(no subject)

[kradeelav]

i am so incredibly thankful not to be a popular artist ajjsjshahk;

(abstract talk about dead dove / non consent in art under the cut)

one art acquaintance who does pretty delicious widely-known dead dove work was understandably griping about patreon's draconian consent rules for fictional work; aka that you have to have the characters smiling or explicitly giving consent for anything resembling rough sex / bdsm / ""odd"" power ""imbalances""

and a lot of the comments were 'haha well you could always put a silly sticker beside the characters on the work that says 'i consent' [to get around that]'

and hm

hmmmmmmmmm

my mental un-virtuous instinctive response to those replies was 'do you fuckers have any respect for the honesty of art?'

weirdly enough that suggested work-around would feel even more straightforwardly... rapey at-the-viewer in a way, to me. just genuinely wrong and 'krad would actually call red on that if this were a a kink scene' and hackles-raising enough i'm sitting here oddly fascinated at myself why i feel strongly enough to type all of this. it almost creeps me out more that the replies didn't see it like that. maybe it's just me since i feel like i focus a little more on the body language and the acting of the characters in drawings than some?

i've written tangentially on this before, how good loving sex can look downright rapey at times. maybe for me it's a little more personal/my hangups where with [all my shit] imbalanced power dynamics is a default existence state and trying to magic away in a hypothetical scenario is genuinely alienating since it's forcefully changing me. and it'd feel like forcefully changing said characters - usually if i'm drawing somebody i'm already in their head enough that it'd just be an anathema to force out-of-character acting on them.

anyway. didn't Say the above that out loud but....idk just feeling Some sort of way that it was the majority of the replies.

i'm glad i don't make art for those repliers, is my honest petty opinion :v

edit: on further thought, it is absolutely fascinating now how "drawing [blorbo] being raped" feels far more like a CNC scene to me (between the artist and the fictional character as temporary mental formation to figure out acting) than "drawing [blorbo] being raped and slapping a sticker on it implying that it's consensual" and that feeling way closer to a true rape as a violation.

very interesting.

Comments

[amado1]

sfhsdhfghjsdf weirdly it DOES feel more rapey like, you're somehow taking away the character's agency even more by portraying a rape scene and then slapping a goofy sticker on it that lies about what they're feeling?? IDK, I love to write about rape, it's one of my favorite subjects, and it would feel so disrespectful and reductive to put a pithy little tag on it at the end, like, "Just kidding, they're fine, none of this was real, they consent." NO DAWG, I'm writing about this for a reason, I WANT to explore how fucked up this is and I want to do it honestly. And it doesn't matter if this is for a piece seriously examining the trauma of rape or if it's a piece where the rape is a kink and it's meant to be titillating (or a mixture of the two); both of those are honest explorations of rape and its complexities. How insulting to wrap it up in a glittery bow with "IT'S NOT REAL" lettering embossed on the ribbon.

[kradeelav]

yessss you get it!! okay phew makes me feel a little better knowing we're not the only ones x)

but i 100% feel you - exploring rape in fiction can be all kinds of needful emotions and experiences to have as a creator; whether as you said it's out of kink factor, catharsis, part of a plot or all of the above.... but the *honesty* part of it is mission critical. removing that with a 'just kidding' is almost like taking away the voice of the character/(what you're trying to say all along).

[ficklecrow]

Not trying to play devil's advocate, but my response to that was to chuckle. It feels closer to a sarcastic "Approved by the Comics Code Authority" stamp to me.

[kradeelav]

oh of course, dark humor is essential too x)