HEY GUYS IT CAN'T BE MY PERSONAL TUMBLR IF I DON'T BASK IN ALL THIS ATTENTION, RIGHT?
Runic - I agree that it's pretty terrible, to be honest. And that is indeed without a doubt THE creepiest aspect of Kit n' Kay Boodle. Just all the raunchy sex talk with all the "derple doo hurr hurr imma singin' fox!" characters. Just... ugh. I think the reason weirdos gravitate towards my art is that they clearly see the Mario/Mega Man influence and see that I like drawing little dinosaur-monsters and well, boom, recipe for disaster. These are the kinds of people who, upon hearing that Yoshi's my favorite cartoon character, would tell me "omg I know right? The best vore character out there! Not to mention the egg-laying ;)" These are the types of sleazeballs we're dealing with, so it's very gross yet unsurprising that they approach me about this shit.
Zamza - Don't you worry none. Judging from my cartoon thread, I've got a lot of catching up to do.
eatenmyeyes - At first I was surprised you even knew who those two were, then I remembered you've been on Poetv, haha. I can totally swing that, actually. It'll be a few days but still!
Jack - I still watch every Youtube video you send me \m/
Healslime - Yeah, you politely asking for art for educational purposes is totally fine, especially compared to death threats for porn, hahaha. You'd have to kick up the crazy by about 9999999999999999999999999999% before you could even begin to bother me, guy! Plus FYI: your requests are amongst the most fulfilling, since I know they're being used for a very good cause. Jus' sayin'.
AND FOR EVERYONE:
See, I've been doing this stuff forever. It's not like one horrible instance drove me to feel this passionately about it. In my experience, it's always a cycle of crazy. You start off with a nut, the nut eventually leaves, and a new nut comes in to take its place. This can make things very stressful.
In all, posting art in and of itself isn't nightmarishly bad. And like I said a lot of the time, ignoring people does in fact work. Really the real trouble doesn't begin until you get stuck as "friends" with people like that. They message you, you choose to ignore their strangeness because you don't know what'll set people off, and then the fun begins. It's such a precarious position to be in, because then you've got someone messaging you and they really, really can not keep their weirdness to themselves. I mean stuff like "I have built my entire persona around masturbating to fat sheep falling off a cliff! XD" So you get someone talking to you and your not-goofy friends, and the little internetling can't stop talking about their jerkoff material because hey! Thaaaaat's the guy! That's that Fat Sheep Falling Off A Cliff Guy! Ohh boy, isn't it so quirky and fun and wacky that he pleasures himself to such strange material! Ha ha, oh what a card! Your normal friends start to get uncomfortable, meanwhile you feel like an ass because hey, the creeper showed up because of you.
What do you do at that point? I mean, you can't tell your friends "hey, STOP feeling uncomfortable around these folks! I mean sure they keep talking about their sexual quirks, but you have no right to feel upset about it!" Oh sure, that's what internet people will say to you, but you know better because you don't live under a rock buried beneath 500 copies of Sonic Adventure. Yeah maybe you can tell that explosive freak parade to stop it, but who knows, maybe they won't even listen to you. And maybe turning them away will start a saga of stalking and threats! Who's to say! It's the fucking internet and everyone is a lunatic!
It starts to affect the way you think. Yeah, these days you guys might know me as Portaxx, The Friendly Nerdy Ridiculist Who Makes A Stupid Whine Noise Every Time Lemon Interrupts Her Oh-So-Hilarious Final Fantasy Jokes (And They Are ALWAYS Hilarious), but I went through a time when I was super-aggravated with anyone who even thought about asking me for art or collaboration. You start to feel like you're in The Thing. You think "okay, which one of you will turn out to be a slobbering nightmare creature hellbent on my destruction? C'mon, I know one of you'll transform, so just get to it right quick and we can get this over with." You don't want to take a request because you assume it's for some gross mailing list. You don't want to collaborate with someone because you figure you'll be tied to some crazyporn gallery. You don't want to give a shout-out to a new artist because they haven't yet proven whether or not they'll be a maniacal stalker. No, I never shut myself into a panic room and jabbered about how the creepers were gonna get me, but I did spend quite some time being very, very cynical. Even when someone would politely leave a nice message about my art, in the back of my mind I'd think "uhhuh, and what's THIS asshole's story, hmm?" I've let go of some of that cynicism, though I am definitely not naive.
Personally, I have in fact refused to post art of certain characters or worlds just because I don't want that kind of trouble. It's not simply that "oh, someone out there will beat off to it." That's just an unfortunate fact you have to accept. Rather, it's that you have to worry about people thinking it's a nod to their community, because then you can get into that terrible cycle I just described. Those guys saying "Tolkien wrote about mud once... do you think he's a mud fetishist like us??" are commonplace online. But trust me, they don't simply sit around and wonder about different authors and artists. If they see your work and have a way to contact you, they will directly ask you "hey, you drew a picture of mud once!... are YOU a mud fetishist like me??" Then they of course pry open the screen door and holler for all their sinky friends to barge on in. Then what? Everything you do is seen as a clever little acknowledgement and whether you like it or not, you risk being lumped in with them. And since you're clearly SUCH good buddies with them, they will definitely come hassle your actual friends too. And then you're left wondering if you should ever post a picture of mud again, because who knows what the fuck trouble that'll cause.
Then you've got the ubercrazies. The stalkers, the conspiracy theorists, the people who over-monster cockyze your every move because everything you do is a sign that you're actually 30 Lucifers and a Hitler wearing an elaborate "regular human being going about their own goddamned business" costume. At this point you may be wondering if I'm even still talking about posting art online. The hell of it is yes, yes I am. It's not simply a matter of turning away commissions. If you post a picture people don't like, or you criticize someone's work, or you don't want to work with someone, you can get ten tons of trouble heaped upon you. Then months later you find out that ohhhh fun! The person you pissed off has actually been stalking you ever since! And then you get to hear the absolutely fucking crazy rumors about you. I've been called everything from a fatass to a murderer to a sociopathic manipulator, and in the end it's all come down to "ART MADE A PERSON MAD."
Now, the stalking is intensely creepy, but eventually it tends to fizzle out because I always find out about it at some point, regardless of which crazy person is trying to do it. The maniac du jeur is always out to "ruin you for the unforgivable sin of hurting my feelings," but the lovely part about it is they either have to keep it entirely to themselves (which means they failed just because an unspread rumor isn't particularly effective) or somewhere down the line, they end up talking to someone with an ounce of sense. It's like a fucking cartoon. Someone either realizes how absurd this is, or that the loonball's overreacting, or that there's no substantial evidence that proves I'm pure evil. Then the dissenter comes to me to get some, you know, facts, and I find out everything. In the comments for the multiples episode, I said that a phony's power diminishes as more people find out about their lies, and I know this because I've seen it firsthand. As soon as a stalker finds out I know everything and can prove them dead wrong, they whimper and slink off to lick their wounds while their echo chamber assures them that acting like an utter fucking mesmerizingly, fantastically, horrifically broken psychopath over goddamned internet art was totally the right move all along.
My point in all this isn't that these things will definitely happen to you. I'm sure a lot of people have only had nice experiences in posting artwork. Rather, these are the kinds of incidents you need to at least be mentally prepared for, because it can happen. The internet gives everyone a voice, and unfortunately for you, that means imbecilic shut-ins with no real human interaction and all the time in the world (in between frequent Tumblr breaks of course) have the power to worm their way into your life. You don't have to hide in a bomb shelter, but by god, be motherfucking ready.
