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I've creatively withdrawn - And I need your help
6 months ago
General
Hi all! It's busty husky puppy, woaw!!!
First of all, hugs for visiting my little journal.
I want to start a discussion with people outside my immediate circle, to see what people think.
What people say, or don't say on this journal over the next 1-2 weeks is going to steer my approach to art.
- Lately I've been actually rather happy with how much I'm able to draw.
- Some of you may have noticed that there's a bunch of things I've uploaded to my Lukabooru, but haven't posted anywhere else. 98% of my art is there.
- 1% is low quality stuff like an edit that barely changes anything, or sketches so rough it barely makes sense.
- Another 1% is stuff I'm holding off on uploading until I improve my website to blacklist these drawings by default.
- The reason I draw art is because certain ideas amuse me and it's validating to find people who also enjoy the same things. I also like being reminded that I can in fact do things that make people happy and am not a waste of oxygen.
- The reason I post art to my website is that it feels like a validating little corner of the internet. I also like categorizing things and browsing through my own porn. It also helps me quickly find specific doodles that are funny to bring up when chatting to friends.
- The reason I post art to FA, Bluesky, is... out of a sense of obligation.
So now I want to move on to the elephant in the room.
As I've grown older I've had certain experiences, and seen several things on the internet that.. have slowly begun to affect me. In an insidious, hard to detect way that I am only starting to sniff out now that I fixed my sleeping habits and feel fresh.
When I pick up the pen to draw, these thoughts start floating through my head.
- Have you seen people get accused of being a kiddy diddler for something dubious, using claims of pedos as an excuse to displace anger onto someone innocent?
- Have you seen people, knowing full well it would make people uncomfortable, post kinks that they KNOW are going to cause trouble, and then act incredulous about it, after having it clearly communicated that a certain place is Not the right place for such a taboo kink?
- Have you seen perfectly worthwhile friendships crumble into nothingness because people that seemed very trustworthy are actually more than willing to just Drop a friendship when they find a fetish they don't like?
- How long will it take for someone to dig through the depths of my gallery and say, "erm, technically this cartoon monster is a form of beastiality, therefore you are a person who would fuck a real life cat", and destroy perfectly valid friendships I have?
There are many such thoughts like these. Normally I shove them under the rug and try to draw and get myself to share things despite everything.
But as time goes on they've become louder and louder. I stopped posting to my FurAffinity and Bluesky for this reason. I stopped feeling safe to hang out in certain spaces I definitely have the time to hang out with because I'm afraid of stepping on someone's toes and watching my entire friendgroup fracture into many tiny shards. Again. Further.
I keep trying to tell myself it's fine, but the thoughts keep coming back. It's possible. There's no Plan B for it. If it happens, years of developing a friendship is irreversibly screwed once psychological safety is destroyed.
So, that's what's happening inside.
I lack the boldness that I used to have, and nowadays I just cower and talk to the same few people my mind feels safe around, and decorating my personal little home on the internet (https://lukahusky.space) as the outlet for my imagination.
Now? I don't know what to do.
My gut feeling loudly keeps telling me that I should stay within this comfort zone, that I should keep myself safe in this bubble, and cover every single possible angle so that I never, ever encounter anyone who points that dreaded finger and makes me feel like a freak of nature again.
But now I'm suffocating in my own safety bubble. People I want to talk to that I don't, because I'm scared. Comics that I want to make, drawings I want to share, but feel that every thing I post is a small % chance that I'm going to run into someone who will ruin social life on the internet. Especially when people are popular, there are many strings someone can pull to pit people against each other. People do it in a fit of rage or because they are scared themselves, or have a chip on their shoulder from shitty things that happened to them in the past.
- What are your thoughts about this?
- Do you ever feel like a freak among freaks? A reject among rejects?
- Do you feel safe online with your kinks?
- Am I really suffocating myself, or am I just practicing reasonable precaution?
- How does one cleanse oneself of this fear of being targeted for a kink, and most importantly, having one's social life destroyed by people all too ready to assume things about people they don't know?
First of all, hugs for visiting my little journal.
I want to start a discussion with people outside my immediate circle, to see what people think.
What people say, or don't say on this journal over the next 1-2 weeks is going to steer my approach to art.
Context
- Lately I've been actually rather happy with how much I'm able to draw.
- Some of you may have noticed that there's a bunch of things I've uploaded to my Lukabooru, but haven't posted anywhere else. 98% of my art is there.
- 1% is low quality stuff like an edit that barely changes anything, or sketches so rough it barely makes sense.
- Another 1% is stuff I'm holding off on uploading until I improve my website to blacklist these drawings by default.
- The reason I draw art is because certain ideas amuse me and it's validating to find people who also enjoy the same things. I also like being reminded that I can in fact do things that make people happy and am not a waste of oxygen.
- The reason I post art to my website is that it feels like a validating little corner of the internet. I also like categorizing things and browsing through my own porn. It also helps me quickly find specific doodles that are funny to bring up when chatting to friends.
- The reason I post art to FA, Bluesky, is... out of a sense of obligation.
The Problem I Need Your Opinions About
So now I want to move on to the elephant in the room.
As I've grown older I've had certain experiences, and seen several things on the internet that.. have slowly begun to affect me. In an insidious, hard to detect way that I am only starting to sniff out now that I fixed my sleeping habits and feel fresh.
When I pick up the pen to draw, these thoughts start floating through my head.
- Have you seen people get accused of being a kiddy diddler for something dubious, using claims of pedos as an excuse to displace anger onto someone innocent?
- Have you seen people, knowing full well it would make people uncomfortable, post kinks that they KNOW are going to cause trouble, and then act incredulous about it, after having it clearly communicated that a certain place is Not the right place for such a taboo kink?
- Have you seen perfectly worthwhile friendships crumble into nothingness because people that seemed very trustworthy are actually more than willing to just Drop a friendship when they find a fetish they don't like?
- How long will it take for someone to dig through the depths of my gallery and say, "erm, technically this cartoon monster is a form of beastiality, therefore you are a person who would fuck a real life cat", and destroy perfectly valid friendships I have?
There are many such thoughts like these. Normally I shove them under the rug and try to draw and get myself to share things despite everything.
But as time goes on they've become louder and louder. I stopped posting to my FurAffinity and Bluesky for this reason. I stopped feeling safe to hang out in certain spaces I definitely have the time to hang out with because I'm afraid of stepping on someone's toes and watching my entire friendgroup fracture into many tiny shards. Again. Further.
I keep trying to tell myself it's fine, but the thoughts keep coming back. It's possible. There's no Plan B for it. If it happens, years of developing a friendship is irreversibly screwed once psychological safety is destroyed.
So, that's what's happening inside.
I lack the boldness that I used to have, and nowadays I just cower and talk to the same few people my mind feels safe around, and decorating my personal little home on the internet (https://lukahusky.space) as the outlet for my imagination.
Now? I don't know what to do.
My gut feeling loudly keeps telling me that I should stay within this comfort zone, that I should keep myself safe in this bubble, and cover every single possible angle so that I never, ever encounter anyone who points that dreaded finger and makes me feel like a freak of nature again.
But now I'm suffocating in my own safety bubble. People I want to talk to that I don't, because I'm scared. Comics that I want to make, drawings I want to share, but feel that every thing I post is a small % chance that I'm going to run into someone who will ruin social life on the internet. Especially when people are popular, there are many strings someone can pull to pit people against each other. People do it in a fit of rage or because they are scared themselves, or have a chip on their shoulder from shitty things that happened to them in the past.
What do you think?
- What are your thoughts about this?
- Do you ever feel like a freak among freaks? A reject among rejects?
- Do you feel safe online with your kinks?
- Am I really suffocating myself, or am I just practicing reasonable precaution?
- How does one cleanse oneself of this fear of being targeted for a kink, and most importantly, having one's social life destroyed by people all too ready to assume things about people they don't know?
I'm also sorry to say but if someone is going to come and pick a fight with you for whatever reason, then even if you posted nothing at all they'd find some reason to attack. So its better to live and show yourself how you want to regardless of chuds, because otherwise you'll be stuck in this stasis forever.
The problem I see is that someone who picks a fight with you can Ruin you if they have strong connections with your mutuals.
An online troll who's calling me a zoophile? Lol, shrug them off.
A popular person who is in very good standing with multiple of my friends? That person can destroy friendships that are perfectly fine.
And you may think, oh if they leave so readily, they weren't such good friends in the first place!
But the reality is that statistically it is difficult to find certain people. On top of that it's difficult to deal with the grief of a burnt bridge, knowing that there were so many good memories, and there Could have been so many good memories should the character assassination been averted or prevented.
But then again, as I'm writing this I'm thinking; do I want to continue living with a mask on, in the one space where the entire purpose is that I can take off my mask and be myself?
Yeah. I don't want to remain stuck in this stasis.
My suggestion is to draw sheps.
Jokes aside, draw whatever you want. You are the one holding the pencil at the end of the day. But I don't recommend any of the fucked up shit like loli or cub.
Good thing loli doesn't do anything for me! I many strange kinks but nothing that is illegal.
The thing I fear is that there's a lot someone can do to misconstrue, one way or another, that something Is or Isn't <insert bad thing here that everyone agrees is in fact, bad>.
My point being, it doesn't matter that I don't draw loli, but someone on the internet who is both angry and popular can point one of my submissions and say, "Hey, this is clearly loli!", knowing full well they're stretching the meaning of words to its absolute limit, and citing Other people who sneak things that everyone clearly knows is loli but attempt to stretch the definition the other way in an attempt to sneak stuff into places where they don't belong.
Even among Maltese furries I've had people talk behind my back because I'm "into zoophilia", and that spooked me and made me stop interacting with Maltese furries completely because if furries think I'd go fuck an actual cat, what's stopping me from instantly having my social life killed by someone stepping up and calling me out? The fact that I heard it through the grapevine rather than being told directly is even more alarming, it's things like these that make me think twice about putting myself out there in spaces where people make those kind of logical leaps.
If you curate your spaces, the people who see your stuff are going to be people that vibe with it and understand you
And I think it’d take something extreme for someone to suddenly want nothing to do with you?
I completely understand the worry of being cancelled over something dumb, I’ve had it happen back on twitter but I think that kind of culture isn’t as prominent now? If it is, I’ve avoided it…
But if folks are willing to believe baseless accusations without their own critical thinking…. Did you really want those people around in the first place?
I personally do feel isolated / rejected, but it’s not down to kink stuff - I’ve understood this to be a self-image issue related to my mental health and underlying conditions.
The best thing you can do is try to reach out, and you’ve done exactly that here so that’s a huge step. Communicating your feelings is much better than doing nothing about it!
I feel safe online with my own kinks, though I don’t necessarily find others into the same stuff so often? I’m kinda happy indulging myself with some of the more niche things and that’s okay, maybe I might find someone into role playing something rarely, but it’s not a huge issue for me.
I think you’re being understandably cautious, but perhaps putting up too much of a wall that ends up isolating yourself - I don’t even see you post art in your own server that often, and I don’t think anyone there would mind? It’s your own space, first and foremost! A community that’s built around YOU.
In terms of social life, I don’t think it’s really something to worry about? You should ideally have friends that aren’t all in one interest category? So there’ll be folks where the kink stuff just doesn’t even become part of the conversation.
Being able to have open and honest conversations around this is great, and you’ll find people are willing to have the dialogue with you to understand you better, rather than just jump to conclusions and hit block - but like I said before, perhaps those people weren’t worth your time to begin with!
It's making me realize that what's happened is that since I've withdrawn myself into a bubble, to the point where I don't even post art to the discord server I created because I feel too nervous to, that I unintentionally created an echo chamber for myself. If I don't actually meet people who remind me that yes, I am safe and don't need to worry so much, that all my brain sees is horror stories of people getting cancelled and ruminating about the same event that happened over a year and a half ago, effectively reliving the fear.
I think the concept that a "person who is willing to jump to conclusions is not a friend worth having" is interesting, because since I'm so cautious, I operate from a scarcity mindset because I'm scared of getting myself into a situation where someone attempts some sort of character assassination on me. But since that scarcity is self-imposed, the solution is just, to lift that restriction and just be bold and put myself out there like I used to before the event happened that led me to becoming a scared mess that bottles it up constantly.
Thank you, I'm piecing together the opinions of different people and things are slowly starting to become clearer and clearer.
I know it's hard to change a core belief, something I believe so automatically (that everything I have can evaporate in an instant and anything I do is a risk), but at least I know that walking out of the bubble is the right choice, because just by a matter of probability, I'll meet way more people who are supportive than people who aren't, and I'll get that realistic evidence my mind needs to finally relax and not worry so much. Thank you Nico!!
I’m glad I’m able to help, and I’m always willing to talk 💕
Take as slow steps as you need to, but you’ve already made one big step by speaking out!
That core belief might change over time as you have more experiences that prove it wrong than ones that prove it right!
I worked myself into such a small corner that I only share art among a small circle of friends. I definitely agree conclusion-jumping friends aren't worth having, but I don't feel like it's possible to feel safe in larger circles anymore. We either have to accept that randos are going to be judgemental/hateful or bow to the crowd. Unfortunately the crowd will never be satisfied, so at some point you have to draw the line. A lot of people in our community think *they're* perfectly reasonable while so-and-so is a degenerate, but there's a whole crowd of people out in the "real world" who wouldn't hesitate to paint everyone on this site with that brush. I think it's healthy (though difficult) to build up resilience, that as long as whatever we're posting doesn't break a particular platform's TOS, we need to just do whatever we want.
Yes I feel a lot lighter and free now. 💙
Hearing such overwhelmingly supportive feedback is really doing good in helping me just, relax!
I think this is one of those cases where it's useful to be like, "Yeah, haters are gonna hate", cuz we already worry way too much and try way too hard not to bother ppl
So we're fine x3