On Saturday 06 June 2009 10:03, madhentairabbit_at_triluminary.net wrote:
> On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:13:09 -0000, "Blindfelid" <jferrite77_at_y.....> wrote:
> > Wow, the reality is starting to sink in. I thought these disturbing
> > fetishes only existed the silly drawings one finds on the chan boards.
> > I've never been to a furry con. I would like to go just to check out the
> > art and buy some prints or comics. But if the majority of the con goers
> > are like that, it doesn't sound appealing to me.
>
> I've been to a number of cons, and for the most part, they're not
> really like that. Or at least, not these days; there *was* a time when
> that sort of outrageous behavior was more openly tolerated or even
> encouraged -- but even then, I seem to remember that the really infamous
> "problem child" stories mostly originated from one or two specific
> conventions,
What's more, a fair chunk of those horror stories come from a con where it
wasn't the furries who were the big issue: It was the other convention in
the hotel that brought in an entire brothel. Fan conventions are, quite
simply, some of the best behaved conventions out there, (largely because we
can't afford to write off 6-figure damage deposits).
There are a few things that tend to generate a belief that things are getting
worse:
The horror stories never go away, and are often told as if they happened no
more than a year or two ago.
The stories 'breed' because they mutate as they pass from person to person,
and over time differently mutated versions of the same story will seem to be
about different events.
The cons are getting bigger and more numerous, so there will be an increase of
stories simply due to population increase plus there is less of a chance that
in any given group of people there is someone who can go: "Oh, THAT. I was
there and let me tell you what really happened...."
The issues with art are also partly illusion:
The first thing is that, as humans, we tend to whitewash the past. The
biggest reason for this is that we tend to not bother remembering that which
is forgettable. I've recently been going through some old boxes of comics,
and a fair chunk of the stuff from the '90s boom is crap, but those generally
weren't the titles that people remember. With the anthologies, the quality
of an issue is generally remembered as the quality of the best story, more so
if it was a popular series or serial.
When looking back at the artists who used to be around, the things we tend to
remember is the quality of their work late in their career and how long they
were around for. (This isn't restricted to visual media, people remember
that Mozart wrote great music and that he wrote his first symphony at 8,
people rarely consider that there might be a reason that first symphony is
never performed.)
There is a _LOT_ more posted now then there used to be: FA sees more
submissions in an hour than alt.binaries.pictures.(erotica).furry,
fur.artwork.adult/erotica/misc and the Avatar archive combined generally saw
in a week. More volume means more of the fringe stuff, because a small
fraction of a large number is bigger than a small fraction of a small number.
This volume does encourage those with fringe tastes to post more, for exactly
the same reason that alt.fan.albedo and alt.fan.furry encouraged people to
post about furry: People saw that they weren't the only one who liked that
stuff.
--
Chakat Firepaw - Inventor & Scientist (Mad)
Received on Sat Jun 06 2009 - 11:05:34 CDT