find anyone who wears them. Yet it's very popular, because people like the body shape as a base to create totally new avatars. And more dramatically; there's also the Regalia Project, which literally isn't a functional avatar on its own, but more of a tailor's dummy of sorts, a literally incomplete package when absent modding efforts.

In some cases, mods are even made for non-furry (human) avatars to make them furry, creating an even broader pool of content for furs to draw from. For example, my hyena's body is a customized skin for a furry hyena mod for a rigged mesh body made for human avatars.

Both 'stock' and 'modder' avatars can be modded, and typically are, to varying degrees. The latter category simply has a larger market of mods, and those modifications are often more dramatic in how they change the avatar, giving the player a lot more freedom in creating something unique.

2. Heads and Other Bits
In Second Life, avatar heads are pretty important! Two avatars could have the same body shape, for example, but different heads could dramatically change how one perceives the avatar. A lion head and a wolf head on the same body with different skins, may not even really be recognizably the same body. But the same head on different bodies, well. People recognize faces.

So does that mean that Second Life is full of cloned faces? Not even remotely.

Obviously avatars have their stock heads - the ones that come out of the box. And you can mix and match heads you like with bodies from different avatars that you like, for example. This became relatively common when the new wave of rigged mesh bodies started appearing - people wanted to keep their old heads, but wanted to put them on the newer, better, more feature-rich bodies.

But there's also a market of modder heads! People create heads, sort of like skulls. They do not come with a skin, they are often just white shapes that modders are intended to make skins for. There's a lot of these, and they come in many shapes that are meant to be roughly generic enough to support different species. this allows modders to make very different shaped versions of the same species' heads. And because they are roughly generic in shape, the skins can often make them look unrecognizable to each other.

People also create stand-alone parts like ears, tails, eyes, legs, paws, different sized hips or chests or whatever, specifically for specific avatars. And then modders create skins for those mods which weren't even part of the original package to begin with! You genuinely are often modding mods for modded avatars. This is only possible because we have such a big and dedicated community of creators.

The end result is that with the exception of furs using default stock avatars out-of-the-box, it's actually pretty rare to see two avatars that look the same. Even for an animal like the possum, which doesn't have a dedicated stock avatar, there are different paths you can take to mod different stock/modder avatars to create a possum that looks completely different than if you'd gone down a different path.

Even before you get into personal creativity, the process of putting together an avatar from different parts, created by different people for different purposes, results in an immense variety. Even if you never add a single personal touch to your avatar - this is not a cookie-cutter push-button fursona dispenser.

3. Personal Touches
This is the part that is going to be the most difficult to describe, or even define. Personal touches can be a lot of things, from using tools to make small changes to the shape or size of things, to building features or entire parts of an avatar, wholly from scratch.

Personal modification is introducing unique changes to parts of an avatar, that no other avatar has. This might be altering the color or shape of part of the avatar, or its placement and alignment. These can be be relatively easy and small changes which may not dramatically change the appearance of the avatar, but along with other changes, can go a long way to differentiating one avatar from another similar one. Depending on the parts you're using, more dramatic changes can also be made. For example, for my hyena I am using some 'arm fluff' that consists of some textured prims. The prims have been completely re-colored, re-structured, re-sized, and otherwise modified to accommodate bracelets. They basically look nothing like they did when I purchased them. At this point I might as well have just built them from scratch.

You can also modify skins - though doing this yourself with a purchased skin technically isn't 'allowed' in the rules - sometimes the creator of a skin will happily take payment to make adjustments to one of their creations, such as adding a design or changing coloration. This isn't uncommon at all. Some people also use tools to modify skins on their own, but that's a gray area. Personally, I feel that if you're just making personal changes to a personal skin, I don't see a problem with it.

Creating stuff from scratch is also more common than you'd think. People create their own traditional body modifications, their own fur accents, avatar parts, and accessories. They do their own skins and textures, add features that weren't part of the original avatar or mods they're using, etc.

4. Finally!

Obviously everyone puts a different amount of effort, time, and skill into their avatar. Some are new, some are old. Some have traditional art skills to supplement their creative efforts and produce avatars that are almost wholly unique, while others are just trying to do the most they can by mixing and matching and making small modifications.

The end result, however, is that when you are on SL, with some exceptions (such as after a new stock avatar becomes popular) almost every avatar you see is unique. And I don't mean in some trite way, like one person's eye color is different from another's.

I mean that part of the experience of being on SL is building and iterating on your avatar to make it unique.

And there are so many avatars and mods and ways to put avatars together, that even people who don't put a ton of personal touches on their avatars, tend to end up being relatively unique.

The notion of SL furries just being a lot of clones is a stereotype that hasn't been remotely true for a decade, if it ever was.

This is kind of an extension of some thoughts I posted on my twitter.

I've been in the fandom for about 16 years, 13 if you don't count years where I didn't have a personal fursona but was really into furry art.

Of those thirteen years, seven of them were spent basically only interacting with the furry community on Second Life. Though I knew there was a larger community of people who went to cons, roleplayed on mushes, etc - for all intents and purposes, Second Life was the entirety of the furry community in my world.

Six years ago, I got onto twitter, and started branching out. It was only then that I realized what a bad reputation Second Life furries had. It was only then that I realized that there was this separation.

You see, I've come to realize something - and this doesn't describe everyone, it's just a trend.

Furries on Second Life largely think going to cons is dumb, they're not into fursuiting, etc. They've seen the pictures and heard the horror stories. The worst parts of going to cons - the stuff I never actually see at cons, but still gets talked about and shared - that is what keeps people away from conventions. There is this idea of what convention furries are like. I know this because I actually believed it for some years, until a friend of mine convinced me to go.

And then I realized, hey wait a second; cons are kinda rad. They're what you make it. You hang out with the people who are like you, who share your perspective, who share your idea of how to have fun.

... the reverse is also true.

Since I've joined twitter and started going to conventions, it surprised me to learn that people have a really ugly idea of what Second Life is like. They see the pictures, they hear the horror stories. The worst parts of second life - the parts I never actually see on SL, but still gets talked about and shared - that is what keeps people away from Second Life. There is this idea of what SL furries are like.

The reality is that SL is also what you make of it. You hang out with the people who are like you, who share your perspective, who share your idea of how to have fun.

I mean... maybe that's hanging out in a hyper-fur sim where everyone has giant cocks and giant tits? No judgment here.

But it can also just be hanging around being creative with friends, or chatting and goofing around with people of a similar sense of humor. Second Life is a big wide world full of people of different stripes. It can be hard to get settled, and I think that's the real difficulty. Finding the people like yourself is harder than finding the people like yourself on twitter, or forums, or whatever. It can feel like a needle in a haystack. But that's no different from just showing up at a con and just hoping you meet some cool people. But once you do, being able to get on and interact with other furs you like and respect is fantastic.

And it's worth mentioning - if you're willing to put the work in, you get to do it all while potentially looking like a visually stunning version of your fursona.

I would have thought that would be appealing to most furries, at least the ones who are online at all. And yet there's this divide. People hear bad things, maybe they try it once and it's awkward and everyone they run into in the most obvious furry places are weird, or socially awkward, or whatever. And they bounce off it, because they've confirmed their bias. And that's a shame.

Anyway, next time I want to talk about avatars and fursonas and dispel some misconceptions that have lead to this idea that furry avatars are cheap copies of each other, rather than the beautiful, unique, complex, and time-consuming projects that they actually are.

I figure if I'm gonna post for anything it might a well be con attendance. =P

Traveling to BLFC today! Well, to the hotel, anyway.

I was stuck between either arriving late on Wednesday or late on Thursday, and last time I came in late on Thursday I felt like I'd missed an entire day and it sucked. So late wednesday it is.

It's gonna be a long weird night. I don't have a room so it'll be weird parties and sleepy hangouts and, if I'm lucky, a nap here or there, before I can check-in tomorrow and get a proper sleep to catch up.

Fun fun

Wow, okay.

So I obviously don't use the journal feature very much.

A lot has happened. I graduated from university, moved to the States and got married (still in the long, slow process of immigrating...), the US then became a shit show, now we're tentatively looking at moving to Canada together, I started going to fur cons (BLFC and MFF), etc etc.

I don't wanna rehash the last nine years, so those are the key notes.

Rather, the reason I'm suddenly posting now, after nine years, is that I've been complaining about how it's basically impossible to have a deep, nuanced conversation on twitter. And how I sometimes just want to write something out, in a pseudo-essay format. Something wordy that probably nobody will read, but I'll feel better for having written it.

I complained that I had nowhere to put that kind of stuff.

Well, it has occurred to me that I have FA. I dunno how many people who follow me here actually care about what's going on in my head, but I guess that's beside the point. I used to shout into the void using livejournal, many years ago. This is a perfectly fine void to shout into, at the absolute least.

Anyway, I don't have an update beyond the fact that I'm updating and might be posting more here.

Cheers!

Soooooo....

Yes. I am back in school, doing more biology/psychology. And more math. Oh god more math. Fortunately my math prof this time around is actually really good, and he spends all class explaining things, not showing things. Which is awesome.

That said, it's still calculus, and I am not hugely looking forward to it.

I got back together with my ex over christmas, which has been pretty wonderful. I spent basically a year single because I couldn't bring myself to date other people(I didn't feel it was right to love someone else while trying to find someone who I could love in the same way), so I'm really glad that whole thing worked out.

2008 turned out to be a wonderful year for me. School started for me, and went well. I got good grades, enjoyed living on campus. Obama was elected, the culmination of over a year of cheering him on from the sidelines. Got back together with the love of my life. Everything is pretty much coming together nicely!

So that is nice.

It's great to have all these wonderful things happening together in one year. Makes it easier to remember.

Cheers folks, hope you had a good 2008 too. And with any lucky, 2009 will keep up the trend.

If I'd known that Narnia: Prince Caspian featured a mouse knight voiced by Eddie Izzard, I would have seen it Much Sooner.

Nobody ever tells me these things!! D=<

Reepicheep fan club starts here.

Life is complicated as ever, but I get by on mousey ingenuity.

I won't get too into detail(because the details aren't that exciting), but I believe I have discovered the perfect midterm/exam cramming method!

On the last night before your midterm, drink one beer before you start studying! Drink one beer for every two hours that you study. Though the body can break down alcohol at roughly a drink per hour, every body chemistry is different, and the trick is to, uh, not get drunk.

See, alcohol is a depressant, and is great for calming down the pre-exam studying jitters that can make studying that much more difficult. It can improve focus by slowing down a variety of interfering brain functions without actually impairing memory and other comprehension functions.

That is the theory anyway, and it worked wonderfully for me!

The next day, I had a coffee and an energy drink before my psychology midterm, and I was totally on the ball.

I conquered that midterm. =.=

Anyway, school is going pretty well. Math terrifies me in ways that I have never been terrified(largely really, really boringly terrifying ways). I thought I'd do awesome in it, but the pace is ridiculous and my head is not one for math, so I'm really just hoping for anything above a 70%.

But anyway, in more interesting news, my close friend Weaselpaws is moving 'cross country and is coming to school here in the Winter(taking nursing, and if you happen to know Weasel you can probably guess that it's just perfect for her), so we're totally getting a suite on campus together. =D

Party party!

We're gonna be the most adorable things on campus, yes sirree. With the most adorable rooms. It'll be nice to have someone around to be cute with, I tend to tone things down in the company of strangers, because, well, I am a mouse not a peacock.

Mouse got standards.

Whelp, I've finally moved off to university, and am now living the semi-comfortable life of a student in residence!

It's technically my second night here, but last night was kind of a drunken stumblefest. I got home from the clubs and afterparties(not nearly as exciting as it sounds) at about 4:30am, stared at my heaps of unpacked Stuff for a while before deciding to make the bed. I was sorely tempted to just curl up on it as it was, but decided I'd appreciate it in the morning if I put in the effort.

Anyway, I spent most of today unpacking and sorting things out, and in the end the room is rather cozy and comfy, thanks to it containing most of my worldly possessions in one handy little space.

One can't argue with being able to watch television, downloaded shows, DVDs, downloaded movies, listen to music, and play games, most of which while lazing in bed with my little tiny wireless laptop connected to all things Internettable.

Life is good.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1512797/

Well, I missed the old girl, so it's nice to have her back. And already some lovely pictures, hooray!

And with less than a month left before school starts! Eep! I'm off to residence on the thirtieth! I'm gonna miss being up all night, especially as I live on the east coast of Canada, which means a 'reasonable bedtime' is pretty much at least an hour before anyone else's. =(

Luckily, I don't need to go to bed at a reasonable hour, because all my classes this semester are after noon! Wooot!

Mouses were meant to be wide-eyed and bushy-ta... wide-eyed and perky tailed at night.

Well, I missed the old girl, so it's nice to have her back. And already some lovely pictures, hooray!

And with less than a month left before school starts! Eep! I'm off to residence on the thirtieth! I'm gonna miss being up all night, especially as I live on the east coast of Canada, which means a 'reasonable bedtime' is pretty much at least an hour before anyone else's. =(

Luckily, I don't need to go to bed at a reasonable hour, because all my classes this semester are after noon! Wooot!

Mouses were meant to be wide-eyed and bushy-ta... wide-eyed and perky tailed at night.

Due to a lack of available staff, I am basically supervising at my job. Which is nice, because even though I've only got a little over two weeks left, I can still put on my resume that I was a supervisor at a store I worked at for nine months.

That is pretty decent credentials.

But anyway, that's really not the point of the post.

See, there's a new guy that I just met tonight, and he is one of those older gay guys, prolly early forties or something. Bald, wears glasses.

Anyway, he got the drift that I'm gay, and now I think he is trying to hit on me. It is a little weird. I mean not even in the harmless, cute sort of way that gay guys sometimes do, he's not really the cute sort. It's just a little weird.

I mean it's nice to have another gay guy around, but couldn't it have been some cute academic sort I could cozy up to? Sigh. It had to be some dirty, vaguely creepy old guy.

Sometimes I wonder how it could be that things in life tend to come in lumps.

I mean like, if things are going great, it seems like everything falls into place all at once.

And when things are going bad, it seems like you just can't get a darn break anywhere.

This month, this 'Month of Dis-May' has been kind of a drag. It hasn't really been a bad month per se, it's just that like, pretty much everything has managed to get at least a little bit more complicated. Or very complicated, as it happens.

Sigh! I won't get into details, because I believe that the only way to make a bad day good, is to just have a good day despite it. That is my l'il mousie philosophy.

Besides, there's good things too! Like I got a new haircut, it is very cute. Mebbe I'll replace that dark picture from before and show it off a bit. Not that... it's really that noticeable from where you can see my face, but whatever!

And I'm really happy about how my last picture turned out. It's given me enormous confidence. If I can do that after just three submissions(I really, honestly didn't do a single drawing between the Harle nude and the one before it), I figure that if I keep it up, after some time I bet I could finally put together some pieces that could blow people away.

Optimism!

I was accepted to university! Hooray!

The news is a few days old, but I figured I'd let people know here.

Although my entrance status is part-time, I'm using my first year to get a few pre-requisites and first-year courses for my chosen degree. Which, presuming I do as well as I think I will, is going to be a dual-major biology/psychology degree.

It has such fun course titles as 'Introduction to Human Neuropsychology.'

I can hardly wait! ^.^

The theoretical end goal is a doctorate, after which I will be going into research. Though that's a long way away. I've yet to decide specifically what I'd like to major in, but I suspect it will be something along the lines of neuropsychology. I really want to focus on gender/sexual theory as well.

But yes, my dream of having a PhD in my title and being able to accurately describe myself as a scientist, is one tiny step closer to fruition.

Mouse in a labcoat?

Totally. Cute.

Hooray!

My tablet finally came, after nearly a month.

It was a long wait, but I have given it sufficient hugs so that it knows I love it.

Anyway, naturally I jumped right in as soon as I got it, and started a-practicin'. I went through the usual starting points. Some scribbling, testing brushes, sensitivity settings. Admiring the wonderful curvy lines that got all thick and thin and thick again.

It did take a little while to get used to drawing on a surface that... isn't the one the image is appearing on. But that said, I picked it up pretty quick. I've heard of people who never really get it right, and only use the things for shading and such. I was a little worried I'd find it really too difficult to learn the craft with, but I think I'm actually sort of at an advantage. I don't have old habits in the way, old techniques and old ways of doing things to get in the way. So I'm learning from a blank slate.

I think the biggest help was spending an hour or so tracing a lovely line-art submission by Wolfy-Nail(http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1171675/). I started out really rough, and by the time I was done, my lines were far, far smoother, and I had a much better understanding of the minimalization concept that underlies cartoon styles. I also reshaded the entire thing, which helped me get a better feel for single-tone shading(I am hesitant to call it cell-shading, but maybe that's right). It ended up looking really good, but I decided not to post it or anything. It's just a trace, and all.

Aside from that redraw I did two years ago, I have never done anything in a toony style. It's a style that's always sort of eluded me, because I obsess over details, and the whole point of 'tooning is to remove details and exagerate the important ones. So it was a bit of a big switch for me. But I took what I learned tracing that picture, and I drew...

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1182772/

Such a cute lil guy! I am happy with it, even though it's a very simple picture. It's the only cartoony thing I've ever drawn from scratch, and the first thing I've drawn with line-art since that old redraw I have, and the only thing of -mine- that I've drawn since highschool.

A good start! Let's see where I can take it.

So I ordered a tablet.

It's something I've meant to do ever since, well, that little drawing I posted like over a year ago. I have never liked paper and pencils, basically because I have a kind of negatively perfectionist attitude about art, and the lack of easy erasing and undo commands just makes drawing a pain in the butt. I spend more time trying to erase and fix things than I spend actually drawing. And often enough, I have completely ruined pictures trying to 'fix' things that weren't really broken to begin with.

The tablet is to correct this.

It's a Wacom Bamboo Fun (Medium). I considered splurging for the more professional Intuos model, but then I realized that 200 bux is pretty much splurging anyway. Besides, I don't want to spend a totally enormous chunk of change for something that could possibly end up gathering dust.

But! I am going to do my best to make sure that doesn't happen. It might take a while to get to a point where I'm comfortable posting art, but once I do, you can rest assured it'll be here.

Wish me luck!

So I never actually use this feature of good ol' Fur Affinity, and that is largely because I keep an LJ. It is a locked LJ though, so don't bother looking. Regardless, I am somewhat tempted to migrate here, or at least update now and then, since many of my Fuzzy Friends aren't privy to the prior mentioned journal.

The problem is, when I start writing, I sometimes start writing about important things. And sometimes the point I started to make turns into something else entirely. It is like a form of stream-of-consciousness essay writing. So take it with a grain of salt. Let's give it a try!

HI GUYS

I AM GONNA RAMBLE NOW PLEASE DON'T TAKE THIS TOO SERIOUSLY ^.^

The Horrible Truth About Being a Furry

I have two confessions to make that may shock you.

First: I am a furry.
Second: I am proud of this. Sort of. Kind of.

The truth is, while I have a lot of love and respect for my dear fandom and the people in it, I make no presumptions regarding the normalcy of what it is that we do. The reasons I love the fandom are intangible, ideological principles that most people don't give a good gosh darn about.

In my heart, I just adore the simple, sweet, friendly atmosphere. I love cute and friendly things with minimal confrontation.

And in my head, I can justify my attraction in a myriad logical ways.

After all, here we have a group of people who can be stereotyped as being leagues more tolerant and accepting of differences than the vast majority of other groups of people. While the reasons for this tolerance go from the strange to the downright sad, the end result is absolutely a healthy and positive one. I am a transgendered girl, I like to prance about online as a cute little mouse girl, and I have sexual needs that might best be described as specific. In the fandom, this is okay.

That is why the fandom is a good place for damn near anyone who can lower their guard and not turn on the blinders just because someone is doing something we don't understand or think is, I dunno... socially appropriate. That's just the beauty of it, though. Where else can you possibly go, where practically no matter what you do, someone is going to say to you 'Oh that's nothing, you should see <insert fandom-specific fetish here>.'

How comforting to find out that all that sexual deviancy you thought was gonna wind you up in therapy is practically vanilla sex amongst the rest of your community.

When speaking to nonfurs, and given examples of how furries seem to be typically incoherent, immature, ignorant, and incomprehensible, I can only offer them the simple alternative; given the option between an entire internet of incoherent, immature, ignorant, and incomprehensible people, I would rather choose the ones who will at least treat me with decency and respect when I haven't given them adequate reason not to.

I cannot say so much for the average - as an example - youtube lurker.

Now, of course, these assumptions aren't always true. I have met furries who have been jerks, or just plain neurotic to the point of being disruptive. There are always exceptions. And it's certainly not that I think that nonfurs are bad. Many of my dearest friends are not furries. But there is a degree of consistency that I am comfortable with, and that is the important thing.

But none of this is important, you see. This is all well and good for me to decide, for us as furries to decide, but people just don't make these sorts of calculations. You cannot tell someone that you are a furry in the same way that you might inform them that you are gay. You can't unfold it like some big revelation. Informing someone you are gay is like informing them you have a sexually transmittable disease; at worst they fear you'll somehow pass it on to them, and at best they just accept it, you both have a good cry, and move on. But they don't look at you and go, 'Why the fuck do you have that?' (Well okay, some people do, but let's move on)

Telling someone you are a furry is a bit like telling them you are a scientologist(not to draw any other comparisons, because frankly that would be insulting to myself, but for the sake of argument here). You can come out and say it like it's this big thing and it's making you so happy, but people are going to at best ask why you even brought it up, and at worst, look at you and go, 'Why the fuck did you do that?' and then stop being your friend because you are a creepy cultist.

Because frankly, sort of like scientology, it's ridiculous and makes no sense whatsoever, but we have rationalized it anyway. It's not about whether or not we have valid rationalizations(and I think we do, which is just one of many wonderful things that separates us from those creepy cultists, just to play down the comparison), it's that it required rationalization to begin with.

Extreme differences in behaviour from the cultural norm is always viewed with various degrees of discord. Always. There has never been a cultural change movement which was not opposed as though by default, regardless of how benign or beneficial those movements have been.

The flaw in furry thinking is actually our biggest argument in defense; we are just people like you. We just think differently.

Of course we're just people like them. So were the abolitionists, the women's rights movement, the gay rights movement, the transgender rights movement. You don't have to be confrontational to find confrontation, and nor do you need to even aspire to grand cultural change to be perceived as abberant. It is highly difficult to persuade an entire cultural that you are completely different and yet utterly the same as they are(even if you really are).

It's unfortunate but it is true. While much of the curtain has been drawn from the once-secretive fandom, thanks to the popularity of the internet, all for the benefit of the public eye, we've found that if anything, it has only made it worse. I have read and watched all manner of furry media coverage, and I have come to realize some things.

First, I am nothing like the people in these articles and documentaries.
Secondly, the most accepting nonfurs seem to be the ones who knew the least about us before actually coming into contact with the fandom.
Thirdly, and most importantly, perhaps, is that despite the first statement, the media has never really given a depiction of the furry fandom that I would describe to be inaccurate in at least large part. I have seen so many people complain because some overweight woman who likes to wear bunny ears flopped on the ground and cuddled the journalist. Or because some airhead made a totally crazy comment about whatever. As if that is the worst we have to offer.

I hope to god that the journalists never get on a serious story about vore, or babyfurs. We'd never hear the end of it. But providing we can keep them away from the really bad subjects, yes it is too much to ask even an unbiased media to focus on the most boring furries of all; the ones who most resemble people who aren't furries at all.

Truth is, as a community we are exactly like these videos depict. These are people just trying to have fun and be silly and do their thing, and when you take something as silly and ridiculous as what we do, entirely from its context, even we tend to find it grating. Whether you do it online or go to meets, whether you care about the community or not, whether you're a vanilla fur or a PG fur or a nasty sexual deviant, we are all in it for the same basic reason; because it's the only place we can be ourselves comfortably enough to meet other people who share our perceptions of what it means to be a fur. And in that, we are all the same.

My answer to this? More power to them. This is the same sort of coverage the gay pride groups got. A bunch of flaming nellies in leather straps and feather boas. And how did they survive it?

They said 'fuck off, we're starting a parade.'

And as much as some people think gay pride parades are a dumb idea, the amount of good all that showboating did to acclimatize the population to the average homosexual individual was incredible. And don't even think that wasn't the point, because it was. When you're exposed to men in insane clothing and butchy, scary biker women, suddenly seeing the same people, completely unrecognizable at a store the next day, dressed relatively normally and speaking with a slight gay lisp or holding the hand of someone of the same gender, just isn't that shocking anymore.

So maybe we're not the victims of genetics or trapped in a position where the government won't allow us to be who we really are, but what the hell. Embrace it anyway. Yeah we're weird, but we're not weird all the time.

But what we are, all the time, is totally adorable.

Rar.

Mousie out. <3 <3