My 81 year old grandmother has been in the early stages of dementia for some time now. About a month ago it got bad enough that we couldn't take her out to eat anymore. Earlier this week she was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, which has happened several times before. After a couple of days she was transferred to a nursing home to finish recovery until she could go home. The next day, though, they found that fluid was building up in her lungs and she was sent back to the hospital.

Today we got the call that the lack of oxygen has not improved and her brain and heart are beginning to fail. She could die as early as today, and almost certainly will within the week. I'm leaving in several hours to see her for what will probably be the last time. Immediately afterwards my parents are taking me to be fitted for a suit for her funeral.

Ey, was just wondering if any of my watchers happen to be 18+ writers who'd like to do an art trade of some sort with me?

So yeah it's another birthday for me as I march closer to eventual doom. Woo? I'll be 24 at... like some time really late tonight. Past 11:30 I think.

Okay so I know this is a long shot but there aren't any on F-List so I figured I'd try here...

Anyone who watches me on this site like to/is willing to play Megabyte from the cartoon ReBoot? Because I have a huge crush on him and I've never gotten to play with him, and I need that in my life.

So I've got a nice little collection of computer program characters, and a handful of friends who have some too. That's great and all, but you know what we need more of? HACKERS!

Hence this contest! It is very simple. Design an awesome hacker character with 1337 skills and enter it for the chance to win a prize! Rules are as follows:
-Must be an original character created for this contest, not an existing one, even if it's redesigned
-Cannot be a fan character - no Sonic-style hedgehogs or Shadowrunners or Mass Effect species or anything like that
-Must exist in "meatspace" - i.e., not looking for AI programs or malware characters
-Other than that, character can be any species you want, or even a robot if you feel like it
-Since I'd be inherently biased against females, being a total gay, I figure it's more fair if I require the entered characters to be male
-Character must be submitted as an illustration (no written descriptions)
-You don't have to draw the picture yourself as long as you designed the character
-If you have another artist draw the character, they must be made aware of the fact it's an entry in this contest
-A brief written bio with info on the character is appreciated but not required
-Artwork entered can be clean or NSFW
-Links to your entry must be posted in the comments of this journal

As for the prize, I can't offer anything extravagant - so the winner will receive either a short story or two-character, flat-colored drawing of their winning character interacting with a character of my choice. Yes this means you could get them pwning Thorn if you wanted to. Which type of prize is given will depend on what the winner wants but also the complexity of the design - if I don't feel confident in drawing your character myself I may ask that you accept a story or, alternatively, I might commission another artist to draw the prize picture.

The deadline for entries is midnight EST, May 6, 2017 - that's the very first minute of Saturday, May 6, so be sure to submit by the fifth!

Any questions can be asked below in comments or through note.

_________

Also, a reminder I have an open Discord server my watchers are invited to join:
https://discord.gg/ZmwQEEf

An easy way to get in touch with me in a public net-space. Open for general chatting, maybe voice chat some time, plenty of funs and such. There's also a dedicated in-character "Ask Thorn" channel. Please read the server rules in the #rules channel upon joining.

I'd love to see some new people/silent watchers in there, get to know peeps :0

Link: https://discord.gg/ZmwQEEf

I COMMAND YOU

Seriously though it was pretty good. Not GREAT, not everything I ever dreamed of, but solidly entertaining. It's very character-driven so there's not as much action as I might've liked, but I can see why they did it that way and there was enough drama and comedy to make it a fun time even before they finally morph. And yes, there is an extra scene during the end credits.

My showing (the first at my theatre) actually sold out; the staff came in right before the movie started and had us make room for the last ticket-holders. One of them said he was shocked at the crowd it was drawing and that they hadn't sold out this auditorium in years. It wasn't the biggest auditorium in the theatre, just a middle-sized one, because they weren't expecting it to perform like a blockbuster. Evidently they misjudged it. Doesn't mean it's going to be a huge hit everywhere but I'm cautiously optimistic.

I can't find any porn of the new design of the Beast from the remake of Beauty and the Beast!

It's setting the record for biggest opening weekend outside of summer movie season ever and there's not a single pic of his dick? C'mon now furries. You're usually on top of this shit.

So it's only a week til spring... and I'm under a blizzard warning. 14-20" of snow. I HATE snow. And that's higher than my snowblower. My house has two driveways, a walkway, outdoor stairs, and a wheelchair ramp. Cleaning up is gonna be practically an all-day project Wednesday.

https://youtu.be/5kIe6UZHSXw-

I am super excited for this! The teaser came out three months ago and it felt like forever waiting for a full trailer but damn, this actually looks pretty good! Can't wait for March 24!

For this special day of the year, Thorn is offering a free download of himself to all who are interested and also those who are not :D

Why not? Go ahead and ask me or my characters anything~

Trying to be more active on my Thorn Twitter account, @CyberContagion, so opening up questions there:
https://twitter.com/CyberContagion/.....30952808439812

So I'm not allowed to post names, AFAIK. But over the past few months there's been this one scammer targeting me from three different accounts. He types in broken, capitalization-free English, asks for muscle art of cartoon and video game characters, and deflects or ignores it whenever money is brought up. As soon as he told me "I'll send you the money when I have time," (improperly typed) but expected me to start drawing anyway, I knew something was up. That was a month or so ago, but now he tried again tonight. His two previous accounts were suspended, but his current one is still active (though I've just reported it in a trouble ticket).

The thing is, both times I've confronted him about scamming me he's outright admitted to it, and this time he even admitted to being the same person and running his scam "a lot!" He also said it was because - in addition to having no money - "people who pay for porn are just sad and alone." Right. As opposed to people who beg for or steal that same porn, which clearly makes them cool :p

So be on the lookout for suspicious badly-written notes that seem like they're from a scammer, probably a kid, who wants you to draw muscle art before he pays you.

To my complete lack of surprise, it was pretty bad. There were more jokes than I expected, and they were fairly successful. A few decent action scenes. But it was dramatically inept, mostly rather poorly-acted, and never as exciting or visually striking as it should have been. The two biggest "they just didn't care" aspects - Gerard Butler, as Set, spends about half his time onscreen speaking in his natural Scottish accent, and some of the visual effects are clearly unfinished.

As to the gods themselves, Horus and Set sometimes "transform" like tokusatsu heroes into metallic versions of their traditional depictions, and they look pretty cool. For whatever unimaginably stupid reason, Ra, who appears mainly as an old white guy, transforms into... a scaled-up old white guy, on fire. It looks impossibly stupid and I can't imagine any reason for it besides budget limitations. The other gods in the movie never transform. The biggest pleasant surprise was that Anubis is in this as a fairly faithful depiction of himself, never human OR metal, always, well, an anthro jackal. His role is minor but important and manages to avoid embarrassment. Also amusing to note that Isis is (briefly) in the movie but they go to pains to never mention her by name on account of the terrorist group. Instead, Horus just calls her "my mother."

Not worth seeing in theatres (which the public clearly figured out given how hard it's bombing at the box office) but if the morbidly curious want to check it out on home video / on demand, there are worse ways to blow two hours.

The first set of posters are out for Lionsgate's new movie Gods of Egypt, from the director of I, Robot and Dark City. I was kinda hyped for this movie. I mean... Gerard Butler as Set sounded pretty awesome, right? Well, they released the first line of posters, which you can see here: http://www.impawards.com/2016/gods_.....gypt_ver3.html

If you can't/won't click: they're just humans in fancy dress. No animal heads, or features. Some of the posters have vaguely animalistic flying figures in the background, but even if they are supposed to be the gods' "true" forms, they don't look particularly like them and their position in the marketing makes it clear that they won't be seen much in the film. Bummer!

And I really don't get it; it's not like they have an all-star cast they need to show off. Besides Gerard Butler, the other gods are played by Chadwick Boseman (that guy who played Jackie Robinson and James Brown in their biopics and is gonna be Black Panther), Geoffrey Rush (a character actor known as Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks), and some other people with no mainstream appeal. Unless you get starstruck at two girls who were in Fury Road and not much else and the useless husband from the horror flick Mama. Maybe they're great actors, but they're not marketable. It's not like seeing their faces in the commercials is gonna get people to go to the movie. Did they not have any space in their $140 million budget to slap some animal heads on there?

Of course, this is not even getting into the fact that all of them but Chadwick are white, and the only index its Wikipedia page links to is "List of Films Featuring Whitewashed Roles."

Boo, Lionsgate. Boo.

I'm not really doing anything special for the milestone, but it's cool to see! 495 more than I was ever expecting. Thanks guys :)

My much more talented friend  iudicium_86 needs some extra dosh, and he's running a sale; full color pieces 25% off, more or less! He's the guy who does the sketches and/or lines for a lot of the stuff in my gallery and working with him is always a pleasure. You should check it out!

Here's the details: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/17344599/

https://www.kickstarter.com/project.....ats-revolution
https://www.kickstarter.com/project.....ats-revolution
https://www.kickstarter.com/project.....ats-revolution
https://www.kickstarter.com/project.....ats-revolution
https://www.kickstarter.com/project.....ats-revolution

C'moooooooon, you know you want it~

So for once I am actually going to comment on some FA drama. Usually I try to just ignore it; it's healthier for me that way.

But I am seriously for real disappointed - to put it mildly - about the new "mature" ads. I know FA has scaled them back, but they should be gone. All of them. This never should have happened in the first place. FA may host a huge amount of pornographic art, but there is a WORLD of difference between adult artwork of fantasy characters and actual video porn or - ESPECIALLY - crass, sexist, trashy, and disgusting websites that invite you to "fuck bitches" and "cheat on your wife secretly" and "fuck hot older women tonight." Not to mention the malware these types of ads carry.

A lot of people say just to use AdBlock and ignore it. I have AdBlock. That's NOT THE POINT. I don't want to be associated with that kind of filth. I can't control what people see, I can't make everyone install ad-blockers, and the thought of someone seeing an ad for real-world anonymous sex next to one of my pictures makes me SICK. FA really needs to cut the bullshit.

Instead of an auction, I've given the rights to Leech Lord to  77chaos77

The deal was worked out in private all secret secret. Per our agreement, existing images of him will remain in my gallery, but I will not be making any new art/stories of him or playing him in the future (without his express permission) as those are all his rights now. So if you're a fan of the character, probably best to give him a watch.

So here's the deal - I'm MUCH better at writing than I am at drawing. Like, infinitely so. Yet I've never really seriously tried to do writing commissions on here. Partially, that's because of the lack of interest in literature on here in general; I've got 440 watchers at this point, but my most-viewed story has only been viewed 133 times (and there's no guarantee those viewers actually read it). But since it's something I'm better at, I figure it might make sense to offer writing commissions on a trial basis.

Before I think out all the prices and detailed rules and such, though, I'm doing an interest check - is there anyone who would actually want to get one? Or does everyone just watch me for the visual virus/supervillain smut? Comments either way are definitely appreciated!

As of right know I'm one watcher away from 400, which is like 390 more watchers than I ever figured I'd have. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all the people who like my characters or, somehow, my drawings. I tend to ask new watchers this, but now here it is for everyone cuz I'm curious: Why is it you watch me? What caught your eye in the first place? What do you want to see more of?~

EDIT: Oh wow, someone unwatched me since this morning so now it's 2 away from 400.

Okay peoples! It was tough, because I liked all the entries (and I'm not saying that just to be nice), but I've picked the winner and runner-up for the computer virus character design contest! Drumroll please!

FIRST PLACE WINNER:
 macro710 - @ison Skypewalker
Very neat, original take on the concept, with a fun design that oozes personality. Congrats! As the first-place winner, you get EITHER a story featuring @ison, OR a colored, shaded picture with a simple background with ison and Thorn!

SECOND PLACE WINNER:
 michaelgrey - The Exile
The simple but imposing design makes for a very nice contrast to the other entries, and I appreciate the thought that went into his backstory and motivations. As second-place winner, you get EITHER a story featuring The Exile, OR a colored picture of The Exile and Thorn that can have either shading or a simple background.

I'll be in direct contact with the winners to discuss their prizes. Thanks everyone for entering, and keep in mind you all get to keep your characters, so have fun with them!

Here's where I'll post finished entries for my virus design contest!

 yzarccreations - Latex the Polymorphic Virus
 macro710 - @ison Skypewalker the Trojan
 michaelgrey - The Exile Virus
 silversketch - F4T4L3RR0R the Virus
 commander-strife - Sekk.gl the Virus