Hey guys!

I don't know who all still watches this account, and I honestly don't know why anyone would be, but good news!

As of today, I have an apartment. I will actually have a home.

Hey,

so for anyone still paying attention after all this time, I'm kind of back. I have reliable internet access now, live in an illegally parked RV with solar power, and have some free time to dick around online. It looks like I'll probably be able to get into an RV park in the near future, too. I can't say when I might start doing art again, though... for one thing I don't have a good computer or scanner handy, it's been an incredibly long time since I've drawn at all, and... I'm kind of depressed. But I have sketchbook waiting for when I can work up the nerve to do it.

Amazingly, yeah, we're still homeless. Half a year about and every job has turned Kelly down. It's gotten suspicious and I fear her prior employer is working to keep her unemployed... or maybe it's just because the bay's tech scene was really scared about a bubble burst for a long time. That seems to have passed, so maybe our luck will change.

As for me, I'm apparently overqualified for everything. I'm homeless, but everyone tells me they think I'll just quit to become a teacher or something, due to my Masters degree. As if it's as simple as showing a degree and not a half year or more process full of paid testing and security checks... but anyway, yeah, an English Masters doesn't open up a lot of job doors, but it does close a lot.

In more catch 22's, one of our parents is willing to pay for a place we can live until we get jobs and can afford it ourselves, but he isn't willing to sign anything, out of fear for his credit. But everywhere I find requires proof of income, so it's out of our reach.

We're in the San Francisco Bay Area, if anyone knows of space for rent, jobs (tech engineer for Kelly, anything for me), or can offer us a little money to help us survive. I hope someday I can come back to actually having a presence here....

So here we are, about two weeks into being homeless. For a while we camped and went to motels, but we can't afford to keep that up, and we can't job search when camping, so we're back in Fremont and sleeping in our cars. It does suck, but you know, it's not as miserable as I'd feared it would be.

Job searching is picking up slowly, for my wife an myself. We're also looking at family shelters we can apply to.

If anyone can help a little, for food and gas expenses at the least, you can donate here:

https://www.gofundme.com/229gp7dw

It's been a long time since I've been on here... at least in any meaningful way. I can't really even claim to be an artist anymore.

So nearly two years ago, my wife was working as an engineer at Apple. And... some pointless bad things happened for no particular reason, that resulted in her being arrested, abused, all charges being dropped, and then being fired from Apple anyway. The experience was traumatic and she went on disability, which let us barely scrape by as long as I dedicated all of my time to managing our lives and taking care of everyone in the family. So... no time for fun, like doing furry art.

Well, the disability ran out and my wife is struggling to find a job. And it's actually going well! Unfortunately, it's not going faster than the eviction we've been trying to beat out. And now, we have 11 days to be out with no where to go and no money for a new place, or any friends willing to put us up out here (California, Bay Area). Our last ditch effort to keep our home was to sell our car, which should be great since it's one of the VW Diesels that got the company in trouble. Good news is, you get a huge bonus on the value of the car if you sell it back to them. Bad news is, the court doesn't actually approve the deal until mid October, at which point we'll be extra homeless.

I know at this point everyone's definitely forgotten all about me. Hell, I don't think I was all that notable before hand. Ostensibly I'm begging for help, but I don't honestly expect any.

Sorry, I'm pretty down.

We put together a Gofundme to try and get help. It didn't go far, but if anyone is willing:

https://www.gofundme.com/229gp7dw

Hey guys,

My wife and I are interested in going to Rainfurrest. Problem is, we never went and got rooms. We didn't even REALLY decide to try and go until last night. But from what I hear, everything is sold out. Even the non-con hotels.

So... anyone got some space? In a hotel room, or if you live nearby, etc? We'd have a car, so just living in the area would be fine still. We've got money, there won't be any "can I sleep on the floor for free" shit going on.

Anyone able to help?

Hey guys,

We all know every artist lusts after a cyntiq. No matter how good you get with a tablet, the ability to draw right on the image instead of trying to line up your hand and eye in different locations... it's the dream!

But most of use can't afford a cyntiq. The cheap, tiny, lame cyntiq is like a freaking grand. And while the technology is impressive enough to cost a lot most of us are making, if we're lucky, a hundred bucks on a commission that takes us weeks to complete. Many of us are slaving away at $20, $40 pieces. Justifying that expense, let alone saving up for it, just isn't feasible until you're already good enough AND well known enough AND fast enough to pull in a pretty descent income on just art.

But salvation is at hand!

So my wife found this tablet on Monoprice. I was skeptical at first, because while I know there's some competitors to the cyntiq these days all the ones I'd seen had some significant limitations (like weighing a ridiculous amount, or pen lag, or whatever) and monoprice is known for giving a fair price on cables that most stores mark up horribly... not for making cutting edge equipment.

After looking at some reviews, it ends up that last part is unfair. Monoprice has been making traditional tablets for a while, for stupidly low prices, and the reviews have been spectacular. Many say they're actually better than wacom, and this goes doubly for Mac (Wacom's Mac drivers leave something to be desired), and they recently updated the drivers making them even better (and clearing out the issues reviews did bring up, so keep that in mind if you go read some). So we went ahead and bought the tablet.

And it's amazing! So this tablet is 19 inches, and if you're not so good at visualizing that, it's significantly larger than my laptop's screen. And my laptop screen isn't tiny. This thing is full on monitor sized! And its performance is great! No lag issues, the color depth is fantastic, it's highly adjustable and it makes an awesome second monitor, too. And now for the kicker...

It's just under $400! http://www.monoprice.com/Product?p_id=10707

Seriously, literally every artist working on a computer needs this sexy piece of technology sitting with them.

For the sake of honesty, a couple things, so no one gets surprised.

First, the stylus doesn't have an eraser. I never used the eraser myself, I just select it from my drawing program's toolbar, but some people like flipping their stylus over to erase.

Second, sometimes when moving between drawing on the tablet and using the laptop's touchpad the clicking on the touchpad will stop working. It can be fixed by tapping the tablet with the pen, then going back to the touchpad, but it's still a little annoying.

Third, sometimes the tablet just starts acting like clicks are happening that aren't when my hand is on it. My wife says the tech uses electromagnetic fields or some shit, like an iphone, and so it might be activating the tablet through my hand? My understanding of what she said has probably made this sound dumb as hell, but I'm going to dry using a glove when I use it and see if that helps. I'd just keep my hand off of it, but the thing is 19 inches; easier said than done.

My only other issue is actually the fault of Manga Studio 5 on the Mac; there's no minimize/maximize button selection, it just binds to the item bar, so you can't drag the program to the second monitor. If you move the toolbar to the second monitor, at least when I did it, the stylus started tracking on the laptop screen instead of the tablet. You can move all the individual toolbars in the program, besides the main one, to the second monitor but it's annoying and time consuming, and any dialogue box still pops up on the laptop. The only fix I've been able to find is that if you close the laptop, everything jumps to the second monitor, so while that does get Manga Studio over there, I can't use the laptop to pull up references. Hopefully I'll find a better fix, but the Manga Studio people have been incredibly unhelpful about it.

In the end, though, this is incredibly cheap for a second monitor and tablet separately, it's exceptional at combining the two into an amazing piece of hardware!

Hey guys, I need a little help.

My wife and I like to play iPhone/iPad games together, but we don't have any that we can REALLY play together. I mean, we have a bunch with social enabled aspects but no true multiplayer ones.

When I look online I don't see much that's interesting, and a surprising number are for multiple people on the same iPad, which is just not what we're looking for. We really want to be more directly involved with each other when we play, but we have our own devices.

Anyone have any good suggestions?

Hey guys,

So A couple days ago Furoticon, the furry card game, published a piece of writing I did for them. I've been a big fan of the game for a long time and I'm pretty excited about this!

It's a spin-off from the game's tie-in novel, but no prior knowledge of the characters is necessary for the short piece. It is pornographic, too.

http://furoticon.com/getcards.php#DAAVIN2

I really don't talk about myself enough here... good god.

So, a few weeks ago I got married! Just after FC, in fact,  kellylsb and I filled out the paperwork and tied the knot!

If anyone who knows me in RL is about to get pissed we didn't invite them, hold on a second. We haven't had a big ceremony... yet.

First, after much discussion, we decided that we didn't want to put off something as important to us as getting married until we'd saved up enough money.

Second, while we will have one (or maybe more) small ceremonies down the line, we decided our marriage isn't about having a big party for everyone else. It was about us. So we went ahead and did it.

Thirdly, I'm not so big on rituals and Kelly kind of hates them. Stresses her out. Having our ceremony after we're legally married already relieves that stress and makes it just a fun little party to celebrate how awesome we are.

Notably, married life is exactly the same only I say 'wife' now, which is fun.

So a person very close to me is currently building an app for finding unisex and private restrooms. It uses a map and users logging the locations of restrooms to share their location and details. It's intended for transsexual/intersex people (who are often discriminated against over bathroom usage, and sometimes attacked) but honestly, I think anyone who's shy about sharing a restroom would love this thing.

She's doing this independently, though. As in, after her full time job she works a full time second job coding this for free. Or almost free, because...

https://www.gittip.com/tkwidmer/

... is where people can pledge a little bit of money each week to support her efforts. I would personally appreciate it if anyone could pledge even just a couple bucks, but I also figure there's a lot of folks who would be personally interested in this. If you are, even if you can't pledge anything, please share this around and spread the word!

Hey guys, just letting you all know, I'll be attending Further Confusion! I live fairly close now, so of course I should! Probably just driving from home for it each day, though. Anyway, I won't be in the alley or whatever it is they call it, just attending.

If anyone does find me, well, there'll be a big surprise! Let me know who you are and I promise you'll get a prize for your troubles. I hope I meet some new folks there! It's a whole different convention crowd for me!

Hey guys, so I've decided to come clean about something. I've actually been doing furry writing for quite a while now, but I've been doing it on a secret account. I was doing this because, initially, it was all for someone else's project. A friend was doing a whole, like, bondage furry thing and he wanted me to do the writing for it. Well, I've decided I want to be open about it, so I can post my personal writing with it, write about my own characters, and do art for those stories.

So, I do writing (mostly porn) under  robur. I also have the account mirrored at robur.sofurry.com

I've also been doing a bunch of writing this past year for furry anthologies of short stories, but so far none of them have gotten published. So, I'm going to start posting some of them over at my writing account. Others I have different plans for but I'm going to share more of this stuff with you all.

Well, that's the long and short of it I guess.

So it's that time of year again. I'm yet older than I was before. No massive, amazing plans today; pretty much just dinner. It comes right on the heels of moving into my new house (Daly City, for those other furs in the bay area I might run into). We also have a new car and I got a hew iPhone, so it sort of feels like I'm already getting presents!

Now to see if I can talk any of my friends into buying me Furoticon cards....

So, tomorrow evening I'm flying out to Youmacon. I'll be able to pop online occasionally, but not very often. You can leave me notes, but I won't get back to them quickly.

So I'll be working for the convention in registration, so you're not going to, like, spot me in AA or anything. If anyone will be there and wants to meet up/needs help with something you can send me a note and I'll give you my contact information. I'm always happy to help out furries.

If any of you are going, I hope you have fun at least!

I've been struck by something in the past year that's been kind of shocking. We all experience and value this fandom really, really differently. As an artist my view of the fandom has always been very, very art-centric. And since most of the furries I interacted with were pretty wrapped up in art this never really got challenged. In college I met other furry artists and their friends. I met more local furries that were learning art. I dated another furry artist. I went to cons where I stayed in the artist alley, talking to artists and customers of artists. To me, the fandom was about art. The celebrities of the fandom were the artists. I think or a lot of people here on FA that's the fandom they see.

I was always aware that there was this other, like, segment of the fandom that lived for suiting. I remember reading about Dan Savage, a sex advice columnist, asking a furry friend what furry was and being told it was all about suiting. He got a lot of negative fallout for saying that, which was stupid because a furry told him that. It really struck me that this person clearly must not have understood just how much more of the fandom there was. But the suiters are a big group, and they're pretty much celebrities at cons. They have their own growing economy of fur suit makers, tons of people are into sex in suits to the point of excluding other interests, and there's many furries who are such fans of fursuits that it's basically why they're furries.

Obviously, I've been just as myopic about the fandom. And now I've met several other furries who aren't into art or suits. I was confused by this at first. Like, then what are you into? For some it's social. Some are into particular sub-fandoms and have little interest outside of those. Some don't seem to be into any of that but they're still here in the fandom. People I can mention a supremely popular artist like Onta to and they don't know that is. And I find that when they say "popufur" they're referring to a well known suit or just a furry with lots of friends and I have no idea who they are.

I thought I knew this fandom pretty damn well, but it seems like I still have a lot to learn about it.

So, Kelly and I will be attending Burning Man this year!

This will be our first Burning Man, so I'm pretty nervous about it. I finally managed to get in contact with the furry camp but apparently they're already overbooked, so I'm not sure where we'll be camping. Probably near one of our friends that's taking a camper, but I don't know where they're camping either, so we'll see.

Despite not staying in the furry camp I imagine I'll be over there a lot, though. Even just to meet more local furries, but also because... you know, furries. I love that shit!

If anyone watching me is going, I'd love to meet people! I know it's not too likely any of you are going, but still, let me know where you'll be and I'll come looking for you!

My friend  lestria and I got a commission from my pal  unimpressive! And it is absolutely beautiful, guys!

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/11230594/

Herm on female, squirrel paw fetish!

So, knowing people and working in pornography, I'm sometimes struck by this distinction. I have kind of a hard time understanding it, really. But there is a big divide, for most of us, between the things we want in our fantasies and the things we actually desire. I'll go into some examples to clarify that.

It's easiest to see in the bigger fetishes. Like, the ones that are already a whole big, fantasy framework; incidentally, these sorts of fantasies tend to be the ones that are between difficult and impossible in the real world. So for example, vore; obviously some people do, in fact, want to be eaten and digested. But enough people who want to be eaten are still squeamish enough about that whole digestion thing that even their fantasies need to have escape methods. And the majority, I think, would not actually do it in the real world regardless. I mean, not many people would commit suicide for a fetish scene, right?

I've just created the danger of this going way off topic so I'm going to drop vore now. Just suffice it to say that if you are actively interested in being consumed alive by some creature... well, go work on that I guess. Or not. Probably shouldn't. Whatever, moving on.

Back to my original consideration, it's much more interesting when we get down to the things that are very possible. But these exact behaviors will turn most of us off in real life. Time for more examples!

So hey, most of us like threesome and orgy porn. I know from favs and views that group sex is really, really popular amongst us perverts, in fact! But the vast majority of us wouldn't do it. Well, leave me out of the 'us' there, but even then, I'm pretty picky about the situation. I'm not just going to jump into any opportunity with nary a thought.

Rape fetishes tend to work this way, too. Even the people who fantasies about committing rapes aren't generally rapists, it's more about power and a lack of accountability (like, if I do something and the other person doesn't like it, instead of it ruining the night it doesn't matter) but mostly it's a popular fetish with girls and guys who like to bottom, but again, it's not like they're out trolling alleyways hoping someone drags them away and rapes them. It's about force and submission, not actually getting raped.

How about impregnation fantasies, especially those hinging on impregnating strangers/people you're not in a relationship with. This is rather different from even fantasizing about having a child with your partner. Yeah, lots of guys go out and have unprotected sex and get girls pregnant in the real world. I posit, though, that this is rarely due to a fetish and more to do with simple selfishness. And much more so for the girls, for whom this situation is about poor planning. I believe it's rather unusual for a person to have flings and one night stands while desperately hoping they result in a baby. I think that's a fair presumption.

three examples is a good place to move on, I think, but honestly I mostly want to talk about the first one (which is actually a pretty big blanket item), as I think most of us can understand easily that rape and pregnancy fetishes are mostly focused on powerplay through representation (ie, what a fetish essentially is). But the threesomes, the orgies, the partner swapping, the cuckolding, etc... the fantasies where you're having sex with someone who is sleeping with other people and you know it. That's what I'm getting down to.

So, show of hands, how many of you like group sex in porn? Another show of hands, how many of you want to have group sex in real life? And how many of those hands kinda sorta like the idea maybe, but imagining the situation where it would work is terribly unlikely? That's a hugely different number of hands, isn't it? In fact, how many of you couldn't help but look at the bottom in that situation as a whore?

For a real world example, I remember reading a few years ago this bit of drama. At a big furry con a guy was organizing a room sex party where the only rule was that anyone who came had to come on him. He had this rule because the previous year, while quite a few people showed up only like three elected to actually use him, like he had wanted. He'd figured getting a whole bunch of guys who liked watching a twink get bukaked would result in exactly that, but it ended up 90% of them were only interested in watching it happen. I'd say "or shy" but these are already people who decided to show up at an orgy party, so I'm ruling shy right the hell out.

How that whole drama turned out isn't important, though one part of it is. People got upset about it being unsafe, even though he required anyone coming to have proof of a recent STD test. Now, I'm not here to argue about how reliable the tests are or anything, just pointing out that the people getting upset about a total stranger trying to live out a fantasy that FA contains BILLIONS of images of where assuming he was a disease ridden slut unworthy of respect. I'm willing to bet 90% of them later jerked off to images of very similar things happening. And that's why this whole topic confuses me!

So to remind the, like, three people reading this the current premise is: most people like to look at multiple people fucking one submissive, but in real life would become disgusted by that submissive.

For the bottom, let's keep going with this; how many people are turned on by the idea of multiple people using them or pleasuring them, but in real life wouldn't be able to go through with it? Probably the majority again.

So why? Is it purely a matter of trust? I mean, the more people you have to convince yourself are safe (because honestly, you're never TRULY sure, even with your partner) the harder it is to believe you're really safe. But I don't think that's why it is. I think it has a lot more to do with looking down on the person taking all them dicks, and the fear of people thinking exactly that of us if we take all them dicks. Certainly the idea that people, particularly the male stereotype, love the idea of sluts but then hate the actual 'sluts' isn't new, but... isn't recognizing that the first step to getting over our stupid hangups?

And if we don't actually want to have orgies then why do we keep seeking out porn of it? Are we not actually imagining ourselves as part of that situation? Is the appeal more purely voyeuristic than the assumptions we make about porn? And really... isn't voyeurism generally more about placing yourself, through imagination, into the skin of another person's sex life anyway? Window shopping for different kinds of experience, so to speak.

Finally, should we feel bad about this discrepancy? I'm going to say yes. Quite frankly, it is disasterously unfair to look down on people while also fantasizing about them. If not for your own clearly fractured sense of desire then for respect of another person's humanity. And also honesty, because they're the one living their dream. You're the one feeling bad for yours (if you're not, then don't take this personally; I kind of have to speak in very general terms right now) putting down people who aren't really any different from you. Don't say you can't help but have those feelings, either; you can work against your own nature to become a better person. It's, like... what the entire history of human society is about. Becoming better than we were.

Now, all of that said, would any of you who liked that group sex porn but didn't want to do it RL reconsider? Or do you still have no interest?

Hey guys, just felt like musing on something for a little bit.

So I really like cyberpunk. Like, it's my favorite genre of... things. I like the punk aesthetic a lot to begin with, I love scifi, I like dark tones and messages in stories... cyberpunk is crafted for specifically me.

But I think most people see it as something of a dead genre. I mean, it had a real heyday with the literature back in the day but in the 90's it fell off quickly and now it's just an occasional thing. It's been getting a resurgence in videogames but they don't seem to be driving a trend. I mean, Mirror's Edge, Deus Ex and Syndicate didn't launch a million imitators. We have some more coming out now but it's still only a few games (I know of Remember Me, Cyberpunk 2077 and Watchdogs which is so near future I'm not sure it counts) but I hope the genre really catches on again.

I'm always interested in why things are the way they are, though, and I've been looking close at cyberpunk for a while because I'm working on it behind the scenes here. I'm worried these projects I'm working on aren't going to go anywhere, as multi-person projects frequently don't (life happens, and the more people involved the more likely life is to happen to one of them) but I'm not giving up. I am, however, looking at how to freshen things up.

For those who don't look at all, the genre has done what a lot of obscure genres do; the adherents have become more and more exclusive. They don't like change and they don't like new fans. Ironically, this guarantees their genre's stagnation. If you find one of these old school cyberpunk fans you'll find someone who still wants only 80's punk fashion, only tells you to read old books, and only tells you to watch old movies and anime. Sure, there hasn't been much good for a while (like that fucking Total Recall remake) but the attitude is clearly more than shunning bad movies. These people actively want cyberpunk to never change.

The problem is that cyberpunk was born out of a particular time. In the 80's street punks were the big counter culture, the drug scene had shifted from hippies and clubs to full on criminal enterprise, businessmen were flat out villains driving the country into a recession, the government was shifting between useless and corporate cronies, and technology was starting to advance really fast. The dark future this world envisioned was one where technology moved faster than anyone could follow it, corporations replaced governments as evil warlords and more and more of the population became punks by way of being shut out of the corporate culture. It was the fears of the 80's taken to their logical conclusion.

This made for some great media, too. I mean, read Neuromancer or watch Ghost in the Shell, or Blade Runner or hell Batman Beyond. It's great stuff! But these are the fears of the past. They don't resonate today. Ironically, part of that is because we now live some of them. Others have shifted so that at the core they're the same but they're superficially different.

Consider the all important factor of cyberpunk, the computer corporation. You can basically say that cyberpunk was the fear of Microsoft. Ubiquitous technology controlled by a single, self-serving hand hovering over the industry, ignoring laws, manipulating the market without concern for the fallout and strong-arming competition. But now Microsoft is not the evil empire and their leader is among the most prolific philanthropists to ever even exist! And the microsoft culture of mercenary, supply side, modular technology had a lot to do with the style. Instead we now have the whitewashed, image-controlled, unmodifiable, pop-culture-savvy Apple as the technological monolith. That just... doesn't work in Neuromancer.

So there's two ways to look at this. One is that the genre is dead. We can make homages to it, like the superficially cyberpunk remake of Total Recall that plays more like The Bourne Identity's distant sequel, but the zeitgeist just doesn't exist anymore. This view would suggest we focus on new genres that are naturally endemic to our current time. What is this? I don't really know... except I do and I'll get to that, but for now I'll pretend I don't know. I mean, it certainly isn't Star Wars or Star Trek; they're cool and all but the generation that shut down the Space Shuttle program and fell into a recession over a decade long can't really claim to represent itself with a galaxy spanning, single government, purely altruistic society. It might represent out liberal hopes of a utopian future (until threatened from outside, as the new Star Treks are basically about terrorism) but they certainly don't say anything about our fears of technology (unless someone fears that terrorists have developed super technology centuries ahead of ours, in which case... what?)

The second way to see this is that cyberpunk has to change. If the genre really couldn't fit us this would be stupid as the end result would just be something new. But I think it still fits us great, it just needs some new dressing. The thing is... we're on the doorstep of our very own dark cyberpunk future. If ever there was a time to exploit these fears it is now. The fears are so big, in fact, that I think it might have to be played as a technological horror story because these are not remote anymore. At all.

Today our government is in a shambles. The rules of polite politics were shattered as various persons decided to take the short term gains they could get by crossing lines and ruined the game for everyone. Corporations create puppet political movements to undermine existing parties, lobbying from special interests spits right in the face of their victims publicly, and confidence in the more and more destitute government is crumbling. Fighting taxation has become the rallying cry from many different directions, corporate and poor, and the fact that this literally means bankrupting the government is all too often met with "good, fuck them." In short, right or not, people increasingly don't trust the government. A few pushes and it could fall apart, or at least become so weak that it doesn't matter.

Our technology is growing too fast for us to even conceive of. I was born before the internet. Now my phone can store more information than my entire computer ten years ago and wirelessly access all the information ever (that is shared, which has now become a whole new way of controlling thought, knowledge and 'truth'), most of my appliances connect themselves to the internet, a robot vacuums my floors, video games look like reality, I can get pets of species that were engineered by science, heroin addiction can be cured with a pill (still too new for the market, though), food is starting to be genetically engineered (including meat), cars are starting to drive themselves, a new gun aims for you, a 3D printer can generate working complex objects, and the internet is so complex that the government agencies can't even keep up with or monitor all of it (especially the independent and legitimately valued internet currency, bitcoins, that can be used to buy illegal things untracably).

Counterculture has exploded into a whole myriad of subculture all defined by a disinterest in mainstream culture, to the point that mainstream has become a common insult and counterculture has begun to re-invade the mainstream. Your movies are from comics, niche nerd movies are super blockbusters, and TV on counterculture has gone from fear mongering like "Reefer Madness" to HBO specials that fully explore the cultures.

Meanwhile multiculturalism has taken off in a big way. Far more than the old predictions of Japan or China becoming really important. Twitter drives revolutions half a world away, blogs replace international news, you can be friends with someone on a distant continent so easily it happens by accident. The heroin cure I mentioned before? Developed by two joint labs on different continents. Research in Japan impacts America, civil rights movements in Africa get backed by American citizens, and the unintended consequences of our political policies spiral into international warfare (really, look at how we became the target of 9/11 and it's pretty dizzying). I can walk out of my apartment and depending on which direction I go I will be hearing different languages within blocks. The old world's barriers are breaking down.

And in our daily lives technology is becoming more defining. We WEAR technology. Most of us carry some variety of small computer on ourselves at all times. I know people selling clothing and accessories with EL wire built into them so you can be a neon sign. Bluetooth gives your accessories accessories of their own. Your car may well talk to satellites for directions and radio. Operating independently of technology isn't even an inconvenience now, it's a TERROR. And I share that terror. Without my phone's GPS I could be completely and totally lost very easily. Beyond computers, much of your clothing is made from materials that came out of a lab. Your food has had science applied to it, frequently even when you think it hasn't. Scents and sounds are being used to manipulate you right now, and in some parts of the world a vending machine will recognize your face and market to you. This is all "walking down the street" levels of technology and some of it you don't realize is even going on.

I'm only even scratching the surface here, too. I didn't plan this out. I just sat down and started writing. I'm just trying to weave a tapestry to make you realize that we're inches away from a cyberpunk prequel.

So as a genre, how do we handle this? Well, my first thought is that technology needs to look different. Something fancy should be white, flat planes and incredibly sterile like an Apple product. Second, punks can't be old street toughs. Like at our current subcultures. Goths, hipsters... whatever else the hell kids do these days. Look for new inspiration and stop treating these punks as a criminal underworld. They're really more of a social movement. Anonymous and LULsec should inspire the style for a punk, not a guy in a leather jacket in a back alley. Third, we need to really think about how technology both makes it harder to live outside of the mainstream, and how it creates loopholes. Like Bitcoins, no one saw that shit coming. But on the other hand, in most places online, something is recording your words and might be reporting on you.

On the other hand, your villains shouldn't be Asian gangs turned businesses. That's such an old style now. The MPAA and its corporate cronies make a much more modern style of villain. Always watching, shilling for the corporation, maintaining an ironclad grip on how the populace is allowed to use technology that offers so much more capability and power than you're allowed.

A personal idea I really like and that shows this direction of thinking is the internet. Of course scifi always uses it now. For instance, I read "Pandora's Star" and in it everyone has a, like, AI program that handles their shit. It shows them things in a retinal display only they can see, looks up information and tells them, reads them their e-mail... and the weirdest thing is that the writer imagines that the future of the internet is that we'll make a program that uses it for us. My angle is completely reversed; the internet everywhere. Once the internet exists in our retinal displays (we'll start with Googleglass and move on to implants in our eyes) how long until thing in the internet are overlayed to the real world? We already have geofencing to connect wireless signals to physical locations, after all. Advertisements in the real world will shift to online adds overlaid on the real world. Streaming video on the wall of a store, information popping up on the item displays, etc.

Then it won't be long (maybe even before) that users figure out how to do this to themselves. Why put on makeup when you can geofence the appearance to your body? CGI work on actual people and objects. You could skin yourself like a Second Life avatar and walk around as a furry, appearance wise. Instead of logging into the internet through a device we'll become the device and never be offline. Now imagine how awesome that'll be! And now imagine how awful that'll be! Now imagine the worst way that can go wrong and boom, you've got a story.

I think the upcoming game "Remember Me" is going to be a great example of this. It's chilling seeing how gameplay involves you hacking someone's memories, putting horrible tragedies in there, and driving someone to commit suicide on these fake memories. It's effect, terrifying and morally upsetting all at once and it's just a normal part of what your character does. Damn man, talk about not pulling your punches. And if that's what the good guy does with this technology, what are the bad guys going to be doing?

I am thinking a lot about physical designs for newage cyberpunk, too, and hopefully I'll get some I can post up sometime. I'm not so great at, like, fashion design though so it's slow going....

So I've been moving a lot in the past year and a half. And a lot of artists will know that, at least for some of us, doing art requires you to be able to get comfortable and concentrate. A chair, a room, particular music, etc... and it needs to fit together. And if you can't get that comfort you can't get your mind to focus.

In my current home there's not a lot of good places I can work on art and I generally just... don't feel comfortable here. Plus, I've never had like music I listen to when doing art. But man... I found something that does help.

When I do art now I watch terrible superhero cartoons on Netflix. I won't say which ones, because I'm sure someone will think they're really good and get mad at me, but that's how I feel.

The cartoons can't be good or I'll get distracted. Hearing and occasionally seeing the dumbness fills me with mirth, though, and maybe the creative instinct to do better? I dunno. I also don't know why it has to be superheros. Maybe that script is just so familiar I don't have to think about it?

So there you go. I'm getting back into art thanks to the low standards of Marvel and DC scriptwriters for animations.

Hey, so yeah, I've been pretty bad on art lately. Which, I know, this is not the first time I've done that. But I was doing at least sketches on a weekly basis and then I kinda stopped, and started having like one piece a month.

I wasn't just being lazy, though. Really, I promise! See, I was writing.

I'd never really put a lot of thought into writing in the fandom before (I always thought of it as my real world focus while I wasn't doing animal people stuff) but a friend who does write in the fandom talked me into giving a it a try and pointed me at a few calls for short stories. I've spent the last few months writing for those and just sent the last of them off last night.

I won't know what's getting accepted for a while but I will definitely point you at them when I know. Sales won't help me directly (they pay a flat rate for the stories) but my main desire is just that some people read them and love them! I put a TON of work into the three I submitted and I feel really strongly about them.

Going forward I plan to start working on some novels to submit for publication in the fandom, too. To begin with I plan to take some of those old comics and games and things I wrote for where the projects invariably ended up falling apart and going nowhere and turn them into novels instead. I put way too much work into them all to just stop now!

So now I'll be getting back to the art. I have a few things I'll be getting started on really soon here that I hope you'll all enjoy! I've noticed my overall views on images have been dropping lately (even though my watches have been going up) and I'm not sure why... but I hope I can draw you guys back in.

I love this fandom and I hope it'll love me back.

Seriously, is it that horrible to think we have a holiday dedicated to love?

We have holidays for Godly snow elves, scary story dress-up, confused rabbit mythology, and most of time wars. Is it really that offensive to anyone that we celebrate love?

Yeah, it's commercialized because of course every industry is going to try and make money on EVERY popular holiday. Hell, is that really so horrific? Who even cares if it was made up by greeting card companies, if that's even true (since it doesn't matter I'm not going to check)?

If you're single, well... that's cool. There's nothing wrong with that. If you're depressed and bitter about that, well... I'm sorry. Work on being more comfortable as an individual so you don't feel depressed about not being part of a pair. If you just hate it when other people are happy, shit, I can even sort of respect that... but shut up, you're doing a bad job of it if you're hating on the love holiday.

If there's anything we, as a species, do that is actually worth circling a day on the calendar for it's love. It'd be nice if it was a more robust holiday with some mytholoy and ritual behind it, though...

Like mistletoe kissing form Christmas, or kissing whoever the hell happens to be there if you're single on New Years. If anything we need more of that on this day. We should use this day to encourage love, new or old.

Tonight, tell someone you love them. I love all of you! Even the ones I find it hard to love.

So, people who know me know that I absolutely love  agouti-rex, and he's been doing these charts of what real art styles different furry artists fall into. And I made it onto the newest version!

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/977...../#cid:65809247

He classifies me as a Magical Realist, which I'll happily accept. That would be including fantastical elements as if they are real. This differs from fantasy/scifi in that they aren't part of a backstory/setting specifically, they simply appear. More like a fable. So like... you could have a completely realistic story and then have a conversation with a dead dog and no one acts like it's weird at all and it's never explained.

In art it's a little trickier to set down in stone, at least for me, but you could consider the way I generally present Lafitte just hanging out with completely typical human pirates as Magical Realism. In a narrative sense she's in a fantasy world but I don't, like... magic it up, especially in the art, so as standalone pieces they would certainly seem like Magical Realism.

Anyway, I feel awesome right now!

So a friend of mine who makes indie games is getting a name for herself lately (check out http://boldpueblo.com/ ), especially for Wandering Monster High School (where you play as D&D monsters going to school to become random encounters).

But she just showed me this interview for her next game: http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/20.....view-with.html

I am so excited for this! I mean, obviously the setting alone is exciting, but that combat system sounds like the most fun a thing can be! I can't wait to run this!