The art I always get dogpiled for

What if I told you that I have one art piece that is especially controversial?

I have one art piece, a comic in fact, that is so obscene that every single time I post it to multiple communities on reddit, I am guaranteed to get flak on at least a couple of them. Not just the typical "you're sick!" snide little comments, either, but people tying themselves into pretzels to justify why this piece is worse than rⱥpe.

In fact, that's the part that irritates me the most about posting this shockingly controversial piece. Since I draw some edgy, taboo kinks, "you need help" and "you should be on a list somewhere" aren't rare, coming mostly from very disrespectful vanilla people, but this piece is so frowned on that even anti-censorship perverts who already like BDSM fantasies turn on me every time.

Let's play a guessing game!

If you assumed I was the most controversial image set, you were wrong!

If you've been following me for a while, do you have one of my works in mind already? Which artworks of mine do you think are guaranteed to get a strong, negative reaction every time? Are you imagining Leon can't help Ashley; he's busy ? It's got sounding in it. A lot of guys think that's gross. Even gives 'em the heebie jeebies! Is that the one?

Nope! Maybe you're thinking Ashley learns her new place, since there's a gụn involved. That's pretty violent and forceful act. I mean, it seems like she could die! (Especially if you're not familiar with the captioned version.)

You're 0/2! In fact, I don't remember ever being criticized for that Ashley / Ada / Leon set.

So surely it has to be the set where Wesker kidnaps Rebecca, right? Traveling with a live experiment is basically a manual on how to kidnap and torture someone!

It's gotta be this one, right? A small girl is drụgged, kidnapped, and kept in a suitcase!

Strike three! You're out. (And, to be fair to me, it jumps the shark a little--no, you're not going to be able to take a live person onto a plane as a carry-on, that's all clearly just fantasy kink stuff.) I do get comments like "someone should call the FBI on you" about that work, again from vanilla people, but it's mooostly garden variety "I wish that was me!!" comments from kink enthusiasts. Sidebar: what is with people who say that on kidnapping fetish content? I even see it on implied snuff. I could understand "what a hot fantasy! I want to role play that!" but everyone defaults to "I wish that was me!" Are they bots? No one wants to be literally kidnapped and murdered, lol.

THIS is the work that makes kinky people mad at me:

Okay, you've been patient enough. No more guessing! Here's the answer, mouse over or tap your screen for the big reveal:

There you have it. That's the piece that really upsets people. (btw, you can also view this comic on my blog here: Some foot job fun!) This short comic is far, far more controversial than any kidnapping or non-con fetish piece I've ever done. It's so frowned on (on reddit, anyway) that even other (supposedly) kinky people are extremely rude to me about it. Specifically, this part seems to set them off:

Wait, why does that comic piss people off?

I know, right. Pretty tame, especially in the context of the internet, but rest assured, I've gotten pushback every single time I've posted that comic, and accusations! Hell, I've been called names. Why?

Pictured: redditor telling me that this comic is real life, I guess? I don't know what they mean by "removes the fantasy/fictional element."

Well, who can say why anyone is rude, really. My guess is poor parenting 🤭 but as far as how they justify being rude to me, they keep saying it's because Some foot job fun "discourages safe word use."

If you're reading my blog, you probably already know some things about BDSM, so I don't want to spend a lot of time going over the terminology, but just in case, really quickly: a safe word is a word that a person and their sexual partners agree on to stop (sometimes with another word meaning "slow down") sexual play immediately when spoken. Naturally, a vanilla person might ask, "why not just say stop?" and that's actually connected to a really important point that I want to make about this comic.

Bondage porn (and related subreddits) is very, very closely linked to CNC, role play, and intensity

You don't necessarily have to engage in CNC (that's consensual non-consent, basically the practice of role playing a rⱥpe fantasy) in order to practice BDSM. You can enjoy being tied up, keep a smile on your face, and voice your approval for being whipped (or whatever it is you're into) the entire time, and the dominant or sadist partner can do the same. For some people like that, "stop!" might be a fine safe word.

I'm having a spiritual experience right now, okay? Mind your own goddamn business.

But I'm pretty sure they're the minority. For a lot of people, the experience of BDSM is mind-altering. A really good session can help one explore parts of themselves they couldn't access otherwise, even grow as a person. A lot of people find it healing, even therapeutic (although it's certainly not therapy) or even spiritual. With that kind of intensity comes expressions of discomfort sometimes, and some parts of the experience can be uncomfortable even though both parties want to continue. Participants want the ability to express that discomfort, to grunt in pain, to cuss, to let "stop!" fly out of their mouths without thinking. As long as you don't say your safe word, your partner will know that it's all just part of the experience for you. They might pause to check on you, but they know they don't need to untie you yet.

Porn is at least one step removed from real life, however (duh). For a lot of people, the porn kind of is the role play. The characters in most porn, drawn or not, don't stop to negotiate their safe words and then "pretend" to kidnap each other. Sure, there are exceptions, and I think it's great when artists create realistic images of real world consensual sex, but you don't have to do that, because no one can get hurt in a drawing and everyone already knows it's just a fantasy. That's a huge part of the appeal of hentai and why I even make it.

In this context, consent is more between the viewer and the computer screen than between people. If you don't like where the fantasy is going, you just stop looking.

Pictured: "Blablabla, everyone clap because I'm a Good Person™ who only likes ethical fantasies™." I get that this is a public forum where people are free to comment, but they're not even commenting on my art as much as they're loudly announcing their own personal preferences on a post where no one asked.

My point is that it's very ridiculous to walk into a party balloon convention and be upset that some of the balloons are shiny because you only like matte balloons. Most balloons are shiny, and a reasonable person would expect to find some at the party balloon convention.

And to be honest, I don't agree with the idea that "discouraging safeword use = rⱥpe" in the first place. Hell, I disagree that she was even discouraging safe word use at all. I do think that it's perfectly valid if some people felt uncomfortable with my work, but I also think the correct response would be to hit the back button, not lash out at me about it. But since they're adamant that they're free to criticize my work in a public space, I should also be free to outline why I think they're wrong and dramatic.

What I think is happening in this comic

Personally, I think that Ada was actually encouraging Leon to use his safeword if he needed it. I think she could sense that he was getting tired, and wanted an in-character way to remind him of the boundaries they set earlier, so that he could exercise an agreed-upon pause if he needed to. I think that the way she phrased it was supposed to avoid breaking the scene and double as sexy talk, but mostly serve as a reminder.

When I labeled her a "No-nonsense Domme," I wasn't giving my personal opinion, necessarily, but rather describing her how I think Leon would, referencing the fact that she may not be sweet, but she is fair. And that's it, that's what I interpret is happening here. That other people think she's literally a rⱥpist in this short two-panel comic is actually crazy to me.

Other valid interpretations

I do think that there are other valid interpretations though, as long as there exists logical reasoning for them. That is to say, don't come at me with a long-winded rant about how Leon clearly represents the proletariat here, and Ada the bourgeoisie, and that's why my comic is harmful. That would be a bit of a reach. In the interest of fairness, here are some other ideas with valid reasoning I came up with:

I'm a sensitive guy that makes silly little quips, sure, but I'm not a redditor-level crybaby.

Option 1- It was just dirty talk in a consensual relationship, no need to read so hard into it.
Obviously the least popular interpretation with reddit, and I know I'm really going to ruffle some feathers by explaining this but, well... here we go. I think it's totally reasonable to point out that Leon is a grown man. Not just a grown man, actually, but a Resident Evil badass action hero man. To that end, I don't think Leon is such a massive sniveling wuss that her 'threat' of not respecting him carries much weight, even if he really thought she mean it, and she wouldn't fuck a jelly-spined people-pleaser in the first place.

And I don't think she meant it! I mean, they clearly agreed on a safe word--that's what it's for, being used, when needed. Maybe she would need to be more careful about "discouraging safe wording" if she was domming a Rebecca Chambers, someone she doesn't know as well, and who is shown to be more demure and less self-assertive-- ooo now there's an idea.

Option 2- Ada made a mistake.
Doms do not need to be perfect, and thank god, because no one is perfect. There's this weird perspective circulating online that all sexual situations are going to be good and consensual, or else they will be bad and criminal, with no room for awkwardness and misunderstandings in between. It's a delicate subject, because people who commit crimes will try to cover their ass by saying it was all just a big misunderstanding, and those people are evil liars, but that doesn't mean that everyone saying that is an evil liar, either.

I think it's completely possible that Ada just misspoke here. Maybe Leon doesn't love that she "discouraged safeword use," maybe he would leave this situation with some feelings about that, and they would need to discuss those feelings. It's totally possible for them to come to an agreement together that this situation was uncomfortable and shouldn't happen again. She might even be very remorseful. Or...

In case you forgot, here are the offending panels so you don't have to scroll up. What do you think? Does he look like he really hates this?

Option 3- Ada is a bad person.
If you're actually familiar at all with Resident Evil, you know Ada is kind of a villian. Anti-hero? Eh, maybe it depends on the game. The point is, she isn't an ambiguously good person the way RE protagonists are. I do believe that she does care about Leon, and I think that's what makes their relationship interesting, but she either cares more about herself, or is too traumatized to allow herself to put anyone else first. Whether or not you find her a sympathetic villainess/anti-hero, she isn't above using Leon, and she has used him before.

I think it's possible that, if Leon actually has some trauma that hurt his confidence and makes him reluctant to use his safe word, Ada just wouldn't care. I think she could think that it's not her fault if he fails to speak up for himself, and she might even think he's stupid for letting her manipulate him, and therefore he deserves whatever's coming to him.

Now, some of you might be thinking, but, but! oh my god! That's a bad thing! And yeah, you're right. Manipulating people and using them is bad. If this were real life, and option 3 was the objective truth of what happened here, I would suggest that no one should date or be friends with Ada. But I don't think I would call it rⱥpe, either. Anyway, bad people do bad things in fiction sometimes. No one ever accuses William Peter Blatty of advocating for the demonic possession of little girls in real life. In fact, for the most part, people don't accuse me of advocating for real life damage on any of my other works, either, even when they're more violent or taboo as discussed in the guessing game at the beginning of this post.

Abusive monster = fine, manipulative dominatrix = not okay

I want to be clear: the reddit opinion on these two panels is not universal. I've never gotten any crap for posting this comic on my public galleries (pixiv, newgrounds) nor on twitter (back when I used it, I don't anymore) nor on bluesky (btw, you can find all my socials / galleries on my linktree). I guess time will tell if I get any nasty comments on this blog (I doubt it). But on reddit, I always run into snark and kink-shaming reliably, every. single. time. I. post. it.

I want to quickly remind you that these are comments people are leaving on my cartoon porn fan comic featuring Resident Evil characters, a series in which a protagonist literally punches a several-ton boulder out of his way.

Naturally, I find it very annoying that redditors think it's okay to lust after a fictional monster like Albert Wesker, someone who in both the source material and my own fan works canonically wants to hurt people, but if you fantasize about a fictional dominatrix who negotiated for a safe BDSM scenario off-screen, well, suddenly she has to pass some kind of purity test, or else not only is the comic wrong, but it's okay to dogpile the author for dreaming up such a shocking scenario.

It annoys me so much that I quit posting that half of the comic on reddit. In fact, I slowed down posting my art in general on reddit, and drove myself crazy for a while wondering why. Why? Why is this piece received so much worse than others, and only on reddit? Why?

It took me some months of interacting with redditors outside of porno spaces, but I think I finally figured it out. It's just a hunch, we'll never really know for sure, but I'm pretty confident I know the answer, and it's really, really, painfully simple.

A little bit about reddit.

Reddit occupies a unique space as far as social medias go. Technically older than twitter, reddit started out as a bastion of free speech according to one founder, and that hands-off ethos allowed a number of infamously toxic subreddits to flourish on the site for many years. Most of them are long gone now after CEO Ellen Pao started to crack down on egregiously hateful content, and prominent admin and successing CEO "Spez" continued her work in that same vein, even going so far as to directly contradict the earlier founder's claim about reddit's original free speech absolutist mission.

Nonetheless, the culture of the website never really recovered: there are still a handful of large subreddits that are more or less dedicated to misogyny (that is, prejudice against women), and the website's demographics are still skewed heavily male, with two-thirds of users identifying as such. Additionally, since the website is pseudonymous, consequence-free assholery and paranoid conspiracy-thinking abound, and reddit skews young. At time of writing, only tiktok and snapchat have a younger average user base.

Man on the ground, submissive. Woman on top, in control. This is the future those batshit woke feminists want.

I'll come right out and say it: the general atmosphere on reddit is pretty anti-woman and only getting worse lately. You've probably already seen the DMs, but the public comment sections are pretty bad, too. I've posted things about being a woman that would be completely uncontroversial had I told anyone in my real life, things like, "women had to fight for their right to vote in the United States in the early 1900s," and "In general, men abuse women more often than the other way around" and had to shut off reply notifications because of a barrage of bad faith whataboutisms and arguing.

Redditors on the whole are eagerly searching for content that appears to be "anti-male," and they are extremely sensitive when they think they've found it. I don't just mean the far-right weirdos, either; most studies show that reddit overall leans left politically, but there's no reason you can't support universal healthcare and think that feminism is cancer and the draft / child support / a random porn comic is an example of misandry (prejudice against men).

The scariest feminine boogeyman

Seems like for most of recorded history, there's been some kind of frightening human she-monster that everyone was worried about. Once upon a time, it was witches who could kill your livestock, make you impotent, and curse your children. Believe it or not, some societies still accuse and murder women for being witches, but most of us have moved on to a more modern scapegoat.

Look at what Ada's saying that sets people off:

If you safeword on me now, handsome, I will never respect you again.

There's a kind of permanence implied here. In regular heterosexual femdom content, which is popular on reddit, it's safe to assume that at the conclusion of the porno, the man will take off his maid costume, pull the dildo out of his ass, and stop licking his mistress's heels, or whatever it is that gets him off, and then he'll go back to his regular life as the default, non-politicized gender. But Ada is talking about never respecting Leon again, denying him his right as a man if you take her seriously.

Do I scare you? Good.

But worse than that, she's being demanding and manipulative, and that's the scariest kind of woman there is. Oh, you don't know about demanding and manipulative women? Why, if you look at demanding and manipulative woman wrong at a workplace, you'll lose your job, your friends, probably go to jail, definitely have your life ruined, because women like that are always making false accusations. Bitches like that lie about being on the pill, too, and then they have 4 kids with a loser, so they try to trap a hardworking, innocent guy in their lives to trick him into taking care of her illegitimate children. Or worse, she'll marry you, probably cheat on you, then divorce you, get full custody of the kids, half of all your assets, and you'll owe alimony and child support because courts are unfair and biased toward women. And, and, did you know that bitchy feminists are demanding that game devs remove all the hot women from their products?!

Now you see it, don't you? It's gamergate shit again: a woman has the audacity to step out of her place, that stokes societal fears about women's growing power in society, and everyone hunts as hard as they can for justification for harassment so they can beat her back where they think she belongs. Something similar happened to Ellen Pao, aforementioned reddit CEO, when she began the process of cleaning up the site.

Reminder: literally no one on reddit cared at all that Chief Irons locked me in a closet for 223 days. They only care about mean CEOs banning hate subs or wicked dominatrixes who don't do safe words "right." Very unhelpful.

People aren't freaking out because they think it's rⱥpe or that my comic mimics real life too closely. I think I've already done a pretty good job of explaining why neither of those thought processes would justify the backlash. They're freaking out because Ada represents the scariest kind of woman to them, and then they justify the freakout by saying that she (and therefore I, as the author) is "discouraging safeword use."

Notice that I said people, not men. I absolutely believe that some of the people criticizing me are probably women. This isn't something that people do on purpose--they don't wake up in the morning and think, "I feel like hating on women today. I'm going to find some porn featuring a woman that steps out of line, and then I'm going to be really mean to its creator."

It's all unconscious; both men and women have been absorbing stereotypes about women all our lives. It's something we can't help. As a result, the process looks like this: Sally Stroker and Billy Beantoucher browse a hentai subreddit and happen upon something that makes them uncomfortable, in this case a woman lording her manipulative power over an innocent man, and instead of reflecting on that discomfort, they immediately turn it on the content creator. At that point, there's no winning them over again. No one wants to do the hard work of looking inside and admitting when they're wrong, and they definitely don't want to admit they might be a smidge prejudiced, and when everyone else seems to be on their side because they felt the same discomfort, it's so easy to assume that must mean you're right. Doubling down ensues, and your friendly neighborhood hentai artist starts to wonder why she even bothers trying to share her work with anyone.

You're a bitch, Emilie. GFY.

I think I re-wrote this conclusion piece about 30 times, trying not to end on a downer. I want my blog to mostly be a place people come to have fun! I like to share stuff that will make people laugh almost as much as I like to share work that will make them horny. I try hard to just, rise above it all, leave my bad attitude at the door. I want to be a place where people can escape... But I also want to be honest and speak my mind about things that bother me. Sometimes I need to air that out.

People do this all the time, pretend they were on my side once, but then I ruined it by standing up for myself. I don't need anyone like this in my fanbase.

The truth is, sometimes I do wonder why I bother sharing my art, and sometimes snide comments do bother me, but there's not a lot that can be done about it. Rudness is inevitable. Really, just by writing this article, by putting forward the possibility that people are being unfair to me, and that it might be the result of prejudice, I'm opening myself up to further attacks. If the internet hates anything as much as demanding, manipulative women, it's women who stand up for themselves and ask others to look in the mirror. Don't believe me? Look at the response I got just for sticking up for myself and calling kink-shaming nonsense exactly what it is.

It's lonely being a horny feminist who thinks other girls are hot on the internet sometimes. Straight women get uncomfortable and complain about the "male gaze" in your art from time to time, but you're definitely not at home in male-dominated spaces like reddit, either, and the moral high-horse crowd is perpetually stealing progressive language around consent as an excuse to harass you.

Unfortunately(?) I feel really driven to share my work with as many people as I can. That's just my cross to bear, I guess! I love creating silly little porno stories, and I'm proud of them, and I want to share them with as many people as I can, and I can't stop wanting that. It's literally part of who I am at this point.

I'm gonna be so quick with the block button from now on.

But when it comes to reddit, from this point forward, I think I'm only going to be sharing Some foot job fun on subreddits that I own and mod, where I can intentionally cultivate a friendly community of people who come to the subreddit to get off and not to win internet points in debates. It will limit my reach, but that was already happening, because people would downvote me into oblivion.

Also, I'm going to lean on this blog to share my thoughts once in a while, and definitely to rant about people who hurt my feelings, and delete any comments that rub me at all the wrong way. Call me too sensitive if you want, call me a bitch and tell me to go fuck myself all you want, I don't care. I'm done worrying that internet strangers who don't care about me are going to label me as someone who "can't take criticism," and this blog is not a democracy! You have been warned! 😜