Rant Thread

[shortprey20]

Hello All,

So first, let me be clear on this: This is a rant thread meant to be a cathartic release of something you find annoying/frustrating either on Ekas or the vore community in general. Got something that's been bugging you a while? Scream it out here!

This thread is meant to be a release, not a rag on thread, so please do not mention specific users/people. Likewise please keep this thread to a "pet peeve" level of annoyance. I won't say the vore community/Ekas is perfect (I have some major issues with this site) but these have been discussed elsewhere and its all issues that do not seem to have a resolution.

So for instance, here is my gripe to start with.

Story dumping. I check Eka's maaaybe once or twice a day depending on things and while I have a core group of authors i follow and read, I like finding new authors with the story tab on the home page and see what's been posted semi recently. I also used to upload stories on here as a means of creative expression. So when I look at the story tab I hope to see a wide variety of authors and stories. BUT DEAR FUCKING GOD do I hate seeing anywhere from 5-9 stories all made from the same author just dumped onto Eka's at the same time. Doesn't matter the quality of the work or if it contains stuff I'm into, its just frustrating to see work the work of others get buried under 8 stories from the same author!

When I was writing stories on here, hoping folks might like my work and maybe get some feedback, I would spend weeks going back and forth on writing the story, making sure not only the grammar was good but also that the story itself was good and hit the right notes for what I wanted (yes its smut but I want good smut damn it!). So then I'd upload it and hope it might reach a wide audience from folks seeing it on the story tab, only to check the story tab and to see my story not even listed down as some author (who apparently have only free time in their lives) uploads 7 stories that sometimes have nothing more than a page of text or look like they were written in 30 minutes. It killed my motivation to write stories and when I think to myself I should go back and publish some old drafts I have I am reminded of this annoyance the next time I visit Eka.

Now its one thing if an author goes a while without posting and maybe they had some insane inspiration and cranked out a lot of stories in a short time. Then by all means go ahead and upload! My problem are the authors that do this CONSISTENLY. It's anytime they upload a story its always in batches that range from 3-9. If an author is usually uploading like one or two at a time between every so often thats fine, but uploading every day/every other day 5 stories is not ok. It buries other authors who put work into their tales, and if the author is writing niche things ( I know, the irony of that statement on a vore site) that maybe appeals to a few people, that means work that might appeal to a larger audience will never get time in the spotlight to build an audience.

Anyway, that feels better! Feel free to tell me I'm wrong or give your own gripes in the thread!

[Eka]

Uploading a singular story in small chapters is generally discouraged; intentionally populating the front page unnecessarily is outright not allowed in our rule (you are only supposed to show up once a day per artist), but understandably, it is not something easy to enforce. Nobody reported those offenses, and most uploaders ain't frequent. They only do it once a month, and it is hard to see a repeated pattern.
Regardless, it is something we can improve on and, coincidentally, something I have been thinking about. We will be adding pages to help people explore recent submissions beyond just the latest and front pages. Stay tuned.

[JDandAliProductions]

Certain content does not belong outside of it's designated section that can only be seen by people who have selected to see it, even if it is roleplay requests for that type of content, the majority of people do not want to see it or be associated with it, it even appears right on the front page sometimes despite the fact that it's illegal pretty much everywhere in the civilised world.

[IddlerItaler]

Okay, I know what incident OP is talking about. While I don't expect to have the popularity of Ryanshow or Dreameater, I was getting pretty hesitant to post my story's next chapter knowing casual gallery browsers would miss it due to it getting buried immediately. I was unsure if there was anything I could report on (after all, when an artist batch-posts a comic it's perfectly fine), but I'm glad to know a solution is underway.

Anyways, my pet peeve I want to rant on...

The usage of "non-fatal" to mean "prey dies but is resurrected". Fatal is a synonym for lethal/deadly, and non- implies the exclusion of something, rather than the reversal of it. If a predator is shown using the toilet, whether they flush or leave the evidence that's still gonna be disposal. If a prey gets eaten and regurgitated, that doesn't make it non-vore. If two characters have sex... you get the point. On the matter of tags, a much smaller pet-peeve of mine is when I see a shot of a prey inside a stomach and it's tagged "post-vore". I guess it's etymologically correct, but a character being in a stomach is also vore. To me post-vore is when the prey has either been released (non-fatal) or lost shape (fatal).

[Gymmerical]

Crap.

I have a feeling I fall under this on accident. I post like once a day, sometimes once every other day. (Roughly 3-4 scenarios a week and not actual full fledged stories—1500 to 2500 words— onto the site)

I just get a weird scenario in my head and just start writing random shit. I usually thought people found stories through the tag search engine, like how I do it, rather than the recent written work section.

[IddlerItaler]

Crap.

I have a feeling I fall under this on accident. I post like once a day, sometimes once every other day. (Roughly 3-4 scenarios a week and not actual full fledged stories—1500 to 2500 words— onto the site)

I just get a weird scenario in my head and just start writing random shit. I usually thought people found stories through the tag search engine, like how I do it, rather than the recent written work section.

Don't worry, OP is talking about posting several times a day. Not even twice or thrice. I saw someone post something like twenty the other day. Which is only really possible if you have a ton of stories you've written long ago and choose to upload them all at once.

If you have, say, 100 old vore stories from your DeviantArt days and want to share them on Eka's, the optimal approach would be to post them gradually, for example at the rate of one a day. Not just for others' sake, but also to maximize your own exposure by always having a story on the frontpage for a few months rather than 20 stories on the frontpage for a few days. This delayed approach is called staggering.

[Rat_Guy]

My biggest pet peeve is when an artist flips the orientation of prey as they're being eaten. Such as a prey being swallowed feet first, with their face facing the pred's face, but in the next panel they've flipped 180 degrees and now they're facing away from the pred. Same thing with internals, whether you're swallowed head first or feet first the orientation you entered should inform the orientation you end up in once you've been fully swallowed, but so many artist just have the prey in whatever orientation they want. It makes it really difficult to imagine the action in-between panels for me.

[ConceptCorner01]

Sorry, I just post when I'm in the mood and have the time.

[shortprey20]

Uploading a singular story in small chapters is generally discouraged; intentionally populating the front page unnecessarily is outright not allowed in our rule (you are only supposed to show up once a day per artist), but understandably, it is not something easy to enforce. Nobody reported those offenses, and most uploaders ain't frequent. They only do it once a month, and it is hard to see a repeated pattern.
Regardless, it is something we can improve on and, coincidentally, something I have been thinking about. We will be adding pages to help people explore recent submissions beyond just the latest and front pages. Stay tuned.

Oh cool! Not going to lie I didn't realize this was something you could report on! Good to know though! I know that is something hard to moderate and implement so I do appreciate the attention to the issue!

[shortprey20]

Okay, I know what incident OP is talking about. While I don't expect to have the popularity of Ryanshow or Dreameater, I was getting pretty hesitant to post my story's next chapter knowing casual gallery browsers would miss it due to it getting buried immediately. I was unsure if there was anything I could report on (after all, when an artist batch-posts a comic it's perfectly fine), but I'm glad to know a solution is underway.

Anyways, my pet peeve I want to rant on...

The usage of "non-fatal" to mean "prey dies but is resurrected". Fatal is a synonym for lethal/deadly, and non- implies the exclusion of something, rather than the reversal of it. If a predator is shown using the toilet, whether they flush or leave the evidence that's still gonna be disposal. If a prey gets eaten and regurgitated, that doesn't make it non-vore. If two characters have sex... you get the point. On the matter of tags, a much smaller pet-peeve of mine is when I see a shot of a prey inside a stomach and it's tagged "post-vore". I guess it's etymologically correct, but a character being in a stomach is also vore. To me post-vore is when the prey has either been released (non-fatal) or lost shape (fatal).

I was thinking about that when I was writing the thread myself as well! I follow several artists on here that go months and then they upload multiple drawings at once but that doesn't bother me. I love their work, but it's the same problem and I think it comes down to a bias where I'm not an artist, I write and author stories so the stories affect me more than batch artwork does.
It's definitely a double standard to be sure!

Lol tags always get me too. I think the problem lies in that the author/anyone can update the tags and we don't really have a file that gives the definition on a tag and where it should apply right. But frankly speaking that would be alot of work and no one likes to fill out paperwork in their spare time :p I'm right with tou though, like sometimes I'm feeling a specific niche for content and there might be 4 or 5 different yet similar tags that aren't always applied properly so you have to sift through the results for what you'd like.

[shortprey20]

Also to everyone who is on here so far thinking "crap this is about me/ I've done this before" don't sweat it alright :p

No one is incredibly upset with multiple postings and no one will (or should) drive you away if you've done it in the past/ have done it. Just try to space out tour uploads and it's all good! No need to worry or get upset.

This is just a personal complaint I have that is a pet peeve and drives me batty, but if you get the spark of motivation and can make multiple works then awesome! I'm sure someone has been on here and loved your work! So keep posting and do your thing!

[shortprey20]

My biggest pet peeve is when an artist flips the orientation of prey as they're being eaten. Such as a prey being swallowed feet first, with their face facing the pred's face, but in the next panel they've flipped 180 degrees and now they're facing away from the pred. Same thing with internals, whether you're swallowed head first or feet first the orientation you entered should inform the orientation you end up in once you've been fully swallowed, but so many artist just have the prey in whatever orientation they want. It makes it really difficult to imagine the action in-between panels for me.

Huh.... ya know now that you mention it I haven't noticed this before but it's pretty common! I'm going to assume it's for easy of the artist/looks more pleasing for what they envision in their head but I get what you mean!

[Abyssal]

My pet peeve is when people insist that their own special take on a term or concept is the correct one, even though there's been an established term/tag/etc. for it for years or even decades. Every so often someone comes in with a ranty thread about how people are using 'soft vore' wrong (an example since it seems to be the most common), when what they actually mean is Endo. And then you look at their account and they made it five minutes ago. Even though this isn't my site and the fandom belongs to everyone, it gives me some very strong "You come into MY house and you tell me how to arrange my furniture!?" energy.

Which... I guess really what that means is that I hate selfish people who think everyone else should change the established way they collectively do things because this one person decided they are correct and that "No, It is the Children who are wrong"

[IddlerItaler]

My pet peeve is when people insist that their own special take on a term or concept is the correct one, even though there's been an established term/tag/etc. for it for years or even decades. Every so often someone comes in with a ranty thread about how people are using 'soft vore' wrong (an example since it seems to be the most common), when what they actually mean is Endo. And then you look at their account and they made it five minutes ago. Even though this isn't my site and the fandom belongs to everyone, it gives me some very strong "You come into MY house and you tell me how to arrange my furniture!?" energy.

Which... I guess really what that means is that I hate selfish people who think everyone else should change the established way they collectively do things because this one person decided they are correct and that "No, It is the Children who are wrong"

I feel like 99% of people on Eka's agree that soft vore means no chewing / no dismemberment, whereas the other usage is more common on Reddit and other sites. For all I know though, I might've passed dozens of people who tag "soft vore" to mean "non-fatal" and never realized it because the vast majority of endo/non-fatal pieces are also soft vore anyway.

I've seen people talk about how disappointed they were that a piece was tagged fatal when the prey was later resurrected, or kept existing through sentient fat or soul vore, and I feel like they've been trying to inflate the meaning of fatal from "causing death" to "causing permanent 100% lights out forever death". I've seen with my eyes how a reformation story with pretty explicit deaths had the "fatal" tag voted out, but telling people not to tag death unless it's "certified" misses the point that even "soft" death is tag-worthy, gets enjoyed by people who are here for that kinda thing, and not everybody will always be in the mood to watch a character die.

I know the term "safe vore" is supposed to mean "safe for the prey AND safe for work" but a good number of people assume it means just the former. I was almost about to make that mistake before checking the safe vore subforum. No idea how this could be solved besides putting up tag definitions.

[lemonayed]

Story dumping. I check Eka's maaaybe once or twice a day depending on things and while I have a core group of authors i follow and read, I like finding new authors with the story tab on the home page and see what's been posted semi recently. I also used to upload stories on here as a means of creative expression. So when I look at the story tab I hope to see a wide variety of authors and stories. BUT DEAR FUCKING GOD do I hate seeing anywhere from 5-9 stories all made from the same author just dumped onto Eka's at the same time. Doesn't matter the quality of the work or if it contains stuff I'm into, its just frustrating to see work the work of others get buried under 8 stories from the same author!

When I was writing stories on here, hoping folks might like my work and maybe get some feedback, I would spend weeks going back and forth on writing the story, making sure not only the grammar was good but also that the story itself was good and hit the right notes for what I wanted (yes its smut but I want good smut damn it!). So then I'd upload it and hope it might reach a wide audience from folks seeing it on the story tab, only to check the story tab and to see my story not even listed down as some author (who apparently have only free time in their lives) uploads 7 stories that sometimes have nothing more than a page of text or look like they were written in 30 minutes. It killed my motivation to write stories and when I think to myself I should go back and publish some old drafts I have I am reminded of this annoyance the next time I visit Eka.

Now its one thing if an author goes a while without posting and maybe they had some insane inspiration and cranked out a lot of stories in a short time. Then by all means go ahead and upload! My problem are the authors that do this CONSISTENLY. It's anytime they upload a story its always in batches that range from 3-9. If an author is usually uploading like one or two at a time between every so often thats fine, but uploading every day/every other day 5 stories is not ok. It buries other authors who put work into their tales, and if the author is writing niche things ( I know, the irony of that statement on a vore site) that maybe appeals to a few people, that means work that might appeal to a larger audience will never get time in the spotlight to build an audience.

I wholeheartedly understand. Same goes for art. I don't mean to sound pretentious, but low-quality cookie-cutter vore art doesn't really do it for me. I'm not talking about beginner artists or those who use free software like MS Paint, I mean artists who use the same art over and over with slightly different skin and churn those out like content farm channels on Youtube. Seen it a lot on DeviantArt, too. Good things take time, and I don't really know what a spammer's goal is with something like this.

[shortprey20]

My pet peeve is when people insist that their own special take on a term or concept is the correct one, even though there's been an established term/tag/etc. for it for years or even decades. Every so often someone comes in with a ranty thread about how people are using 'soft vore' wrong (an example since it seems to be the most common), when what they actually mean is Endo. And then you look at their account and they made it five minutes ago. Even though this isn't my site and the fandom belongs to everyone, it gives me some very strong "You come into MY house and you tell me how to arrange my furniture!?" energy.

Which... I guess really what that means is that I hate selfish people who think everyone else should change the established way they collectively do things because this one person decided they are correct and that "No, It is the Children who are wrong"

I feel like 99% of people on Eka's agree that soft vore means no chewing / no dismemberment, whereas the other usage is more common on Reddit and other sites. For all I know though, I might've passed dozens of people who tag "soft vore" to mean "non-fatal" and never realized it because the vast majority of endo/non-fatal pieces are also soft vore anyway.

I've seen people talk about how disappointed they were that a piece was tagged fatal when the prey was later resurrected, or kept existing through sentient fat or soul vore, and I feel like they've been trying to inflate the meaning of fatal from "causing death" to "causing permanent 100% lights out forever death". I've seen with my eyes how a reformation story with pretty explicit deaths had the "fatal" tag voted out, but telling people not to tag death unless it's "certified" misses the point that even "soft" death is tag-worthy, gets enjoyed by people who are here for that kinda thing, and not everybody will always be in the mood to watch a character die.

I know the term "safe vore" is supposed to mean "safe for the prey AND safe for work" but a good number of people assume it means just the former. I was almost about to make that mistake before checking the safe vore subforum. No idea how this could be solved besides putting up tag definitions.

Fully understand what you mean here. The tag system is amazing for when you're specifically looking for something but man it's a little wild west sometimes with what is/isn't tagged or if its tagged correctly.

I also always took fatal to mean death, even if reformation is involved. Personally I enjoy a good reformation story as sometimes I don't want to be treated to gloom and doom with character deaths. I think the solution of having a tag list with a set definition of what each tag means is a good idea. I think it would simplify things and also set a standard. Though I am hesitant as to how effective it will be, after all this is the internet and trying to get folks to follow a specific standard or set etiquette is dicey at best! The hope is you always have folks finding and growing the site but that runs the risks of folks getting all huffy about imposed conformity.

I think the current system of tagging and community review is an imperfect solution but at the same time the best one available given how I doubt we could retain folks that would be interested in going through a review process of every bit of content that gets uploaded here daily (not even counting the content already on here!) every day. Personally speaking I have found myself often wishing for this list of definitions with tags myself as I might be feeling in the mood for a particular scenario and trying to find a tag that matches it can be hard sometimes, not to mention the content that does have this scenario but doesn't have the tag! On the flip side there is content I do NOT want to view, and the worst feeling for me is when I start a story, I'm interested in how its going and then all of a sudden something pops up with that I do not want to read about and there's no tag for it in the story. I lose interest immediately.

All this to say I'm right with you there buddy!

[shortprey20]

Story dumping. I check Eka's maaaybe once or twice a day depending on things and while I have a core group of authors i follow and read, I like finding new authors with the story tab on the home page and see what's been posted semi recently. I also used to upload stories on here as a means of creative expression. So when I look at the story tab I hope to see a wide variety of authors and stories. BUT DEAR FUCKING GOD do I hate seeing anywhere from 5-9 stories all made from the same author just dumped onto Eka's at the same time. Doesn't matter the quality of the work or if it contains stuff I'm into, its just frustrating to see work the work of others get buried under 8 stories from the same author!

When I was writing stories on here, hoping folks might like my work and maybe get some feedback, I would spend weeks going back and forth on writing the story, making sure not only the grammar was good but also that the story itself was good and hit the right notes for what I wanted (yes its smut but I want good smut damn it!). So then I'd upload it and hope it might reach a wide audience from folks seeing it on the story tab, only to check the story tab and to see my story not even listed down as some author (who apparently have only free time in their lives) uploads 7 stories that sometimes have nothing more than a page of text or look like they were written in 30 minutes. It killed my motivation to write stories and when I think to myself I should go back and publish some old drafts I have I am reminded of this annoyance the next time I visit Eka.

Now its one thing if an author goes a while without posting and maybe they had some insane inspiration and cranked out a lot of stories in a short time. Then by all means go ahead and upload! My problem are the authors that do this CONSISTENLY. It's anytime they upload a story its always in batches that range from 3-9. If an author is usually uploading like one or two at a time between every so often thats fine, but uploading every day/every other day 5 stories is not ok. It buries other authors who put work into their tales, and if the author is writing niche things ( I know, the irony of that statement on a vore site) that maybe appeals to a few people, that means work that might appeal to a larger audience will never get time in the spotlight to build an audience.

I wholeheartedly understand. Same goes for art. I don't mean to sound pretentious, but low-quality cookie-cutter vore art doesn't really do it for me. I'm not talking about beginner artists or those who use free software like MS Paint, I mean artists who use the same art over and over with slightly different skin and churn those out like content farm channels on Youtube. Seen it a lot on DeviantArt, too. Good things take time, and I don't really know what a spammer's goal is with something like this.

Yeah I'm not sure either. Don't get me wrong I have no artistic talent myself, and even my writing is pedantic at best so I don't claim to be a good author either so I tend not to judge too harshly anyone's content they choose to share here. Expressing yourself is great and I wholeheartedly support someone wanting to share their work with the internet. With that said, spamming content like this doesn't make you any fans so I am not sure why people do it. Variety is the spice of life!

[IddlerItaler]

I also always took fatal to mean death, even if reformation is involved. Personally I enjoy a good reformation story as sometimes I don't want to be treated to gloom and doom with character deaths. I think the solution of having a tag list with a set definition of what each tag means is a good idea. I think it would simplify things and also set a standard. Though I am hesitant as to how effective it will be, after all this is the internet and trying to get folks to follow a specific standard or set etiquette is dicey at best! The hope is you always have folks finding and growing the site but that runs the risks of folks getting all huffy about imposed conformity.

I think site culture succeeded at this with some tags. It's pretty common to see warnings like "disposal ahead" while you're reading a story and even a caps-lock warning in the title. Honestly I don't think fatal warrants going that far considering how ubiquitous death in media is but I guess it'd be nice if non-fatal alts were more common the same way non-disposal alts and non-futa alts are.

On the flip side there is content I do NOT want to view, and the worst feeling for me is when I start a story, I'm interested in how its going and then all of a sudden something pops up with that I do not want to read about and there's no tag for it in the story. I lose interest immediately.

I get that feel. And sometimes people are craving a certain scenario but there's no easy way to look for it. A few tropes I've noticed that are almost never tagged: species/gender dynamics ("humans are prey for anthros who lord over them", "males are prey for female", etc.), obligate/innate preds (as opposed to preds who could live without predding but choose to do it anyway - I'll be frank, if there's one trope that the vore community takes for granted even more than fatal, that's willing pred), subverted reformation / safety (the prey thinks they'll be reformed or spared but the pred says "fooled ya" or an accident happens). One could also propose multiple tags for the different types of reformation (non-fatal reformation where the prey unambiguously stays alive for the entire process before regenerating like a slime or shapeshifter, fatal reformation for when the prey returns from death, and replacement reformation for when the prey stays dead but a clone is brought back in their stead), though those could also be extrapolated easily enough by looking at the rest of the tags.

It's a trickier question because you don't wanna rag on authors for failing to tag every single thing (and even a thorough tagging that's longer than the description won't likely cover everything), but at the same time you might try to raise awareness of a trope so that people pay attention to it enough to consider it worthy of a tag.

[darknight555]

Uploading a singular story in small chapters is generally discouraged; intentionally populating the front page unnecessarily is outright not allowed in our rule (you are only supposed to show up once a day per artist), but understandably, it is not something easy to enforce. Nobody reported those offenses, and most uploaders ain't frequent. They only do it once a month, and it is hard to see a repeated pattern.
Regardless, it is something we can improve on and, coincidentally, something I have been thinking about. We will be adding pages to help people explore recent submissions beyond just the latest and front pages. Stay tuned.

Good to hear that something is in the works! I've been a bit worried that I over-spam the front page a bit since I like to do long-ish comics and upload them all at once when they're done. I always imagine people frustratingly trying to click past pages of my stuff >_<. If I were making a site wishlist, #1 for me would be some kind of bulk uploader page so you could upload a comic/sequence all at once, apply a set of tags to all of them, and then maybe click a box to have the whole comic or chapter thing show up as a single work under "latest."

My biggest pet peeve is when an artist flips the orientation of prey as they're being eaten. Such as a prey being swallowed feet first, with their face facing the pred's face, but in the next panel they've flipped 180 degrees and now they're facing away from the pred. Same thing with internals, whether you're swallowed head first or feet first the orientation you entered should inform the orientation you end up in once you've been fully swallowed, but so many artist just have the prey in whatever orientation they want. It makes it really difficult to imagine the action in-between panels for me.

Totally agree with this one, even though I'm sure I'm guilty of it as well (I try to pay close attention to this, but I know I've slipped up once or twice). Seems to happen a lot with artists who like to draw prey with just their feet sticking out (like me).

[truth]

A personal frustration is that, as someone who's into vore but not in furries, it can get very annoying trying to filter vore results on certain sites. On a place like Eka's its fine, because this is a site with its own dedicated gallery, and dedicated art sites tend to have people who will tag their posts comprehensively.

But on other more general social media sites, I find a lot of furry artists just...will not use any furry related keywords or tags in their posts. At all. So, obviously you can't just mute some keywords and be done with it. But that's fine, at first you might think to yourself "that's fine, this is my own personal issue, as a strong believer that everyone is responsible for what they see online I can handle muting a few people individually". So you start doing that. And then several weeks pass, and suddenly you've found that you've muted literal hundreds of non-tagging furries. And somehow its still not enough. The next day you go searching on the site, somehow they're the majority of the vore results all over again. Just a never ending flood of furries.

And the strangest part is, every now and then you'll stumble on someone who's self-aware about this. Someone who actively...I dunno, "brags" about not tagging their posts? Its a very weird and strange attitude to have, to where I'm surprised to have encountered it more than once. Like why. Why are you circle-jerking about this, seemingly unprompted, even? Whats with this weird arrogance? Imagine someone saying that in relation to vore, or any other niche or weird thing on the internet. People would want you to be shoved in a locker.

Edit: And before I forget, because the odds are non-zero of someone popping off like this: no, I don't hate furries. I have nothing against furries conceptually. I just have an ever increasing annoyance in regard to a very particular kind of person, of which a shocking amount just happen to be furries.