I Wish I Had A Place To Post My Fucked Up Arts Without Being Cancelled

I wish I had a place to post my fucked up arts without being cancelled 😭

Honestly I think the drawn arts have suffered perhaps the most out of modern censorship. Especially the communities, too, because when sites ban things to please advertisers, investors and the handful of people squawking about protecting the children, it creates this mentality of; 'if its been banned its bad, so whoever makes it or enjoys it is bad too.'

There will literally always be at least one person who comes after you for what you create. Lord knows I enough enough angry anons in my inbox on a daily basis and all I do is rant about antis and occasionally knock my braincells together with enough force to say something vaguely helpful.

My best advice for avoiding being 'cancelled' is to heavily, heavily curate your online space and the people you aim to include within it. This could be by:

Following specifically other blogs who post similar content or express interest in similar content to what you produce or your interests.

Pre-emptively blocking blogs who express disgust or hatred for the content you produce or like, blogs who express moral stances conflicting to yours, ect. This is expressly helpful on sites like Twitter where options to limit engagement are limited.

Tagging properly, and including trigger and warnings tags whom others are likely to have blocked. This prevents people from seeing something they don't want to, and also gives you coverage if they try to accuse you of 'spreading it around.'

In cases of art that may have more extreme content, try using spoiler flags or any filtration option that requires viewers to actively consent to viewing it. Relevant to above, nobody can cry wolf about 'being exposed' because they would've had to physically reveal the work to themselves.

DeviantArt unfortunately recently changed its policies to a frankly ridiculously constrictive degree, so while I previously would've recommended that as a place to host your artwork and find a safer community, I can no longer. Hopefully someone is successful in pushing for the site to reform to its previous rules soon.

ArtStation is an option. The site is not eligible to anyone under 18 and sexual, gore, fetish, and 'mature' content is allowed provided the usual stipulation that you aren't using it in order to cause, infer or threaten harm against someone. A lot of the site is geared toward marketing artwork, though, so you might be hard pressed to find more of a community aspect to it.

Rule 34.com is... Objectively one of the best places you can host your artwork if you create content that is based on sexual themes. The protective rights aren't the greatest, but anyone who uses Rule 34 has no leg to stand on regarding morality and censorship.

Reddit has a lot of subreddits for sharing art, and a bonus is you can find subreddits specifically geared toward artwork based on things like gore, violence, sexual content, ect. Filtering options and monitoring are basically non-existent, however. Also, Reddit sometimes spontaneously decides a specific post is against its TOS and yeets it.

There's also the option of building a Discord server based around sharing artwork of certain themes, which is objectively the format that allows you the most control over who views it, but it also means your art has a limited presence. (Can't be reblogged, ect.)

If you do check out any of the websites, always be thorough in reading the Terms of Service and the Community Guidelines.

Do you even understand that if there were no 'bad guys' and 'bad choices' and 'icky things' in media literally 99.99% of the music, movies, TV shows, books, ect that we have right now would not exist?

All those awesome action movies where its a race against time to save the world from a criminal organisation hellbent on chaos and world domination?

Gone.

The Great Gatsby and his slutty parties and reckless pining?

Gone.

Godzilla?

Gone.

Snoop Dogg and his beloved music?

Gone.

A world wherein we can freely see a young Hugh Dancy sluttily covered in blood and entrenched in a homoerotic, literally consuming love with a DILF-y Mads Mikkelson, also sluttily covered in blood?

Gone.

What would we even be left with? The gripping adventures of a man running from store to store to find the right kind of flour?

"Whhhaaaaahh, I hated this Evil Villain, I wish he wasn't in the movie!"

Good. That means the storytelling did its job. That means the actor played the Evil Villain well. That means the role was properly fulfilled.

That does not mean the Evil Villain shouldn't exist.

Pre-emptively blocking people is good for everyone.

Seriously. The amount of times I see people whining or laughing about being blocked when they 'haven't even done anything' just tells me that not many of you know its actually a really good way to properly curate your online space, and its not something to be offended over.

Blocking is a form of protection. Its also a form of mutual protection.

Especially on websites that don't offer more extensive or usable filtering, tagging and avoidance options. Twitter, for example.

Blocking isn't some personal insult. Its a method of saying; hey, we clearly shouldn't interact, so I'm gonna build this soundproof wall between us to make sure we can't.

To use The Salmon Analogy, if I run a restaurant based on salmon as the main ingredient, and you're allergic or or severely dislike salmon, me refusing to serve you isn't a personal sleight. Its me recognising that you can't or really don't want to eat salmon, and its me protecting you from an unpleasant experience and myself from you inevitably screaming at me for serving salmon.

If you are someone who enjoys 'objectionable' content, such as gore, and you stumble across an extremely anti-gore blog, its absolutely a viable option to pre-emptively block them. Maybe your paths never would've crossed, but its better to ensure they don't than potentially wind up the victim or hate or harassment.

Blocking is an absolute sure-fire way to ensure that you do not see something you do not want to. It should be used as liberally as you want to.

I would buy so much more music and band merch if it wasn't all cheaply made, mass-produced, stick-on factory crap that costs $95 for a single t-shirt.

And like. I know why its so expensive. I know why its so cheaply made. But still.

No.

"Why don't you tell people what kind of fictional porn you like?"

Why don't you tell them you spend your free time telling real people to kill themselves and arguing about the rights of people who literally do not exist.

I'll tell my mom that I read about Tony Stark pounding Peter Parker until his ass is as open as a 24/7 McDonald's if you tell yours that you wholeheartedly tell people you hope their families burn alive and they get raped because they ship a human and a celestial being together.

While we're at it, sure, I'll tell my boss I like monsterfucking as long as you tell yours that your break-time hobby is scouring the internet stalking people and harassing them over their kinks.

I might be the freak with a tentacle dildo and a bookmarks page full of nasty, kinky incest, but you're the freak who could literally kill someone.

I know which one I'd rather be.

No, no, they're right.

But also, it does contribute to my analysis of how the approach to characters is different based on whether the canon content is geared more towards realism or fantasy.

Waiting for the thinkpieces about how Astarion and Billy Hargrove are extremely similar characters but only one was well written...