Where is the line drawn on this issue?

[rarrawer]

There's nothing morally wrong with drawing a picture.
There's nothing morally wrong with looking at a picture.
It doesn't matter what that picture's of.
Draw whatever you like, we need more art.

[Aickavon12]

Your argument seems to be faulty. When an actor or actress plays a character, yes that character looks like them and vice versa, but it simply put, isn't them. There is a direct disconnect with that and it would be faulty to say no fanart (or in that case, fetish art) should be done of characters simply because they were in a live action movie. For example, Captain America has had plenty of design interpretations, but the recent movies have made his outfit quite modern and appealing to look at and potentially draw, why should people only have to refer to older captain america styles (that were only featured in comics and not in movies) just because an actor wore the costume?

However, this is where a personal question comes in. Are you trying to draw a character that was portrayed by an actor? Or are you trying to draw the actor and attempting to bypass the unspoken fetish rules? If you're just drawing a character portrayed by an actor, than you are as well, sharing that same disconnect with the actor. You know that the actor and character are separate. This is fine. IF you are drawing the actor and using the character as an excuse to draw the actor, then you're still drawing the actor and it's still a bit uncouth and frowned upon. Of course, this question can only be done by the artist, and only they can be self aware to know if they're doing right or wrong. Unless they're so blatantly obvious.

[Doku]

Well. I strongly disagree with everything you said. The idea that harming, or enjoying harming, fictional characters in a fictional context, can be unethical, is an anathema to my worldview.

Fictional people have no rights. They have no feelings. They should have have no protections under any just or logical system of law or ethics.

That's just my take on it. The moment you say "thinking about X is unethical" or "writing about X is unethical" when X is not real... I find that I cannot agree with your position.

That's nice. I don't expect most on this site to agree with me on many things. I've over a decade of experience being the odd man out. That does not change the fact that I still hold the view that I do.

However, to clarify so there's no confusion: It is not about whether X is real or not. Writing fetish material such as Vore, bondage porn or simple old fashioned missionary position sex is always going to be ethically objectionable to me. Pornographic (and I view material designed for fetish/paraphilia purposes to be such, even when the participants are fully clothed and the material is not expressly sexual) My choice to participate in it goes against my own ethical beliefs, but that is my choice and I make little pretense about being a morally 'good' person. I don't consider myself to be an especially good person by the ethical standards that I follow, but I also do not and have never changed my ethical stances to feel better about myself.

That said, again, I don't especially expect people to agree with me at Eka's. I'm very accustomed to that fact.

[EnderDracolich]

That does not change the fact that I still hold the view that I do.

My intent was not to change your view, but merely to express my own. I am sorry if I seemed like I was trying to force you to recant your position.

You have every right to think that pornography is unethical. I simply happen to disagree, quite strongly.

[Doku]

That does not change the fact that I still hold the view that I do.

My intent was not to change your view, but merely to express my own. I am sorry if I seemed like I was trying to force you to recant your position.

You have every right to think that pornography is unethical. I simply happen to disagree, quite strongly.

Got it. We good. Agree to disagree and all that jazz.

[RhinoSalt]

I believe wanking to captions/morphs is as bad as wanking to the unedited image, so not that much.

[sweetladyamy]

There's nothing morally wrong with drawing a picture.
There's nothing morally wrong with looking at a picture.
It doesn't matter what that picture/story is of.
Draw/write whatever you like; we need more art.

Fully, unarguably agreed.

[Speedyblupi]

I think that it could be morally wrong to draw a picture - if, for example, that picture was propaganda that promoted violence against a particular group of people.

These sort of pictures are rare though, and I agree that when it comes to the sort of pictures we see on sites like Eka's portal there is no moral issue in the overwhelming majority of cases, as the overwhelming majority of pictures don't cause or encourage harm to anyone in the real world.

[soline]

(Prefaced with Site rules are site rules. My opinion doesn't argue they should be changed.)

Personally there's nothing wrong with this in concept. The problem is that 'the line' is drawn incredibly close to said concept and it's far too easy and common for people to charge straight over it.
have sexual thoughts, it's natural and it's natural to think sexy things about other humans you've encountered in some way or another and it's equally natural for many people to express their sexy thoughts in artistic outlets. Finding it unethical to draw porn of an actual person feels like a mishmash of modern societal sexual oppression and 'offense-culture' to me. Either it's finding the act of creating said drawing unethical (hence the connotations with 'expressing sexual desire is bad') or it's finding the creation of content a person might be uncomfortable with unethical (which comes back to 'you have the right to be offended, and I have the right to offend' problem.).

I think the line is drawn at actively or negligently 'forcing' that content upon the person. It's okay to fantasize about your best friend (within reason.) but wholly inappropriate to tell him in front of his fiance you've written erotica smut featuring you and him and a triffid.
It's okay for you to draw Scarlett Johansson as a reptilian snakewoman called Kaa. It is not okay for you to post/email/tweet it to her and show off that you're fantasizing about her.
It's also not okay to put it on twitter but with a bunch of tags very likely to attract her attention, or on your instagram if you're an extremely popular gram'er whose porn pic is likely to get across to her rapidly.
That doesn't mean you have to carefully hide in a black hole. It means you need to be reasonable about protecting other people's sense of comfort. If she does discover the picture and is offended, that's okay. She's not obligated to like everything on earth and you're not obligated to only create things every single person is comfortable with. The point is that you haven't attempted to force your imagination on her.
Similarly if a third party finds your picture, they shouldn't tweet it out to her because that's just as bad a step 1, being the content creator or not is irrelevant. Just because I didn't make it doesn't make it okay for me to make them aware they exist.

Of course there are exceptions to all the rules because life is subjective. If you're actually Scarlett's friend, find this snake-lady picture and know her well enough to know she'd find it funny, there's no reason to 'hide' it. Some people genuinely enjoy getting fanart and don't mind the fetish stuff because they appreciate it's normal. I remember a pornstar (Belladonna) having an art gallery on her website showing off the fanart people sent her, it was almost entirely lewd, many were joking, and at least a few were basically comedic anal vore. Ikumi Nakamura publicly tweets her 'treasures' of (often edging towards explicit) fanart people drew of her in the wake of E3.

It's all relative, the problem is that because it's relative, it's super easy to confuse your own fantasy with reality. ScarJo seems like a really nice person, maybe she'd find this picture amusing, or maybe she'd like that I was enough of a fan...etc etc. And then that tips immediately into "Well now you're just forcing her to acknowledge the fact you're thinking about her in a specifically sexual manner."


At least that's my early morning waffle on the subject.

[Scrumptious]

There is one point of contention that I wanted to address and that is the idea of drawing fictional characters who are portrayed by real people... One person brought up a good point having to do with the character of Hermione from the Harry Potter series played by actress Emma Watson. As far as I can tell this character and the actress playing her look exactly the same, at least in superhero movies the actresses/actors normally wear over the top costumes or makeup which helps to alter their image a little bit, but Hermione is literally just Emma Watson wearing street clothes (at least in later movies). This means (from my point of view) if an artist was to draw a vore picture of the character Hermione and label it “Emma Watson vore” it would be considered bad, but if they labeled it “Hermione vore” then it would be okay? Since the character and the actress look exactly the same, the ONLY thing that is separating the two is what the artist decides to call the drawing, so is just a few letters all it takes to turn something taboo into something permissible?

In that case you have the added complication that Emma Watson and Hermione were both underage at the time of their peak popularity.

I'm also curious about the idea that there's a difference if the projected person in question is in the pred or prey role. While, in the fetish context, both roles sexually objectify the person depicted - which is not good - it seems to me that being depicted as a pred doesn't depict the person in question as a powerless victim.

[Ixtili]

Depends if you have the persons permission to use their likeness, and I personally think it's preferable to have their explicit permission, rather than just a creative commons license. Also you tell them what your actually going to do with the image.

Also I'd say pictures of real kids are off limits 100%, because of about a dozen, social, moral, ethical, polite and law related reasons. Imagine explaining to your cousin Susie that you are the reason why she's a pornstar before she even hits the age of reason.

Just don't do it guys, please, I'm begging, these are manners and everything.

Celebrities at least adult ones, I don't think is so bad, but it's still gotta be a little demoralizing to find an image of you and a college doing something gorey or weird. So I'd say be careful with that too but at this point it's like...meh, you are probably just adding to a pile that already exists so it's not quite as bad.

With porn stars you should probably ask just because their body is literally how they make money and so it's kinda impolite or presumptious to just use their image without letting them get a word in edgewise.

For models in art classes, you should probably at least ask first just cause they might peek over your shoulder and then you have to explain why they look pregnant. Awkward.

Overall I'd say if you just want to take the basic anatomy of something and not literally copy someones likeness then it should mostly be free game, unless A. they are underage or B. Doing so without permission will lead to awkward social interactions down the line. C. They make money from their likeness and it's how they feed their cats/children/fish/selves.

Taking creative commons images of pregnant ladies and barely editing them with some photoshop stretchmarks and text, also seems kind of socially inept, since I doubt they actually thought someone was going to use their pregnancy photo for porn when they made it CC. Plus it's pretty lazy.

Oh! And if you come across any of those videos of animal snuff for voreophiles or crush fetishists. You are basically creating a market for that kind of cruelty by watching the video. So please don't use that reprehensible shit as a reference for macro/micro or anything like that. Oh and if your copying from a vore artist who uses their actual body or pays models to do it, maybe don't just wholesale steal that either since that's someone elses work either modeling or photography wise or both.

Finally...maybe don't use pictures of real world dead people for gore, that's effed up. Like it's not snuff or anything so you aren't encouraging a market...but it's still morbid, disrespectful and it's probably not good for you to train your brain to associate real world death with your libido.

[jpl0pv]

I personally don't think it's too weird, especially in the case where as you say it's a person depicted as in a role (idk like Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow or Chris Hemsworth as Thor). I think that appears to be an unpopular opinion though.

[MidnightRose]

I personally try to keep real people out of my fantasies. However, if there's a character who bears a resemblance to their actor, I don't mind nearly as much because it's still fiction. The fact remains that the character is NOT the actor. They aren't real. I understand why some think it's creepy and/or awkward, but as long as the actor themselves is not the focus, I don't see the harm.

Everyone is going to have different views on this, and that's perfectly fine.

[SamWamm]

people have drawn so much art of my ocs against my will I don't even care to argue anymore.

some of them are based on real and resemble them including depictions of myself.

meh, each to their own I guess.