#but “sexy” is censored in the generator

[agena87]

The multiple lives of Agena and her men.

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

So, naturally we had to, now the game is actually out, bingo the CENSORED outfit in Stellar Blade. Credit to HarryNinetyFour for showing all seventy-four outfits, and Kotaku for this article where they propose that Eve is at her sexiest when she's got more on.

Okay... maybe not that but...

Seriously, if you're playing to fap - this game has you covered. But it also has a few really interesting, covering outfits that seem to reflect fantasies of fashion and comfort.

The only thing that's really not present is any sort of actual military like BDUs or combat jumpsuits. That's kinda weird, even Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain let you put BDUs on Quiet.

And that bit is weird is, based on what I've seen people who've been playing the game saying - there is really a story about her being a soldier and fighting for a cause there. But you'd never know that based on the ongoing outrage.

The outrage is weird and sad

So as you can probably guess, the continuing riot of "censorship" here is pretty absurd. It's got to the point where they even bullied the Stellar Blade's X/Twitter account to un-repost the Kotaku article that praises the game.

But here's the thing, in all the years I've had to deal with brodudes doing this kind of nonsense in various online platforms etc, I have never seen one that is happy.

YouTuber Moon Channel did a two part (1, 2) series on a different drama in South Korea involving a Gacha game that dared not to be pointlessly horny, but here's the general take away.

English speaking brodudes in this situation are imagining that Stellar Blade is some sort of iconic work coming from the anti-woke wonderland where everyone is happy. The reality is:

South Korea has a deeply hierarchical society which essentially tells young people they are to obey and not to speak up

The economy and nepotism is such that unless you are born into a rich family, your employment prospects are downright depressing

Many young men in South Korea develop a lot of resentment toward women primarily because they are told that in order to enter a (heterosexual) relationship they will need to demonstrate they have the ability to be a great provider, and then are denied those opportunities by the economy and nepotism

On top of all this, the government takes a "we know whats best for you" approach to the extent that not only is porn banned but you will be expected to supply your identity information if you want to look up basic sexual educational materials

They would find it to be an absolute nightmare realm.

The reality is that in the "woke" world that brodudes fear, we'd probably see a lot more eroticism in art, including games, and it'd be of the more focused, sincere variety rather than that directed by creepy marketing guy.

All we really need to do is accept each other as people, appreciate each other's humanity and boundaries. Then we can both enjoy a sexy paradise, but also unite and deal with the assholes who keep oppressing us economically and socially.

Wouldn't that be nice?

-wincenworks

[kytiapseud]

In Defense of Epic Manwhore au

Okay, so I’m kinda nervous to post this but I feel like it should be said. I hope I tagged correctly for the topics I discuss in this. So, in defense of the Manwhore au as for the concept being coerced, it’s not like the god(s) said ‘you’ll die if you don’t have sex with me’. Odysseus is the one who brings it up. Although yes, the line of consent there is a bit murky with Odysseus more doing so to get out of situations rather than because he wants to. It’s totally valid for some fans to not be a fan of the au, not everything in fan spaces is for everyone. You are entitled to your opinion and get to make your fandom experience safe for you. There is something I saw though that felt like commentary about those who came up with/ enjoy the au. To me this felt close to attempted fandom censoring or those who try to ‘cleanse’ all fandom content to what they think is morally correct. Again, it is fine if you want to share your thoughts on something. But I hope no one comes after those who do enjoy the au. I haven’t seen that happen yet, I’m hoping it doesn’t. But the generalization about what it says about those who enjoy the au doesn’t sit right with me. For reasons like I mentioned above, about worrying it could turn into attempted censoring. Especially if anyone tries to get others to agree to black-and-white thinking about what they think is true. That could easily turn into justification to harassment, which I have seen in fandom spaces before. Particularly with anti-proshippers.

There may be valid criticisms to this au concept, but that doesn’t mean everyone who is a fan likes it for the same reasons. Let me address some of what I’ve seen though. The joking about Odysseus being a Manwhore coming from homophobia. Yeah, that’s possible (although personally I feel like a homophobe is more likely to not even mention gay things.) I don’t think that’s always the case though. I know there was one animatic I saw, the first thing I saw for the au, that had a joke in it that I didn’t like. I don’t judge this creator, and in fact it’s a common joke I’ve seen. Particularly with people wishing they didn’t see something. It just doesn’t vibe with me. In no way do I think that those who say such jokes have something wrong with them. People have different senses of humor and I think some use such jokes as a way to cope.

Anyways, I think some of the humor more comes from how unexpected it would be. I mean, we have a war captain facing foes who instead of choosing to fight goes for seducing them. It’s certainly interesting. I know some of the jokes come from the others not involved in the coupling being just shocked or grossed out. I think that more comes from like not wanting to see someone else talk about or get busy with another? I mean, some of these men probably consider each other to be like brothers. I imagine that would be weird. I think homosexuality wasn’t taboo in ancient Greece, I’m not entirely sure though I may need to do more research on that. So there could be some homophobia to the jokes, but I don’t think that’s the case for everyone. It certainly wasn’t for me. It could also be lgbt+ fans wanting to see more gay stuff in the story. Gay shipping isn’t uncommon after all.

I don’t think everyone who talks about the Manwhore au has no problem joking about sa. There can be many reasons why someone may enjoy a concept in media. You don’t know. Like how women are criticized for rape fantasies. I watched a documentary about sex once (I can’t remember which one this was in now) and there was a whole segment about the rape fantasy, discussing why this is an appeal to some women. It did not mean these women want to be raped of course. Part of it could come from a culture of feeling pressure to not experience any sexual feelings, so the scenario allowed them to experience something without feeling guilty about it. There isn’t always a clear explanation for why someone can find something sexy.

I think this started as a joke, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some who wanted something sexy in their Epic fan experience. I mean, having read the Odyssey in school (twice actually) I did not expect I would want to see Odysseus in such a scenario. But then I saw one sexy fanart of him with others and cough I ended up liking it more than I expected. Those who have seen my reblogs on this tag know heh.

There’s also the infidelity notion. I feel like given the situation, Penelope would understand. I also saw some comments that they could be poly, which is a concept I like for this. I’ve also seen mention that human relationships with gods have ended up tragically for the humans involved. I don’t think everyone who listens to Epic knows about that. I didn’t. But again, this goes back to it being fantasy. People enjoying picturing it the way they want to. It doesn’t have to be accurate to the myths. It’s fanfiction/au.

I think the infidelity notion to it didn’t bother me as much as others because in the original, he wasn’t faithful. Sorry for Odyssey spoilers I guess. Anyways, I was already used to him being a cheater. Although the one with Circe may match more with the coercion along the lines of ‘sleep with me for your crew’. The knife that’s been shown in some animatics wasn’t in the original. It’s been a while since I’ve read it so I’m not entirely sure about how that went down.

Referring back to if Odysseus wants it even if he was the one who offered (sorry if I’m all over the place with this, I have a lot of thoughts.) Seducing foes doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t want it. There’s a character in a Sanders Sides roleplay I was in named Remy (Sleep), whose rp version was created/and played by the wonderful @queroze , who was proclaimed by them to be a manslut. His go-to to get out of situations, if he saw it was a fit strategy, was to seduce. Sure, he got into situations that weren’t great, but often he was the active one in the seducing. I wouldn’t say his go-to being to seduce meant it wasn’t always consensual. In fact, there’s many descriptions and some statements from Que themselves saying Remy loved bringing pleasure to his partners.

Then there’s the mention of the unlikeliness of the scenario actually happening. I don’t think this matters that much to be honest. It’s fandom enjoyment. Who cares if people want to enjoy something that doesn’t seem likely in canon? I personally couldn’t see seduction working, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t find the concept entertaining. Sure people shouldn’t insist it could occur to the creators. But aside from that, it doesn’t affect you. Enjoying fan spaces is way more fun if we let things stay peaceful.

I kinda want to write a fanfic now that adjusts to some of the critiques I’ve seen of this au. I know I said I probably wouldn’t, but I got inspired while planning this heh.

[duckprintspress]

Fandom 101: The Origin of the Citrus Scale

A guest post by Aeryn Jemariel Knox. (@jemariel)

Ah, the citrus scale. It’s like a cryptid roaming the edges of modern fandom communities. Long-tenured veterans speak of it with affectionate mockery while newcomers google curiously. A relic from a bygone fandom era, the citrus scale saw a brief resurgence in 2018 during the Tumblr porn ban, suggested as a way to avoid the new bot censors trawling for posts with the NSFW tag—though never, I think, in seriousness. 

That may have been jocular and short-lived, but it does point to the reasons why the citrus scale was created in the first place. Certain fandom activities have always had to fly under the radar to one degree or another. Whether you’re trying to evade legal action or simply avoid deletion based on explicit content, a certain level of obfuscation is sometimes worthwhile.

It’s not hard to find the generally agreed-upon definitions of the citrus scale’s levels. According to Fanlore, KnowYourMeme, and others, this is more or less the “official” citrus scale:

Orange: Light stuff, kissing, nothing below the waist or under the clothes. 

Lime: Groping, implied sex without details, fade-to-black, no intercourse or intimate contact.

Lemon: Sex, in full detailed glory. Woo-hoo! Regardless of the actual acts performed, if you can tell who had an orgasm (or, perhaps, had an orgasm denied), how, and where, it’s a lemon.

Grapefruit: We’ll get into this later.

But these tidy categories are clear thanks to the benefit of hindsight. In the Wild West of the early internet, it was not so easy to pin down exactly what you might be getting into based on which term was used.

At its origin, the citrus scale wasn’t a scale at all. It has its roots in hentai (and was always more popular in anime fandoms), stemming from a specific early hentai film by the title of Cream Lemon (1984). Hentai being what it is, this led to certain subculture communities referring to any story with explicit sexual content as a “Lemon.” And for a while, that was the extent of it. Then came fanfiction.net purging explicit content (2002), Livejournal suffering Strikethru (2007), and other events that pushed burgeoning fandom communities out of their growing hubs and back into smaller, isolated communities centered on a single fandom or pairing. In the relatively sparse early ’00’s internet, anybody could spin up an Angelfire website, pass the link around to their friends, and get a reasonable amount of traffic.  Websites devoted to the works of a single author or small group were common.

I mention this to describe the landscape in which fandom lexicons grew and evolved in the early-mid 2000s. Each pocket community had its own rules, lingo, and expectations; venturing outside of your home pocket could lead to some pretty major miscommunications. 

“Lemon” was established early and its definition has hardly shifted. It means that the labeled content (art, fic, mood board, etc.) includes sex. Intercourse, bumping uglies, etc. However, some yaoi fandom niches used it specifically to mean gay sex of the male variety. In some communities, “lime” developed as a corresponding term for feminine gay sex, while other communities brought it up with the usage that eventually “stuck,” “not quite a lemon.” Given that lemon and lime often go hand in hand when discussing actual flavors, the fact that we had some divergent term evolution is not surprising. But coming in from a different pocket of fandom and seeing “lime,” thinking you’ll be reading semi-softcore sexual tension and instead being confronted with graphic sapphic antics? Bit of a shock, I’m sure.

A more dramatic example is the rating level of “Grapefruit,” which occupies two completely different ends of the scale. In some circles, grapefruit was defined as “less intense than lime,” G or PG-rated stories that were more soft or cute than sexy. In other circles, it was used to mean the exact opposite. Kinkier than kink, smuttier than smut, grapefruit art and fic was where you went to have your eyebrows singed off. Some communities were even more specific, using grapefruit for stories featuring non-consensual sex. This was where darkfic lived – in modern day parlance, your “Dead Dove, Do Not Eat” works. To say that this usage difference caused some disagreements would be putting it mildly.

Nobody really worried about orange. Orange just existed, not bothering anybody.

When these terms were coined, the internet was not an assumed aspect of everybody’s daily life the way it is today. There was no Tumblr, no Facebook, no social media to speak of. There were no large repositories of internet lore and knowledge such as Urban Dictionary or KnowYourMeme. It was a playground. And what do you do on a playground? You make friends! The citrus scale, like so many fandom tropes and concepts, was defined by groups of friends that created them ad hoc to meet their own needs at the time. No one could have predicted that it would become so much a fandom history that it’d be enshrined, nor that I would be writing a blog post about it two decades later. From the common source of lemon, people extrapolated what the rest of the scale might look like, and there was no authority to tell them they were wrong. (Except other fans. That hasn’t changed.)

In conclusion, it’s best not to take the citrus scale too seriously. At best, it’s a cheeky way to avoid censors who try to bar a community from engaging with explicit works, but it’s also varied to a fault and open to interpretation. If you and your community have come up with a use for it that suits your needs, then congratulations: you’re part of a fandom tradition stretching back to the roots of the internet. Just don’t try and tell anybody else that they’re wrong. You might start a flame war.

References:

Prokopetz: Orange and Grapefruit

She’s Got Plans: What is the Citrus Scale in Fanfiction?

Unwinnable: Lemon and Lime

Past Fandom 101 Posts:

Everything About A/B/O Dynamics You Wanted to Know (but were Afraid to Ask)

How to Diversify Your To-Be-Read Pile

Recognizing AI Generated Images, Danmei Edition

[synstoria]

Imperial Grace FAQ

When will the game be out?

Hopefully, early 2025, we will communicate an official date when we have more visibility. At the moment (16/08/2024) the full script is written, but we are still missing some key arts (all the CG, 5 sprites, and some MC customization), and a portion of the script still needs to be properly edited and translated.

I want to smooch the Master of Murmurs 🙏

Thanks to our generous backers, the MM will get a proper romance DLC after the game release, so you just have to be patient <3

I want to smooch another character 🙏

Unfortunately, it’s not possible; we do not have the time and resources, but that’s why fanfic and fanart exist, and they are always welcomed. 😉 (You can see more about our fan content policy.)

Is there any DLC plan for the game?

On top of the MM romance DLC, we plan on doing a marriage DLC (with a standalone storyline for each love interest) and a short prequel telling the story of Mellissandre of Terinfel. Both have been funded on Kickstarter, but I have no dates to give you yet.

How much the game will cost?

The final price is not completely set yet, but it will be somewhere between 20€ and 30€. 💸 After careful thought, I also decided I will do proper regional pricing. 🎉 I was dubious because I know a lot of people are abusing the system with VPN but I don't want to punish the people who actually benefit from it. 💖

On which platform will the game be available?

The game will be available on Steam, GOG, and Itchi.io; at the moment, we are working hard to make it completely Steamdeck compatible! At the moment, a switch port is not possible but not excluded; if the game does well enough, we might be able to get a special partnership for this.

A mobile port is not on the pipe either, as it would require a full UI overhaul and regular updates to comply with stores, and our economic model is not appropriate for the mobile market.

In which language will the game be available?

The game will be available in French and English on release day. At the moment, we do not have the budget to translate the full game into another language but we are looking for solutions to allow the most people possible to enjoy the game.

Where can I follow you?

The most reliable platform for news is Discord as I am very active on it. We also have a mailing list (with exclusive gifts upon joining!) and a twitter account.

What is the game rating?

The game doesn’t have official ratings (that cost money), but considering the mature themes in it, I would say 17+. Imperial Grace includes verbal (but not visual) descriptions of violence and consensual sex.

The game, especially through the petitions, also alludes to topics that may be sensitive, such as arranged marriage or suicide. The list of full trigger warnings is available on steam (beware spoilers). It might be subject to change depending on the petitions we include or not in the final game, I want to make sure that every sensitive topic is treated with care and really brings something to the story or denounces a social problem close to our hearts.

Sexy time, you say? 👀

The game features plenty of hot kisses and two optional sex scenes; they can be stopped (in game choices) and not happen at all or censored (fade to black). The text is explicit (anatomical parts are mentioned; it’s not all metaphor, but there is no vulgar words either.), and some suggestive but not pornographic images illustrate them. In other words, even the uncensored version of the sexy time will be safe enough to be streamed on Twitch but more steamy than what we usually find in otome games!

Is the MC customizable?

MC physical appearance is customizable to some extent: you can choose her skin color, her hairstyle, her eye colors (heterochromia possible!), and minor details like moles. The skin color options are not just recolors; the features are actually slightly different to reflect different ethnicities and bring more variety.

All customisation will be reflected in CG, except hairstyle (you can learn the difference between hairstyle and hair type on this post.)

What do you mean by “meaningful choices”?

Imperial Grace has over 200 choices during the main storyline; contrary to traditional Japanese otome game where there is usually a “good” and “bad” option for each choice leading to the best/good/bad ending, we have a more Dragon Age-like approach where most of the options are valid just entails different consequences to shape a more custom epilogue with tons of little variation to reflect your decision as Empress. (And there is instant game overs when you take very very bad decision :p)

You have more questions? Our ask box is always open! <3

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/766688842914938880/wait-soif-the-only-things-making-companies-censor?source=share

So I've been keeping half an eye on the NSFW AI chatbot and image generation scene (because it's funny watching how fast they flare up and burn out), and the app store and payment processor thing is really evident here

Horny AI image generators can't go in app stores. Full stop. It generates pornography, there's no really getting around the artistic merit stuff, and anything that generates believable photographic styles can actually spit out literally illegal images (digital content which is indistinguishable from a real life photograph recording of a living child) if it's good enough. Users only have minimal control over if what they generate will comply with the ToS; if you ask a bot to give you an image of a "cute boy" it might give you a heartthrob pop star, a generic smiling toddler, or a shota with a huge dick. If the shota is against the ToS, you are now breaking a rule that you have no control over.

And becaues it's AI, it can't actually be filtered. The robot doesn't know what it's looking at, it can't generate an image and then make a judgement call about how that image applies with the ToS because it doesn't know what a ToS is and all it knows is that the image it generated from the "cute boy" prompt is the kind of image that is associated with the caption "cute boy".

App stores and the big payment processors don't want to deal with that mess, so these platforms will have apps that can be downloaded from their website or from discord, and weird sketchy ways to pay, like crypto or some small payment processor that you've never heard of and that sounds like a phishing scam.

Horny image gen platforms tend to be very short lived, and either rebrand as SFW platforms or completely shutter after only a few months. It's funny, but the tragedy is that this happens because of poorly moderated NSFW images, not because the images it generates suck.

****

Text does a little better, since it's copyright laws, not "we can't let people pass off recordings of child abuse as digitally generated art" laws that AI text tends to violate, and "horny is bad" as a social more is applied more strongly to visual material than to plaintext.

The bigger text platforms, like Google's Bard, have filters in place that will refuse to show NSFW text, and they're more or less accurate. The smaller platforms, which most of the "talk with your anime waifu" chat platforms are, have stupid insane garbage filters on what text users can enter, but not on what the chatbot generates. So you can prompt "describe her sexy vagina" and get "I'm sorry, I want to keep people safe so I can't talk about that", but if you type "describe her petals" you get a graphic description of a vagina from a bot that obviously has a mountain of het erotica in its database.

There are some text-only NSFW chatbot platforms that seem to be chugging along just fine with paypal, but they have strict rules about what images can be uploaded as avatars. Some will allow users to make sexually explicit loli bots, but won't allow any images of young characters, sexual or otherwise, anywhere on the site. Many text-only platforms don't seem to be in app stores, though. Paypal is fine with them but Apple isn't.

It's a weird, weird, little microcosm of the internet, and an interesting insight into what's going on with payment processors and app stores in re the pressures placed on websites.

****

The takeaway from all this (aside from the fact AI is amusingly ridiculous) is that text-only sites like AO3 and or Literotica are probably just fine, while sites that host images, like Tumblr, are under more scrutiny.

--

[coulsonlives]

Y'all. There has officially been "furry" drama on the neopets subreddit, and I'm crying. It's such a trainwreck.

Someone posted anthro artwork of their neopets OCs, which looked like this:

And I guess it was reported as NSFW by multiple people, because these neopets were really um, well. I'm not gonna lie, they look like naked people with super short fur, and they even have pretty big mons pubis (genital area) which for anthro characters, especially super humanoid ones, is normally covered by clothes and/or thick fur.

Plus the poses seem a little playful (tongue sticking out? toesies?) and could easily be interpreted in a sexy way, especially once you factor in the more realistic anatomy, which again, there are shapes there in the genital area that aren't even really hidden. So I'm not surprised a lot of people were uncomfortable.

My opinion? It shouldn't have been taken down (and it wasn't!), but people had the right to be confused about why it wasn't marked as NSFW.

My thinking was, you wouldn't want to open something like this at work and show it to your coworkers. Or leave it around the break room table.

But of course, the artist got snarky. Apparently this happened to one of their older posts too, so they were really annoyed and acted like the mods were spineless (literally, they said multiple times that the mods should "grow a spine"), and there was some weird implication that the mods were censoring women's bodies, or fatter bodies, or something. They also compared their OC artwork, which is of the above very-humanoid neopets, to the Fontaine Sisters (who ofc, are always fully clothed sigh), and said if the Fontaine Sisters would be allowed to be posted, their naked humanoid neopets should be, too. Uh?

Then, they made a totally separate rant post on the subreddit, titled "yes, neopets is a furry website", which was promptly removed (I didn't even get a chance to see it, rip).

But I'm scrolling through the comments, and oh my god.

Someone replied with this comment:

The <image> link goes to this picture, with a few comments:

This person also seemed to agree on the general interpretation that it was a very "sexy" rendition:

And someone else on the original post with that character:

So hrmm, okay. Nothing wrong with drawing what you think is sexy, but. Own up to it and accept it might get marked as NSFW.

Someone made the following comment...

And the third reply checks out tbh. If I was still working with kids, I'd probably get written up too lol. And no, not everyone has a hip with the kids, totally down to hang boss, so that's a weird argument. If you couldn't leave this in an office break room, like I said before, it's not okay.

This person explains why the NSFW tag actually is appropriate, even though the artist claims it isn't:

Another comment that points out the mons pubis:

To which the artist replies:

To give them credit, they're not wrong that humanoid animals and humans in general do have a shape in that region! And it looks weird to just have a totally flat silhouette there, especially if the rest of the character is super curvy. But. again. There is almost no fur. So it comes off as nakey + features too humanoid for some peoples' routine, at-work browsing.

Someone else comments:

When... the artist could've just dropped the subject as soon as their post was labelled NSFW, but instead they had a tantrum and made a totally new post to whine about the mods' decision and peoples' reactions? Um.

Here's someone else trying to explain peoples' reactions, and the artist's reply is just silly:

Those are dogs and cats and fish. They're. not. extremely. humanoid. anthro characters. Now I'm getting annoyed reading all of this stuff lol. Is this really the hill you've chosen to die on? This has happened twice now. Mods are gonna mod. Get over it or leave. Your art isn't the same as say, King Coltzan even if people do thirst over him too. He's fully dressed.

Another commenter who missed the point about how most neopets characters have clothes and aren't very, very humanoid:

But thankfully the mods came in and locked some of the comment chains:

So um. That was wild lol.

[kittydragondraws]

the way the md fandom treats nsfw is hilarious

On one extreme you'll have AO3, with people writing all sorts of kinky (as well as creepy and borderline illegal) sex.

Then you have MDTumblr, where we generally like suggestive and sexy stuff provided it's properly tagged and not like... illegal

Then you have Fandom, Reddit, and Youtube. Where people will look at cheek kisses and sfw cuddling and cry that's it's horribly inappropriate and needs to be censored immediately.

[creation-help]

Miscellaneous character design tips (that everyone could find useful)

- Feathers in hair, behind the ear, on the head, in some headress ect? Just don't. Unless you're indigenous I strongly, strongly advise against it, bc native people have criticized this design trope time and time again. Accessories and clothing like this can be very difficult to get right if you don't know what you're doing.

• Also! W*ndigos. Don't. If you wanna design a character that "looks like" (or is what you imagine when you think of a) W*ndigo, just. Design a character that looks like that and call it some other monster (Disclaimer: I'm mainly talking about things like those skull headed monsters with antlers ykno). These creatures have alot of deep meaning to the cultures they're from, and people are tired of them being appropriated and misrepresented. It will cost you nothing to just make a generic monster rather than butcher something from a marginalized culture. (Also, I've censored the word because in the past I've been told that using it's name is bad luck/harmful, so I'm doing this to be respectful)

(Natives/indigenous people are welcome to add on discussion about this if you feel like there's anything I could've said differently)

- Unless your character design is meant to be flexible, up to artist interpretation, or just messy, place patterns and decorative characteristics on distinct, memorable places. For example if your character has spots, put the most notable ones on places that're easy to remember and replicate, like on particular body parts. I'd also advise to make just a bit less of these patterns. Generally, if you're not aiming for a cluttered looking design, prioritize quality over quantity, when it comes to patterns.

- A character design's intent is just as important as the actual character design. You'll see me mentioning this on the previous point as well. Unless we're talking about offensive caricatures, there's teeechnically no such thing as a "bad" character design. Just rather a failed or unsuccessful one. What I mean by that, is that if your design is meant to look cliche, tacky, messy, or just plain unappealing, and it looks like such, that is a successful design! If you designed a character just to be something fun for you to draw, that's a successful design! I often see this point applied more professionally by other art advisors, to mean more like "You should be able to tell what kind of character it is based on the design", which is also true! But intent and purpose matters in storytelling. Obviously, not all aspects of a design need to be there for some very specific reason (looking at the people who ask "Why was this character made fat/gnc/black/poc?" and so on.) just keep in mind what this character is supposed to be. I think it's better to worry about if the character design does what it's supposed to, rather than if it's ""Good""

(And yeah, there are still things that just objectively don't look very good together, according to human perspective and color theory and whatnot, but again, if you're aiming for that, you go buddy!)

- Sorta coinciding with the previous point: Don't be afraid to use "ugly" traits when designing. I think the reason why is obvious (beauty standards can go suck a dick), but there's more to it than just radical acceptance! By giving more unique, weird, or "ugly" traits to your characters, you make them more memorable and distinct from one another. If there's a billion smooth faced perfect pretty characters who are the exact same kind of flavorless vanilla sexy, it gets boring, and they blend together! And please don't limit these traits to just villains or characters who are supposed to be disliked!! My other advice on this point, is, pllllease don't design villains "ugly" and heroes "pretty", I feel like that should be a given, but alot of people may be doing it without even realizing. And that's understandable, but I heartily recommend taking a second to think about it more deeply. Why is this visual trait "Bad", or "Evil"? I just feel like so many artists are deathly afraid of having their characters look the least bit unappealing or challenging. I could go on about this but I'll stop here to keep it concise. Don't beauty police your oc is all I'm sayin

- Reference! I don't necessarily mean take inspiration from other existing character designs, although that can also be helpful. I mean that look around you, think broadly! If you have a certain theme for your design, try to round up all the little things (items, concepts, colors, animals, traits) that could be associated with it! And try to reflect that in your character design. You can get a little wacky and experimental. You can literally just broaden your inspiration to things like everyday objects, a specific fabric texture, an element, or a fungi that lives in moldy houses. Anything! My main point is to try to think outside the box and consider more unconventional things to reference for your character design, you'll never know what might work and look really interesting. Often, a bland design is worse than a weird one. (Disclaimer: Unless you're aiming for bland ofc, per my prev points, but ykno). You can also just go by "Hmm, I'm making a character who is X, what does that remind me of?" or, what I also recommend "Hmm, so X kinds of characters remind me of these things. Let's ditch that and think what one usually wouldn't associate with X kinds of characters!". Ykno, defy convention, think about things you might not usually do. I know it can be easier said than done but once you get into a habit of trying to think more broadly, it'll come to you easier. Don't be afraid to get odd and unusual

- While I don't condemn designing a character in a way that just, is that way, because you designed it like that, I also recommend thinking about how and why the character is like that in-story. Might seem like an obvious tip, but I'll elaborate. I for example, have a pair of bug demon characters who grew up on the streets and didn't have the normal amount of nourishment for their age, so, due to that their mouth pincers and other buggy parts were left much smaller and more "plain" looking than others of their species. They never developed to their appropriate adult size. Things like this will reflect on a character design! And that's just one example. If your character has a habit of nervous picking, or sensory problems, or live in an area where certain resources for clothing aren't available, all of this will reflect on the design! Of course, you can also work backwards from a design and think "Hmm, what justification will I think of for the character having these traits (especially if they're uncommon for their story setting)?"

I may do a part 2 sometime later, I just had some thoughts I wanted to compile for now! Obviously you can have your own design principles but these are ones I consistently use (also the first one being as specific as it is, is just something I particularly wanted to say).

[captainx-camino]

i'm kinda amused that both Lugosi and Lee had their biting scenes either cut out altogether or cut for some releases. Lugosi's was too gay and Lee's was too hot, the censors for the '58 film said 'it looks overly sexual when he kisses her face before biting her' like Dracula's always been too gay and too sexy, even in your grandparent's and great grandparent's day 😅

The book is entirely gay and that was literally the point.

Movies censoring the core of what makes Dracula Dracula for generations amuses the hell out of me, especially because it has done absolutely nothing to hide from us the fact that it is still entirely gay.

The sexual tension Lugosi and Frye brought to a heavily censored 1931 film? Magical. Unstoppable.

They had one job and by God they were gonna get it done.

[suusoh]

omg, don't support inc3st irl and in fiction... that shii is nasty...

I have never nor will ever support incest in real life. Nor have I made any statements of real life support on this blog or statements in personal.

I usually would tell you to just do your own research and advise you to leave this blog right now if you do not want to see any more disturbing content. Unfollow me. Your mental health is more important than compromising it to read a couple of fanfics.

But! If you are willing to lend an open mind and ear to learning anon, then I am more than willing to teach what I know :)

---

Since you are sending an ask to my blog I assume you already follow me or are at least reading my content. In which my friend, I have talked and written about:

cannibalism, kidnapping, unhealthy borderline obsession, psychopathy and sociopathy, dismemberment of familial limbs, nonconsensual kissing and nonconsensual touching and forced sexual acts, and forced dynamics.

Which is why I must ask: Do you not react to those? Are those also not nasty in their own respects? Why is it incest in particular that you are disgusted?

And not just in my works, but fiction in general.

Should your not read about Oedipus Rex, as it is a long hailed classic play about a son marrying his mother? or Lolita because it contains pedophilia?

Truth be told anon, I doubt that fictional incest will ever go away soon. It has been around for as long as the 1700s (The Castle of Otranto and The Monk), and will continue to be around for it is long-standing, staple, horror element in literature (Gothic and Horror. e.g., Flowers in the attic, Crimson Peak, and The Secret History)

Incest carries many themes, and can even dissect societal issues in fiction. Issues that incest talk about within its literary simblosm include things like the patriarchy, misogyny, financial and racial elitism, homophobia and yes, even sex and sexuality. Incest can all be that— an important allegory to many societal issues.

...Or y'know, it could just be... well, hot. The same way unhealthy relationships, borderline obsessions, criminal mafia organizations, dubcon and noncon, kidnapping and captivity and other controversial things are hot and sexy. It's fiction. A safe imaginary and unreal space where NONE of these things are actually happening.

I ask you these anon so that you may also ask yourself. These questions are not meant to prove you wrong, but merely to give you a guiding hand and as we learn together to try and understand why we find these things wrong.

"We are more concerned about the bad taste of a thing than its real harm. But moral sensibilities should be guided by understanding, not by mere emotional reactions." (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty)

If you have reached this far anon, I'm happy that you have tried to be open minded and give this a read :)!

Please do feel free to not censor yourself next time anon. This is a platform free of monetization and purity-driven censorship. We can talk about these things like free adults.

[thistlearts]

Twitter apocalypse rant

I'm so tired to having to navigate collapsing social media. I've left tumblr after the NSFW ban. Twitter always had it's problem but it was a place here I met lots of people and clients. It helped writers who wanted a quality book cover art for the gay and achillean stories to be made, easily find me. I only posted my art here on Tumblr as a backup. I still don't get how to make friends here and how to socialize. not to mention, that I'm generally bad at socializing and getting used to new places and adapting to change. Since nsfw art is still somehow banned here I guess I will switch to "spicy but everyone is fully dressed" stuff, which I can do quite well. I'm the master of making things sexy without showing much. And will probably add links to less censored stuff to my patreon. But I'm still unsure how to rebuild the support network that twitter was for me. I'm so sad tbh.

[remixingreality]

Hi there, I really like your stuff and the moods they create, Thanks, can i ask what you use and is it an expensive subscription?

Sure, I use mostly Bing Image Creator, which is completely free with a free Microsoft Account. It makes such beautiful images, but the drawback is it’s pretty heavily censored.

Luckily since it’s free you can generate multiple generations of a prompt and eventually get a sexy version. I just keep running a prompt idea until I end up with something worth sharing.

There are two types of warnings you’ll get at Bing, the “dog” will appear to advise you the prompt is NSFW, and you can just run the prompt again when you see that one, but if the big red notice appears telling you your prompt is banned, then you should stop and rewrite the prompt or move on to another idea altogether. If you see that warning too many times in a row then your account will be banned. You can signup again with a different email address, but it’s still a pain.

A paid service I also use is Magnific AI, which I use to upscale the images and add extra detail. It’s about $40 a month, a bit pricey but it’s worth it.

And l also have a subscription to Midjourney, which is $30 a month for the standard plan.

[wildandmoody]

CW: anti-japanese and antiblack racial slurs

(I tried to censor out as many instances of both j-words that i could easily find, but I've probably missed a couple :/)

I've already made at least one post mentioning EXACTLY the kind of things going on in this tabloid article from September 1987, from the very start of Michael's first solo tour, which he started in Japan. This is the kind of treatment he was already getting post-Thriller: more overt racist name-calling, with Japanese people getting caught in the racist crossfire just by way of being Japanese. The continued lie that he "completely changed his face" because he hadn't come forward about his vitiligo and lupus yet. The continued push that he was either gay or a virgin just because he didn't frequently publicly date, while they claimed to talk to his "closest aides" about it....but then generating their own rumour that he wanted to become a mormon so that he could have multiple wives?? At this point he was still loosely JW, and didn't leave them for good until 1990. His chimp being with him is true but trying to assert that he would have refused to do the concerts if the chimp wasn't there is completely ridiculous.

But let's get to the main point of what this haphazard "article" is trying to get at, which is that Michael's new look was "too sexy", and "shocking and angered Japanese mothers who brought their children to the concerts". I have watched and read multiple first-hand accounts of people who attended some of these concerts, including as children, and they only had good things to say even from casual fans. This includes some Japanese news reports covering the first 8 dates in Osaka, Nishinomiya, and Tokyo, nothing about them saying his performances or the clothes he's wearing being shocking or perverse from what I've seen. The dance moves that the article claims "would make Mick Jagger in his heyday blush" were mostly the same body rolls and pelvic thrusts that he had literally already been known for his entire life up to that point. The crotch grabbing was the only thing new. If this was the 60s I would maybe believe these things to be shocking, but it was the 80s and his moves were already known as playfully provocative at most.

And as for the clothes....yes, the pants and belts were leather-ish and taken from BDSM gear. Aheem. The shirt was actually a black breathable bodysuit that came in different colors with the collar pattern stitched on. But as I said in previous posts, it's literally not anything more shocking or visibly sexual than what manyyyy other male acts were doing in the 80s. White America was once again just angry that this Black American star had international hyperstardom, and could reinvent his sound and aesthetics at will while still being extremely commercially successfully and loved and setting himself as the standard. In articles like these the racism and jealousy is very, very, obvious.

And to cap off this already long post here's some of the only surviving footage of the black shirt from that first concert in Tokyo which the tabloid claims was soo shocking and raunchy. Come to your own conclusion. You're welcome.

[bookscandlesnbts]

Have you seen the TikTok that Jungkook liked and people are gossiping about? It's a video of a girl dancing Seven, but she's wearing a short crop top and baggy jeans that keep falling very low (she even has to censor it when it shows too much), which shows the string of very thin panties around her hips. Pretty much a sexy video. It's not funny, it's not cute...it's just sexy.

People keep saying he liked it because of Seven and because she was dancing to it, but I don't know about that....... 🤡

I have seen the TikTok but didn’t know there was gossip about it. But y/n JJK stans will do anything to “prove” that JK is hetero I suppose, so I’m not surprised. I didn’t get a “sexy” vibe from that video no more than anyone else doing the choreo to Seven. But since women are sexualized for their choice of clothing, I’m not surprised that people’s misogyny is showing. That’s a trendy style in Korea (look at other kpop girlies) and for dancers in general.

It’s a fact that JK’s likes are pretty much choreo covers with a few BTS jokes and memes sprinkled here and there. Him liking a video of a women dressed “sexy” is not proof of a heterosexual orientation. Did he say that she bit his neck? Did he suck on her sweaty ear in a stadium of 90k people? Because those things also happened, but those weren’t proof of his sexual orientation either. Especially not for the “JK is unequivocally straight” crowd of fans. I don’t attach any motive for him liking that video other than she was doing a great choreo cover so he liked it. He also liked a choreo video of a guy pole dancing to Seven awhile ago. But you didn’t attach the same narrative to that did you? Ah, that’s right because it’s not fitting your belief that JK is straight. I don’t seek out the “gay” in everything that JK does but boy do the straights try to see everything that he does as macho playboy heterosexual man. Ick.

[absolutebl]

What are your unpopular opinions abouts bls?

Few of Mine would be ...

I don't care if a dark bl has a sad ending like modc. Though they didn't specify it was going to turnout like that or it was a dark one

I hated Kiyoi for all cliché bully things he did but the one that tips me off is that graduation pull-kiss-shove I would still like to punch him for that.

I don't like cartoony edgy women like tiffy from lovely writer.

Oh sure why not just get me into trouble, why don't you?

You all ready for this?

Here's the 10 I can come up with off the top of my head:

The Untamed is way overrated and so is KinnPorsche

Censored Chinese bromances should NOT count as BL and should always be watched illegally

Most Korean BL is absolutely fine at the shorter length

NO SECOND SEASONS

Make it Right is great

The stepbrother trope is super sexy and so is age gap

High school set BL is ALWAYS welcome and university set BL is fine too

Most Thai BL pulps have better chemistry in mere cheek kiss than all Korean BL Kdramas in general (and Cdramas for that matter)

IRL shipping is absolutely gross and extremely creepy

If the story doesn't need high heat, it shouldn't be in there (I know, I shocked you didn't I?)