Feed aggregator

Im trying to get my name out there after being on hiatus for quite some time, and need the practice and 'promotion' Opening up cheap commissions of whatever you'd like within reason! Just message me, and let me know your thoughts?

I'd appreciate it, and would love some feedback!

http://xprincesskatx.deviantart.com/

submitted by toxicxrequiem
[link] [comment]

I'm dabbling in the idea of getting myself an actual ref sheet so that I don't have to feel awkward giving artists a pawful of bad art done two years ago since I don't have much that's recent that actually shows off my fursona's (simple) designs.

Anyone take or know of people who do preferably cheap ref sheets?

submitted by Riffti
[link] [6 comments]

It is generally considered that you become an adult at 21 years old. Anyone who is 21 years old or more knows that this is completely false.

We might be physically mature, but there is a big difference between physical and emotional maturity. An emotionally mature person likes and accepts themselves. This takes a lot more than 21 years.

Personal hygiene is hard. Getting up in the morning is hard. Feeling lonely is hard. Managing suicidal thoughts is hard. Holding down a job is hard. Looking in the mirror, and liking what you see, is hard. And pretending that you don’t, deep down, consider yourself to be a failure is really hard.

Everyone feels like a failure at least some of the time. Society dictates that we must pretend that we’re doing fine, so we hide how we really feel. Everyone else wears the same facade of competence, which means that it’s easy to look around and see people apparently doing well. This reinforces our own feeling of isolation, unworthiness, and failure.

As you gain emotional maturity, you learn to take pride in your own self-improvement. You learn that everyone else is struggling too. You learn your real value and you gain empathy for all those other losers out there.

Ironically, for a group of people who identify as pretend animals, the furry community is a great vehicle for self-improvement. This is obvious through observation of our furry friends: seeing those pursuing education, weight loss, jobs, relationships, and other avenues to happiness. The science explains the value of furry as well, through clinical psychology and therapeutic experience.

Furries, unwittingly, act in ways that reflect psychological techniques for self-improvement and the pursuit of happiness. We have a healthy and effective method of managing our internal world, and of improving our relationship with the external world. The first helps us feel better about ourselves; the second helps us grow relationships.

The cornerstone of the furry world is roleplaying. Each of us creates an anthropomorphic animal alter-ego and acts as if this fiction were real. We routinely do this online but we also take this roleplaying into the real world. At conventions, or furmeets, or just among furry friends, we tend to act as our avatar. When you meet me in person, it’s entirely clear that I am not a horse (and my passport says Matt rather than JM) however furries will treat me as if I were. I like to hang around with other horses and complain about My Little Pony; I get why-the-long-face jokes; carnivores eye me up in a slightly disturbing fashion. It’s as if JM Horse were really there.

I, of course, return the favour and treat my fellow furries as if their avatar were real. (Hungry carnivores can be satisfied, I’ve learned, with candy. Or beer.) There is a mutual contract to reinforce the fantasy of our furry world.

Through this roleplaying, we are following a common Cognitive Behavioural Therapy technique known as ‘modelling’. Modelling is a self-improvement technique, usually applied to manage the internal criticism (from an inner voice) that we all struggle with when we are anxious.

A cognitive behavioural therapist will ask a client to identify a rolemodel. The rolemodel will be someone who is skilled at the behaviour provoking the client’s anxiety. So if the client is nervous about public speaking, he will be asked to think of an excellent public speaker. The client will then be asked to imagine what it would be like to ‘be’ that person. They will be asked to imagine how that person’s clothes might feel, see through that person’s eyes, hear that person’s internal dialogue.

Several things happen during this process. The first is that people become less self-focussed when they are roleplaying. When people are anxious, they tend to become more self-aware, which is usually counter-productive. The roleplaying exercise makes a connection between the new skill (public speaking) and a state of low self-awareness.

Pretending to be the rolemodel acts as mental mask, which has very similar effects to wearing a physical mask. A 2003 study from the Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin showed that people are significantly less self-aware when roleplaying (or wearing a physical mask). The effect is more than doubled when the subject is performing a task that makes them anxious.

Low self-awareness means that physical sensations – pain, nausea, heat – are felt less strongly. Awareness of the outer world is heightened. These effects from the mental mask of roleplaying make you feel more competent and confident.

The technique can also be used to try out new personality traits. Therapuetically, this is often used to treat depression or low confidence. The client will be asked to roleplay a happy person, which gives them experience as to how that might feel. Ideally, the client will draw some of the roleplayed traits into their normal lives.

Dr Robin Rosenberg is a clinical psychologist and editor of The Psychology of Superheroes. She believes that cosplaying is a form of self-administered mental health treatment. Dressing up as Batman, say, requires a client to practice acting like their rolemodel. At a sci-fi convention the stakes are low, so an insecure client feels safe to act brash and outgoing. This works as a practice run, giving the client some resources that may be summoned in times of stress.

There is more background on Dr Rosenberg’s blog in Psychology Today – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superheroes

There are obvious parallels to fursuiting, where an otherwise shy suiter becomes confident and outgoing. The experience of being in suit is liberating, in that you lose much self-awareness and become more engaged with the outside world. The effect is also comparable to furry interaction online.

Online, we can test personality traits in a friendly and low-risk environment. For some furries, online interaction is a stepping-stone to becoming a more confident social animal in real life. Some will roleplay as a dominant individual, which will help them to be more assertive. Some will roleplay as a different gender, which helps gain self-acceptance of an unusual gender identity. And many furries will experiment and discard traits that don’t fit.

The best example of the value of furry roleplaying is sexual preference. Many furries experiment with a gay or bisexual persona as a first step towards self-acceptance of their true sexual preference. Data from the furry survey, which forms the basis for an analysis here on [adjective][species] earlier this year, showed that around 50% of furries re-evaluate their sexual preference within their first five years in the community, typically from straight to gay.

The positive influence of furry extends beyond modelling. The value of ‘play’ towards self-improvement and maturation has been the subject of increasing research in recent times. It is understood that children develop social and cognitive skills through play, improving self-confidence and maturity. The benefits of play also continue into adulthood, in any areas where the subject is growing and learning new skills.

Social play, loosely defined as unstructured recreational time, helps improve social coordination and development of ‘social scripts’. Social play includes anything where there are no formal rules and where the social experience is unconsciously negotiated by the parties involved. Examples include a conversation or a drawing circle (but not TV or most gaming sessions). This includes so-called ‘parallel play’, where two or more people will engage in separate activities without much formal interaction.

The most relevant form of social play amongst furries is probably ‘pretend play’, which covers the sort of roleplaying that forms the foundation of much furry interaction. Online or in person, playing the role of furry characters and exploring different ideas helps develop self-identity and empathy. This translates into self-confidence.

There are a few examples where furry ‘play’ may have a direct positive effect on self-confidence:

• A furry meeting others for the first time may find themselves less anxious if this takes place in a safe, furry-only environment. Success in such an environment may grow the confidence of our shy furry, and embolden him to socialize elsewhere.
• A furry who feels outcast may socialize online, where she can find kindred spirits. Being accepted will help her understand others, improving her empathetic skills.
• A furry lacking sexual confidence might roleplay a sexual situation over text. This might lead to a low-stress real-life meeting, where intimacy already exists and the sexual mechanics are pre-negotiated.

The standards set by the furry community are important to help people discover a realistic target for themselves. Be it professionally, personally, or sexually, a person exposed to a healthy and happy community will tend to be drawn along a positive path. (Conversely, someone exposed to a negative environment will find it very difficult to rise above the norms of their peers.)

Happily, the furry community is a broad school. Someone new to the community is likely to find a positive and realistic rolemodel. We have many ad hoc variations of the mentor/mentee, or big-brother/little-brother relationship. Furries who are struggling with self-acceptance can expect to treated with care and respect.

Furries are unconsciously appropriating fun and using it for personal growth. The furry experience is externally enjoyable and internally rewarding. It’s making us happier critters.

Further reading on [a][s]:

• Re-Evaluating Your Sexual Preference

I'm finally actually interested in getting a commission of my fursona(s). However, to be honest, I'm really rather new to the whole idea of paying someone to draw it for me. So I was wondering: Who out there has gotten someone to do a commission for them? Do these artists still do commissions? Do you have any artists you would recommend for me?

Also, any artists out there: Would you be willing to do a commission?

submitted by auctionedkitten
[link] [10 comments]

i am looking for someone to do an amazing commision of my fursona playing rugby. the maximum i can pay is $48.96. need examples first.

submitted by cobracol
[link] [2 comments]

Not sure if this guy is a furry, or just really, truly loves goats and wants to be close to them, but something is odd about a man in a home made goat costume fallowing a herd on a hillside.

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/hiker_spots_man_in_goat_suit_frolicking_with_a_herd

Papabear,

For many years of my life I have been haunted by the fact that every time I have neared the pinnacle of success in my life, something has occurred, whether through my own fault or circumstances beyond my control, which takes my hopes, dreams, and goals and shatters them to tiny pieces each and every time. 

Having recently finished reading “Waterways,” and hearing certain music from FA artist Nevirwolf, I have found myself questioning my life as a whole. Why am I around? Have I only validated myself by the fact of being in relationships with friends and my recent boyfriend? Am I living a lie by hypocritizing my own advice? Where am I going with my life? Who am I truly inside?

When I was a young child many people in the town I was growing up in hated my existence. I was hunted, beaten down, physically broken, shot, stabbed, and many other forms of mental torture. Eventually they broke my will to live and I tried to commit suicide 7 times. 

I moved away from there, but the pain and torture have left mental scars. Once I had gotten out of my depression, I swore on my life that I would do all in my power to stop what happened to me from happening to others. Since that day I have thrown myself into harm’s way more than once for the sake of strangers. But WHY?

I am so confused within my already perplexing mind, and this self questioning is tearing me up. My fears of loss validated hundreds of times in my life. Last year I had to watch as 12 years of work shattered, and this sent me back to suicidal thoughts. Did I keep myself alive for the sole sake of my mother's wish to not feel the pain of loss once more? My real name is in memory of a good friend of hers who had committed suicide.

My main question is, how can I face my fear of losing everything I work for when all my life it has come to fruition time and time again?

Taiku Altergrund

* * *

Dear Taiku,

Your question might seem simple on the surface, but your letter asks some very deep and difficult questions that are hard to address in an advice column, yet Papabear will try his best.

To give you truly relevant advice that would be specific to you, I would have to know more about all the things that you have tried, how they failed, and why you feel they failed. But dealing in generalities can still be of help to you, as well as to all furry readers, with luck.

Taiku, you have had an extremely difficult young life that has, as you said, scarred you deeply. One possibilities for your later problems in life may be that your wounds have left you at a disadvantage to begin with, which makes you less likely to succeed in your adult life. You have probably heard the quote “What does not kill us makes us stronger.” Not all people believe this, including psychologist Noam Shpancer, Ph.D., who wrote this article in Psychology Today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-therapy/201008/what-doesnt-kill-you-makes-you-weaker.

But you managed to survive and embarked on the highly admirable goal to help others who are also suffering. You ask why you do this, and the answer could simply be that you do it because you have a good heart. But you also say you have thrown yourself into harm’s way repeatedly to help people, which could be an extension of your desire to commit suicide.

Again, as I have said in my column before, I am not a trained psychologist or therapist of any sort, so these are just guesses on my part. You would probably benefit from professional help, given your traumatic background, whether or not you have sought out any as yet.

As for your fear of losing things you work for, the fear itself might be causing a self-fulfilling prophecy in which you are so afraid that it causes you to mess things up, in a way self-sabotaging your plans. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, very wisely, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

So, one thing you can do is try to stop fearing failure. This is not easy, and it is a topic that cannot be thoroughly addressed in a column like this one (again, therapy could be beneficial). One thing to try is behavior modification in which you do everything you can to surround yourself with good feelings—go do things you enjoy, surround yourself with happy people, even ACTING happy and confident can actually CAUSE you to feel that way.

Just because you have failed in some things that you have wanted to do does not mean that you yourself are a failure, only the things you have tried are failures. Let me give you an example from my own life: I dreamed of being a successful author and worked very hard on it for many years, the result being a couple published books and no money (they only sold a few hundred copies). I eventually realized I wasn’t really suited to be an author and I moved on to other things. I do believe I may have found something I am good at with this column you are now reading.

So, it could just be that you haven’t found the right thing for you yet and, difficult as it may be, you need to keep trying.

Now, you also say you are afraid of “losing everything I work for.” Well, what are you working for? If you are working for money and material gain, then don’t worry about it; those things are meaningless. If you are working for prestige and power, then those are misguided goals you should not be working toward anyway. But if you are working for family and friends, then if they are really family and friends to you, you have nothing to fear. True family and friends never leave your side, and they appreciate what you do for them.

Taiku, when you realize that things like money, careers, material goods are really not so important in the scheme of things and focus on the things that DO matter—love friendship, and spirituality—you will have gone a long way toward finding yourself and your happiness. You’re asking the big questions in life: “Why am I around? ... Where am I going with my life? Who am I truly inside?” These questions can be answered only when you observe what the Buddhists call right mindfulness. In fact, come to think of it, I think you would benefit greatly from a little study in the Noble Eightfold Path (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html). 

It is Papabear’s belief that there is only one correct goal in life (enlightenment), but that we each may take a different path towards it (various religious, spiritual, and philosophical pursuits). While Papabear has been pursuing some study in Wicca and Shamanism, for you, I believe that Buddhism might hold a strong appeal. I’m not saying you need to be a Buddhist, but I believe that the way that Buddha put things into perspective may appeal to you in your case.

I hope that helps you some. I wish you much love and happiness in your future endeavors.

Papabear 

Simple question, or is it?

What do you do and want in life? I know this isn't exactly furry related, but I want to know what other furries want out of life, besides drawing animal things.

I'm currently studying Graphic Design, moving to work in a related field. However, I've come into doubts about this over time. It's much better than anything I could've imagined 5 years ago so that's good, but still, I wish for something else.

My current plan is super hazy and changes as I go, but I might be looking for a sewing related school, computer/game school, or perhaps even something music related after I graduate. I've also thought about starting a youtube channel of sorts, but that's a very difficult way to make money with.

If I could decide and make something work, I would be making music along with drawing an original webcomic & art, and perhaps work on a game in the spare time. My long time #1 dream has been to sing and make music, but that's very unlikely to go anywhere with my situation. I feel too uncomfortable to practice singing in a dormitory with very non-soundproof walls. All of these things are what I genuinely WANT to do, but making a living with it is a whole new issue.

Those are my dreams anyway, and I still have that spark of hope that I might be there one day if I can find the path.

submitted by Tsum
[link] [51 comments]

submitted by finjopa
[link] [5 comments]

submitted by evolon
[link] [3 comments]

submitted by portalborn
[link] [10 comments]

submitted by BigBadDog
[link] [3 comments]

submitted by Shiftia
[link] [5 comments]

Okay, first off I need to quickly state that my experience in writing isn't that great, and my grammar is going to be that of a high school level. You have been warned.

-Nothing NSFW. Sorry.

-Give me details. Details can include description of character(s) and their personalities, a simple plot idea (can be as basic as, "Write a story about me being cool in a medieval setting," and I'll do my best), and any other things you'd like to see in the story! Oh yes, and mentioning the mood you'd like in the story would be rather nice, too. I'd hate to write something comedic and silly when you wanted an epic.

-I make NO promises whatsoever of all the stories being finished, or, if any at all get finished. Trust me, I'll feel like an ass if I don't finish any at all, but I will try. Hell, I may even keep looking back at this list for a few months' time, so be ever hopeful.

-Keep in mind I said 'short story'. If yours ends up being a mere five pages, single-spaced, apologies. It's nothing personal, it's me being lazy. Of course, I don't want that to happen, and I'd like to give them some credible length, but I cannot guarantee I'll be as motivated as I am now in the future.

-If you feel anxious specifying what you'd like in your story, feel free to message me. It's Reddit. I have hardly friends on here. I don't care. Don't be nervous, I won't judge.

But most importantly of all, remember that I am an amateur!

submitted by Nicodimus27
[link] [2 comments]

Author: Harvi We’re rebooting the podcast! Now you can take part in the Hop Inn from the beginning! When we catch up to the current episode we’ll update our iTunes Feed to point over here instead of the old, soon to be gone, site. We’ll be adding more information and links as this site progresses [...] [Series Reboot]Live From the Hop Inn Episode 215

submitted by 4dolfin
[link] [9 comments]

Hello. This recording that you are about to listen to is not an official WagzTail episode, but something that was put together today. A friend of mine, IantheGecko, was kind enough to join me for a brief talk on the Aurora shooting, and we talked a little bit about one of the most important questions to answer here: “Where was God in all this?”

God was the same place on Friday morning as He was on Thursday morning, of course.

I encourage you all to listen, and comment if you will.

Thank you.

 

Here is the link mentioned:

http://aminiatureclaypot.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/so-you-still-think-god-is-a-merciful-god/

Thoughts on Aurora, Colorado - Hello. This recording that you are about to listen to is not an official WagzTail episode, but something that was put together today. A friend of mine, IantheGecko, was kind enough to join me for a brief talk on the Aurora shooting,

Lynn Hogan is an author and artist from the Seattle, Washington area. She’s worked for Marvel Comics and Bella Sara, among others. Prydwen is a fantasy-adventure comic she has been putting up on line for some time. Now Sofawolf Press have released Prydwen: Gods and Monsters, the first graphic novel compilation of the on-line comic. This full-color work is available in softcover and hardcover editions. “Orphaned at a young age and raised in a Sui monastery, Prydwen settles into a peaceful life tending the gardens, never knowing who she is or where she came from. When disturbing dreams give way to waking up in patches of ash where flowers used to be, she flees the safety of the church grounds with her friend Auric, looking for answers. Her path takes her deep into the sacred gardens of the Wanderkind God, where she is destined to release his imprisoned Elynd and learn more about her past.” Sofawolf has a preview on their web site, and a video preview up on YouTube as well.

image c. 2012 Lynn Hogan

submitted by evilsibe
[link] [7 comments]

submitted by evilsibe
[link] [15 comments]