#theyre like. part of my normal internet/art world exposure

[fisherfurbearer]

Hey! I hope you don't mind the message - I just wanted to say, your tags made me cry. I'm so happy that our makin silly lil creatures over here could mean something to you all these years later. You absolutely can do what you want, and make a living at it, and more people need to hear that. Everyone in our lives told us we couldn't - we were just too stubborn to listen. I sincerely thank you, I'm going to look at these tags anytime I feel discouraged, and I hope we can make you a monster one day. <3

OH MY GOODNESS!!!! I didn't see this originally and finally checked my inbox and saw this.

Now I'm feeling teary eyed ... I genuinely think it was artists like you both, Melissa Curphy (@missmonstermel), and Allison Theus (@crispyfishsticks) who showed me at a young age you CAN make awesome monsters and be wonderfully successful and HAPPY doing so.

I'm not joking at all when I say I found your DeviantArt over 10 years ago and it stuck with me ever since. I've kept up with Homemade Horrors since then on multiple platforms. It was always a dream of mine to have a custom monster made by you both, and now that I have an actual career position (transgender healthcare, which still doesn't feel real! That this is happening and it's Real!!) I may be able to afford that someday. ❤️

For reference this is the post and tags and if you like the looks of this gorgeous creature you should DEFINITELY give them a follow!!!!! Homemade Horrors are AMAZING and everything Worms and Bones make together is always so full of love and creativity.

[gizdathemxel]

my hot take on purity culture is that nobody knows how to be normal about sex :3

(tw for sex, puritanism, pedophila (?) [not explicit tbh], and shitty discourse)

call me a puriteen n all but like has it not bothered you to ever think of why so many young people are sex negative (definitely not a culture and internet that puts us in sexual situations when we are far too young and far too uncomfortable) ? has it ever bothered u to ask why so many young people are not performing critical media analysis (definitely not a lackluster education and culture that dissuades us from thinking deeper about the media we read) ? when I was a minor I could not tell you how many people i knew (me included) struggled with porn addiction bc we were exposed to pornography when we were FAR too young. young people are taught to be ashamed of and fearful of sex while simultaneously having their sex lives being put on blast 24/7 for others to jack off to, and you expect us to NOT act out about it?

like yes, you are absolutely right that sex (esp queer sex) is a totally normal thing and that you should be allowed to write wtv you want to write and share it among other like-minded people! yes you’re absolutely right that sex is a huge part of queer history that has been historically wiped away and that needs to be preserved !! i will not argue that puritans won’t jump at any chance to censor and shame and discriminate against anyone they deem a deviant!!! that is true!!

but you cannot expect a bunch of young people, still educating themselves, still figuring out their sexual identity in a world that shames and sexualizes them, still figuring out how to truly interact w media to have already know that. you don’t have to educate them but like there’s no need to be like “erm…minors amirite 😒” when a block will suffice

it’s so ridiculously revisionist to act like the internet is ‘sanitized’ or is perfectly filtered out so that minors stay in minor spaces and adults stay in adult spaces. there are people posting porn on tiktok, on twitter, on tumblr, on every fucking platform one can think of (including youtube). it is truly not that hard to encounter adult material even when you’re a minor. people will gladly send you porn or similarly graphic stuff even if ur a minor. you literally couldn’t have looked up mlp on GOOGLE back in the late 2000s/2010s and not be shown mlp porn. there’s an infamous porn video of mlaatr where the main (16yo) character gets raped by rock creatures, and it looks JUST like the show’s art style. so it’s very likely that there’s a generation of people whose very 1st sexual exposure was watching their fave characters be placed in inappropriate sexual content when they were children. so yay learning about sex thru bastardization!!

and combine that with young people who have never actually been taught how to explore their sexuality and instead learned “if ur even horny for a minute you will go to hell and die” ur going to get ill-adjusted young people who do not know wtf theyre doing. u are going to get people who are going to bump their heads a fucking lot.

ill be honest and admit that when I was a kid I was definitely within the puriteen camp bc gw!! I was a queer kid who just started grasping their sexuality in the middle of the pandemic and all I had was unrestricted access to the internet, that gave everything to me at 110%

I am not asking that every space be wiped squeaky clean just in case that a minor might be present, but I am asking to extend a little grace. Drop educational sources a so called puriteen should refer to!! Show how that kind of puritanical thinking can do actual harm to marginalized people!! Don’t get in internet spays w kids!! Just block and move on!!

(also i will forever be giggling at that one comic abt a minor entering an “adult” space and then getting mad at the adults there and calling them pedos just for the ‘adult’ space the op was talking about to be sophia the 1st nsfw fanfic. i literally cant)