Blaugust 01

I'm going to blog on this monthly event of Blaugust. No guarantees on finishing all 31 days, but it's nice to do something in month when a lot of other people are doing the same thing :) And it's a nice way to get all my current thoughts together, rather than spamming them on 50 different blorbo posts.

I'm just some guy. I draw sometimes. I like horror and yaoi and horror yaoi. I also like kitties and puppies and animals and gardening. I'm on the “small web” with my personal site and such because mainstream social media stifles the artistic expression of my friends and myself. I am very attention deficit and am always thinking about 500 things at once, and not thinking very clearly either. Bear with me while I try to organize my insane thoughts.

From Blerdy Otome:

For the newbies, August 1st is celebrated as Yaoi Day because when you write �801� in Japanese, it can be read as �yaoi�. The 8 can be read as �ya� (?) in the Japanese number �8�, when read as �yattsu� (??). The 0 can be read as the western letter �O.� And the 1 can be read as �I� (?). Together that makes Y-A-O-I!!

I watched 2 seasons of Kaiji with Shane and slippy, and now we're rewatching it in the English dub. Kaiji is boy's love! Boys LOVE gambling and Saw traps! And of course I thought the gooey eyed lad Miyoshi should harass the crybaby martyr Kaiji.

[image id: Drawing in ink and red spot color of Miyoshi from Kaiji dressed up as Scout TF2, and Kaiji dressed up as spy tf2. Kaiji (implied to be BLU spy) is trying to run away with the RED intelligence, but Miyoshi is RED scout monkey grabbed onto his back and saying “SAVE ME SPAIJI-SAN!!!”. Everyone is crying and red in the face. End ID]

I've been feeling very yaoi-ful since I made the first draft of the Fujo Phrases zine.

ADHD detour: A couple weeks ago, I saw a Chinese artist express that “fujoshi” is part of their LGBTQ identity. And of course there was some English-speaker QRT-ing them rudely saying “they let people say anything these days”. It's just.. strange that can and will “joke” about yaoi being an accessible point to ponder their gender/sexuality, but refuse to actually acknowledge it as a gay medium because of it's association with “cis het girls”. Including from ex-cishet girls who are now lesbian or trans and acknowledge that they realized their identity through cartoon dudes kissing, but they think it's shameful? IDK I feel like boomers realized their shit through watching Wizard of Oz or wrestling or something, it's fine for people of our generation to realize it through the popular media and creativity and role-playing of our time.

Something I wrote in a blorbo post:

in the case of cartoon porn, I know a lot of artists (many of us immigrant-descended, or from non-English not-USA countries) don't find a lot of english-language lgbtq terminology accurate or personally helpful for defining our characters ?? And in a lot of other cases, I know a lot of people who identify with gay, lesbian, trans, and so forth terminology IRL but want their cartoon porn to be fully fantasy without specific terminology, so they don't have to think about the realities of dysphoria and medically/financially inaccessibility, and other things that would be depressing. (Much like the blog post from congenial anomaly about how certain things hit TOO hard and you have to be in a certain mood to read. while other things that are �too real� for other people are more casually readable for others) https://blorbo.social/@CongenialAnomaly/114928230278270073 “I think for people who grew up with more gay people around them IRL [properly known terms from the LGBTQ umbrella terms are] helpful… and I think for my group of fujos, we found the term “fujoshi” useful, because we were relatively isolated from a gay community but found what we were looking for with yaoi and other fu”joshi“ and now not-quite-joshi online!”

I've said this before somewhere, but yaoi (encompassing writing stories, role-playing characters, and making out in boy cosplay) is very much drag for assumed-“girls”. It lets people explore their gender and sexuality in a creative way. And much like drag, there's a strange contingent of people saying “you're OBJECTIFYING THE OPPOSITE SEX BY ROLEPLAYING THEM!!!” without thinking about why someone might want to play with gender and presentation in a safe space of fake cartoon stories and larping. But yeah. Be yaoi and be free.

Payment processors bans on adult art is such a hot topic in my groups, people complain about seeing people be sad about this shit LMAO. While in other groups, people don't even know about the NSFW bands. Long story short, in the month of July Steam banned pornographic incest/rape kink games, due to a group known as Collective Shout (CS) pressuring Visa/Mastercard. Then CS moved onto Itch.io (an indie games marketplace) and Itch.io did a blanket de-listing of all NSFW games - including non-pornographic games that simply have mature stories like autobiographical trauma, because they were tagged as “mature”. Itch.io also instated very sweeping rules that disallow a LOT of things, ostensibly to weed out the incest/rape kink games, but very much lump autobiographical trauma in there.

As of right now, August 1st, itch.io has re-listed NSFW games, but do not allow them to be monetized whether it's accepting payment or donations for those games. They state that they're working with Stripe right now to try to instate payment. But there hasn't been any word on whether the new adult content restrictions will stay.

I have no time for people who say “who cares” or “they deserve it” when it comes to adult art, porn, and self-expression. Especially when people close their eyes and plug their ears when people say “nasty porn deserves to exist alongside autobiographical trauma art because it always gets lumped in together”, or “this shit affects EVERYONE from struggling sex workers who have always had issues with payment processors, to vanilla ass LGBTQ people whose existence is automatically sexualized by shitty institutions, to cis women trying to get reproductive rights.”

Links for further reading and calls to action:

• https://yellat.money/
• https://cartoonist.coop/censorship-pay-discrimination/
• https://stop-paypros.neocities.org/

IDK maybe I'm cringe and woke for wanting artists and sex workers to have money so they can buy food to eat, because they're groups that are often poor and are affected by so much bullshit from sexism to racism to homophobia and transphobia. Maybe I'm cringe and woke because I draw adult art and I'm affected by these bans. Maybe I'm cringe and woke for caring about people. But I'm so sick and tired of ostensible “leftists” and “progressives” and people with pride flag icons saying this doesn't matter, and people deserve it, and it's all just “stupid fandom wars”. It increases my anger levels to talk to people like this, so it's up to someone else to try to educate them on why they should care about people and have class solidarity, even if you think they're “yucky”.

Anyways. I made a fedi post about some web communities for adult creators. Cuz it's always important to pat each other's asses and support each other.

The text reads:

Hello cute little people in my sock drawer! Please connect with your fellow artists and autists in these trying times.

@gg8473.com runs a yuri VN webring:
https://yurievnring.neocities.org/

@aroceu.cloud runs a general fandom webring
https://fandomr.ing/index

@itsnero runs the Adult Artist webring:
https://www.adultartistswebring.org/artists/
as well as a BL webcomic webring
https://webring.gay/

Smutgusher runs a yaoi webring:
https://smutgusher.com/webrings/yaoiverse/

And I run fujofans weblisting (not webring cuz i ain't using javascript lol) for fans of girls who like guys who kiss like girls but the girl fans themselves might also be guys or otherwise.
https://fujofans.scumsuck.com/

These are just the first couple that came to mind for finding kink-friendly artists so we can support each other with copium. Feel free to add on with your own sites/communities in the comments.

(But please don't comment if you're gonna defend assholes deleting art whether it's exploring autobiographical trauma, fantasy horror, or just fetish hentai. I'll give you the dark gift my IBS if you do that.)

Carry on!

I'm having fun with my wiki! I've started a vague "blog" on there, mostly to collect my sprawling mastodon thoughts, immediately because after doing GSO zinefest I'm very inspired to do more zines. I've also made a janky request box for my friends, using the discussion plugin, so when they say “you should draw this” I can remember it instead of searching through 50000 discord lines.

I still need to ask Kat about helping me make that booru for my own art - it's been easier to find cool Kaiji art that's properly tagged on boorus rather than trying to trawl through deviantart and pixiv and 500 socmeds :P But I haven't really had time to just sit down and work on computer stuff… We need to clean up so much, I gotta work on comms and sticker club, we're vending and doing caricatures at Slutfest in 2 weeks!

I gotta color that jeanne/sparkle commission that's been waiting for 2 weeks. I'm excited to have finished the BANGZZ album cover commission and can't wait for the go-ahead to show it off. I have a new OC commission to ink. And I really need to finish the Coelacanth sticker for this month's sticker club, as well as send out zines.

But before that, I must digest my lunch and clean up the cat litter boxes and do the dishes. Okay. Let's start.

Comment below if you'd like. Ignore the “real name” input and just put whatever your username is.