~LittleRover

MYSELF

I don’t really talk about myself much but I’ll open with it. It’s no secret I’ve not been posting much, in honesty I’ve had a lot going on IRL which has impacted my mental health pretty badly. Reaching breaking point with stress twice this year forced me to actually address the issues behind it and get some help. I’m in a kind of recovery period but I’m starting to get things together again. I have ideas and goals of my own to reach but will be doing a lot of learning as I go, so I’ll be trying to upload but the stuff may be quite different. Vore remains my love and focus though! =D

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FURAFFINITY

I’ve been watching this in the background and thought I’d give an update on it too. Here’s the TL;DR version:

FA changed their rule but say they didn’t and now everyone is (still) scrambling to make sure they’re compliant with the rule that didn’t change. Without guidance nobody can be sure they won’t be hit for being non-compliant. To be compliant (at least mostly), Rover will just delete anything in his gallery that is not part of an on-going sequence (Cumpocalypse will live, Random Encounters before the most recent sequence will go). BUT NOT UNTIL LATE NEXT MONTH. Just in case the rules change again.

For those that want more detail I broke down my thoughts on it, you don’t have to agree with them, it’s more of a summary than an opinion and a hope there will be some solution that works out for at least most people.

Firstly, we should be clear the rule is being changed on the 1st July 2023. An unwritten rule is still a rule, the leadership at FA are clearly at fault for permitting art of pokemon that violated the rules from 2015 to present day. It is not the fault of artists and users that this has been allowed to go on without any kind of warning or clarity around it.

But we are where we are.

Motivation hasn’t been clearly addressed either. It is clear there is a historical wrong that needs fixing and it is being framed as a technical change rather than a large one. The effort made to provide a review service suggests it is known this change is actually very significant. The motivation for this change has been stated as trouble tickets - there has been no consultation, no attempt to get views from the community, the only forewarning being that a decision has been made and it is coming into effect 1st July. There has been no suggestion so far that this is being pushed by server or legal issues. If it were, there would be more understanding.

Since it is the fault of FA that we are in this situation, there needs to be a better method of dealing with historical cases that fall afoul of the rule. If after the 90-day grace someone finds an offending image in the depths of a gallery, it should not trigger any action. It was valid then and it is not reasonable to have people re-evaluate their entire galleries without resorting to mass deletion. Especially where there is uncertainty in the rules. It keeps an avenue for abuse of the ticket system to harass artists open that must not be allowed to exist.

Guidelines for the rules still don’t exist. We have had conflicting information about whether species would be allowed (we now have been told some have to be aged up). But in what little guidance that has been provided there are huge questions. Canon is to be considered (first stage evolutions and rookie pokemon appear to be unacceptable), except where it isn’t (mental maturity is not a factor apparently). If canon isn’t being considered, then we are left with problems on knowing what body shapes are okay.

We need a visual reference to show what is acceptable and what isn’t. What makes the two balls that make up most of a pichu’s body like a human child? What about Cubone’s dumpy shape? How does that differ from Pikachu? If Impmon is child-like in this definition, do sonic-style characters also fit this definition? I think we can agree that having a human child with a layer of fur and the face of a Litten should be disallowed here. But there is a world of difference between that and some of the examples given. Clarity is required otherwise it is simply a lottery to deviate from the 6 foot tall 7-heads humanoid. Anything else risks being seen as a minor.

The leadership and moderation teams really need to take a good hard look at themselves and consider how they have responded to this too. Considering how integral the furry identity is to so many people who use FA, it is not acceptable to be making sweeping statements without careful consideration for their impact. I understand it probably was poor judgement and stuff taken out of context but this has been a PR disaster.

As for my stuff, I can see a lot of my earlier stuff when I was a much more rookie artist being flagged. I won’t be making a judgement call on everything so I will be removing stuff not part of an ongoing project from this gallery. It will still exist on my other galleries. Eka’s Portal being the one I know is definitely complete. I am on others too, Inkbunny, Weasyl and Furry Network should be complete other than the human ban on Inkbunny.

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For the rest of you out there I hope you’re doing okay. This has hit some people really hard and discourages people learning to draw and share for what is innocent content. In the coming month I will be looking at shoring up my online presence and getting back to enjoying being part of the community again. FA won’t be neglected but it may not receive all the content anymore.