Now Ronnie James Dio. :(

Its becoming increasingly clear that I can write like nobody's business. Mountains of work. And I can draw 'okay', but I can't draw well enough to make comics as I want to. So I'm in the market for an artist willing to work pro bono so we can put together a body of work.

I has wacom tablet. Lets see if I can makes it work

I am 28 today, one day closer to death.

We will now accept offerings of sex, guns, or candy

If Rune had one, it would be Blood on My Hands by Demons and Wizards

Wait, I have to fight myself!?

Nintendo Hard strikes again!

I don't know if I've mentioned, so I think I shall now:

I'm a disabled person.

Not like supremely disabled. I get around on my own, I'm fully cognizant and coherent, I don't require assistance to do basic things, you'd hardly know it if I were sitting down or behind a computer. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have its unpleasant side effects. Case in point? I wake up this morning at ten to ten, and feel like I've been beaten with sticks.

Actually, that's not accurate.

It started last night as a pressure in my lower back, like someone took their knuckles and ground them into my kidneys, ribs, and the muscles of my spine. Then I went to bed and when I woke up I felt as though, in the night, my unseen attackers had upgraded to nightsticks, from nightsticks to 3 x 4's, and then chained me into position so it would be entirely impossible for me to move and do anything but suffer.

Does that sound fun?

And I get to struggle through this semi-annual weekly ordeal on my lonesome. Something to think about the next time someone runs into me in a sour mood.

Friends bailed out my simple brain. Enjoy!

But they need resized. Stay tuned!

Last night I sent a story in to Weird Tales

Well today is the day, today come hell or high water I stomp out my last words on my book and pray like hell it passes muster. Day before halloween, lets hope the gods are with me. As I finish this two year long tribulation, hopefully gearing up to repeat it soon, I wonder though what the future holds for me. I want to get serious about Life With Arkloyd, true, but I've also been reading more and studying more about the craft of comics, and comparing what is said against what I see in anthro and furry comics. I can't say I'm encouraged.

Just like the mainstream markets anthro seems to have worked itself into well-worn safe ruts, and on top of that because we're such an author and artist driven community there's a lot of creator based arrogance abroad that our creations are somehow sacred. Let me give a reality check here: in a subculture where the greater majority of creations are Sonic the Hedgehog derivatives, nothing is sacred. The fact that I am surrendering much of my intellectual property, almost twenty years of concepts, does not mean I've sold out so much as it means I recognize that to do something valuable with my talents I've got to be willing to play ball.

I've been reading The Authority alot lately, both where that series did it right and where its gone wrong, and I can safely say that neo-silver age is the future in more than one media. I think my future works might reflect this as well. I am a byronic creator, and I like byronic heroes, but moral neutrality only works in a world of hope. The tendency towards 'grimdark' and 'squick', to say nothing of useless 'yiff', short changes what creative power we have. Man's reach does not exceed his grasp, his grasp exceeds his reach, and that reach of late strikes me as low indeed.

I've got a mountain of homework and a rewrite to finish but I feel the need to draw coming on strong.

I've been going through some RL stuff, much of it heavy, and as I've kept a pleasant face about it all its given me a great deal of time to think about just who I am. For one while I am not moving away from the Fandom or quitting it in a mountain of baaaw, I am growing as a person and that requires putting my anthropomorphism in perspective. I am not, nor have I ever been, otherkin. I am not, in any form, a physical wolf. On the other hand metaphysically I believe that I have attuned myself to my deeper Id by conceptualizing it and controlling it in the manifest of a wolf. Intellectually I wield the metaphor and symbol of the wolf weighed against social norms as a will to power. I am the wolf, I am the man, we are the human.

Secondly, I am a student. That is not to say I am simply going through the motions of scholar achievement for a piece of paper, although I do seek success outside the scholarly environment. I mean to state that I am one for whom the learning proccess itself is my enthusiasm. I endevour, with constancy, to learn new things and digest them into my being. I hold myself and others to high academic standards of deductive reasoning and dialetic quality, and I am enraged when I and others fail to uphold those standards while still claiming to be academics.

I am by choice of association, a goth and metal head. I prefer the thundrous tones of power metal anthems and lighter ballads like I enjoy my literature: deep, sanguinary, and violent. By extension I despise the light, superficial, or emo, finding them little more than self masturbatory excursions.

I am an author. I crossed the line from writing aspirant to actual author not long ago, and while I am still in the proccess of learning how to be better I am also adequately knowledged in the craft to know how to critique it when I see it and describe its application.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I am a dedicated individual to those things which matter most. I do not betray my friends, I will not abandon my parents no matter how much they antagonize me. I survive, I perservere, and I will one day profit by this loyalty.

For those who know me, then they should understand how I have suffered and why this is a formative commentary on myself. For those who do not, I am also working class poor living in a trailer for one with two other people. I am a disabled person, my mother is a recently disabled double-amputee with severe health problems. My father is an aging mentally abusive with deep seated psychological problems that give rise to great inconsistency in his capacities as a provider. I subject myself daily to the ignominous foolishness of others, to dismissal of both men and women as a member of the intelligensia and the dating pool, and the callous banality of the social infrastructure which actively encourages me and others to accept mediocrity when we could be exceptional.

In essence, too smart for my own good, too foriegn to be accepted, and too resistant to the prefabricated roles for a person of my socio economic, political, religious, and physical makeup. If I sound like someone you would like to know, I invite you. I really am more awesome than when I'm dispirited and insomniac at 3:25 in the morning. If I do not sound like someone worth your time, I'm not stopping you.

Tried microns and pens, which I still love, but I'm experimenting now with speedball and bottled ink for different effects. So far nibs seem to be more 'on target' for what I want. Keep an eye out for new content on this page soon as I experiment

THE EMPEROR WANTS YOU!

FUR THE EMPEROR is a new Warhammer 40K fan comic in desperate need of assistance and you can help. We're looking for artists, web designers, and some space to put up shop. The focus will be an anthropomorphic one, but breaking the type of usual fan comics and attempting to retain the true flavor of the 40K verse by being grim and gothic. If you're interested, send this wolf a note in his FA box. I'm calling head writer, but I'd love to talk about any element you can think up.

TRUST NOT THE ALIEN, THE MUTANT, THE HERETIC.

Don't get riled. It's a joke title. And that's actually part of the problem I've been considering. I was listening to a recent furry podcast, I didn't know such a thing existed beyond 2 the ranting gryphon but I like to try new things, and found two things that really irked me conceptually. First of all who exactly discerned what the personalities of different anthros was? Admittedly, as a wolf, I assert some thoughts and emotions to be properly wolfish but in the grander scheme I play a Norse wolf and that influences perceptions. The kind of gung-ho over the hill and through the woods chainsaw wielding horror action adventure lifestyle I enjoy may not be the cup of tea for someone else. Likewise I think it just as improper to impart behaviors on anthros by species just as it would be improper to imply behavior schemes based on race among humans.

Which brings me to the second thing: Furry and gayness. Now I'm bi and people that know me will know that yes, if I met someone I felt strongly about and we were consenting, I'd want some sweet man candy. However, in other regards I'm functionally heterosexual. Women are beautiful and sexy and if they got a brain to go with it I just want to love them to bits. The important part here is I keep it to myself. It's really none of your business nor do you care if I like fudge or not, but I find there's this perception that most furries are gay almost to the point that something is wrong with you if you're furry and not gay; like we're going to stalk down and rape female straight furries in ravenning gangs or something.

Now admittedly many a fur might have some poor social skills, but that's from the total of all furs not just straight ones! Now could it be that the preponderance of gay furry lit and content is because it's a subject that makes us uncomfortable so we've dilluted its effect by exposure? Seems likely. But that's no reason to screw the pooch, as it were, and let it run rampantly out of control. Furries have sex. That's all that needs to be said. Now for a quality piece like Carpe Diem or Circles maybe homosexuality has a contextual signifigince, but does it really matter in my daily living and should people be putting a value on it for me? More importantly, if people think homosexuality is so desperately vital as an expression, what does that say about them? It's all well and good to point fingers and talk about balance, but if I'm the one being egaltarian in the situation, does that not by definition mean the opposing point is being unreasonable?

Ah well, time to get back to my gay old time here in RL.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em!

...

...

Alright! that sucked!

I like women. I think women are one of the better parts of the human species. As a bisexual male I like men as well, but overall, I like women. No, I don't expect them to clean house for me or cook my meals. I like to be tidy. I like making my own food. I think women deserve the vote they earned so prominently, I think they deserve equal treatment under the law, I think if a man can disassemble an M-16 blind folded and a woman can put it back together in the same condition she has just as much right to fire the thing as anyone else.

So when did it become a crime to have a penis?

No.

Really.

I'm a college student and when I go to my classes I find that, in what should be an entirely mental realm, I'm categorically ignored or at least dismissed by my fellow female students and it distinctly feels like the cause is gender; as if because I'm not there for sports or boobs I'm breaking some primal taboo. Worse, I see it on TV, and I read it in books: this hyper-feminization where women characters are able to do everything, know everything, possess all the power, while men suffer for their gender as brain dead degenerates.

Will I deny centuries of male on female abuse? No. Will I deny a patriarchal culture that, until reecently, in America relegated women to second class? Absolutely not. But women are not better than men. The idea of equality is for groups to be first and foremost equal and it is remarkably stupid for any group fighting for equality to do so by denigrating another. Who did I oppress? I'm not my grandfather or his father. Whose rights did I impose on? I'm not a law maker. Whose religion did I enforce? I'm a pagan fer cripes sake.

The fact of the matter is I'm getting the scattershot from a counter movement. Societies fluctuate on pendullum effects, and we're moving from a Patriarchal bias to a Matriarchal one where the majority are just now finding out women have the capacity to be just as unpleasant as men are. In addition the bias is moving into our language. If I like a movie with Bruce Willis getting shot at it must be because I'm a "Macho" "Gung-Ho" guy who likes "Explosions". It couldn't be I just happen to like Bruce Willis. But if a woman likes the same movie she's empowered? If a woman watches Pride and Predjudice she's cultured. If I do the same thing, I'm a fag or pandering?

Something is really wrong here. And I'm tired of being the whipping boy.

In order to prevent 'loitering', security companies have invented a device called The Mosquito which apparently produces a high pitched buzzing that can only be heard by people 15-25 and encourages them to move along. Putting aside that I'm not quite sure how they formed this 'technological marvel' as I'm not an aral specialist and don't know how hearing develops over time, what I want explained to me is what defines 'loitering' for the users of the device. True, you will see a reduction in teenaged drug use and gang activity that you can see, but apparently its affects are negative to nearby residents and is no defense against older persons. Furthermore medical professionals say that extended exposure could be damaging, despite the assurance of manufacturers that the device is harmless.

Now I'm 25, I'll be 26 this April, so I shouldn't have anything to worry about. However I'm deeply worried because I have a right to free assembly. This right was granted because the British empire revoked that selfsame right in order to prevent large protests and violent resistence to their imposition of colonial rule. Now if we can circumvent legal rights for 'comfort' how long is it before they become circumvented for other purposes? Worse because I know most teenagers, from experience, are willfully unaware of the power they possess as citizens to exert their freedoms or how to do so; which means not only can this be gotten away with but the victims won't resist because of sheer banal apathy. This is dangerous people! It might not be microchips, barcodes, and big brother, but it's a distinct step in that direction. First we had invisible choke chains for our pets, now we have invisible choke chains for our children.

Woo for school scanners!

I'm a cartoon junkie. I admit it. I grew up with some of the greatest cartoons of our generation. And, while struggling through years of Power Rangers, Poke'mon, and Digimon, there was one program or rather set of programs that I had thought set a bar for quality.

The Batman Animated Series was a breath of fresh air in a crowded landscape of cariactures. I still remember sitting in excitedly while they played the third episode at eight in the evening, the first appearance of Man-Bat in which Batman well and truly got messed up; you could see the blood on his face! And the series just got better over seasons and in the Adventures of Batman & Robin spinoff. These were cartoons, for children, that approached the subject matter like kids were smart and used fundamental movie tricks to present an ambiance that attracted adults as well. I find it a well and true shame that they didn't continue with the trend set by the amazing animated film Mask of the Phantasm.

True The Batman/Superman adventures were a step backward conceptually, but it was only a step, and the writers more than made up for it with Justice League and Justice League Unlimited which as cartoons were almost like an adventure sitcom. My dad's a Trekkie, he tunes in for the mind numbing dross of Stargate: Atlantis, but I tuned in for cartoons. And that's to say nothing of the awesome that was Batman: Beyond.

Now we have The Batman. Now I gave it a fair shake through at least two seasons. I love the inside joke of including Adam West in the cast as Comissioner Gordon, just as he was included in BTAS as The Grey Ghost, I appreciate that the writers had traded setting acuity and updated the presentation for a more ambient and dark appearance. I had hopes that it would perhaps reintroduce the ideas of quality cartoon to the wasteland that my saturday mornings have become.

Then I lost my cable.
I just couldn't afford it. That happens.
So's I wander by a journal here on FA and it refers me to a Youtube where someone has uploaded an episode of The Batman combining concepts from a BTAS episode, The Terrible Trio, a Batman Beyond episode, Splicers, and of course Anthro which is a plus in my book.

It was not a pleasing episode. It tried to do a lot of things, but didn't do any of them particularly well or suitably. Okay, I can deal with that. I'm an adult. So I cued up another episode that had been uploaded. The plot, while predictable at first, was pretty good: a dynamic duo of villains begin combating Batman and Robin in order to get revenge for personal losses and while they're at it, bring up questions of duality and liminalism that appeal to me.

At one point in the show however we have Joker, peeved because this new team is intruding on his fun. Joker has always had a psychopathic fixation on Batman, for whatever reason, and I find it objectively interesting to wonder under what conditions might a villain like Joker with his obsessions be put in a position to defend his enemy. An excellent example of this in the Marvel Universe is when Doctor Octopus saved Peter Parker's life in order to destroy Spider-man later. This was an opportunity to truly delve into an unusual plot hook.

They didn't follow it up.
But they did present an interesting connundrum. Batman and Robin caught the badguys, were going to send them to jail, and the baddies whom have since learned Batman's identity threaten to rat them out. Here again, a gold mine. Nope, we're going to take the idea of Joker getting back at the interlopers and make it shtick for the end of the cartoon! Some Joker Gas bombs and some quasi-permanently deranged villains, and some cute commentary by the Joker end of story.

That's SUCK of the highest order. I feel cheated. I want some good g'damn cartoons. And I'm sorry but until we break the back of this DBZ/Naruto/Poke-trade-a-franchise/fanboi circle jerk bullshit it ain't never gonna happen. I know this journal won't fix the problem, but sometimes, I despair.

Some of you may have read my piece "Birth of a Furry", some of you may not. But even that origin tale does little to fully express why I, or anyone, would choose to be Furry. Gar does an excellent piece on Furry in the negative, and I invite everyone to exert the effort to listen to his silibant tones. I, however, have another perspective.

Frederich Nietzchie described in his philosophies the idea of a will to power, that is violently siezing wisdom by ones own will and breaking its neck if it tries to run away. Many people in his time and after it abused this as the groundwork for ugenics and war crimes better left unspoken but in his core views Neitzchie was actually speaking to learning. If one wanted to learn, one should seek to learn actively. In his perview, picking up a book and reading it was different than picking up a book and trying to comprehend its deeper meaning. Anyone can read, one must have the will to learn, to understand.

In this way he was also speaking to a deeper conflict. Sigmund Freud described it as a war between Id, the beastial, and Ego, the higher brain function. We have added to this with the idea of Superego, that is the idea that social mores influence our Id-Ego conflict. His student, Jung, also expanded on it by making the claim that our minds were full of archetypes. Culturally universal images of the species that everyone had, so while Death might dress differently, all humans have a concept of Death therefore Death is an archetypical being.

For me then, Furry is a path to will to power when combined with my Asatru beliefs. Odin, all father of the Norse pagan pantheon, only requires three things of his followers when boiled down to simple truths: Honor or Integrity, Wisdom, and Courage. Note, I say courage, not battle. Battle as interpersonal combat is an outmoded concept spoken by people who lacked the formal education to describe their intents. Courage is not the assurance of warfare but the willingness to defend what one believes. I am a disabled person. I do not lie in my bed and die. That is courage. In spite of great physical pain and emotional turmoil, I go to class, I learn, and I seek higher wisdom. That is courage. And for those seeking battle, it is also a war. That same war with the self.

For myself, and for the all father, I have named my Id. My Id is a wolf. I cannot escape this fact, my Ego cannot slay the wolf. But with the society as my guide Wolf and Man, two profound personal archetypes, can work together to give me strength. To give me courage. With my will as one unified whole, and not two warring factions, my mind become claws and fangs with which I rend ignorance and injustice. By seeking the understand my inner animal and blending it in socially acceptable ways I have become a more whole person, and in my time of dying I will not look forward with fear.

Can any of you say the same?

That's right. I done it. I be published.

For those who wanted more information, a local magazine with a friend as photographer accepted a story I wrote (sort of a vampire BDSM thing, high on the suggestiveness, low on the content) and it went to the Editor, who was impressed and is giving it a once over (structural, not spelling or grammatical), thereafter if I oKay the changes (why wouldn't I?) it'll eventually go to print at some point and I should see...rough estimate...$20.00 for my labor.

I've done the unthinkable (to me)! I wrote some World of Warcraft porn and so far it's gotten posetive response. The thing of it is that so far people want more of the character's adventures as well, if I make it a series should I post it here as well for my furry friends to indulge in as well? YOU DECIDE!