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on the nature of tags, visibility, and the lack thereof
4 years ago
Probably not a good idea for me to start rambling while I'm supposed to be getting ready for work, but... I have something to get off my chest in regards to tags/keywords on FA and the mortifying ordeal of being known.
Tags are optional here on FA, and I almost never bother to fill them out in any case. They can be nice to have but a lot of times I'm just lazy. Like I guess I don't see much point in tagging 'wolf' on a clear picture of a wolf that is already filed under 'Canine>Wolf', you know? About the only thing I regularly tag is my Redwall art, and I feel like most other subjects should be pretty obvious in the correct category already.
But it's not always a matter of laziness. There are certain subjects and characters I deliberately avoid tagging because I don't want to draw the 'wrong' kind of attention. This is largely a SFW account, but more than that, there's an entire kink community that I have no desire to interact with because at the end of the day we have nothing in common. I know full well that I could get more views if I tagged all my drawings of Blaine. I've literally seen it happen in other artists' renditions of him when they bother to tag. Here, for example. Every time I look at this simple sketch and it continues to have twice as many views as the beautiful fully rendered pieces on either side of it I can't help but laugh- and it's always a bigger number than I'm expecting- but then I have to question the viewers' motives. And I could joke about how this is FA we're talking about so I don't really have to guess, but it's not exclusive to FA either. Sometimes it feels like I'm alone on a tiny raft in a sea of fetish content. How does the saying go? Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
I don't actually care what people are into as long as they're not hurting anyone, but the last thing I want to do is give people the wrong impression about me and my art. So it's just easier not to tag. File my fursona away under a generic category in the FA dropdown. File myself away under a vague umbrella term on social media. Because there's a kind of attention that for me, is not worth having- but then the downside is feeling utterly invisible, everywhere, all the time. And I'm not really sure if that's better.
Is it worth it to tag in this case? Sometimes I wonder if I should. I wanted to, when I posted Blaine's new ref the other day, just because I was hyped about it and wanted to be -seen- for once, but talked myself out of it. I guess I could always go back and edit/add something. It occurs to me, too, that if I don't make an effort to contribute to a tag, then of COURSE what's there will be overwhelmingly fetish content. Of COURSE there will be fewer serious heartfelt things in the tag. Because I'm the asshole not putting my serious heart into the tag.
I dunno. It's complicated. And I'm a coward. So there's that. I could keep going, and maybe I'll edit this later, but now I really do have to get my ass to work.
A question to other trans artists of any stripe: do you make an effort to tag your work/characters as such? Would you still do so, if you didn't have a community, and a search on FA turned up nothing but, like, 'herm' porn and chasers? Would it be worth it to you?
Tags are optional here on FA, and I almost never bother to fill them out in any case. They can be nice to have but a lot of times I'm just lazy. Like I guess I don't see much point in tagging 'wolf' on a clear picture of a wolf that is already filed under 'Canine>Wolf', you know? About the only thing I regularly tag is my Redwall art, and I feel like most other subjects should be pretty obvious in the correct category already.
But it's not always a matter of laziness. There are certain subjects and characters I deliberately avoid tagging because I don't want to draw the 'wrong' kind of attention. This is largely a SFW account, but more than that, there's an entire kink community that I have no desire to interact with because at the end of the day we have nothing in common. I know full well that I could get more views if I tagged all my drawings of Blaine. I've literally seen it happen in other artists' renditions of him when they bother to tag. Here, for example. Every time I look at this simple sketch and it continues to have twice as many views as the beautiful fully rendered pieces on either side of it I can't help but laugh- and it's always a bigger number than I'm expecting- but then I have to question the viewers' motives. And I could joke about how this is FA we're talking about so I don't really have to guess, but it's not exclusive to FA either. Sometimes it feels like I'm alone on a tiny raft in a sea of fetish content. How does the saying go? Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
I don't actually care what people are into as long as they're not hurting anyone, but the last thing I want to do is give people the wrong impression about me and my art. So it's just easier not to tag. File my fursona away under a generic category in the FA dropdown. File myself away under a vague umbrella term on social media. Because there's a kind of attention that for me, is not worth having- but then the downside is feeling utterly invisible, everywhere, all the time. And I'm not really sure if that's better.
Is it worth it to tag in this case? Sometimes I wonder if I should. I wanted to, when I posted Blaine's new ref the other day, just because I was hyped about it and wanted to be -seen- for once, but talked myself out of it. I guess I could always go back and edit/add something. It occurs to me, too, that if I don't make an effort to contribute to a tag, then of COURSE what's there will be overwhelmingly fetish content. Of COURSE there will be fewer serious heartfelt things in the tag. Because I'm the asshole not putting my serious heart into the tag.
I dunno. It's complicated. And I'm a coward. So there's that. I could keep going, and maybe I'll edit this later, but now I really do have to get my ass to work.
A question to other trans artists of any stripe: do you make an effort to tag your work/characters as such? Would you still do so, if you didn't have a community, and a search on FA turned up nothing but, like, 'herm' porn and chasers? Would it be worth it to you?
For the trans question- I tag my art depending on if the subject is trans/intersex. I HATE hate hate that people started using the term intersex for their "herm" character though. It makes it impossible to find other intersex art since it's all.... obscene porn...
Do you ever get unwanted attention by tagging your intersex subjects, then? Or do you feel like *somebody* has to put their earnest work out there? Because I'm very, very okay with not attracting a bunch of CBT fetishists, but if someone was searching for a non-kink perspective and missed mine because I didn't tag... that would suck actually!!
I've yet to get any gross comment on my intersex pieces- mostly get them on female characters. But yeah, i feel that maybe if my intersex art can reach one person who enjoys it in a non-fetishy way, then that's worth it ❤
The difference between weasyl's and e6's tagging systems is that there is a definite list of tags on e6, and any tag outside of that list gets changed to 'invalid_tag'. This enforces that a certain thing is tagged in only one way.
Weasyl doesn't have this, so when I blocked seeing content tagged as, say, 'alcohol' for example, I still kept seeing pictures where it was tagged as 'booze', 'drunk', 'tipsy', or just not tagged at all. A viewer can suggest changes to a picture's tags, but in my experience artists reacted aggressively to this on weasyl.
thats probably a deeply different point of view to approach things. but i want to sympathize with the discomfort of ppl behaving in unsavory and uncomfortable way towards trans people and fictional trans media because like, ive had those kinds of ppl comment on my stuff over the years too. it makes me angry as a trans person, ive even gotten into fights over it. but nowadays i try to swallow it and block any engagement rather than create more stress for myself by snapping at it. results may vary, some days im less successful than not
but uhhh rambling, i think im trying to say tho that i dont think youre a coward for avoiding the encounters. its scary being trans, gnc, intersex, whatever isnt your hard line Man and Woman. i cant blame you for shying away, and i dont think people should be harsh towards that. shits hard, try to make it easier for yourself however you do
LONG COMMENT LMAO but i understand a lot of what ur hitting on in this journal. be well
I'd like to say that I don't care whether people find my work or not, but if that was true I wouldn't bother to post at all. I'm not, like, 'out' in real life, and even if I was I can't expect to be correctly read by anyone, so drawing my OCs is often the only way I can express myself. And I've been lucky enough to make a few good friends with people who found my letters in bottles over the last decade, and I wouldn't trade that for the world- but I've never actually talked to anyone in the trans community like me, and that gets pretty miserable after 16 years. If I do decide to start tagging my work more, it'll be because I don't want another person to feel that loneliness or think that there's nothing but fetish stuff out there.
I do like that people are free to tag their own work, however they want, or not at all. If tags were mandatory or could be added by other people, that would be a turnoff for me.
I think I know what kinds of communities you want to avoid; it's why some things stay in my head; the thought of brin ging them to paper feels strange, and on one hand it would attract people I don't want to, and expels my other Faithful Followers ™, maybe? I am not creating arts entirely for myself, or else I wouldn't bother putting them on display anywhere.
a long time ago I made a sloppy sketch of an almost-humanoid make chicken, and named it "the biggest cawk in the world", and even added a thumbnail. of course, nothing was as expected, and some time later maybe a disappointed admin deleted it. irony is so hard to understand...
Yeah, I get what you're saying. We post art because we want it to be seen and hopefully liked, otherwise we wouldn't bother. And there are some things you wouldn't want to be known for... but other things that you do. I don't go seeking the fetish groups out, but I've stumbled into them accidentally, and the thing that bothers me isn't so much the content itself. It's the fact that the community is -there- and would probably welcome me if I made myself known, but it's the opposite of what I'm actually here for :/
rule 34a: if it's on the internet, someone, somewhere, is right now fapping to it.
On the trans question, I do tend to tag my fursona as "FTM" "trans masc", etc regardless of the sort of post it is (SFW or NSFW) because it's part of my identity and I know other people of that identity might look for it. And also because when I do rarely post NSFW art of my fursona, I want to make sure he doesn't either get misgendered or called a "c*ntboy" or something. It is so fucking hard to find choice NSFW art of transmasc folks because a lot of it is "cboys" or, even worse, detrans stuff (thankfully not as much on FA, but basically everywhere off FA all trans masc content is like "FTM GIRL TAKES HUGE BREEDING BULL COCK FROM REAL MAN".) UGH.
When someone else commissions NSFW art of a trans/nb character, I usually put the character's pronouns in the description so that people know not to be shitty about it too.
But it does get muddy when it comes to the subject I know you're talking about. I have a few commissioners who are both either trans women or nonbinary who are themselves castrated for gender identity, but are also kinksters and commission some CBT related stuff as well. I saw someone call it "self actualization porn"? But there are 100% definitely people who are just into it for kink and would make gross annoying comments on your SFW art because they lack the tact to distinguish between "fantasy kink art" and "hello, this is someone's actual reality".
I have some very un-kink-related SFW art that I've gotten the weirdest fucking horny comments on. FA is weird.
You leave the most thoughtful responses and I feel so bad for dumping on you that one time just because I did, and still do, have my own hangups about making myself visible to the community. You're right in that even the most innocuous things can receive creepy attention sometimes, it's always a possibility, but it doesn't mean the work shouldn't be posted. And I'm not against the NSFW stuff or anything. It's not a hard line between SFW=meaningful and NSFW=shallow trash. Nobody has to tell me that self-actualization is a powerful thing. And I don't get to define what that means for anyone else.
...if I did start tagging my stuff more, and I DID start getting viewers looking for kink commissions, at least I could politely decline with a recommendation for another great artist. c:
Another thing I've found helpful when posting something that I don't want "creepy comments" on is outright saying in the description (towards the top) that it's not welcome. IE, posting art of my fursona, along with his pronouns I might say "I'm shy and married, please enjoy respectfully" and I'll get more comments that are like "Handsome", "Cute", "Good job!", etc instead of more sexual comments, even if people obviously enjoyed it that way. Of course there will always be THAT ONE ASSHOLE, but if they are a continuous problem, you can always block them.