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FA's new rules (again)
a year ago
Current queue: Medieval YCH(Nezmog, Jespe, TaurusProductions, Microcub ), Olivia, Jespe again, Edwin_at_work
“After reading a lot of overheated puffery about your new [rules], you know what I’m craving? A little perspective.”
--Anton Ego, Ratatouille
(Context for those who may be reading this in the future: 4 years ago, 1½ years ago, Earlier this month)
The journal I wanted to write today was not about this, but I feel the need to, once again, provide a statement. I understand things are scary and confusing, and I chalk this up to two reasons: the “feedback” section of the announcement which seemed to imply “well we don’t know what’s ok and what’s not so we’re going to ban everything to be safe”, and the policy itself, so let me begin by saying what I think the new rules mean
The new rules as I understand them
• Minors being not allowed in mature content: Renaissance-style paintings like riffs on Raphael’s Galatea are no longer OK.
• Minors being not allowed in adult content: A married couple getting frisky is not OK if there’s a cradle in the room; no exceptions will be made for “but the scene takes place in the 1300s, houses had only one room!”
• Minors not being allowed in the presence of “prohibited” stuff: If you were planning to tell the story of how, accidentally walking in on your parents “doing it” when you were little, changed you for life; you will now no longer be able to (this is from the previous rule change but it’s been bothering the back of my mind for a while).
• The definition of “presence”: If that story is about what you heard through the door, and the story makes it very clear that it was NSFW stuff, that is no longer allowed either.
• The definition of “minors”: If your story is about an elf or a fairy, even if the fairy is a hundred years old, if they are still a minor in elf/fairy terms, they count as a minor (however, I think an unintended casualty here may be chibis, and an artist I admired whose whole thing was chibis already deleted their account!)
• The definitions of fetish and kink: The rule no longer reads “minors may not be fetishized,” so these definitions have no effect on the rule (I guess they’re from an earlier draft).
• The “no minors with bulges” rule: Although this was in the previous rule, this, I think, is directly targeted at “baby Pokémon” art (i.e. “he looks like a newly-hatched pichu, but he’s canonically an adult”), since in my 20+ years in the fandom I can’t recall ever seeing a minor with a bulge (and I have explored the AR community quite a bit even though it “does nothing” for me – yes, it is possible to read those stories for the plot!)
• The “no pregnant minors” rule: Chibis may not be pregnant; no exceptions will be made for teen pregnancy stories (again, this was part of the old rule).
• The “no messy diapers” rule: Similar to how there’s no bleeding in Disney movies, baby diapers must appear clean even when being changed / needing change (definitely a ‘kill a fly with an artillery canon’ rule, at least as far as storytelling purposes go IMHO, but almost all diaper art that features messy diapers also has a “clean” version uploaded alongside it so, sadly, this one will have the least measurable impact)
• The “no restroom activity” rule: Riffs on the illegal Calvin peeing on logo stickers are no longer OK.
• The “Body Part Emphasis (except coincidental)” rule: This appears to be another targeted one, this time at the Bluey fans who will have Bluey do a “paw tease” for giggles but it’s okay because she doesn’t know what she’s doing. I have also seen this with The Lion King community with young Simba accidentally stepping on smaller OCs (no doubt inspired by his interactions with Timon in the third movie) and I’m sure there’s more I just can’t remember off the top of my head. The “except coincidental” seems like a way to ensure it doesn’t hit the size community (where “we need to sneak past the kitten” pretty much requires filling the frame with said kitten – assuming what they’re sneaking past doesn’t fall under the “presence” rule)
• The “Regression restrictions” rule: This one seems designed at fixing the “non-sexual depictions of birth and breastfeeding” “loophole” in the same way the “no teen pregnancy” rule attempted to fix the previous loophole: by overcorrecting. Again, I see this as detrimental to the stories that may be told: lucid dream sequences where you revisit your earliest memories, social commentary on “why do kids find this funny”, and Freudian-style analyses on how we long to be cradled to mommy’s chest, are all in the crosshairs here. And these are not hypothetical, these are all staples of age-regression stories, some of which are hundreds of pages long. While I get that the intent is to not fetishize the lack of consent (which seems to be why they added the “mentally” clause since “magically reduced to babbling fool” stories are a thing), similarly to when they said “just age up your baby Pokémon”, it creates this weird alternate reality where adults breastfeeding is the norm.
How it affects me
The most direct effect on me is with the story of Camila the fairy. I’ve mentioned before, her canon story features her and Susan bonding as children by performing magic. I will now need to make sure none of the magic they perform results in anything that is fetishized (which, when the spells are supposed to be random, is actually a tall order!)
In fact, anything where Susan appears now carries a risk since, as I noted in my last journal on the topic, although I have her entire life charted out, I’m not too good with making her “look” the right age.
Then there’s the stories I wrote when I was 10 like Back Home. Although I was prepared from the beginning to not appear in them at the age of 10, I’d been hoping I’d be able to in at least one of them. The risks associated with doing that have basically just gone up for no reason.
Lastly, there’s gift art and fan art I’d planned for certain babyfurs which I will now have to tread very carefully on.
As before, I have no intention to cancel my plans, I don’t consider my art explicit, and I let the author decide if a character counts as a minor. But I am legitimately fearful of losing all I’ve built here if I unwittingly step over this invisible line like I haven’t been in a long, long time.
Posted using PostyBirb
--Anton Ego, Ratatouille
(Context for those who may be reading this in the future: 4 years ago, 1½ years ago, Earlier this month)
The journal I wanted to write today was not about this, but I feel the need to, once again, provide a statement. I understand things are scary and confusing, and I chalk this up to two reasons: the “feedback” section of the announcement which seemed to imply “well we don’t know what’s ok and what’s not so we’re going to ban everything to be safe”, and the policy itself, so let me begin by saying what I think the new rules mean
The new rules as I understand them
• Minors being not allowed in mature content: Renaissance-style paintings like riffs on Raphael’s Galatea are no longer OK.
• Minors being not allowed in adult content: A married couple getting frisky is not OK if there’s a cradle in the room; no exceptions will be made for “but the scene takes place in the 1300s, houses had only one room!”
• Minors not being allowed in the presence of “prohibited” stuff: If you were planning to tell the story of how, accidentally walking in on your parents “doing it” when you were little, changed you for life; you will now no longer be able to (this is from the previous rule change but it’s been bothering the back of my mind for a while).
• The definition of “presence”: If that story is about what you heard through the door, and the story makes it very clear that it was NSFW stuff, that is no longer allowed either.
• The definition of “minors”: If your story is about an elf or a fairy, even if the fairy is a hundred years old, if they are still a minor in elf/fairy terms, they count as a minor (however, I think an unintended casualty here may be chibis, and an artist I admired whose whole thing was chibis already deleted their account!)
• The definitions of fetish and kink: The rule no longer reads “minors may not be fetishized,” so these definitions have no effect on the rule (I guess they’re from an earlier draft).
• The “no minors with bulges” rule: Although this was in the previous rule, this, I think, is directly targeted at “baby Pokémon” art (i.e. “he looks like a newly-hatched pichu, but he’s canonically an adult”), since in my 20+ years in the fandom I can’t recall ever seeing a minor with a bulge (and I have explored the AR community quite a bit even though it “does nothing” for me – yes, it is possible to read those stories for the plot!)
• The “no pregnant minors” rule: Chibis may not be pregnant; no exceptions will be made for teen pregnancy stories (again, this was part of the old rule).
• The “no messy diapers” rule: Similar to how there’s no bleeding in Disney movies, baby diapers must appear clean even when being changed / needing change (definitely a ‘kill a fly with an artillery canon’ rule, at least as far as storytelling purposes go IMHO, but almost all diaper art that features messy diapers also has a “clean” version uploaded alongside it so, sadly, this one will have the least measurable impact)
• The “no restroom activity” rule: Riffs on the illegal Calvin peeing on logo stickers are no longer OK.
• The “Body Part Emphasis (except coincidental)” rule: This appears to be another targeted one, this time at the Bluey fans who will have Bluey do a “paw tease” for giggles but it’s okay because she doesn’t know what she’s doing. I have also seen this with The Lion King community with young Simba accidentally stepping on smaller OCs (no doubt inspired by his interactions with Timon in the third movie) and I’m sure there’s more I just can’t remember off the top of my head. The “except coincidental” seems like a way to ensure it doesn’t hit the size community (where “we need to sneak past the kitten” pretty much requires filling the frame with said kitten – assuming what they’re sneaking past doesn’t fall under the “presence” rule)
• The “Regression restrictions” rule: This one seems designed at fixing the “non-sexual depictions of birth and breastfeeding” “loophole” in the same way the “no teen pregnancy” rule attempted to fix the previous loophole: by overcorrecting. Again, I see this as detrimental to the stories that may be told: lucid dream sequences where you revisit your earliest memories, social commentary on “why do kids find this funny”, and Freudian-style analyses on how we long to be cradled to mommy’s chest, are all in the crosshairs here. And these are not hypothetical, these are all staples of age-regression stories, some of which are hundreds of pages long. While I get that the intent is to not fetishize the lack of consent (which seems to be why they added the “mentally” clause since “magically reduced to babbling fool” stories are a thing), similarly to when they said “just age up your baby Pokémon”, it creates this weird alternate reality where adults breastfeeding is the norm.
How it affects me
The most direct effect on me is with the story of Camila the fairy. I’ve mentioned before, her canon story features her and Susan bonding as children by performing magic. I will now need to make sure none of the magic they perform results in anything that is fetishized (which, when the spells are supposed to be random, is actually a tall order!)
In fact, anything where Susan appears now carries a risk since, as I noted in my last journal on the topic, although I have her entire life charted out, I’m not too good with making her “look” the right age.
Then there’s the stories I wrote when I was 10 like Back Home. Although I was prepared from the beginning to not appear in them at the age of 10, I’d been hoping I’d be able to in at least one of them. The risks associated with doing that have basically just gone up for no reason.
Lastly, there’s gift art and fan art I’d planned for certain babyfurs which I will now have to tread very carefully on.
As before, I have no intention to cancel my plans, I don’t consider my art explicit, and I let the author decide if a character counts as a minor. But I am legitimately fearful of losing all I’ve built here if I unwittingly step over this invisible line like I haven’t been in a long, long time.
Posted using PostyBirb
I do fully heartly agree with you in all accounts
Thou the intentions are well-meaning it does try to blow-up and target other stuff like you stated.
I am in the camp of, if the art is not real life material - it is still legal. I may not personally like the extreme material, but I am not force to watch it. It still should be free to make with the freedom of personal expression. Art can have value. Some cases it's worth is debateable, thou tastes are subjective, afterall
Regardless, when talking about FA as a platform that allows NSFW material, it feel hypocritical to make exceptions with one thing, yet let gory violense and sexual slide. We are still talking about artistic expressions that maybe depict realistic seeming scenarios - I argue it is not encouragement to real life crime, which is illegal and first (1.1 + 1.2) rules of Conduct in this site
On completely different topic is that some statistics so that access to NSFW-material reduces real life crime of that nature - since we are talking about individuals having those "special interests", they would benefic to channel energy towards fictional work - to opposite to perform their tendensies for real. It is not an easy topic to discuss, but imo still a point worth noting and with supportive evidence to reduce criminal activity irl
Getting back to topic - The new rules themself don't ably to my works as I do avoid getting into that territory with minors. I do have few written classical horror and elrich horror stories with late adolescense/pre-teen main character(s), but any violence/gore with minors present are non-sexual and only for story reasons.
So agreed, the new rules can take a larger swing at unrelated art works, thus not working as intended - but I would personally have staff focus on real life comments and encouragements than fictional works
I don't think I'll be personally affected by this too much, but it does seem a bit inconsistent. "Baby fur" is in the same section of the upload categories as "Fetish Other" which might give the impression that it is considered inherently fetishistic, but any baby fur content that FA considers fetishized is disallowed. Though I see the needle they're trying to thread (Sonic or MLP content isn't inherently fetishistic after all and they appear in the same list). I'm not super familiar with the baby fur community but it seems like totally SFW art got banned because it was judged that it's a kink to the artist? ("Is this depiction inherently sexual because it's a kink to some people?" A tried-and-true question to start a huge flame war in the vore community.) And to hit artists with punishment *before* announcing the rule change... not cool.
The ability to block under-18s from interacting with your page is a feature more sites should have though (looking at you, Twitter).