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~fffandever
Heya! I'm just some person, who likes drawing. I'm not very good, but I don't let that stop me.
I only do art trades with people I know to some degree.
If I'm ever open for commissions, usually I'll put it on my Twitter first!
Here are some cool people!
Current icon is by candibat!
I only do art trades with people I know to some degree.
If I'm ever open for commissions, usually I'll put it on my Twitter first!
Here are some cool people!
Current icon is by candibat!
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Featured Journal
MFF 2023 Retrospect
5 months ago
So, I'm back from MFF 2023! I got in later last night, and have since slept. I had a lot of mixed feelings, and that gave me some time to compile my thoughts a bit. I'm gonna be saying a lot of things, so I'll preface this whole thing with me saying: At the end of the day, I had a good time, I would like to go again.
So for some context, this isn't my first con, but it might as well have been. Last time I went to a con it was Furnal Equinox back in 2019, and I went to that one by myself. FE is, plainly, nowhere near as large as MFF. And heck, was MFF busy.
This time, I went with a group of 4-5 people. Friends I'd never met in person before, but I've known for a long time. I was very happy to meet them, they were all great people to hang out with! Most of my favorite moments over the weekend were when we were together, rather than something specific to the con, really. I'm grateful they were all able to come, and it was good to hang out and just talk, sketch, that stuff! Which was surprisingly harder to do than you'd think.
MFF is, i think, the biggest con of its kind, or at least one of them. From what I understand the 'biggest' con title seems to bounce between MFF and AnthroCon quite a bit. And yeah! It was a lot of people. Honestly it was almost too many people in some ways. Registering Thursday evening, I arrived right when the lines opened for pre-reg, and I was standing for two and a half hours. Which was not that bad a time, all things considered, had some chats with the people next to me. Mass respect to the people who were in that line in full suit, by the way.
Every staff member seemed to be saying the same thing, that being that they did not expect the turnout that they got. I never got an official number of attendees while I was there, but I'm pretty sure it was in the tens of thousands. Or maybe not, I'm not good at estimating. Anyway, point is it was a lot of people. This seemed to be a recurring theme throughout the con. Every meet-up and event we went to, the rooms were typically at capacity (or at least had minimal open space, with more people spilling out into the hallways. Hosts would often remark that they did not expect the number of people that showed up, and a lot of the rooms were very warm to sweltering due to the number of people in them, though I'm pretty sure at some point enough people complained that they kicked the AC up a few notches, which I also appreciated, and I wasn't even in a suit!
When I was at FE, I took a ton of pictures, I'd try to politely ask every suiter I came across if I could take pictures of them, and with their agreeance, did so. It was a lot easier because that con took place within a single building, and it was much less sparsely populated, so it was easy to stand off to the side as they posed for me and I'd take a pic.
I took a lot less pictures at MFF. I found it difficult to catch people at the right time and place for pictures. There were a lot of times I'd see some really awesome suits in the narrow hallways that spanned the multiple venues this con took place at. These were hallways (or 'skybridges') that barely had the room for two single-file lines (it also didn't help it was cold and rainy the whole weekend), so we couldn't exactly just move to the side to take a picture without disrupting traffic. Often I'd see a suiter I wanted to take a picture of, but would just go 'it's alright, I'll try to find them later,' since space didn't always allow for it, my friends and I were on our way somewhere else, and I'm sure the suiter was, too. That, and I don't want stalk a suiter to wherever they were going just so I could harass them for a picture.
I know I sound like I'm complaining a lot, but you know what? I still had a fantastic time! Cause you know what? Your eyes? They're also cameras! And you can store the pictures they take in your brain!
Sorry if that was a bit condescending.
But for real, I still had a great time! I saw a lot of cute and cool suits! And even if there were a lot of people, everyone I came across was courteous and nice. Which I appreciate. I'm not the best at being proactively social. Part of my day job is working at a hospital, and getting cancer patients to agree to donate excess tissue from surgeries for research purposes. Most of my 'socializing' is scripted by lawyers, filtered by ethics boards, and canned by committees. So it's very hard for me to flick that 'socially active' switch without the filter from my job, especially when I spend a lot of time in that mode at work. Pair that with some of my own personal past, and being proactively social ending with me being the butt of a joke, I get very apprehensive about it. I jokingly say that my social switch is a rusted out, oversized industrial breaker switch, those ones that make the big KERCHUNK sound. Once I flick that one way or the other, it's hard to flick it back. So I'm very choosy with when I turn that on, and as a result, I'm very passive when it comes to social situations. I enjoy the environment, more than the things in the environment. I like taking pictures of things, not with things.
That's not to say I can't be social! I'm still good at holding conversations, I can carry small talk, that kinda stuff. I'm much more comfortable with being reactively social, if that makes sense. But that leads into the main point I wanted to make regarding this whole con.
I enjoyed it alot! I would love to go back again. I felt like ... not that I shouldn't have been there, but it felt like I didn't need to be there. I want to be there, and I want a reason to be there. I find it difficult to just approach random people about furry stuff, even though that's literally what all those people were there for. One of my friends helped me summarize this best when I was spilling out a bunch of my feelings last night. I want to have a purpose to socialize. I wouldn't mind just getting a nice camera, setting up somewhere, and offering to take people's pictures for free. When I do go again, I'd love to do so in a suit of my own, honestly! This is the same feeling I had after FE as well.
Honestly, this con made me look forward to the future. I actually have set aside money for a suit. The main reason I've been holding off is twofold: The first is trying to pick someone to make a suit. I'm notoriously indecisive in general. Like, anytime I ask people what I should order for lunch when I eat it's like "oh no he's trying to decide what he's gonna eat, we're gonna be here for 3 hours". Haha I'm not really that bad, but I can get really indecisive. *Especially* with commissions. But besides that Even when I *do* pick someone, they have to be open for comms, and then also be willing to make a friend-shaped fox.
The other reason is that I currently don't live alone. I'm living with family at the moment. Trying to pay for rent in my area is not easy. I *could* do it in theory, like on paper I'd be able to do it, but with little to nothing left at the end of the month, and I don't see that as sustainable. My family is fortunately, understanding, insofar that they get it's not easy to afford a place to live right now. Ultimately though, while my parents aren't (overly) nosy, I would rather they not stumble across a big pear-shaped fox suit, even if the odds of that are low. When they found out I was bi, they couldn't stop asking questions about past partners and my preferences for weeks. I can only imagine what it'd be like if they found out I was a furry, haha.
But in the meantime, I'm doing a ton of self-improvement! I'm applying to go back to school, aiming for a few therapy programs, which if I get in, I'll be put into placements for a learn and work type program, which will definitely push me towards a more fiscally sustainable situation. Even if I don't get in, I can still hold onto my current job until I find something that pays better.
I've also been losing a good deal of weight irl, getting into shape a bit. If I keep this up, then I'll actually hit 200 pounds in the next several months, which for context, I haven't weighed less than that in almost a decade. And if I keep it up for a little while after that, I'll literally be half the person I was at my heaviest. Still not totally sure how far I'm going with it (the dad-bod does appeal to me some), but hey. I figure if I want to get a suit, I should probably be in half-decent physical shape, at the very least.
I'm also gonna continue drawing a ton! Octummber was a great springboard for me, I guess I've hit a level of quality where I'm actually excited to draw things now. I don't finish every drawing thinking about how I know I can do better, even despite how long I've spend on those drawings. I want to really get out there! So I'm gonna try to pick up the Biggest League of All, like I've said previously, hopefully I'll get at least one chapter out before the new year.
I also want to start drawing other people more as well! I think I might start doing some semi-regular draws for free art on Twitter/FA.
Additionally, in the new year, I want to try and begin working on a project. I have this faint idea of putting together a "magazine" of sorts, inviting artists to have their OCs interviewed or written up in an article, maybe some pin-ups, some ads and the like. I think it could be a fun project. Plus it'll help me get out there and interact with more artists, too!
So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to the next few years. Keep an eye out in the future, you might see the fluffy boye walking about somewhere!
Anyway, I've now realized I've been writing this out for well over an hour, and it's an absolute wall of text. So uh, if you read all that. Thank you. I really appreciate it. You're awesome, and I hope you reach your goals too.
So for some context, this isn't my first con, but it might as well have been. Last time I went to a con it was Furnal Equinox back in 2019, and I went to that one by myself. FE is, plainly, nowhere near as large as MFF. And heck, was MFF busy.
This time, I went with a group of 4-5 people. Friends I'd never met in person before, but I've known for a long time. I was very happy to meet them, they were all great people to hang out with! Most of my favorite moments over the weekend were when we were together, rather than something specific to the con, really. I'm grateful they were all able to come, and it was good to hang out and just talk, sketch, that stuff! Which was surprisingly harder to do than you'd think.
MFF is, i think, the biggest con of its kind, or at least one of them. From what I understand the 'biggest' con title seems to bounce between MFF and AnthroCon quite a bit. And yeah! It was a lot of people. Honestly it was almost too many people in some ways. Registering Thursday evening, I arrived right when the lines opened for pre-reg, and I was standing for two and a half hours. Which was not that bad a time, all things considered, had some chats with the people next to me. Mass respect to the people who were in that line in full suit, by the way.
Every staff member seemed to be saying the same thing, that being that they did not expect the turnout that they got. I never got an official number of attendees while I was there, but I'm pretty sure it was in the tens of thousands. Or maybe not, I'm not good at estimating. Anyway, point is it was a lot of people. This seemed to be a recurring theme throughout the con. Every meet-up and event we went to, the rooms were typically at capacity (or at least had minimal open space, with more people spilling out into the hallways. Hosts would often remark that they did not expect the number of people that showed up, and a lot of the rooms were very warm to sweltering due to the number of people in them, though I'm pretty sure at some point enough people complained that they kicked the AC up a few notches, which I also appreciated, and I wasn't even in a suit!
When I was at FE, I took a ton of pictures, I'd try to politely ask every suiter I came across if I could take pictures of them, and with their agreeance, did so. It was a lot easier because that con took place within a single building, and it was much less sparsely populated, so it was easy to stand off to the side as they posed for me and I'd take a pic.
I took a lot less pictures at MFF. I found it difficult to catch people at the right time and place for pictures. There were a lot of times I'd see some really awesome suits in the narrow hallways that spanned the multiple venues this con took place at. These were hallways (or 'skybridges') that barely had the room for two single-file lines (it also didn't help it was cold and rainy the whole weekend), so we couldn't exactly just move to the side to take a picture without disrupting traffic. Often I'd see a suiter I wanted to take a picture of, but would just go 'it's alright, I'll try to find them later,' since space didn't always allow for it, my friends and I were on our way somewhere else, and I'm sure the suiter was, too. That, and I don't want stalk a suiter to wherever they were going just so I could harass them for a picture.
I know I sound like I'm complaining a lot, but you know what? I still had a fantastic time! Cause you know what? Your eyes? They're also cameras! And you can store the pictures they take in your brain!
Sorry if that was a bit condescending.
But for real, I still had a great time! I saw a lot of cute and cool suits! And even if there were a lot of people, everyone I came across was courteous and nice. Which I appreciate. I'm not the best at being proactively social. Part of my day job is working at a hospital, and getting cancer patients to agree to donate excess tissue from surgeries for research purposes. Most of my 'socializing' is scripted by lawyers, filtered by ethics boards, and canned by committees. So it's very hard for me to flick that 'socially active' switch without the filter from my job, especially when I spend a lot of time in that mode at work. Pair that with some of my own personal past, and being proactively social ending with me being the butt of a joke, I get very apprehensive about it. I jokingly say that my social switch is a rusted out, oversized industrial breaker switch, those ones that make the big KERCHUNK sound. Once I flick that one way or the other, it's hard to flick it back. So I'm very choosy with when I turn that on, and as a result, I'm very passive when it comes to social situations. I enjoy the environment, more than the things in the environment. I like taking pictures of things, not with things.
That's not to say I can't be social! I'm still good at holding conversations, I can carry small talk, that kinda stuff. I'm much more comfortable with being reactively social, if that makes sense. But that leads into the main point I wanted to make regarding this whole con.
I enjoyed it alot! I would love to go back again. I felt like ... not that I shouldn't have been there, but it felt like I didn't need to be there. I want to be there, and I want a reason to be there. I find it difficult to just approach random people about furry stuff, even though that's literally what all those people were there for. One of my friends helped me summarize this best when I was spilling out a bunch of my feelings last night. I want to have a purpose to socialize. I wouldn't mind just getting a nice camera, setting up somewhere, and offering to take people's pictures for free. When I do go again, I'd love to do so in a suit of my own, honestly! This is the same feeling I had after FE as well.
Honestly, this con made me look forward to the future. I actually have set aside money for a suit. The main reason I've been holding off is twofold: The first is trying to pick someone to make a suit. I'm notoriously indecisive in general. Like, anytime I ask people what I should order for lunch when I eat it's like "oh no he's trying to decide what he's gonna eat, we're gonna be here for 3 hours". Haha I'm not really that bad, but I can get really indecisive. *Especially* with commissions. But besides that Even when I *do* pick someone, they have to be open for comms, and then also be willing to make a friend-shaped fox.
The other reason is that I currently don't live alone. I'm living with family at the moment. Trying to pay for rent in my area is not easy. I *could* do it in theory, like on paper I'd be able to do it, but with little to nothing left at the end of the month, and I don't see that as sustainable. My family is fortunately, understanding, insofar that they get it's not easy to afford a place to live right now. Ultimately though, while my parents aren't (overly) nosy, I would rather they not stumble across a big pear-shaped fox suit, even if the odds of that are low. When they found out I was bi, they couldn't stop asking questions about past partners and my preferences for weeks. I can only imagine what it'd be like if they found out I was a furry, haha.
But in the meantime, I'm doing a ton of self-improvement! I'm applying to go back to school, aiming for a few therapy programs, which if I get in, I'll be put into placements for a learn and work type program, which will definitely push me towards a more fiscally sustainable situation. Even if I don't get in, I can still hold onto my current job until I find something that pays better.
I've also been losing a good deal of weight irl, getting into shape a bit. If I keep this up, then I'll actually hit 200 pounds in the next several months, which for context, I haven't weighed less than that in almost a decade. And if I keep it up for a little while after that, I'll literally be half the person I was at my heaviest. Still not totally sure how far I'm going with it (the dad-bod does appeal to me some), but hey. I figure if I want to get a suit, I should probably be in half-decent physical shape, at the very least.
I'm also gonna continue drawing a ton! Octummber was a great springboard for me, I guess I've hit a level of quality where I'm actually excited to draw things now. I don't finish every drawing thinking about how I know I can do better, even despite how long I've spend on those drawings. I want to really get out there! So I'm gonna try to pick up the Biggest League of All, like I've said previously, hopefully I'll get at least one chapter out before the new year.
I also want to start drawing other people more as well! I think I might start doing some semi-regular draws for free art on Twitter/FA.
Additionally, in the new year, I want to try and begin working on a project. I have this faint idea of putting together a "magazine" of sorts, inviting artists to have their OCs interviewed or written up in an article, maybe some pin-ups, some ads and the like. I think it could be a fun project. Plus it'll help me get out there and interact with more artists, too!
So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to the next few years. Keep an eye out in the future, you might see the fluffy boye walking about somewhere!
Anyway, I've now realized I've been writing this out for well over an hour, and it's an absolute wall of text. So uh, if you read all that. Thank you. I really appreciate it. You're awesome, and I hope you reach your goals too.
User Profile
Accepting Trades
No Accepting Commissions
No Character Species
Fox
Favorite Music
Anything orchestrated
Favorite TV Shows & Movies
Heist Movies
Favorite Games
Bioshock, Dark Souls, Monster Hunter
Favorite Gaming Platforms
PC
Favorite Animals
Foxes. But also pretty much anything fluffy.
Favorite Foods & Drinks
Curries are tasty! Also I really like tea.
Favorite Quote
“In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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