It's getting to a point again that when I write, the sex is the part that I'm least interested in describing for paragraphs at a time. For the Buffers Evolution one, I know it got a little goofy with bubbly anime areas and such and frankly I probably won't entirely stop doing that because frankly I think it's funny. But as for the sex, it's just hard for me to figure out how to write pages and pages of the mechanical bits because of a couple reasons: 1) I think I'm running out of ways to say it and that makes it boring to write and 2) I'd much rather focus on the emotional aspect if at all possible. Maybe that makes me a hopeless romantic, but I imagine the imagination can handle more of the heavy lifting instead of every paragraph being a matter of checking your watch and saying, "yep, still fucking!"

I feel like this is cyclical in a way and there will come a time later where I will absolutely be back to writing the steamiest sex scenes I can imagine in excruciating detail; this is just kind of a thought about what I'm working on right now and whether that comes out right away is always a "probably not." Maybe I'll be able to vary things up as I finish whatever.

Sorry to anyone I worried. I was freaking out yesterday because I'd spiked a sudden fever and I admit I was making some poor decisions. Bringing any of that to my submissions was a mistake. I'm fine as of this morning, but getting a fever out of nowhere with no explanation had me not in a good place.

Anyway, expect more stories soon. In the meantime, mask up, social distance, wash your hands, get vaccinated, and take care of yourselves. Fall and winter are going to absolutely blow this year.

EDIT: I honestly think it says a lot about me that one of the things I could think to do was post stories knowing someone was waiting on them just so someone could maybe be happy.

...Please don't try to unpack that. I have no idea what I was thinking, either, but it came from good intentions.

It's pretty much gotten to a point where I've realized I probably will not be releasing stuff in any kind of chronological order because the stuff that has my attention and the stuff that's related to the overall timeline are not really a good match.

Fair warning, there is probably going to be a MASSIVE dump of content coming up. Not all of it is going to be sexy. There will be content warnings.

For the record, you can expect more of Jim and Bateau. And on one hand, I feel like that sequel provides some essential context for the story that I'm working on now, but the one I'm working on now got so big as one that I intended to release as 2 stories now is a story, an interquel, the second story in 3 parts, and 2 sequels. And on one hand, this is literally the most natural progression I've ever written about a relationship forming over the course of months without the main characters ever boning, but on the other, I feel like I just can't stop writing it, where the Jim and Bateau sequel just has so many gaps in it right now that I have no ideas or drive to fill that I wonder if it's not just better to wait on it, because it will happen, and I want it to happen, but not every story needs to be told in order.

So I guess I'll be compromising and using the linking thingy to put certain bits in chronological order for the current "main" timeline and just otherwise noting when things happen by year in the comments.

EDIT: The response to last night's dump was... certainly not what I expected or was hoping for, but it's all out there. I had had reservations about releasing "Exotic Pet Shop - The Gray Room: Pain" at all, but that's gotten more attention all at once than I think anything I've written in years, while the rest has received a tepid response. So I guess that sets the bar for the rest. There will not be more like "Pain." I'll just live with the tepid response, but it's certainly made it seem like less of a priority to get any of the rest of it out there. I'd had visions of smashing through a bunch of it by Halloween, because of my loose tradition of having a Halloween story, but I might just release that without linking it until the rest catches up and not worry too hard about any of it. NGL, it's a bit of a gut punch. I always approached this stuff as a story first where sex happened to occur. This isn't going to stop me; it's just dented my enthusiasm a bit for now. The rest will still come out and maybe someone will find and appreciate it. All it takes is one to make it worthwhile.

EDIT2: Given a few days since the last update, I'm over it. Being very honest, I enjoy writing for the sake of it and disappointment has never stopped me before. I think that honestly maybe I was a little ungrateful, and certainly less than gracious, given the trickle of interest I've had with literal years of not providing any new material. If I had a bit more of myself to give, I might have amassed a following, but for many years, I simply didn't. Logically, what I thought were content warnings were actually tags for interested parties. Tags are something I need to get better at. So just by the sheer number of them, that became discoverable, even if it's not anything I want to focus on. More of the story will trickle in, including the bits I know everyone is actually here for. Maybe someone will see it and give everything a read. It certainly spells out a lot of context that informs the rest of this world.

I just realized it's been almost a decade since my last journal and honestly it makes me cringe, so this is partly to get it off my page.

I honestly don't think this can be called an "active" account, but I haven't actually stopped writing stuff; just mostly stopped finishing it.

A lot has changed since I first joined this site, but mostly adulting. I won't say I'm really that different of a person, but there are things I haven't posted because I honestly look at the tame stuff I have up and what I considered "weird stuff" back then and feel like I should work up to some of the less wholesome content, if I post it at all. It will come with appropriate warning labels.

Anyway, I know I don't have a following, especially after literal years of hiatus stuck in the slog, and that might be a benefit in a way because people probably have fewer established expectations, even if the natural progression was lost that would have been visible if I'd just finished anything to post. And to be honest, I know this stuff doesn't really matter. I'm not making a business of it. So whoever enjoys whatever, cool.

Essentially, this account is all but abandoned. I've lost my interest in writing smut because I don't even have energy for more important things. This is not to say I don't still get ideas, just that more likely than not I'll save the pic somewhere for the unforeseen future and maybe someday see it and see the same thing in it.



That said, I've gotten a little more... experimental in the past few weeks. I've come to the conclusion I'm bi, if only for the furry aspect, and I've broken down and am now the owner of two dildos, with a third on the way.

The two on hand are from Zeta Paws and my first was Mr. Pluggit, which I figured would be small enough to hide, and I was right. The thing is it's actually so small I can't tolerate it for long, since it doesn't keep things really either open or closed. It starts hurting, despite the fact it's supposed to be a "wear it anywhere, sleep with it" kind of deal.

My second one is Darius the Lion, which arrived today. This one I tried out and wished I'd gotten it in hard instead of medium like Pluggit, because it wasn't cooperating very nicely in the shower. I'm now glad I got it the way it is, because after a bit of being dry, I decided to see how it would feel spit-lubed under normal clothes. And for the most part, it, well, it feels like it belongs there. I probably WILL sleep with this in, despite the fact it's not designed for that.

I suppose you could say it's because it's in line with what I'm used to. Without going into embarrassing detail, the dream world is a bit kinder to me than the real world, which is why I went with a feline one for my first "real" toy. Having this here feels like what I have there and it's a comfort for me in my time of need, because frankly life just outright took a shit on me in the past few weeks with several major events (thankfully none with work) that have left me first terrified, and when I got over that one, pretty much emotionally shattered.

I won't ruminate on these, but I'm dealing with two sick pets, one of which has aggressive, untreatable cancer, and I'm faced with the reality that everyone else in the family is treating me like the emotional rock of the situation.

So basically being able to pull that little bit of physical contact into the physical world is a comfort. A little piece of the rocks I relied on since my teen years to get me through everything, when I really wish I could just pull them through. Because I really, REALLY could use something big and soft and warm to cuddle, and with my family pretty much scattered right now, I can't even get a hug.



I'll avoid being too much of a downer and tell you about my last one. Just Google up "orc dildo" and you'll find it. The seller is on Etsy and for $5 off, you can pick up a "failed" unit from them, which usually isn't "broken" so much as a color fade failed. Even though it's still $70, I liked the look of it, and fell in love with one in hard in particular with an uneven pink-green fade, because it's a really nice combo even when "bad" that has a purple intermediate. I wanted one in hard because the soft being comparable to "a slightly stale gummy bear" does not sound like something I want going really ANYWHERE in my body and from pics I've seen of people squishing it, there's no way in Hell I wouldn't wreck the thing trying to get it in, inexperienced as I am. Hard is "like a hard cock, but slightly bendy" or something like that. Probably not something comfy to keep in at all times, but I won't be ripping it in half fighting with it, either.



As silly as it sounds, this doesn't change who I fall in love with. Guys are the ones I ogle and I'll admit in that regard I'm flat out a sub. I have no interest in putting my meat in another guy, but am not adverse to having some come my way. But in that regard, any relationship I'd have with a guy would be at most friends with benefits, because it's a different kind of love. More like "I'd share anything with someone I care about that much, including myself." And I just don't have that IRL. IRL, I just don't see guys that way, or maybe it's human guys that way, to get that close.

Girls are the ones I end up falling in love with and I still see myself settling down with one, once I stop getting ball-stomped every time I try to have a relationship with one (seriously, first try in high school was "let's remain friends" and the second one I asked out more recently outright stopped serving me at the restaurant she works at after us talking for a year, just because I asked). I don't fall in love with just anyone, either. I'm in for "Mrs. Right," not "Mrs. Right Now," and unfortunately, I'm not in a position to be meeting anyone outside of a small group of women, frankly, at the restaurants I frequent on my lunch breaks. Time is still something I just don't have. At this point I'm just biding my time until I can transfer to a location closer to home within the next year in hopes I can hold out until normal life becomes possible again.



Anyway, until then I just have to hope and wait. I can't say the "guys" I have now are really liberating, but they feel good, which is all I can ask for.

Wanted to write this down somewhere before sleep. I have no plans to cobble together a fursona, but I do have certain traits of various animals.

I've compared myself to a penguin for years. Awkward little bird outside of his element, gives you a pebble if he likes you (in my case, does favors), which seems small from the outside, but can mean the world between myself and the other person.

Cat. Because I act like a fuggin' cat. Often aloof, affectionate on my own terms, and while friendly like a Tom, not particularly social.

Cheetah, because I tame easily, rely a lot on my brother, and am comfortable within a small core group (if none of this makes sense, do us a favor and wiki it). When I say I tame easily, it doesn't take much for me to get used to a person or place, all things considered, and I get along with nearly anyone.

I'm also a bit of a momma bear, because I defend those who I come to call friends ferociously. I take care of people.

Porcupine. I've only started saying this recently, but basically I don't fear much because I don't have much to fear. I've had pretty much everything you can think of slung at me since childhood, so short of a few extremes there's not much you can do to me anymore. I have a weapon in every situation, which keeps me safe, but also means I'm not used to not using them. It's something that often keeps people at arms' length or drives them away.

Newest one is a gorilla, by which I mean while I'm normally gentle, once you do manage to piss me off, you're going to regret it.




There's probably not going to be a series of characters to come out of this. I'm DEFINITELY not going to try to jumble them into one unholy abomination. The last thing the fandom needs is a Pencatahbearillapine. Like seriously, I doubt any artist I know of would even attempt to figure those semantics out, and some of them already do hybrids. Also, I generally just dislike hybrids. They made me create a special area in my folder system and even that has an "Other" subfolder. Love some of the designs, hate the messing with my taxonomic classification setup. YES I AM ANAL!

I haven't been around, but since last journal it's just been more of the same. I haven't written more than a couple intros to new stories, both in the same week, and checking things, it's been 5 months since I got back to anyone.

I'm not dead, but my interest in this stuff has waned. I just have too much going on to do this anymore, at least for now.

Sorry, all, but I just haven't been around or really involved much. It's ironic, because my Twitter queue has become about 80% furry in the past week or two after I followed a couple people who just happened to pop up and kept going as more people interested me. I guess you could say that's the furriest I've ever been, not that that really counts.

This was always my side activity and I've fallen out of it. I'm just involved in too much work and other creative projects to do anything for this account, including remembering to check on it regularly. I haven't even had the energy to do other things I considered more important than this.


I apologize to all the people who've commented, faved, or watched in the past half year. And in advance to anyone who does those things into the indefinite future. I realize it's rude to leave all this hang for so long, but I'm probably not even going to get back to my backlog like I did last time. I don't think it would mean much at this point. But I will say I'm sorry.

I used to think I was inactive when it was a month between posting stories. Now it's been THREE months since I even had the courtesy to thank people for watches, faves, and comments.

It still holds that I'm busy as I was when I wrote my previous journal on the subject. I still wake up early in the morning and come home at night wiped. The difference is really in how I'm blowing off steam these days.

I used to come home and write stuff for here, and I can't blame this one on my faded interest in doing porn. That was something I was recovering from last I wrote furry stuff. I have to lay blame for this on a slew of ideas for other things. Most of my inspiration has gone into more projects than I actually have time for, which has always been a bad habit of mine. I'm great at starting things, awful at finishing them, which I've said before. I know logically that some of these things are pipe dreams which will probably never come to pass, while others are feasible, but will fall by the wayside once I lose interest.

I'm also split between more sites now for my art-gathering tendencies. I used to only do FA and fchan, but now Rule 34 is in the mix and I often forget FA has the functionality of both instead of just the links to individual artists.

But the thing I'm really worried about is not getting back to people. It was easy at first to say I'd do it later, which changed into the notifications losing meaning. It wasn't until I clicked it just now that I got the wet sock to the face that, yes, these are people, and I've neglected common courtesy for a quarter year. I honestly think that that's worse than when every notification was a heart attack when I first started.

I'll be getting back to these nine intrepid souls today with apologies.

. * . A *
@_(^ ) *

I have no idea why this idea won't shut up. Usually the urge to write something down lasts a day or two at most these days with life going as it is. But since it won't stop nagging me, I may as well put it down.

Many people have several fursonas. Fen has his combined at the moment, but is effectively a bull and a wolf, for instance. I still don't claim to associate with any animal, but recently I decided to dick around in Allods again before the massive amount of updates took well into the next morning and the urge passed into oblivion like so many other things these days.

On the other hand, the Gibberlings provided a thought. I guess you can say a very lazy thought. Making a triplicate persona for myself. Sky the Body, Sky the Mind, and Sky the Heart. Easy to make a human as well, which makes it attractive.

Sky the Body is kind of the side that doesn't get out much. Given that I'm a skinny little guy about as imposing as Steve from the old Dell commercials, I can't really claim to be "alpha," and in general I tend to stifle this side as soon as it starts talking. But it's a side that needs to be acknowledged. The side that puts me on the dominant end of things, that enjoys things like bondage pics looking down on a victim when I really feel I shouldn't, that makes me file away a domination pic under the sub's species. He's the red one, since a red aura represents things like power and passion.

Sky the Mind is my deeper, more intellectual side, which sees a lot more action. This is the one that's all about information, who generally ends up in arguments he can't win because he fails to accept he's not dealing with rational people, and the one that generally feels like crap about himself because of the kinds of reputation he tends to earn as "the guy that hates X" or otherwise being the omega wolf because he's easy to goad and tear apart. His color is black. Black in an aura color is seriously unhealthy, either physically if it's in a spot over the body, or in personality if it's global. Not something you ever want to see in an aura either way, but this side of me has at times gotten me into such lousy situations that I have gotten physically ill or depressed from the stress. Otherwise, it's easier to remember than indigo, which is a highly mental color associated with intuition and perception, and purple, which is associated with creativity and wisdom.

Sky the Heart generally walks hand in hand with Sky the Mind and is a good deal of the cause of the trouble. He assumes the best in people sometimes long after he probably should, loves to help, and is generally enthusiastic. While not a "white knight," he is very much a "healer," always ready to listen and help calmly. These are traits embodied by a turquoise aura, which is his color.


I guess you can say all three are fairly equal, but Mind and Heart are more public. Heart is generally what wins people over, while Mind tends to be what I need to regulate to keep from earning yet another reputation. Body is kept away from people by Heart mostly.

I have no idea if I'll draw up some Gibberlings, or even just go into Allods and throw something together. I don't even really know if I'll modify what I have in pixels for the human silhouette I have done up. This is probably the most open I've been on here and with that comes the danger that I'll get found out and potentially have some explaining to do.

You may notice these are also roughly the colors in my avatar. Didn't really plan on it (much), but it works out well. Also, they're colors Gibberlings use just to make life simpler if I go that route. I dunno. I never said it was a completed idea, just one that won't shut up.



Just an update, but I did this for my new profile ID (linking it for future reference should it change again): http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7057727/ There's more explanation in there.


UPDATE:

I guess another idea to add onto the pile. This one kind of gelled a bit when writing the description of the three avatars, but really, why not just give them powers outright? Psi power for Mind, healing for Heart, and speed for Body. Strength would be the obvious idea, but really, I'm faster than I am strong and super strength has some unfortunate implications. Of course that's assuming it's "super" (which is liable to end you up as a puddle of flesh and powdered bones) and not just "enhanced."

I supposed enhanced strength and speed could work. These guys are better off with more minor abilities. I don't really intend for them to be superheroes, but maybe they can be everyday heroes who do little things and can still have normal lives. Lift a car in a time of need, but throwing it is another matter.

I'll have to work out the power balance and if there's anything I'd like to add. Also what powers of the psychic range Mind should get. There's a helluva lot to choose from.

Life is busy these days. I thought I had it rough in school and figured things would settle down now that I'm working. The truth is that I was basing this notion on high school and how I could juggle a menial job, class, homework, and recreation.

The truth of the matter is I had no idea how much time I had in college. Sure, there were papers, classes, and travel time when I came home. The thing is all those things were totally on my terms. I CHOSE to make class. In my entire college career, I can count times I intentionally skipped a class on one hand. And when I did, it really didn't matter, because I didn't need to be there, only know the material. My productivity was totally at my leisure, and I purposefully signed up for classes that let me sleep in so I could stay up at night and do whatever I wanted, be it homework or play.

Now I have a job out there and all my work is condensed into 8-9 hours depending on whether I take my allotted 1-hour unpaid lunch. My job is an hour away, so I need to wake up early, which is a struggle for a guy who's never been a morning person. When I get home, I generally have all the productivity out of my system and just want to vegetate. Weekends are less free time now and more recovery time.



How does this relate to the title? Well, really, it's a combination of not coming around nearly as often and not having the energy to go through the steps to reply to faves when I do. I mean I don't delete the messages. Everyone who leaves a comment or fave or watch gets a personalized message from me. I hate seeing lines of "Thanks for the fave!" on pages. It's lazy and people deserve more recognition than a copy/paste so standard that it's nearly universal and people put on their pages to stop spamming them with it. No, I actually put the effort into mine. "Glad you liked" may be a bit cockier, but I'll bet it's nicer to see it breaking up lines of meaningless clones. I add an emote, or not, or maybe a bit more of a message about the particular work, or my performance outlook at the time, but every last message I leave is hand typed.

It's just a bit more effort during a time when I'm out of energy quite often. Maybe things will slow down in the new year. The end of the year is hectic with the annual processing. I'm in the thick of it right now. So if it takes me a while to get back to you, it's not that I'm a jerk or lazy. I'm just half-dead and probably too fried to pay more than 10 minutes of attention to anything.

Let me just say this is not about artists who up and leave and take their work with them. That's a symbolic gesture and in most cases when I see it, it's because their work was being abused, they personally were being abused and they just can't handle it anymore. It breaks my heart to see good artists and seemingly good people pushed to that breaking point and I fully support artists who clear out their galleries because people have been assholes and they just can't stay.


No, this is about artists who just clear out their old work and only show their newest and best. Never mind people might appreciate those older works as having beauty in their own right, they're "bad" and no one must see them. Or especially when artists clear out their old, crappy stuff from when they first started. I ultimately think it's really dickish and here's why.

A lot of people look at all the beautiful art and develop an "either you have it or you don't" complex. And yes, I call it a complex, because it kills their confidence in their own art abilities. And why shouldn't they think that way, seeing gallery after gallery of art that shows nothing but brilliant success? It just all magically appears with no indication of how long it took to do, but more importantly, no indication of how long it took to LEARN to do. Keeping up your old, bad work shows where you came from - your development, your successes, your failures, your learning process - and how you got to where you are now. Honestly, I think artists who dump that are selfish. I have yet to delete a single thing I've put up and honestly, it surprises me just how many faves they still get. I didn't know how to write porn until I got here. I just started doing whatever interested me and honestly writing this is making me want to put up old crap that I finished and then just never reviewed and put up. Certain experimental pieces, my "real" first story, and so on.

Mind you, I already had writing experience before I started on smut. I used to spend most of my free time writing novels which would show my development even better if any of them still existed. Sadly, that machine is quite dead and I have no good way of recovering my data, even if it didn't get wiped by the lightning. But the point is you guys can look back (not nearly as far back in my gallery as I'd like, honestly) and see everything I've put up.

Dragging myself back on topic, the reason I think deleting your old work is selfish is because nobody gets to be Grisser or Rrowdybeast in a day. Fen had two accounts before that, being SilverFenrir and later UnshackledFenrir before now, and having kept and re-uploaded a good deal of his older work, which still exists on the UF account. Taking down all your old, crappy stuff is great for promoting yourself, but bad for encouraging others. Isn't art supposed to be a community? Isn't a community supposed to help support its members? Dazzling people is all well and good, but putting yourself up atop a seemingly impossibly high pedestal and then burning the stairs behind you leaves newer, less experienced artists living in the ash and soot while they look at you as shining and unreachable. When you're that high up, without a stairway to your position, there's no reaching down to help your fellow artists build and climb their own path. It makes a lot of people just give up and leave. I'll admit that's a good deal of the reason I write, although in my case I'm validly impaired by a clinical lack of fine motor coordination. This journal will likely take me over a half hour to type, including review. But I'd be less adverse to doing art (I do enjoy sketching and once in a great while do costume designs) if it hadn't been waved in my face for so many years that other people can do amazing works of detail in the time it takes me to scratch out something simple. In theory, I could get to be that good, but given that it took me until college to learn to type at something like ten words a minute, and I still doubt I've broken twenty, much less thirty, the amount of practice it would take is daunting, and this is coming from a guy with an inherent grasp of anatomy and lighting on his side. For people who are less ridiculously visual (irony of ironies) and lack the same confidence as I do (when I do sketch I pour myself into it and can say I'm still proud of everything I've done), their hindrance isn't physical like mine; it's mental, because they're bombarded with all the final products without ever getting to see the roughs.

So, artists, if you're considering doing "housekeeping," don't. Ultimately, leaving your old art up is of nothing but benefit. Other people get to see you better as a human being instead of a figure, they get to learn from you just by looking, and, really, it'll probably help keep you grounded. Sometimes I think artists forget where they came from whether it's intentional or not unless they have the past staring them in the face. Good concepts that you couldn't do before can be redone and compared to the originals for both your benefit and everyone else's. Or maybe you can just look back at your old work and smile at how proud you were of that old crap, or maybe you'll decide you didn't used to be that bad after all. Maybe you'll look back at it for a while and hate it, but given a little time and distance will be able to look back and realize it was actually better than you gave it credit for when you notice all the stuff you did right instead of all you did wrong. I look back at my old work quite often, and while I'll admit I fix typos and such, I never retcon anything. I've found old poetry from middle school that I don't even remember writing that's been so good I didn't even realize it was mine at first. No name on the page, but it's about something that was unique or important to me at the time. I just recently read through Glass Box again and have to say that, really, that one I said I hated and and just shat out? Really not that bad. Not amazing, but it said what it had to and is readable. Give your own work a fair chance, or at least let yourself be brave enough to show off that, yeah, sometimes great artists really do crank out crap.

I'm tired so this may come off as random.

So really, hair on furs kind of irks me. I mean the stuff on your head. I think I might know why, too. It's got to do with what "defines" an animal. Cheetahs? Fine, sure. Because it's not important. They have very defining markings. Or a snow leopard, since there's pretty much nothing that looks like a snow leopard.

Lions on the other hand are "supposed" to have hair in the form of manes, and really for them it irks me if they're bald in a human balding pattern. Or really any hairdo that isn't at least based on a mane. A wolf? For some reason I have a much lower tolerance for a hairdo on one. Or a panther. These are guys who are more lacking in species features. Now, something like a tuft of hair out the front is just fine because it looks like an extension of the fur, but for them to be walking around with a human haircut in a completely different pattern makes me envision myself standing in silhouette with shining eyes holding a razor. This urge to shave increases as complexity of fur features increases up to a point where the definition makes it matter less.

And, OH GOD, especially long hair on basically anything but a lion. There is some beautiful art out there which is in my opinion ruined by short-furred species having long, intricate hairstyles. For a lion? Go for it, but the most I can stand even on a cheetah is messy-long. For that matter, I generally think guys IRL with long hair look ridiculous, but for some reason it's more aggravating on a fur.

And really, even on species I tolerate hair on, the tolerance diminishes with age. Adults really just need to look more animal-like for some reason. Maybe it's because real adults tend to need to get real haircuts for real jobs, but whatever the reason, even on a cheetah, if it's an adult, as in a grown man, it's gotta be "bald."

I know I'm mentioning cheetahs a lot in this, but that's really because I use them as a metric for judging other species. Kind of how like Cheetor was actually shown running with real cheetahs in Beast Wars and thus has the distinction of being used as a reference point for how all the others were scaled versus real animals. I guess you can say cheetahs tend to be at the center of the sweet spot for what I tolerate in terms of color variance, hair, etc. They're very distinctive and thus you can pretty much get away with murder with them. Throw spots anywhere you like, screw counting tail rings or skip them entirely, those buggers have teardrops! :P



Anyway, the reason I came in was to blow off a bit of steam. If I'm not careful, I might unfortunately have all the time in the world to get back to writing. There's been a string of bad luck as of late and I haven't been making myself popular for various reasons. It pretty well sucks. I'm going to be moving to be closer to work to help avoid being late, but that doesn't resolve the personality conflicts that I didn't know about. It might have been nice to know about before now, because I thought everything was going just peachy. Now I don't even know who it is that hates me, just that someone or several someones think I'm an ass. It's been stressful for the past couple days after getting called into the office. Today didn't seem so bad, but still, I'm planing for the worst. There's a housing authority that holds the keys to some of my best options, but there are waiting lists and my biggest fear is that by the time I'd get into an apartment, I'd already be fired. At that point, I'd probably be out on the street for the rest of my life, because I really don't have that much work history, and even less in my chosen profession. If I'm out of there in under a year, well, what it took for me to get the job I have would be a sneeze compared to convincing someone else to hire my n00b fired ass. At this point I'm "that guy" and I never in my life wanted to be "that guy" on the job. Part of the problem is they hired me based on future potential, but sadly it's not "a few years from now" when my skills will actually be useful. For that matter, there's stuff on the job description that they don't even do and that basically no one does anymore anyway. So essentially I'm the equivalent of a Mensa physicist mopping floors, but I'm supposed to learn how to mop them an extra-special way when the only thing I've even known on the subject is using one of those fancy Zamboni things. I know I'm mixing metaphors. Like I said, I'm tired. It's just kind of frustrating. My boss basically said if I was in my element I might be totally great, but they're not ready on their end to put me there and I essentially suck at what they have me doing, or at least that people think that I think I'm awesome at it when I'm not when really I'm only happy that I'm being useful. It's like being in that place I mentioned leaving all over again, only in this case, I really can't afford to leave it. At least not without something else lined up, but I doubt I'd look good looking elsewhere after only a few months, and if the new people called, well, that would be like shitting in the doorway at my current job.

In short, I'm going to just have to try to salvage it. And to do that, I need sleep. Signing off for now, sorry to be a bummer.

Normally I'd do something to celebrate this kind of thing, but at the moment I'm wiped.

Er, uh, I mean I TOTALLY MADE A COMMEMORATIVE PROFILE ID FOR THIS OCCASION LOOK BELOW SEE IT'S THERE!

Now if only the site didn't "shrink" smaller images to larger than the source. There's just no getting this thing to look good. :/

Anyway, yeah, the red box is me. I'm anonymous. That's with a small "a." I don't have the time to be one with a big "A." I'm also Hyooman, if you missed it somehow. I'm also currently very, very tired if you can't tell.

Anyway, I still have stories bumping around in my head, but at this point they've actually managed to learn to sit quietly or even go dormant after a while. Just got a new one today. Sorry, but still don't hold your breath on me writing it. Tomorrow is another day, but being honest, I'm probably just going to play video games or something, or more likely accomplish jack all day because I won't be able to stick to anything for a decent amount of time without getting bored/frustrated/distracted.

If this sounds emo, well, I'm actually the opposite. Life is pretty great. I have a good job with good pay, even if it does wipe me out, but the people are great and I feel like what I do there really matters. I left a site that was doing a lot to hold me back and now have a good support group online, and recently purged out all of the "friends" in real life who were really just assholes that I happened to have known for years rather than actually being good for me. I may not be re-established yet, but I'm moving in that direction.

Really, being tired is the only real thing wrong with life right now and I can't be bothered to do much outside of work, or at least not in anything but scattered bursts.

I'll take tired and happy over awake and miserable any day.

Yes, that means any requests that were already on the table are also getting dumped. Life is just too complicated now. I didn't even start on any of them, or work on anything for myself for that matter in over a month.

I guess I'm not really gone, but I really don't have the time to be writing much for here anymore. Too much going on at work, too much happening at home, and I'm tired enough that every day for the past two weeks I've told myself "thank God it's Friday" on the drive home before realizing I'm wrong 4 out of 5 days. Today they had a laugh because:

Me: It's the, uh, uh, thing. The- God, it's Monday.
Co-worker: *chuckle* It's not Monday.
Me: *looks at calendar* (hopefully) Can it be Monday?
*laughter*

At any rate, this place just needs to move aside to make way for life. I'm still checking back, but I've got no time, and if I'm being honest, basically no interest anymore to be writing on any of my work here. My weekends are pretty much devoted to me and whatever the hell I feel like doing at the time, so basically a lot of video games and sleeping and occasionally getting food, sometimes, maybe, if I can drag my ass out to buy something more healthy than chips and milk, since that's all that's around here that doesn't require cooking.

In short, I'll barely be a trickle when it comes to writing for a while.

Just tripped across this gem and had an odd thought. The setup of that story is a lot like Persona, and it got me thinking about what mine would be. I came to the conclusion that I don't really have one of my own and just use everyone else's. So it's not even a traditional main character thing from the series. All those guys have some sort of default that's unique to them, even if it's a name that's been used before. Mine is... blank. I've known who I was for so long that I don't really have any masks to hide behind. It didn't used to be that way. I used to write in character online, but I've found in recent years that I've lost the ability to slip into the roles that I used to be able to slip into in seconds. None of my characters are "me" anymore, human or non.

Maybe it's just a change in my creativity at this point, knowing a character inside and out without having to "be" them anymore to fully do it, and that's probably healthier for me. That lets me be me instead of having to bounce around all the time, or maybe it's more subtle now, like more of a mind link than assuming an identity. Vinnie is probably the best example I have on here of a living, breathing person, which is a bit sad, because Brandon needs that more, since Glass Box was always supposed to be primarily from his perspective. Brandon... honestly has some kinks to work out. I really don't know what to do with him right now or how to mix his various experiences with his general innocence very well. I suppose he's just harder because he's less caricatured. Vinnie, funnily enough, is very predictable in his own way. Brandon, not so much. Okay, Vinnie can behave quite erratically at times, but everything he does makes sense from HIS perspective, where Brandon doesn't really know where he is or what he's working with and potentially can end up doing something incredibly stupid or incredibly smart or both in the same action.

Back to the main point, though. I know I've been slapping down some proper OCs lately, but honestly past what's already written for them or in the works, they're probably not going anywhere. John was based on an original visual idea for a potential fursona, but he's not me and so it doesn't make much sense. Jacobus is an interesting concept character with a lot of porn potential, but I have no money set aside for art and no real interest in getting any of him anyway. I guess I'm running into the issue of being too strong in my real self to really break out of it for a persona. I'm great at writing characters, not so great at assuming their identities anymore.

Just some thoughts on my part. Other than that, been flitting around from task to task in pursuits not around here without accomplishing much. I haven't written anything for here in a while and while there is an idea in my head for a story that's been nagging for weeks (and you thought I was just making that up, didn't you? :P) I haven't started hammering it out. Been too tired and too occupied with other stuff in my free time. Then I still have a request to fill. I feel bad about not producing, but to be honest, I've just been "blah" since my job began and maybe I just need to do stuff for myself for a while, rather than worrying about any audience.

I guess you could say I'm into the "teenaged" phase of this furry thing. I just looked at my avatar after getting off a hellish work day and was like, "Shit. I think I just dyed part of my hair." Which is to say I made a small tweak of color to help me experiment with my own identity, not unlike a teenager putting in some temporary color to see what he can get away with in the chance his parents flip, only I'm already living on my own here (God, I hope my parents aren't on this site). I suppose everyone has to find their identity through the same processes. The funny thing is this is really the only time I've had to deal with the issue. I've always had a strong sense of self and never had to worry much about experimenting, and when I did make a change, it was pretty much always permanent.

Just a bit of food for thought as I literally struggle to keep from passing out in front of my screen.

Well, he didn't stay there long, I'll admit. Honestly, I'm glad I waited it out until now instead of going into a panic, but honestly, at the moment, I just want my own identity. He might come back later. The avatar isn't going anywhere. In the meantime, have a sexy splash of red. I've always liked red, but I'll admit it looks a bit obnoxious against the blue of the sky. I dunno, I think it looks a bit more exciting and modern to have it "Net" in black and "sky" in red. I've had that in mind for a while now but never got around to it.

Cheers!



Late, off-topic edit:

As a side note, I think I need to just break down and write stuff in MS Word for now on. I'm using the linking system to clean out an embarrassing number of errors in Glass Box. It's never much, but I'm consistently finding typos and such in all of them, and if that goes for everything, well, it's faster to just wait for Word to load up than to go back much, much later and have to fix everything. And I mean everything.

This is what I get for writing at night and using WordPad.

Because in essence I just kiiiinda sorta realized I have one. >.<

Y'see, many of my stories get inspired by art, which means in a lot of cases I'm essentially writing about anything from generic characters to fursonas, probably with changes because I drop and/or add details to suit my own preferences, tweak species, normalize colors, etc.

So I guess in light of that and my seeming inability to stop, I'm just going to start apologizing for the big ones as I release stories where it's blatantly obvious.


Segue to starting on that, I guess my first official apology goes out to  grisser for essentially stealing Vinnie from him for Glass Box. Admittedly, I said as much at the time and I added more to the character than Grisser ever probably had in mind in his one-off image, but still, I even cropped his pic for the icon without asking and for that, well, *holds out a large paper fan*, I'll be waiting should you ever find it all. Please don't sue me. >.<


And again, (official) apologies to  rrowdybeast specifically for the bull-wolf. I've always tried to hold off on fursonas as much as possible, but well, the dancing pic tripped something in my brain where before, if I'm being honest, I didn't have much interest in the design. I guess it's a testament to your ability to express emotion, which is something you've always excelled at and should be proud of, but doesn't excuse me adding something very, very similar, or at least something that can be assumed to be very similar in absence of my having gone into excruciating detail. I figure you for more of a baseball bat kinda guy, so, *holds out Louisville Slugger*, please don't sue me, either. >.<


That's about it for released material, actually. So far, at least.




DAY-LATE EDIT:

Just a thought on my own character, John (whom I just realized is a potential target for people drawing horrible things happening to if they're ticked at me (side note, contacted Grisser about Vinnie today and it went well, now considering whether I value my life enough to contact Fen)), I guess you could say I figured out our relationship at this point. To wit, it's kind of like Lan and MegaMan.exe from the MegaMan Battle Network games, only without all the fancy programming or unbeknownst to us being my twin brother. So I guess not really at all in all technicality, but in the sense that he's kind of my face online without actually being me and being his own entity.

So I guess an avatar that's not supposed to represent me in any way. ...Shut up! It's probably weirder for me than it is for you!

Like I always said, or at least have been saying, I generally see the avatar as a reflection of the self, so the idea that it's not is rather alien to me. So I guess you can say that my previous avatar, a net against the sky with the word Netsky in PC Senior font (don't bother downloading it, BTW; it's nowhere near complete and won't have the proper characters when it is) represents me perfectly in this place in that I took the wrong name and needed something to reinforce the right one in people's minds, as well as that I'm pretty well anonymous here.

I COULD just make an account under that name, mind you, but to be honest, I think Fen might be onto something with his changing accounts and I feel that a move would be the opposite of what I need to define myself at this point, ironically. I've been distancing myself from things I signed up for as Netsky, either intentionally or unintentionally, because to be honest I used it to sign up for things that simply didn't end up interesting me and in some cases I don't want hanging around my neck, and while I have signed up for things under it since beginning that move, such as Inkbunny, honestly, this is my #1 spot for my activities and the only place I've ever posted anything to. I mean I'm still going to prefer people to think of me as Netsky, but for the time being, making an account move, although I've been considering it, means losing everything I've done here and continue to do here, including the loss of PM convos with some truly great people as I went back to fix my mistakes. I guess you could say that while I'm Netsky, I still need to establish myself under the Jesse Cheetah name and finally define myself before I can properly take on the (renewed) Netsky identity. Because by that point I probably won't even remember any of my Netsky passwords.

Which is entirely not the point I set out to make, but I guess that's what journals are for. I dunno. I offered Fen a nice Ash bat, and John is there to provide a face, so I guess 1 + 1 = however many pieces Fen ends up wanting to draw from the resulting impact and I can sit back and feel bad for John while catching flying fish. It's nice to have a patsy. :P



Another day later:

Honestly, now that I've had time to think about it, I didn't actually describe Dunc in enough detail for it to really come off as Fen's character, at least without having put up a link to the pic that inspired him and the specific scene. There are more canine-bovine hybrids out there than his and while he's the image I have, that's not really the image I gave. At least not in the text. So I guess I've just been doing more overreacting. I've been doing that a lot lately, but then I've got a lot splitting my attention at the moment, so I haven't been giving myself much time to actually park myself and really judge in my harried time.

I just did it up today. How, you might ask? Well, while I suck at drawing, I'm experienced doing pixel art. Like some of my fondest memories include messing around in MS Paint as a kid making comics with my family, making up stories as we went along. My first experience working in pixels was at age 10, when I wanted orange, which MS Paint on Windows 3.1 just didn't have, so I went and alternated red and yellow pixels to make a carrot.

Why do I not do a ton of pixel art? Well, I do, just not here. Most of it is dedicated to graphics for a few game projects I have (learning to program them is another matter). Plus, it's effing time-consuming. Like, I did this avatar up all at once, and it took me a good hour or more. I might make a few improvements later, but right now I'm short on time.

Does this mean I'm making a fursona for myself? Yes and no. I mean, I guess a cheetah is as good as anything, and I've had the appearance on my mind for a while now, especially the glasses, but I guess it's not really "me." Like, it's no one, or at least no one in particular. I just figured I'd break down and put a cheetah up there, since it's my account name, which, keep in mind, was slightly stolen, so the cheetah up there isn't really "Jesse," either.

I guess you could say it's less an avatar and more a change of pace with me putting up something I actually built from the ground up instead of a picture of a net overlaid over a picture of the sky. It's certainly nicer to look at. It just doesn't mean I've actually gone properly furry. :/



Edit: Oh, like wow. I forgot about the whole thing where it posts with shouts and junk, too. I just visited Moriko's page and saw it up there and was like "Whoa...! That really looks like a furry...!"

Like, okay, yeah, putting up an actual cheetah fur, even one that I made and have had in silent mental development for months, was just a little bit out of my comfort zone, or else I wouldn't have made this journal explaining it in the first place, but it really just hit me that that's now essentially my face on here, and it's, like, an actual face, not just some anonymous image. I'm honestly not sure if I'm comfortable enough with that to let it stay.

I mean, it would be a real asshole thing of me to say I'm not comfortable with furries. I am, or else I wouldn't be here. We're all people. I'm just not sure I'm comfortable committing to having an actual face on here, or at least one that's not human. Like I've always said, I don't see myself as one, or even really as any animal in particular. I... think I'm going to have to think about this... It's not that I don't want to have the pic up on my page. I'm rather proud of it given how fast I cranked it out, and it makes me more confident in my ability to do stuff for my game ideas. I just don't want people thinking that it's me when it's not.


I know this probably sounds really dickish, freaking out over people thinking I'm a fur, but, well, aside from the fact that people probably already assume I am just from being here, I guess I just don't know if it's the face I want people to think of when they think of me. It sounds pretty pathetic saying I'm a human, but having "cheetah" in my account name, and then having a cheetah in my avatar. Like, pathetic and defensive and in denial.

*sigh* I think I'm taking it down for now. I have to really think and decide. Maybe I'll upload it and get your guys' feedback on it. I just, it kinda just hit me that I was giving people a face to see me as, and if I'm doing that, I want that face to be me.




Edit again:

Wow. Reading that up there now makes me feel like a total heel. I'm actually disappointed in myself for reacting that badly to my realization. But, in the interest of honesty, I guess it stays. I really haven't changed as much as I'd like in my time here. I put up my first story two years ago and seeing myself flipping out like that showed me I'm still the same guy in a blind panic about the whole "furry" thing from back then. That was honestly something I'd hoped I'd left behind.

I mean I'm not a furry, at least not in the sense of the whole fursona aspect (the porn is just fine), and at this point I'm comfortable saying that's probably not changing. It just saddens me that I'm still as scared sh*tless of being mistaken for one as I was when I started writing. Granted, it's a question of identity, but it shouldn't be that important of one that I react that badly when there's a chance of it happening. Especially since there's already a good chance it happens every day.

At any rate, I've posted up the image and the proper questions in this submission. Please post comments in there for providing feedback on whether I should use it, but if you're going to berate me for/be understanding about this journal itself, please keep it here.



Edit once more:

Reading two edits ago again, you know what? I didn't handle it nearly as bad as I thought I did in my last edit. Those are valid concerns and while, yeah, maybe I did flip a little bit, I'm better than I was two years ago.

I guess this is just an emotional roller coaster, but then it's a big decision for a sleep-deprived guy. Like I said, an avatar is the face you put out to the world. I've been using other faces elsewhere for so long that I haven't actually had to think about it since about... 2005 or so. That's a very, very long time.

At any rate, I know I put it up to you guys to decide, but you know what? I'm better than that, too. I mean not like better than you guys, but I'm going to do what I did this morning: grow a pair, take the bull by the horns, and make the change. Even if it's not my face, it's at least a face, which is a step up from a fishing net on clouds.

So I met a cute girl at the pharmacy yesterday. Apparently she went to my school and we graduated together. Problem is she's only here for the summer and will be back off to college in fall. Which is a shame, because it was pretty clear she still likes me (I was actually absurdly popular in high school despite being shy), and seems really nice.

Of course, her being a girl, our conversation sent me straight back to my early days of puberty in terms of awkwardness. I mentioned this in a comment on a story, but despite being an adult, and having a real job now, I still can't talk to girls. Or at least not on romantic terms. Like I work with women and one of my co-workers is about my age, too, but that's a business relationship, not a prospective romantic one. If she showed any interest in me, work would get really awkward really fast.

So that's why I write male work. I'm meh on furry females and will probably never do anything with one because they just don't interest me, and I mean at all. Furry males are @-,@ for me, and furry males with human males are just peachy, although human males on their own are, if I'm being honest, marginally better than furry females. Not like, I wanna go out RIGHT NOW and get a boyfriend, but I can watch maybe a few minutes at a time of gay porn before all the cheese gets to me, which is more than I could guess for most people I can think of. I just can't watch anything with a woman in it because, well, yeah, I get really embarrassed. I am such a prude. XD

But yeah, all my male work is about relationships, and the couple straight stories I've done are about relationships, despite the fact the only one I've released started out as a male thing and got converted (and please, really do tell me if you find any gender issues in there, since I found one right at the beginning MONTHS after I put it up) and the other biggest one has been in the works since, well, about my second month writing this stuff, on and off. I can write stuff about guys because it's less embarrassing. Guys are just more chill in general and more approachable, and while I do have a good handle on how girls think and have been told I write them well, when it comes to porn, guys are just, well, more approachable.

I guess you could say I can write gay porn because it means less to me. Not that I don't see homosexuality as valid; love is love, no matter who it's with. It's just, outside of men with fur or scales, it's not really who I feel I'd like to end up with. I do intend to settle down with a nice girl someday. Even someday soon if this job works out (which I pray to God it does, because I'm not 18 anymore and not getting any younger). Maybe have 2.5 kids when we're ready (I have a weak stomach and handling my cat is hard enough, but I do do great with kids and my cat is basically my baby), a couple cars, and we'll keep cats instead of dogs, because cats are just more chill. Nothing stale like white picket fences, but a nice ranch-style house in a nice neighborhood with a decent back yard and some nice trees for shade.

So I guess this is just sort of a personal thing that I was thinking about, and I'm putting it here so you guys might get to know me better. I haven't really opened up here until now and I still really don't feel like a part of the furry community, or even really this community, but for those of you who have stayed with me and watched me for a while, I guess this is a small look at my hopes and dreams, some of my flaws, or maybe virtues depending on how you think of it, and a better look at me personally.

Just very, very busy. Got a new job and the hours are murder. I'm getting over my disinterest in writing the smut part of things in bits and pieces, but overall I haven't been writing that much anyway and it's been very selective. As long as I limit the cheese, I can spit out a marginally good scene, but, really, still mostly focused on the clean parts. I'd love to say I've been doing more with Glass Box, but I really haven't, since while I have ideas for what happens later, I'm stumped as to how to get there right now or how to organize it. Under My Belt is seeing a bit of progress, though. The plus of that one is that I set a hard limit on the number of stories that'll be included. That makes it easier to manage.

But yeah, I'm waking up early in the morning to drag myself in to open the place, then school, and by the time I'm done with it all, I'm really not in a mood to be writing things for any real amount of time.

So, I guess Monty Python summed it up best with "he's not dead; he's just sleeping!" :P



Edit: Know that I've still been popping in to check comments and faves and stuff. I just don't have the energy to reply between having to wake up at 5AM every day and my back killing me by the time I'm done at work 12 hours later, then a long drive home. Then I pass out at no later than 9PM and start the whole process over. What time not spent sleeping, driving, or working is usually spent bumping around online flat on my back to ease the ache and stiffness. Thusly, I haven't had much chance to write about other people being flat on their backs, either. :P

This job is going to kill me.

As mentioned in my previous journal, writing porn is just getting to be not fun anymore. Like, okay, sex is a part of life, so in cases where that's involved, it'll still get touched on, but the mechanical act is just getting to be, well, burned out. I've been finding my focus less and less on that for quite some time simply because real sex isn't all that hyper-technical porn stuff. There are only so many ways you can comfortably do it, and writing the same stuff over and over lost its luster a while ago.

That's not to say I won't still be handling it, but most of my stories at this point are in the "add the sex here later" boat. It'll take time for me to get around to all that, and in the meantime, nothing's complete enough to release. So things probably aren't going to get cranked out as fast.

I've written myself into a corner with a lot of my WIPs. The same goes for that Easter story I promised. I'm going to probably have to break that promise. I know all what happens in there, but I'm just blah on writing it.

So, really, expect to see less porn and more probably just adult stories for a while, maybe forever. I really don't know. I guess I consider myself more of a comedian than a pornographer at this point. I've always called myself a writer first and a pornographer second. I'm just burned out on writing sex. We'll see what I can come up with as time goes on.

It's one of those late-night epiphanies. Basically, EPS as it stands right now does have an overarching plot and timeline. It's also mostly one-shots. Therefore, the smart thing for me to do to keep writing it as it is would be to connect all the main story stuff and leave the one-shots as islands. Or, in other words, I get to have my cake and eat it, too. Everything is canon, I get a timeline, you guys get all the pr0n as things told out of order. Because, really, trying to release it all "in order" when most of them have no particular order is kind of a pain. So just because you're hearing stuff that doesn't make sense after the ending just means it happened before that point. Likewise, some of them will be after the end and stuff will still work that way. Maybe I'll make new icons to mark them or something.


Also, on releasing stuff out of order, I've been doing some FF stuff. No, not more Zell. Sorry. This is FF7 stuff. Unfortunately, I have a bunch written from later on and have missing bits in between. So, really, would it be too much of a problem if I released the intro and then tossed order slightly to the wind? Comments are appreciated. Since it's one plot, I'd be going the Glass Box route and linking them in order, but the fun thing is that it doesn't matter the order they were submitted. Okay, so it's kind of a mess on my end and maybe confusing on yours, but otherwise I've got finished material sitting unreleased, and I have enough problems with UNfinished stuff never getting released. XD


Glass Box will totally be released fully in order, though. That one's too important to be messing around with.

The more I think about it, the more it becomes clear that this whole "furry" thing isn't just something I stumbled into. Looking back, even as a kid I liked "furry" characters better for some reason. Red XIII is the only feral that really grabbed me, but grab me he did, and my favorite X-Man has pretty much always been Beast. Blanka was my main in Street Fighter, King was my main in Tekken, and I have to admit I kept Kimahri in my party partly because of how he looked. Despite being a pretty awful game, I thought Lynx from Chrono Cross was a pretty decent villain. When I played the first Lands of Lore game as an ankle-biter, I almost always picked Kieran (and now I feel old -.-). When Mareg died in Grandia 2, it was one of only a very few times a video game ever made me cry (the only other one I can remember being when Bugenhagen died in FF7, again, with Red). Leomon was one of my favorite Digis and giving him to Lain's writer to kill off was like ripping my heart out.

You'll notice that almost all of those are feline guys. If you didn't, Google is your friend. :P

Point being, I guess, that I always figured I just favored cats. I guess you could say now that while I DO favor cats, I was cuddling up to furs (or at least near-furs) for most of my formative years, and there just happened to be more cats out there. It's just kind of odd to realize that now in retrospect.



So, that said, I've been 34-ing things from my childhood lately and have noticed a sore lack of the following characters:
* Red XIII from FF7 - there's some of him out there, but only enough to leave you wanting more. FIX IT! :P
* Lynx from Chrono Cross - there's like nothing on this sexy feline, for we all know Evil Is Sexy.
* Mareg from Grandia 2 - there's so little of this barrel-chested lion-man that FA only has one pic of him. Grandia 2 isn't an obscure game; it was out on Dreamcast, PC, and PS2. FIX IT!
* Ax and Elfangor from Animorphs - or Andalites in general. Come on, people, I can't hold up the Animorphs quota with just two stories forever!
* Ifrit from FF8 and FFX - he pretty well had me when he decided to be a lion. A wolf is okay, too.
* while we're on summons, Maduin from FF6, Gilgamesh from FF in general, and Griever from FF8 - for Maduin, LOOK AT THIS HUNK OF BEEF! http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3053397/ Gilgamesh has 8 arms to work with (not a major thing of mine, but that's pretty special) and Griever for being a winged black lion, which you know is black velvet over rock-hard muscle. :P
* and finally, more lion-Kero from Card Captors - furry or feral, I don't care, but the grand total of 3 pics I've ever found of him were totally great, so I wouldn't mind having enough for its own folder.

Get on it, people!