(NOTE: This journal was carried over from the previous iteration of SoFurry as the updated version of the website no longer offers support for user journals. As such, some verbiage may seem out of place.)

Hi, I am Viscosisaurus. I created this account on SoFurry a little more than a year ago. I also joined FurAffinity and X around the same time but both of those accounts have since been closed since I have unfavorable opinions about both of them. I created them to make an effort to reach out and meet people but FA is and always has been an absolute shit show of a website with the most incompetent developers in the world (seriously no tag blacklist in TWENTY YEARS lmao) and X is just a place where meaningless political slapfights happen. All that's left is this account here on SoFurry, a website that I used to know under a different name what feels like a lifetime ago.

I'm not new to the furry fandom. I've been here before, long before. I recall talking about the finer points of Rescue Rangers nearly 30 years ago on Acorn Cafe. I didn't actually write any fanfics or anything for that website, it was just a conventionally popular furry/anthro/toon community and back then we just sorta took what we could get. I have fond memories of going to my local comic book shop every two weeks to purchase the latest Furrlough and whatever other anthro comics came in. I went to a few conventions at the turn of the millennium and took photos with people in busty vixen fursuits -- who were probably men under the suit -- like they were booth babes at an E3 show. I was there for so many of the most pivotal and memorable moments of the early fandom, like Uncle Kage thinking he was hot shit because he was trading emails with the creators of SWAT Kats, or when Fredryk Phox posted a teaser of his Star Fox cartoon (for the first of what would be many many times), or when Dennis Falk scared a handful of female cartoon voice actors into never appearing at conventions again by being a creepy stalker. I even vaguely recall "the Vanity Fair article", though admittedly that one was a little bit before my time in the fandom.

And yet here I am on a new account with 0 followers on the decrepit remains of what was once the premiere place to read furry stories once upon a time. Yes, I also remember The Yiffy Story Archive, or "Yiffstar" for short. I had a presence here many moons ago. I remember when Kyell's "Aquifers" reigned supreme as the single most read story of all time and I was here when Of The Wild's "The Dragon In The Dungeon" dethroned it 11 years ago. It was a big deal, a real passing of the torch.

So what's the deal? What happened to my old account? Where is everything else?

Like a bad Facebook relationship, "it's complicated". I'm part of the old guard of the furry fandom, the first generation to bring anthro stuff to the online world. I had art hosted on VCL and Yerf, I had an account on Furcadia and the Lava Dome Five FaibanxMUCK even though I'm not into macro stuff. I knew a lot of people back then and I'm actually still friends with a very select few of them. The fandom is different now, and it's been different for a very long time. I can't exactly put my finger on it but there were two major tonal shifts in the community and each of them greatly soured my opinions toward things when they happened.

The first happened some time in the mid to late 2000's when the fandom suddenly started becoming incredibly sexualized, like to an overbearing degree. I am aware "yiff" has always been a thing but the way I was used to things there was a time and place where things of a sexual nature were appropriate. If you wanted to buy an issue of Genus from the comic book store, for example, you had to ask for it and the store owner would sell it to you, or it would be in a sleeve on the top shelf with black paper covering up most of the cover. Likewise there were certain spaces online that were delineated as being for adult content but the fandom as a whole was mostly just artwork of anthro animals and whatnot. People weren't just flagrantly horny out in the open everywhere. It's hard to determine what caused this shift but I think the establishment of Bad Dragon cemented that particular era of the fandom was here to stay. There were companies prior to BD that made adult toys for furries but BD was on a whole other level that had never been seen before. It achieved mainstream success. The fandom has just continued to rot and spiral out of control ever since.

The other shift happened toward the end of the 2010's and it was when the fandom started becoming overwhelmingly choked by social justice. I understand that people take their social causes very seriously, as they should, but I don't know, there was just this point where absolutely everything in the fandom became political. I absolutely hated it, and that's when I cashed out my chips and said fuck it all. It seems like even just bringing up the thought of "the furry fandom is too political" is in and of itself asking for trouble. It sucked all the fun out of what was once a laid back and whimsical place. I don't know how else to explain it. The other side of this coin is that I am old now and most of us greymuzzles do not maintain a public presence in the fandom anymore. We've collectively moved on and most of us just contact each other directly and have no interest in the young 20-somethings of today's fandom. We are literally two generations apart. We have nothing in common. (And honestly this is just me but I'd feel really awkward about being friends with someone and also being twice their age. It just seems creepy.)

The fandom became something that was openly hostile and I'd had enough, so I left. In that time I continued to write and draw however and pretty much the only people who've ever seen any of my work from the past decade are like the same 7 people I've stayed in touch with since I met them 20+ years ago. Despite my growing disdain with the furry fandom I did enjoy sharing the things I'd made and seeing people's enjoyment and feedback when I was originally here. Part of me has missed that for quite some time now so last year I rejoined the fandom purely as an uninvolved party and earlier this year I worked up the nerve to post my first story under this alias. I guess people liked it, about a half dozen people added it to their favorites. 20 years ago I'd have gotten dozens of favorites and comments but these aren't those times anymore, and I've learned to accept that. That era of the fandom and of my life can never and will never happen again. I accept that. I am okay with it. I'm probably looking back at the early fandom with rose tinted glasses anyways and intentionally forgetting the bad things that happened to me, which were a good many.

Anyways, I'll be posting stories and things every once in a while. I've written a lot of them; series, one-offs, fanfics, etc. But I'm in no rush to dump them here, nor am I planning on uploading my back catalog of works.

A lot of what I write caters to kinks largely in the realm of science fiction and horror because that's just what I grew up watching, likely at an age when I shouldn't have. What can I say though, I was a latchkey kid. I had a lot of unsupervised time to myself. It's how I wound up here after all.

I apologize if I come off cold or like an asshole. In a sense I guess maybe I'm really not here to make any friends because I'm just operating under the assumption that things are too different now and it's not worth getting involved emotionally. I'm back here on SoFurry mostly because I missed having an outlet to share the things that I've made. Even when I wasn't here anymore I still wrote stories and comics, it's just nobody ever saw them. It was a lonesome existence. It still is.

Thanks for reading all of this. Perhaps the next one won't be as pensive.