It's Wednesday again

[altivo]

Bah, humbug to Wednesdays. Now that there's only an hour or so until closing, things are starting to slow down. Thank goodness.

I'm rather surprised at the reception my artwork has received on both SF and DA. I'd almost be inclined to say that it's not worth writing when you can be so popular by doing art. Art is faster, too. I could do a traditional painting every two or three days. Writing a very short story and getting it to where I'd let anyone see it takes more like a week. A novella is a couple of months, a serious novel might be a year or more.

FA is quite a different story, though. To get noticed there, you have to do not just art, but porn, it seems. Oh, there are a few exceptions, but most of them do a fair percentage of erotica as well and their followers take the non-yiff art in along with it. Writing is hopelessly irrelevant on FA, as I've noted before.

In any case, I'm off the edge now. I have several more picture ideas in my head that are going to have to get onto paper to make room in there for writing. Oddly enough and at least so far, I have not been inclined to draw my own characters or scenes from my writing.

Comments

[kingodin.livejournal.com]

Sex definitely sells in the furry fandom. And my own art definitely gets more attention than my writing, although I do art related to my writing, in hopes of getting my work more attention.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Sex sells and so does junk food. I'm not about to pander to either demand.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I like what I've seen of your art. It's unfortunate, though, that it gets so much more attention than your writing — I say this not only because your writing is good, but you obviously care about what you write and you've had it out there for a long time. I'm sure it's not just you; it seems to be a trend everywhere.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Yes, it's clearly a trend, unless you're James Patterson or Danielle Steel. I was having a conversation about that with my boss and a board member last night. It seems that the wildly popular authors today write formulaic stuff that is nearly the same every time. You can tell what is going to happen and how. In a very real sense, it's like the fast food of literature. The people who return to these writers time and time again are doing the equivalent of eating every meal at McDonald's.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I think the rot really set in when SF (at that time Yiffstar) started admitting art as well as stories to it's site (about three years ago.)

I objected at the time on the grounds that there were plenty of places where people could exhibit artwork, but fewer places where writing is submitted. I still think another part of the problem is that reading takes time; time which people just don't have.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the ill advisedness of mixing art and literature on the same site. In the resurgence at FurRag that was, oddly enough, started by the SoFurry rollover, a number of new arrivals have said much the same thing.

This thing about people "not having time" though. That puzzles me. They still have 24 hours in a day. They are prioritizing their own time. Clearly the reason they "don't have time" to read is that they are using it for something else. In most cases, I don't think it is work or the effort required for survival that is keeping them from reading. It has to be things like video gaming or television, which really amount to major cultural shifts rather than any real shortage of time itself. They don't have time because they choose not to, because they value youtube over books or whatever. I view this as the collapse of human intellect as the masses shift into more and more passive entertainment that requires no intellectual engagement.

The clear analogy to me is is the Golgafrinchans and their "B" ark in Hitchhiker's Guide, or, to use a more recent and non-literary reference, those people on the space ship in Wall-E, who had forgotten how to even walk or eat without mechanical assistance.

[animist.livejournal.com]

I think people just don't read because they are mainly visually oriented today. Thanks to TV. That's a reason I think furry art drives the furry fandom, and stories don't even come in second.

[animist.livejournal.com]

I followed your link to your FA page. It's interesting that the FA graphic that comes up for the link back to the main FA page looks... hmmm... looks like the furry character just had an orgasm. I'm not against orgasms, mind you. Just find it amusing. Kind of baiting the haters isn't it? AH well.

I should explore FA and see what art is there. I am woefully behind on such things.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

FurAffinity and SoFurry provide constant material for the haters. I don't think they have any interest in improving the image.

deviantART, on the other paw, is more decorous and contains some remarkable art in the animal related groups. I find myself inspired to work on visual art again as I browse through DA, where much of what I see on FA repels me.

[animist.livejournal.com]

Thanks for mentioning FA... found this bit of coolness on there:

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2732911/

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's valid and useful all right.

[animist.livejournal.com]

My background is science more so than fantasy, so I like it when people take time to make something plausible and realistic. Plus, I was first interested in therianthropy and transformation through alt.horror.werewolves before I discovered alt.fan.furry back in the mid nineties. That's probably a big reason why so much furry stuff became boring to me after a while. I like comic characters to a certain degree - as long as there is a good story behind it.