Memento Mori, or "Then They Changed What It Was"
(cross-posted from a FurAffinity comment thread)
Some greymuzzles will romanticize the "good old days", when you only had 3 TV channels and you were forced to watch "Battle of the Network Stars" or whatever crap those guys were airing. That era is gone, and it's not coming back. And greymuzzles will also have to ask what was all that great about their old stuff, when it can be made freely accessible to new audiences at no cost. Why isn't more of this available? Where are the classics? If this old stuff was so great and so innovative, where is it?
There's far, far too many creators (not just furry ones) who were born on third base and thought they had hit homers. Back when there were fewer players in town, if people wanted furry content, they could only get it from a few sources. As digital-delivery and print-on-demand has grown, now people who want furry content to their needs can go to more places for it. Some of the older creators have found that when people could find alternative product, that the customers stopped coming to their door.
Subjectivity aside, there has to be something to modern furry content that resonates with audiences. For example, how does the My Little Pony revival figure into this? It's a 1980s property about anthropomorphic horses, so it should surely be something in the greymuzzle's bailiwick. When the bronycons have more attendance than furry cons, then it's not purely an issue of "more diverse" content. There's something in MLP:FIM that resonates with people. A lot of people.
By far, the biggest challenge of the greymuzzles is to remember that the furry community is larger than ever, but it's also more discriminating than ever. You were a kid once. What spoke to you, then? And as an artist, what can you do to make it to speak to people, today? And as one of the best artists, what can you do to make it speak to people of tomorrow?
Some greymuzzles will romanticize the "good old days", when you only had 3 TV channels and you were forced to watch "Battle of the Network Stars" or whatever crap those guys were airing. That era is gone, and it's not coming back. And greymuzzles will also have to ask what was all that great about their old stuff, when it can be made freely accessible to new audiences at no cost. Why isn't more of this available? Where are the classics? If this old stuff was so great and so innovative, where is it?
There's far, far too many creators (not just furry ones) who were born on third base and thought they had hit homers. Back when there were fewer players in town, if people wanted furry content, they could only get it from a few sources. As digital-delivery and print-on-demand has grown, now people who want furry content to their needs can go to more places for it. Some of the older creators have found that when people could find alternative product, that the customers stopped coming to their door.
Subjectivity aside, there has to be something to modern furry content that resonates with audiences. For example, how does the My Little Pony revival figure into this? It's a 1980s property about anthropomorphic horses, so it should surely be something in the greymuzzle's bailiwick. When the bronycons have more attendance than furry cons, then it's not purely an issue of "more diverse" content. There's something in MLP:FIM that resonates with people. A lot of people.
By far, the biggest challenge of the greymuzzles is to remember that the furry community is larger than ever, but it's also more discriminating than ever. You were a kid once. What spoke to you, then? And as an artist, what can you do to make it to speak to people, today? And as one of the best artists, what can you do to make it speak to people of tomorrow?