What Was I Saying...?

Hello, Dreamwidth, and yes, it has been a long time, sorry. This year has really put the “fun” in “executive disfunction.” But I need somewhere to ramble, so here we are.

Today was a rough day. I’m at MFF, which I was abjectly unprepared for in the first place, but that was true last year and the year before too, so I was hopeful I could pull it out. Yesterday was fairly decent; only one commission, but it was a big one. The commissioner negotiated herself up to double what I was asking (um, thank you?) and in the end felt like she’d very much gotten her money’s worth, so big win/win there. That’s the kind of commission I like!

Today, I sold a moderate number of books, but got no commissions whatsoever. Selling books is fine, I’m always happy to do it, but half of that money goes straight to FurPlanet, as opposed to commissions, which are all me, and even if sales had been amazing (which they weren’t), it would be very difficult for a books-only day to break even, much less make money. So, that was scuffed.

My quest for breakfast kept being thwarted by every place being closed when I wanted to go there; I ended up walking to the Hilton Starbucks (which is not that far, but was out in the freezing Chicago wind), and then when I finished there and went to the Dealer Room I discovered that smoothbrain I am, I left my badge in the hotel room, requiring another hike back… so that was scuffed.

My neighboring table dropped some of their product on me from a high shelf; fortunately, it was a plush tail and mostly resulted in some of my books being knocked over. That was only very minor scuff, but it still counts.

Mid-afternoon, due to the lack of traction at my table (again, nobody to blame but myself), I started falling asleep at my table—which is not a good look. So I went off to get more coffee, which requires leaving my table unattended except for any eyes the FurPlanet guys next to me can spare to watch it. After yesterday’s snafu with the Convention Center Starbucks, I didn’t even mess with it. First I went across to the Crowne Plaza coffee shop/lunch bar… only to discover it was closed between something like 2:00 and 4:00. So, that was scuffed.

Back to the Hilton Starbucks I go; it was probably faster than the Convention Starbucks would have been, and definitely both more pleasant and better at accurately making drinks. It also got me a walk out in the brisk air, which helped me wake up. However, while there, I was informed by my smarter half that our car engine was more severely damaged than we thought by the recent coolant hose explosion and that, basically, we need to get a rebuilt engine or a whole new car.

Super-mega-scuffed. -.-

Anyway, after the Dealer Room closed, I wandered over to the con hotel, where I picked up a rather flabby flatbread and tried to find someplace to sit and people-watch, without much success. I didn’t find anyone I knew, even on the con staff, nor did I find any people who seemed particularly interesting to hang with. Even in the very eclectic furry fandom, finding people with my own tastes and sensibilities can be difficult, and the culture of furry has evolved over time such that for all its diversity, there’s a remarkable sameness to the people hanging in the hotel common areas on Friday night. If you’re not a late teen/early twenties person away from home for the first time and able to cut loose… there’s not a lot for you there.

Scuffed? Eh, I dunno, it’s just life being life. But it also left me with nobody to hang with, no real desire to lurk in the lobby, and with no panels I’m interested in attending. I am now sitting in the “Business Center” section of the hotel so I can have a flat surface to type on, and so that I’m not just paying (mumble)-hundred dollars just to sit alone in a hotel room.

NGL, it’s been a rough con. But I want to get it out of my system here tonight, so I can face tomorrow fresh and hopefully have a good final convention day.

-The Gneech

Alas, sales were sluggish again today. While the raw income was higher than yesterday, it was mostly on books, so I’ll end up keeping a bit over half of what I actually brought in. I did have some fun conversations, and got some very nice compliments on my art, but I actually spent most of the day being completely unable to get anyone to look me in the eye. XD

The con is bloody big. It feels like what Dragon*Con felt like back in 2000, except that Dragon*Con had more diversity of content. It feels like the furry fandom has become very self-referential, with a handful of archetypes or themes being repeated over and over again—kawaii cuteness, edgy inversions of kawaii cuteness, proclamation of marginalized identity, or porn. And while any and all of these themes can have value, it’s kind of monotonous for them to be the sum total. Maybe we’re just in a cultural slump (those do come around from time to time), but I can’t think of a single thing that’s jumped out to me as new and distinctive in the fandom recently. The “floor” of craftsmanship has risen quite high—the base level of fursuit now is where the “amazing” ones were when I came into the fandom, for example, but they all kinda look the same.

People keep telling me that they like my art because “it looks like old-school furry,” which, I mean, I guess it would! But… what does “new-school furry” look like? Is it the painterly look of someone like Kenket? Is it 3D VR avatars? I dunno. Does my art look that different from somebody like Kadath?

I don’t know. Be more interesting, furry! XD For all the numerical inflation, you seem to have fallen into a rut. XD

-TG

PS: I did warn you they were random thoughts. XD

I actually had a much longer post (with art!) which I put on my Patreon page, directed towards the subscribers over there but open to the public. G'wan, click the link, you know you want to see an adorable gorilla surfer gal! ;D (But! My intended practice is to post here more, and to that I hold, even if in this case, it's just to say "Hey, look over there!")

-The Gneech

So today I happened upon a review of a tabletop RPG called Wanderhome, which is all about furries rebuilding and healing after a devastating war. In that regard it joins Reclamation Project, Kipo and the Wonderbeasts, Biomutant, et al. in the "furries fix the apocalypse" genre, which I am pleased to be a part of, but in the RPG space, it also immediately makes me think of two recent standouts: Burn Bryte and Thirsty Sword Lesbians.

All of these games have as a core premise that they are "all about the feels," so to speak, instead of the usual gaming priorities of killing monsters and taking their stuff. Both Thirsty Sword Lesbians and Wanderhome particularly use the characters' emotional states as the touchstone for their mechanics. This is not a totally new idea: Gumshoe often had characters' chances of success connected to their defined traits, and of course GURPS and the HERO System were famous for disadvantages/flaws (particularly "Psychological Limitations") as character-building components, and that was 1985, guys. XD

But these newer games don't just include this aspect as part of a larger mathematical and narrative framework, they lean into it, hard. It's kind of awkward to use the term "queer" outside the context of sexuality or gender identity, but it's the closest analogue I can think of. Even the straight characters in these games are queer AF. XD These are worlds full of neurodivergent, norm-disregarding, existing-hierarchy-smashing characters, often with a radically kind agenda, and I'm here for it.

That radically kind part is where "cozycore" comes in. Like the aesthetic movement of "cottagecore," this genre is about creating a place of comfort for those who have been traumatized, a warm place to escape a cold world. With the possible exception of Burn Bryte (which is actually hopepunk, a related but noticeably different vibe), these places are cute. They are soft. The over-the-top "Here comes the Evil Queen and oh no, she's hot!" camp of Thirsty Sword Lesbians may not seem like the Frog-and-Toad gentleness of Wanderhome, but what is TSL founded on? The willfully self-indulgent, tropey escapism of fanfic, a world where "hurt/comfort" and "redemption arcs" are foundational pillars.

After forty years of "darker, grittier" all the everything, this is not just a breath of fresh air, but I'm hoping it's a harbinger of a cultural shift in the making. Counter culture becomes popular culture and the fringe becomes mainstream, and lord, if a culture could ever stand to become more kind and way more hella queer, it's contemporary western culture.

Maybe living and dying by the sword can finally give way to just plain living, by the plowshare?

-TG

Not the R63 version of Rarity, although I'd be happy with that, too.

So, the past several weeks have been bonkers. Got a new job (Barnes & Noble), moved back to Virginia from Maryland, spent four days in Chicago for Midwest Furfest, and then had an unexpected (but welcome) visitor come spend the night at our place over the weekend. I haven't looked at my hours, but I do know that of the 12 days I've had off since mid-November, six of them were either moving, convention, or Thanksgiving. So I've been pretty harried.

The good side of that, is I've been insulated from all the noise and drama around world events and social media. The bad side of that, is I've been isolated from all my online friends and barely able to work on my writing and art.

Fortunately, now that the moving is done and we begin the long process of unpacking and assembling the house, that particular problem is much reduced. The last single large bit (car paperwork) will probably be dealt with tomorrow, and from then it'll be slow but incremental improvement until the new house is truly a home. It's already got a Christmas tree, the first one we've had in two years, and that is a bigger deal than it sounds.

I'm not to the point where I can get some work done in the morning and then go off to my job in the afternoon/evening yet, but I expect that will start being a thing later this week or early next. Of course, once the holidays come barreling through, the B&N job will either scale back or possibly disappear entirely. But I've got some big things in the works for 2018 that will make everything happening for me job-wise right now seem like the smallest potatoes, and that's going to be pretty awesome. I'll have more updates on that as I get them worked out, or probably by my annual New Year's post.

In the meantime, hey! I'm still here! I'm still creating stuff! And this time I'm not even dodging 16 ton weights! More like spinning 16 hundred plates.

It's an upgrade, man. It's an upgrade.

-The Gneech

So when Nyxsern said "You're all set!" on Friday night, she meant that I was in the Artist Alley lottery for Saturday, not actually IN the Artist Alley. Thus, yesterday morning, I dutifully packed up all my stuff and schlepped it over there only to discover that Oops! I was on the wait list. *sad trombone*

I lurked around and moped [1] about that for a bit, but in the intervening time my one commissioner popped up and I delivered his book, and I decided that, as I had been planning to bug out of the Alley at 2:30 for inkblitz's panel anyway, I might as well just punt on the Alley all together and actually GO to the convention. So stuff was schlepped back to room and off I went.

In the Dealer Room, I did some Christmas shopping, and also connected with FurPlanet. When asked how the con was going, Teiran informed me it had been full of snafus, to which my response was, "YOU TOO?" On the good front, they sold out of Rough Housing Volume One, so I guess I'm gonna have to get my author's copy later. ;) Blitzy and I then checked out the Fursuit Menagerie [2], where Blitzy actually knew more people than me for a change. I got to see Babs in her fursuit, and of course she was just as adorable as you might expect.

Blitzy's "Becoming a Better Roleplayer" went off well, only slightly hindered by the noisy hallway outside and uncooperative Google Docs notes. From there, I caught up with Vince and Dev outside the dealer den and bounced back and forth between them, the FurPlanet guys, or both. We had the obligatory Chicago deep dish (a curious entity halfway between quiche and lasagna which the locals stubbornly insist on referring to as pizza) and had much geeky discussion of movies, superheroes, and superheroes in movies.

Rounded off the evening with some people-watching with Vince and Exatron in the Hyatt lobby, and then back to the hotel where I gave Seifer a crash course in Furry History 101 and we talked about God, alternate universes, and other mind-blowing topics until 1:00 a.m.

It was a good day. :)

Today, I am officially confirmed to be in the Artist Alley (double-checked!), so I'll be back there, hopefully drawin' my little arm off. Sadly, never could connect to AxiomAxiom and CargoWeasel. Despite all our DMs back and forth, I only have their word for it that they were ever even here! ;P [3]

Back to Virginia tomorrow!

-The Gneech

[1] You ever notice that moped (past tense of "mope") and moped (motorized bicycle) look exactly the same in text?

[2] As the cons get larger and larger (MFF and AC keep leapfrogging each other as "largest furcon ever"), fursuit parades have just become unmanageable. So MFF cordons off the main ballroom and hall outside of it and shoves all the fursuiters there for photo shoots and everyone who wants to see all the suits can go there and watch.

[3] That would be a very effective, if weird, way to troll someone. Pretend to be at a con and constantly text people, "I'm in the main lobby by the elevators! Where the heck are you???"

After a week of work-packing-work-packing-work-moving-work-unpacking, punctuated by lots of sitting in traffic jams on the Beltway/I-270, laurie_robey and I managed to get moved, and I even made my flight to MFF.

Forgot my CPAP. D'Oh. >.> That's going to make sleeping a challenge.

Got installed in the room and connected with Inkblitz, Trixie, and Seifer, as well as encountering Exatron, and we all headed off to the prereg line, which was huge and took an hour to get through... only to be told they didn't have a registration for me. ¬.¬

Checking my e-mail for confirmation was no help, as I couldn't find one. So either a) I forgot to register, or b) the registration didn't go through and I didn't notice not getting a confirmation. Muttergrump! I booked travel and hotel, is it really conceivable I didn't register the con? I guess. I dunno. I used to have a pre-con checklist for just this sort of thing, but I stopped using them because I hadn't had this kind of thing pop up in years. Guess I need to go back to it!

So grabbed food and then it was back to the on-site reg line, where I stayed for what I estimate was three hours. Given the shape my back has been in after all the standing at the cash register at B&N, I could barely walk by the end... but I survived. I'm grateful to Exatron for keeping me company the whole time– he basically waited through both lines too even tho he didn't have to. XD

The CPAPless night was on the rough side; I doubt I got more than 45-60 minutes of uninterrupted sleep through the whole thing. But I was still able to sleep-until-I-woke-up, instead of jumping out of bed early to go get moving-plus-work done, so I still ended up pretty decently rested, for which I'm grateful.

So now it's on with my day! The reason I stuck out the line last night was so I could have a badge number to get into the Artist Alley lottery for today, which opens in just a few minutes. (The alley itself doesn't open until 1 p.m.) So, having finished my breakfast and done my report, I'd better get on off to that.

CYA soon!

-The Gneech