Rain Dog @Leucrotta@awoo.space

Thinking; I’m unsure if I’m extroverted or introverted. Leaning low key extrovert; I’m happy for hours quiet while hiking with others, drawing around others, in a coffee shop. Similarly social media and MU*s are low key social without being intensely committed so they’re almost dangerously appealing as time commitments. I can take center stage for a while but not lead role which might be a time/intensity thing, f’rex if you’re the GM you get no downtime.

Ruining the Cutthroat Island soundtrack by yelling PARRY BEAT CUT TO FIVE HA HA

… admittedly you can do this with a batch of soundtracks.

But if I can go all Barbara Ehrenreich for a moment, conventions are what humanity's all about; a big festival atmosphere, planning elaborate stuff for ages, personal involvement in ecstatic experience. That's where furry comes in; there are a lot of places where cons and music festivals can lose their way and furry, being kinda big tent and rooted in smaller scale creations, can't so much. I'm sure there's other conventions that capture that same energy though and honestly we need all of them as a counter to the sort of mass produced, conveniently sorted, profitable joy we're *supposed* to be having in this society.

I'd managed to miss 11 so;

11) I absolutely love conventions despite their *built in* down sides. There's not much of a line between exciting and intense/overwhelming and exhausting; being in this big exciting space which you sunk tons of energy just *getting* to makes it entirely too easy to screw yourself up on self-acceptance, body image, alcohol, food, sleep, hygiene, etc.

Today's sudden wave of depression after finally getting back, kinda silly given that there's an actual con next weekend, followed up with feeling a lot better as soon as I ate, really drove home the physicality of con drop;

Any convention's going to be a lot of emotional and probably physical intensity, so I'm by definition going to be vulnerable to anything (for instance, getting to be alone/suddenly being isolated is emotionally wobbly for me as introvert - it's vitally needed *and* upsetting.) I guess today was a lot of being conscious of my brain swinging back to equilibrium (and corollary, the longer or more emotionally caught up I am in a party or convention, the longer it's going to take me to regain equilibrium after the con).

It's an inevitability, but a logical and not a terrible one. I'd just been missing it consistently thanks to how I'd been parsing my "everyday" experience (which in some cases really *was* that negative).

14) favorite furry character from pop culture - this is going to date me, Mrs. Elizabeth Brisby. The movie version drifted from Watership Down styled adventures right into D&D (come on, that owl?) and Mrs. Brisby's superpower in a world full of necromancer rat geniuses and huge cats is basically being kind and caring.

CATTLE DIE KINSMEN DIE I TOO SHALL DIE
BUT I KNOW ONE THING THAT DOES NOT DIE

13) Paws I guess - I like handjobs and footjobs but I'm not OH WOW PAWS like some fans I know. And definitely not maws, I think because I'm a little too old to have had all of the Bluth movies with mouths be a looming influence in my childhood.

12) I don't think I'm the big reason anyone's gotten interested in furry!

I *do* think it's a little too easy to use a great looking suit as substitute for being an okay person and I definitely think they're an overemphasized part of fandom simply because they're that visible - a little like assuming all SCAdians are fighters with their own elaborate armors.

10) my opinion of fursuits have changed over time. Initially because ears and tails were static I didn't want a suit, but thought they were technically neat (very much the "magic of special effects!" nerves). Now though I'm a lot more interested in performing as a character, and how fursuits are their own thing, part of furry's festival atmosphere and potentially a nice augment to weed (I of course would never want a fursuit for the purpose of stoned lying on the floor listening to Kyuss).

9) I will probably change fursona species at some point. I've thought about fennec fox, manul, black-footed cat, fisher, river otter, but I might go right back to being a border collie, idk.

Okay here are two drawings of fursonas rather than “stuff I thought looked pretty”; a borzoi by Diana Harlan Stein, and a Percheron with hyenas by Kaiven. The second is NSFW though I’ve covered up horse bits.

oh yeah steamed pea shoots as basically an excuse for hoisin sauce!

That and I'm having hot barley tea, always a favorite.

Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” on KEXP. Thanks, now i have this strange urge to throw crescent kicks in slo-motion.

Has anyone done a wargaming miniatures take on the “dude looking at another woman” meme where both women (labeled as STACK OF NEW MINIS and STACK OF MINIS IN MY CLOSET) have been photoshopped to pewter or resin gray?

8) Let me dig through my stuff when I get home for art by Kaiven. She was REALLY good. If you’re out there somewhere, I love you, I miss you, and fuck cancer.

7) all fursonas are something like who I am or want to be. F’rex I wanted to join Frank’s hyena study group in grad school, the wolf character is very much who I was in high school without the “practically under house arrest” part, and the unicorn is very much “I am an untamed creature of the forest also tell me I’m pretty and pet my hair.”

6) okay the unicorn is a shapechanger, but I thought it’d be nice to have a way more forest/somewhat fey creature with the heraldic traits and I empathize with horses (strong competent smart creature suddenly irrationally panicked). I like the eat-anything nap-anywhere water loving nature of hyenas, and I chose wolf intentionally to make that character somewhat generic.