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I might have to go on a bit of a hiatus now
2 years ago
So, I apparently picked a terrible era of the Internet to start tentatively dipping my toe into Pokémon content. I was already feeling apprehensive due to falling out of love with the recent games, and now with this… well everything has become a depressing mood now here. So the Pokémon comics might have to go on an indefinite hiatus while I figure things out… 😓
When I accidentally tied the comic's origins to the real-world calendar I kind of wanted to get it wrapped up before next October, hence why it's been so active lately compared to other art… but now things are taking a bad turn. I didn't want to stretch it out into a multi-year scenario, but this unscheduled hiatus is making next October possibly unlikely… 😢
I really had some fleeting hope that FurAffinity was the last gallery site that hadn't gone completely insane with puritan censorship. That there was one last corner of the Internet that you could maybe unwind and not stress out too much about jackasses relentlessly ramming censorship down your throat to conform with what their idea of purity was. Twitter is slowly burning itself down (and sucks for finding & viewing content anyway). Tumblr murdered all of its NSFW content. dA went to shit long before I jumped ship. I even started subbing to FA+ almost entirely because it felt like FA was the last (relatively) sane place. But I guess that's gone now (along with my subscription…)
It's really depressing to hear that they're very much privately rolling out blanket species bans on NSFW content while publicly claiming that they aren't. It's very hypocritical and feels like a huge red flag for more content bans to come later. Retroactive bans have always been a shitty concept. Remember when YouTube decided to retroactively nuke content for daring to say the word "fuck"? It's impossible for a content author to feel safe about ANYTHING if rules are slammed against them retroactively. The new rules are so vaguely broad that any moderator with a vendetta could basically interpret it as they feel like…
My type of NSFW content is very far removed from what they're ostensibly trying to censor, but with how wide of a net they're casting it's impossible to know where the line will fall at any time of day now. Can completely fictional children get breastfed (or udder-fed) by their completely fictional mothers? Are all content with Riolus simply banned entirely? The very minimal public rules seem to say "no", but all the feedback I've heard so far seems to indicate a HARD ban on certain species is incoming. I don't want to pretend a completely-adult artist basically should stop existing purely because they use a Pokémon avatar. I already self-censor plenty of udder content for fear of it being misinterpreted.
While I create NSFW content with udders, all the scenarios I've had involving fictional "children" have been just innocent parent & child interactions. I don't EVER want to cross the line into sexualising children, and the looming spectre of being accused of it is worrying. There's a dangerous trend that just about any content daring to acknowledge that children exist is going to come under fire. Completely fictional species with small body types are already under fire right now. I'm starting to feel very uncomfortable about the prospects of a future here on FA…
I'm just… so tired. It's getting hard to just exist in peace these days.
When I accidentally tied the comic's origins to the real-world calendar I kind of wanted to get it wrapped up before next October, hence why it's been so active lately compared to other art… but now things are taking a bad turn. I didn't want to stretch it out into a multi-year scenario, but this unscheduled hiatus is making next October possibly unlikely… 😢
I really had some fleeting hope that FurAffinity was the last gallery site that hadn't gone completely insane with puritan censorship. That there was one last corner of the Internet that you could maybe unwind and not stress out too much about jackasses relentlessly ramming censorship down your throat to conform with what their idea of purity was. Twitter is slowly burning itself down (and sucks for finding & viewing content anyway). Tumblr murdered all of its NSFW content. dA went to shit long before I jumped ship. I even started subbing to FA+ almost entirely because it felt like FA was the last (relatively) sane place. But I guess that's gone now (along with my subscription…)
It's really depressing to hear that they're very much privately rolling out blanket species bans on NSFW content while publicly claiming that they aren't. It's very hypocritical and feels like a huge red flag for more content bans to come later. Retroactive bans have always been a shitty concept. Remember when YouTube decided to retroactively nuke content for daring to say the word "fuck"? It's impossible for a content author to feel safe about ANYTHING if rules are slammed against them retroactively. The new rules are so vaguely broad that any moderator with a vendetta could basically interpret it as they feel like…
My type of NSFW content is very far removed from what they're ostensibly trying to censor, but with how wide of a net they're casting it's impossible to know where the line will fall at any time of day now. Can completely fictional children get breastfed (or udder-fed) by their completely fictional mothers? Are all content with Riolus simply banned entirely? The very minimal public rules seem to say "no", but all the feedback I've heard so far seems to indicate a HARD ban on certain species is incoming. I don't want to pretend a completely-adult artist basically should stop existing purely because they use a Pokémon avatar. I already self-censor plenty of udder content for fear of it being misinterpreted.
While I create NSFW content with udders, all the scenarios I've had involving fictional "children" have been just innocent parent & child interactions. I don't EVER want to cross the line into sexualising children, and the looming spectre of being accused of it is worrying. There's a dangerous trend that just about any content daring to acknowledge that children exist is going to come under fire. Completely fictional species with small body types are already under fire right now. I'm starting to feel very uncomfortable about the prospects of a future here on FA…
I'm just… so tired. It's getting hard to just exist in peace these days.
It's not the most popular site, but I think that helped it avoid the insanity of...well, most everywhere else. Weasyl is very clean and functional, and has rules almost-identical to FA's (pre-insanity, that is), so it's pretty easy to move content over from one to the other.
I should see if my IB account still works. I haven't been there in forever.
I'd prefer a site like Pixiv or Inkbunny that allows you to upload comic books or sketch dumps (Tho hilariously people almost never use that feature, annoying me forever when I try to read their damn comics)
Tho a lot of people I know don't want to be around loli or cub stuff, which fine, but that means both art gallery sites with comic book functionality aren't used by most people.
deviantART used to have one, but that relied on Flash. Tumblr is probably the best bet except it's hard to like... organize pages and comments... Twitter isn't for artists and it's gonna be devoured by Elon Musk's X so I'm just waiting for the next hilariously awful thing that ruins everyone's lives and we all go to tumblr.
Yeah. I actually recommend InkBunny as well just for anyone, but people are always leery of it because of unfair stigmas. It does indeed host the dreaded 'cub content', but you can just, you know, post adult-age stuff too there and not interact with that side of things. I dunno.
Twitter seems to be the most popular decision for a lot of artists, but I think absolutely nothing about the site makes it good to meaningfully host artwork, so...
Which, anecdotally is kind of mixed results with part of the mix nazis trying to get people to hate minoritys by using children as a cudgel so it's hard to anything.
Tho the thing is that twitter has a lot of that stuff too and people join that website so I dunno, maybe it's more that people would rather go to the most popular website which is twitter and everything else is an excuse.
Or you could host your own site, but again, not sure how people would ever find it.
Only really commenting because, even though I keep everything I post SFW (I tend to find things far more interesting that way), I've followed your art for a long time and you're one of the very few people who've drawn completely unsolicited fanart for me over the years. Don't feel any pressure to keep drawing; I know how fickle motivation can be - sometimes only certain things really scratch the itch, and sometimes nothing does.
Either Furaffinity will be like dA and Tumblr where anything goes unless you get reported, or this website is going to shut down soon and resources moved onto some other website.
"Are all content with Riolus simply banned entirely?" Eeehh, yes and no. Perfectly game accurate Riolus? More or less? They have the same proportions as a kid. But at the same time, a perfectly game accurate Riolu would not possess visible genitalia. Ones that are drawn with adult proportions? Those are fine. Totally kosher.
It seemed like I may be by pure chance out of most of the crosshairs for this (the teat hole thing is a very weird metric, even if it’s beneficial for me and I don’t like that style), but I’m incredibly depressed and worried about any past and future content soon also being up for bans.
It’s incredibly sad how stigmatised sex is (especially in America), to the point that new witch hunts like this one are constantly cropping up every day. Meanwhile, violence and other nasty extremes are completely ignored by the kinds of people who push these agendas. It’s sad and depressing how intensely obsessed they get over controlling other people’s genitalia.
Eehh, I have to disagree with you on that point. I've seen a few artists that have been drawing what would otherwise be blatantly children, but saying 'naw they're this pokemon, so it doesn't count.' If they draw a Riolu that has the same proportions as a child and say 'but he's actually 37 I swear" well...if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, acts like a duck, but you say it's a car...well...no, it's a duck.
As far as it being arbitrary or unfair to meet, it's the exact same standard they've been applying to other species, including stuff like Avalis, for years. They don't yeet entire species just because said species is cute. So I don't see it being applied that way to pokemon either.
That's exactly what they're doing. You're already yeeting Riolu right here. This "same proportions as a child" nonsense is highly subjective and willfully misreading things to support forcing a "it's eternally a child" viewpoint onto things entirely from personal preference. It's the same sort of pareidolia that causes people to see Jesus on toast, going around enforcing people to be seen as children forever just because they were unlucky enough to pick the "wrong" Pokémon for an avatar.
These rules are vague and highly subjective about something that is clearly far removed from real actual humans in an entirely fictional context. There are no real children being endangered and absolutely no ill intent towards children. This insanity is entirely imagined and fake outrage, made worse by mischaracterizing people into the same bucket as lolicon. I don't want to forcibly infantilise people simply because they picked chibi or small character designs.
Bud.... I know very well how you feel...
I'm feeling very discouraged having to re-evaluate the design of some of my characters (who are Kobolds) to make their proportions more appropriate...
feeling terrible here.
and if you wanted to get into conspiracy theory territory. honestly this whole thing and how sudden it is makes me think that someone who really shouldn't have been a part of staff managed to get a position high up the chain at FA because from everything I have seen and heard, it feels more like its one persons personal crusade being forced because no one else in the chain of command wanted to risk being accused of enabling the sexualisation of minors by the one crazy person pushing these changes.
I'll likely send over a couple AR-focused works I posted ages ago for inspection, as much to find out if they're safe as to make it clear to the team directly interacting with people on this matter just how much stress and strain this ham-fisted approach is causing.
It's not like anything you've done here should run afoul of those rules anyway. You've always known what lines to not cross, haven't you? You should be fine. That's what I think.
I can’t stay around and stress out every day whether or not another rule change or a misinterpretation of a design or scene is going to retroactively get me banned for past content.
This isn’t “slightly more consistent”, this is a whole new rule that also uses extremely contentious subjective opinions about what is now considered inappropriate. Applied retroactively to old content.
This is a witch hunt where there will be no room for discussion. It’s extremely stress-inducing and I don’t feel comfortable staying around and risking being mislabelled as a child porn for things that you and I know is far from it.