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Election 3 (Updates and Plans) By foxyoreos -- Report

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Obviously, the situation is not ideal.

A lot of furries have already talked about how the election has made them feel or what their broader fears are. They've also offered tips and reassurances about solidarity. I've got multiple posts up on Mastodon talking about some of those feelings, and I've talked to a few community members in private as well.

So while there are many, many more conversations to have, what I want to talk about here is specifically my plans as a porn artist and what I'll be doing moving forward. I was already in the process of trying to figure out my next steps as an artist before the election, so Trump's win has mostly caused me to re-evaluate some of those plans and re-prioritize some of them.

So I'm specifically going to be talking about my individual plans as a NSFW artist, not talking more broadly about bigger issues. There's a lot of text, but the TLDR is I'm going to diversify my platforms, projects, and income sources.

I'll leave comments open so anypony can ask any questions they'd like, but I'll also warn that this is not the place or time to get into arguments with me about the election. I'm just laying out what I'm going to be doing over the next few months.

The high-level plans:

★ To start with, nothing immediate is changing. Trump isn't even the president yet, and like I said in the previous comic, I expect restrictions to come in via a slow squeeze, not some sudden ban. So for the short term I'll be continuing as normal while being proactive about long-term plans.

★ In the long term, I'll try to expand SFW income sources. I won't be abandoning NSFW artwork, but I want to diversify and start getting income from multiple sources (diversity is going to be a major theme in these plans). The primary way I'm thinking about doing that is to put more effort into software development for furry projects. This is an area I was peeking my fox nose into before the election, but mostly experimentally. Post-election, I'll put more serious effort into making it work on the off-paw chance that the NSFW artwork becomes harder to monetize. I'll also be looking at what portion of my artwork can be made suitable for SFW storefronts or print-shops; a lot of stores with bans on NSFW material don't have bans on mawshots, or characters looking smug, or implications of things.. there's room for me to experiment there.

★ On the NSFW side, I'll be less cautious about platform restrictions. I have a policy on FA that I don't post Pokemon at all in NSFW situations like vore, even though the platform has so far only pushed bans on a subset of Pokemon. This was a safety measure when I felt like the increased audience attention was not worth the extra risk of getting banned. Given the changes at FA recently, and given the changes in how urgent I now think that building up an audience is, I'm going to start posting some more clearly adult characters like evolved pokemon to FA. I'll still avoid posting characters like Eevee or Vulpix.

I'll be increasing the diversity of payment processors and platforms I use: Previously, while I was valuing diversity of options I was ultimately looking at each platform as a cost-benefit analysis. Itch.io is an interesting place to sell games or one-off pieces, but doesn't really fit how I draw art. Patreon is a popular platform, but I don't trust their security (and still don't) and they're hostile to a lot of NSFW art that I draw (feral, anything with rape, etc..). I'm going to be more aggressive now about trying to make those platforms work. If I can't link a Patreon to most of my NSFW art, can I link it to software or can I have a separate SFW gallery that I link it to? If Itch.io doesn't really work for subscriptions, what one-off-pieces and art packages can I make that could be sold there? A diversity of options is the best way for me to avoid getting caught-out by a sudden Paypal ban or a Subscribestar issue. Additionally, being on multiple platforms will make state-level issues easier to avoid - most of the age-gate bills that are being proposed are sloppy and have carve-outs for different social media companies. This is one of the few if not the only benefits of Musk's positioning within the administration - age verification bills even at the state level are likely to have carve-outs that Twitter can fit through. I've already started accepting commission payments through Subscribestar in addition to via Paypal invoices, but I may hook into some Subscribestar APIs to make that even easier, or look to see if other NSFW platforms that aren't advertised as commission platforms can still be used used as one.

★ To help with managing all of this, I'll be putting more time/energy into building furry tools to help with multiple galleries. I think that there's an increased urgency to build tools that make it easier to follow artists and to post to multiple galleries. I'll attempt to fund some of this development and turn it into an income source. But regardless of how that goes, open-sourcing those tools and trying to improve the furry ecosystem is a safety measure that will make it easier to be reactive to gallery changes or platform restrictions.

★ And finally, on a purely personal level, I'll be assessing what my tech dependencies are and trying to address some of them before 2025: I didn't mention in the original comic, but (assuming he actually does go through with them) I expect tariffs to spike electronics pricing. Depending on what's possible for me to address, I may look into trying to buy a second-hand drawing tablet or (less likely) trying to upgrade some aging parts of my computer before that happens - to avoid a scenario where a hardware failure leaves me without an easy drawing method while prices are still spiked.

The immediate plans:

★ I've started converting a privately built tool that I use to monitor notifications across multiple sites into an open-source package that I'm calling Birdwatch. The initial release for this will be very, very limited, but if you're an artist it will allow you to get phone notifications whenever anypony comments on a piece or messages on Aryion, Inkbunny, Itaku, or Furaffinity. In the longer term, I would like to build this out into an artist-focused companion to Postybirb to allow monitoring galleries. This should help artists stay engaged with communities on multiple sites rather than just posting artwork and never checking them. You can help fund this either through my Subscribestar or on Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/foxyoreos), but I'll be pushing to release it regardless of funding. At some point in November or early December I'll set up a Github account in addition to my Codeberg account and I'll both enable Github sponsors on there, and start cleaning up some of my Postybirb changes and submitting patches to upstream them (if they're wanted).

★ I'll be launching my first YCH auction (probably) next week on Furaffinity, Inkbunny, and Aryion. This will be a really good opportunity for me to try a different commission format and to get a better feel for pricing. Depending on what the reaction to that piece is (as well as a separate non-auction YCH I'll be launching later) I should be able to get a lot of data on what kinds of commissions I can offer and what critters would like to see. I expect I'll try to rework my commission process in late November or early December to address a lot of issues - maybe providing a comic format that isn't tied to streams, providing some polished tiers where the price can be fixed up-front instead of hourly, looking into more regular YCH offers, and streamlining stream sketches a bit. I'll talk about that more as it gets closer and I think about it more, but I think there's a lot of room to improve my commission process. (If there's a format that you wish I offered, let me know ;3)

★ I'll be revising and expanding A New Pet (https://aryion.com/g4/view/899825), adding small in-text illustrations to the story, and then launching the finished piece as a purchasable download on itch.io. I have some other projects as well that I'm thinking about that would work as interactives within the browser, but I'll be playing that by ear since it'll require building support for a few features that Itch.io doesn't currently offer.

★ Outside of furry stuff, there are a few very short temporary programming contracts that I have available but I've been putting off that might be really helpful for pulling in some extra money to get new equipment or provide extra safety nets, so I may at some point in November or December take a week or two off to tackle them. My long-term goals aren't changing; I hope to eventually make furry artwork and furry projects my only source of income.

★ And finally, I'm going to be experimenting more with streams to see if there are things I could improve. Possibly varying stream times over the course of the week or doing occasional endo-only or maybe even non-vore streams to see if that helps make them more accessible.

That's a lot, and it's honestly still only scratching the surface of the different projects I'm thinking about. I expect the remainder of 2024 and a decent chunk of 2025 to be extremely busy, but I'm going to do everything I can to make this work. I really enjoy the work that I do: I love drawing things that critters enjoy, I love the conversations I get to have with furries, I love hanging out and drawing things on stream, and I love this community; I am more invested than ever in being able to continue doing this full-time.

Tips for you:

I'm not going to go too detailed here; this is already too long of an update. But I'll give a few suggestions:

Join Bluesky (and/or Mastodon): Twitter has been a bad place for artists for a pretty long time even before Elon bought the site. But there's a strong movement from furry artists now to use alternatives and the alternative that most of them are moving to is Bluesky. I prefer Mastodon (I have strong criticisms for Bluesky's design), but it is still a lot better than Twitter - and Mastodon takes some getting used to, while Bluesky is much more of a drop-in replacement for Twitter. If you're unsure, join Bluesky.

There is a lot to recommend about both Bluesky and Mastodon, but the big thing is that they'll be better platforms for artists to use. Artists can be safer, they can spend less time blocking trolls or abusive accounts, and less time trying to figure out how to game an opaque algorithm. And regardless of whether you join Mastodon or Bluesky, you can communicate with users on either network by following @bsky.brid.gy (https://fed.brid.gy/docs#fediverse-get-started).

Try out multiple galleries: I think that diversity of platforms is going to be very important over the next 4 years and onward. Using multiple platforms is challenging, and there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make it easier and to make the furry community more resilient. Things like this tend to improve the more that critters use the tools that exist and talk about their flaws. Different platforms have different strengths and weaknesses, and so when furries are looking at multiple sites, they can see parts of each site that work well and can then encourage other sites to improve. There are large backbones of the furry community that have been stagnant for a long time, and we need to start being more proactive about building a community that can respond to sudden changes or challenges. It's commonly said online that the Internet "routes around censorship" - but the truth is that the Internet only routes around censorship if critters are willing to use the new routes.

★ Most importantly, keep being yourself: There are many unknowns about Trump's presidency and I can't tell you everything he is or isn't going to do - Trump is impulsive and doesn't think about long-term plans. In my election comic, I said that I expected attacks on porn to be slow and subtle - under the guise of trying to protect children, or by narrowing down which kinks are the okay ones, or just by slowly reducing the places we can be. In that atmosphere, an almost required piece of reading is "Pete Buttigieg is Just a Fag".

Normalization of who you are, and an unwillingness to compromise on your identity are defenses against the whittling away of kink spaces. That doesn't mean that you should do things you're uncomfortable with and it doesn't mean you need to come out of the closet if you're in the closet. First things first, be safe. But in the spaces where you are comfortable, be unapawlogetically you. Be as cringe as you want to be! Fuckin UwU if you want to. Be into the things you want to be into. Stick up for and celebrate community members who you care about who are unapawlogetically themselves. <3 There is no version of yourself that you can reduce yourself to that will be accepted by bigots. And there will always be temptation in that direction, and not only from Republicans. We're not even a week out from the election and I've heard Democrats say that focusing "too much" on trans rights was the problem.

Fuck that. Don't let people shave off parts of your support network or start demanding that you be less of yourself in order to earn their respect. Subtle forms of censorship rely on slowly whittling away at a community: getting the community to self-censor when possible so the censors can't be blamed, trying to get everypony else to forget what used to exist, hoping they don't notice when community members drop off. And visibility is a defense. Existing in all of our weird, wonderful ways makes it just a little bit harder for parts of our community to disappear invisibly.

★★★

I want to say again that I'm really grateful for this community. I love what I do, and I am thankful every single day that I'm able to do it. If you're an artist with questions about platforms that you think I can help with, please reach out to me. If you have challenges managing or checking galleries (as a user or an artist) that you think might be fixable with software, let me know. If you have suggestions about things I should be doing, let me know - I'm still relatively new to commissions and I'm still figuring all of this out. Going into 2025 I want to be more open about things I'm trying to do and to be more collaborative with other artists, and I want to put in a serious effort not just to make my own artwork into something sustainable, but to in small ways try to make any chaos that comes up just a bit more manageable <3

Comment on Election 3 (Updates and Plans)

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Person955

Posted by Person955 1 month ago Report

I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but I really doubt there's going to be a major crackdown on something so niche. If any action is taken, its only going to be against the mainstream, vanilla porn websites like Pornhub. Even then, any restrictions made are going to just going to make it less easy for minors to access pornography (which most people think is a good thing).

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

I hope you're right. I'm not confident that you are; I've already seen furry discourse in mainstream politics over the past 4 years. Particularly given the intersection between furry spaces and LGBTQ+ identities (which are more often than not the actual targets of these attacks), I think it's something for furries to think about and plan for.

But.. again, I hope you're right. If you are, no harm done; we're not gong to get to the end of a Bluesky migration or finish building artist tools for managing multiple galleries and think, "we didn't get directly targeted, so I guess we made artist's lives easier for nothing."

Many of the issues I'm talking about above are already issues today. I'm worried they'll get worse. If they don't, and we just.. improve them..

..great! <3

Person955

Posted by Person955 1 month ago Report

I'm really confident it won't be that bad, hope my words are some sort of reassurance. Politics and Porn shouldn't really ever mix in my opinion, it just causes more unnecessary online discourse and further divides humanity.

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

I'm an aromantic asexual, nonbinary fox and probably at least half of the artwork I draw features transgender and/or gay characters.

There's no version of that porn that can be considered non-political.

Don't get me wrong, I would love for my work to be non-political. I would love for my identity to be non-political. Unfortunately that's just not the world we live in. When there are people in Congress who earnestly believe that your identity is an affront to God and that your job is very literally evil, then doing that job and making representations of that identity is a political act.

FurryTastyTreat

Posted by FurryTastyTreat 1 month ago Report

I really feel this comment as an enby ace person. Our politicians also campaign to take our rights away, but not necessarily in the same way. I'm grateful not to be American. Sometimes the right to exist safely as yourself feels political.

FurryTastyTreat

Posted by FurryTastyTreat 1 month ago Report

I'm so sorry for Americans from marginalised communities. Please do keep being you. I didn't read all of it but well done for putting back-up measures in place.

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

Thank you for being you as well <3

I don't intend to go anywhere. And lol, sorry it's a long post - I had been trying to work on November updates already, and everything ended up getting merged together X3

RyanKrakinski

Posted by RyanKrakinski 1 month ago Report

I’m pretty sure nothing is going to happen. Harris and Trump were both garbage choices; let’s all move on already.

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

If nothing happens and we make the furry community more stable and we adopt tools to make artists' lives easier, and there's no pushback to furries being more confident in their identities - then great.

There is no downside. Artists are already struggling with platform migrations and porn bans. There's no harm in improving these things.

And if something does happen, improving these things will help.

jason7657

Posted by jason7657 1 month ago Report

Keep in mind, Baron Trump, Trump's own favorite son, is noted as helping his father understand the youth and internet culture, constantly, through the campaign. Baron was the one that pushed his father to talk to streamers on Twitch. Baron's the one that pushed him to go on Joe Rogan. That kid is 18. He 100% knows that Furries are the IT people that keep the internet running. If Furries are ever targeted, he will easily explain that to Trump and explain the disastrously bad fallout.

TheDragonBoy

Posted by TheDragonBoy 1 month ago Report

I’ll try to remember to keep an eye out for your GitHub post. If you could give me some pointers on staying anonymous while sharing code, perhaps I’ll contribute- assuming I know the language/framework.

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

Definitely! <3

Keeping with the theme of diversifying locations, I'll keep a Codeberg upstream as well, and depending on your level of privacy you want it should be pretty easy to set up a Codeberg account with an anonymous email; no Microsoft analytics or LLM nonsense required :3.

The only other thing I can think of right meow that you'd want to make sure you set your Git commit signature to not include your real name/email if you use Git elsewhere. It's easy to get accidentally caught out by that.

I'll try to make a step by step guide at some point.

Loomfox

Posted by Loomfox 1 month ago Report

Apart of me really believe nothings really gonna change considering in 2016 the same things were said and nothing really materialized so I believe this isn't gonna be any different but honestly speaking at the moment I believe its best we all continue with our normal lives untill it some how affects us but stressing over it when nothing has happened yet or worrying too much about the future is too stressful and bad on your mental health but I understand that it can't hurt to prepare on the off chance this is any different but do try and relax as this type of stress isn't good for you and this is coming from a fellow asexual

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

Trump is impulsive and reactionary - he'll make a dozen comments about what he's going to do and will follow through on 6 of them; the problem is that which 6 he's going to follow through on are basically random.

Trump's campaign didn't follow through on anti-pornography pledges during the 2016 campaign, but he did follow through on a lot of the rest of his rhetoric, and contributed towards a national environment on porn that has in my opinion moved the needle backwards.

I think the reason why Texas age gates haven't been ruled unconstitutional is because of Trump's Supreme Court appointments. I think you can draw a line from Donald Trump's presidency to attacks in Florida that are classifying books on transgender identity as porn.

What Trump does and doesn't prioritize during his presidency is going to mostly depend on his mood on any given day. I'm not panicking over that (porn is not the most important issue that I care about, even though it is my currently my livelihood). But I am preparing; a lot of America changed under Trump's first presidency.

I think Donald Trump's first presidency was an equal mixture between things going better than expected and things going much, much worse than expected. Of all of the things being proposed: tariffs, attacks on transgender critters, Clarence Thomas floating a repeal to Obergfell, possible changes to tech monopoly rulings, there are a lot of things that could have an impact, and Trump will pursue some of them and will forget about some of them, and Republicans will feel emboldened on some issues and will abandon some issues in favor of new scapegoats. I'm not telling anypony to panic or stay up at night worrying - but I want to be proactive about building infrastructure that does allow me to react to what might happen, rather than being caught by surprise.

I've commented the same elsewhere, but the issues I'm talking about trying to address above are already issues. If we solve them, and we're lucky and Trump doesn't make them worse, then the furry community will still be better for it. I don't understand what anypony's aversion is to trying to improve this stuff; I thought that saying, "Twitter sucks right now, I'm going to try and make it easier to keep track of socials" would be completely uncontroversial even among furries who aren't concerned about Trump. I just don't understand it.

I genuinely thought that most of the comments under this update were going to be in the vein of "oh cool, here's a feature I wish existed in Postybirb, will you add it to your todo list?"

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

Sorry, this comes across as a little harsh re-reading it. I'm not frustrated at you, and while I would guess that I remember Trump's first term much differently than you do, I agree that panicking or depression is not the right way to prepare for his second term.

That's not what this post is. This post is an update about what I plan to do over the next several months, and what my immediate projects are going to be.

Loomfox

Posted by Loomfox 1 month ago Report

No its ok I understand your frustrated and didn't take it as being directly at me or anything, tbh perhaps I should have worded it differently but really what I was trying to say is that well I understand the frustration and everyones concerns as well as understand choosing to be proactive about the situations at hoove I been seeing alot furs really truely panicking about the situation to the point of having mental breakdowns. Such stresses is very bad for ones mentality and honestly I believe us as community should take things one step at a time and well theres nothing wronf with having a plan its best we don't let the mental strains from worry collapse our community as awhole...this is a time we best just all stick together and help get through the next 4 years

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

I get where you're coming from - there are a lot of conversations I've had over the past few days, and there are a lot of fears that critters have, and what I've been saying in those conversations is very similar - you're not in this alone, whatever happens we'll try to deal with it as best we can, take things one step at a time.

Fear is really only useful to the point where it helps us act on things; if it becomes paralyzing, then it can make things worse. I know I can't just tell that to critters and have them magically not be afraid, nopony looks at fear or depression or anxiety and thinks, "I'm feeling this way because that's what I think is useful for me to feel." X3

Feelings are not voluntary decisions. But part of me laying out really detailed plans is me trying to help a little bit with potential fears: "here's what I think will help, here's what I'm going to do, here are the immediate projects I'm going to tackle, let me know if there's something I'm missing." I think some of the frustration was just a general sense of, having a bunch of comments saying "don't panic": Me writing 2000 words about my plans for the next 3-4 months is the opposite of me panicking <3

And again, I didn't mean to be exasperated in your direction, it very much was not directed at you. Part of my shortness here is unrelated to election fears - I'm asocial, and there's a limit to how many earnest conversations I can have (no matter how much I value them) before I just become exhausted; and I have had a lot of small, earnest conversations over the past several days. I appreciate you taking the time to comment and trying to reassure about these things.

Loomfox

Posted by Loomfox 1 month ago Report

No I get it and I'll keep it short than but to simply phrase it...I been in this community for over 12 years but joined officially 8 years ago...for all its weirdness and voreness...its good and will survive this I can tell you endless stories of acts of kindness I seen over the years here and personally speaking I really like your art and you as a artist...we all are gonna do our best to keep eachother going at the very least I know I will do my best to be there for you and all the artist I enjoy so much

voreanonomyous

Posted by voreanonomyous 1 month ago Report

this is very informative, thank you so much. you've helped ease some of my worries a bit (im still very much afraid of whats coming), the way you communicate is very clear and concise and helps me step back and think.

thank you for the list of alternative sites to diversify acrossim defiantly going to check out a number of them to make sure I can keep following the same artists through this

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

Thanks <3 I'm glad I could help a little bit about things - the point of this post wasn't really to make anypony panic, it was to to take a step back and ask, what are the risks that can be planned around and how can I (and/or others) plan around them?

For me, action is often the best way to reduce anxiety. If you run into difficulties with sites, if you have problems that you're seeing trying to keep up with multiple galleries or frustrations - please let me know about them.

I can't promise I'll be able to try to address everything, but the last time I posted about using multiple galleries and floofs showed up to talk about their frustrations, it was really informative to me and they helped clarify a lot of pawblems and it helped me plan better what I should be working on - things that I hadn't been thinking about before.

SamytheDragon

Posted by SamytheDragon 1 month ago Report

Bluesky is temporary safe, but since a lot of people made ads for it, well... shit. Our far right politicans found out the most people join bluesky, not long and it is the new platform X.

Mastodon is a better choice for adult art.

Porn cannot be banned, a lot of people try it in history, they failed, it is a hidden part of the Economy and bring high taxes no matter who you live.
I doubt the US Elephant with long muzzle can do it.

I promise, nothing will happend, maybe some websites going down, but people will find other ways.

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

There's no danger of porn disappearing from the Internet; but I want to prep for if a website goes down whether it'll be easy to get community members onto other websites. I think critters have this idea that the threat is.. the US removes porn from the Internet. That's not really my threat model, my threat model is about the subtleties around how porn is accessed, how it can be monetized, and what barriers are in place in front of it and whether safe sites exist for artists to use.

For example, when Patreon got harder to use for a lot of porn artists, Subscribestar rose in popularity - but it's still a much more niche audience on there. The internet routed around that censorship, but some artists got dropped along the way, and the remaining audience is much smaller.

So what I'm looking at is:

A) can I mitigate some of that by spreading out to a lot of small platforms? I don't think I could make a living off of itch.io with porn - but I could make part of a living off of itch.io with porn. And I can use other platforms alongside it.

B) are there things I can to do make it easier for communities to move around? Because I'm not at all worried that porn is going to disappear from the Internet, I'm worried it'll become very difficult to make a living off of drawing it. So helping furries get used to moving around websites, using multiple websites - these are ways for me to make it easier for furries to access porn safely in a mainstream way.

❤❤❤

I'm definitely much more of a fan of Mastodon than Bluesky (and I have some doubts about Bluesky's future, I'm trying really hard not to go on a side-tangent about my critiques of it X3), but my short-term priority is just getting floofs off of Twitter if possible and to get them used to using multiple sites. And even just to get them used to the fact that sites can be better than Twitter.

Bridgy is also really good here - if somepony goes to Bluesky and forms a bunch of Mastodon connections through Bridgy, that'll help Mastodon grow, and if Bluesky becomes a problem in the future, they'll already have a bunch of connections on Mastodon if they need to move over there.

It's not the ideal social network I wish furries would standardize on, but Mastodon wasn't necessarily my ideal either. I'll make do with the tools that are available to me <3

SamytheDragon

Posted by SamytheDragon 1 month ago Report

The porn banning from what I read the US internet and .com domains, more hostings on EU/Asia Server avoid that issues, and after the Elephant is gone it goes back to normal.

Germany is the only Porn land, global.

Patreon goes harder already, they pick up user - most Furry artists and check the websites they posting or art reposting and ban them. Subscribstar goes slowly the clean art path.

You are right, social networks are not easy today and not a ideal build, so long it working it is a good.
All my private Clients came from Twitter, Tik Tok & Co.

What would you do when all websites are compromised? Down the next 4 years?
You are a programer, how high is your skill?

Furries or anthro artists are often rude, that flows automatical at the whole Fandom, and the Furries are more porn lovers today, they not accept new things.

As Freelancer you spoke alot about the porn theme before the Election Day, the core was ~it is your income~.
That was the mistake, you had to activate the inner Patriotism of every registred voter. In the End it brings the Elephant back.

By the way. My Brother vote the Falcon, not the Elephant.

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 1 month ago Report

I'm hoping (and generally expecting) that all hosting websites won't restrict porn; but I am also self-hosting deliverables and commission info. I'm expecting to eventually expand that to self-host at least parts of my gallery as well.

I don't think self-hosting is a solution for gallery restrictions right now because RSS isn't commonly used in furry circles. That might change in the future, maybe. I don't know. The problem with hosting artwork right now is less about the actual hosting part and more about the visibility/community - finding a place that both allows the artwork and is active. You can put artwork on a pawsonal website, but will anypony discover it or follow it?

Payment processors are a bigger concern for me - I'm very interested to figure out if I can use itch.io in creative ways, because if I could figure out a way to give commissions through Itch it would be another alternative to Paypal/Subscribestar. There are not a lot of other English alternatives that I can think of at the moment, but that's why I'm going to be looking around more.

It's also possible that European commissioners might end up eventually having an easier time of this. I've talked to Europeans who have told me that there are payment services over there now that can pay money to US banks while still calculating things like VAT and taxes (which I do care about calculating). I haven't looked into the privacy of those services yet; what's great about Paypal, Subscribestar, and Itch is that I don't need to dox myself when collecting payments. And in the case of Subscribestar/Itch the commissioner doesn't need to give me personal information either <3

❤❤❤

I'm a good programmer, but I'd prefer to keep doing what I'm doing if pawsible. I enjoy drawing for critters a lot more than I enjoy working with tech. Where I am looking at doing more programming, I'm going to try and keep it community-focused if I can. But if that doesn't work out, doing some freelancing on the side when possible could cover some bills.

I'll figure that stuff out when/if I need to though. There are too many unknowns for me to start making specific plans that far in advance.

❤❤❤

I can only speak to my own experiences with the furry fandom, and maybe I'm sheltered, but for every bad experience I've ever had, I've had a lot more good ones. It's possible that's because I haven't been on larger sites like Twitter. It's possible I've just been very lucky - but the community that follows my art is really amazing and I'm very thankful for them. I only hope that I mostly make it as positive of a place for them as they make it for me <3

SamytheDragon

Posted by SamytheDragon 4 weeks ago Report

Speaking of Payments, last Month I had PayPal issues, cause I paid for Commmissions with low fees, Dogmo.
They or the algorythm thought I was hacked and deactivate the Account. In that time period I use Paysafecards (before I made a Paypal account I use that). It is one alternative for anonym payments.

Confirm, you have a amazing community behind you, you are thankful for every member, not proud.

It is our nature, you a programmer like to create arts for critterrs, me a Doctor like to create realistic arts.
I am very thankfull to meet Alex - Cathrin - Dogmo and all others, every artists has his own unique charme. You too my dear fluffy fox.

In the last week was Alex a big hold in the dark hours.
From all negative moods and outcome of the Furry Fandom, Alex was a light at the end of the Tunnel, a guardian Angel. He is a good experiance from all negatives I had, he rised my mood every time and Cathrin too. Yes, the Fandom has amazing people, not enough to change my mind.

Bills must be paid, good to average alternatives are easy videogames with Achievements, cat or both.
Achievement Hunter buy games with easy earn 1000GS, a fair price are $3-$4,99. They want to come in the Legendary book of 1billion and farther. Easy Achievement games become free Ads for fastest/quickest GamerScore every Month.
Games with cats or fluffy animals are a niche for Kids and casual Gamers.

Omb74

Posted by Omb74 4 weeks ago Report

Honestly, at this point I feel too jaded to feel bad. Trump lost millions of votes this election but 15 million voters decided there was something wrong with Harris. They made up so many fucking excuses to not vote and now their mad about the outcome. Someone in this very post commented that they were both somehow garbage but gave zero details. Please, someone, anyone tell me how a former public defender and sitting VP is somehow the same as a fucking convicted felon, rapist and wannabe dictator.

The only silver lining I see is that Trump and his flunkies are incompetent. Make no mistake, they are going to hurt people and fuck up the country, that's guaranteed. It's just that some idiot is going tear down a wall and its going fall on top of them. Their plans have so many landmines that they'll likely spend the next couple years in damage control. Like, what do they think is going to happen if they get rid of the Department of Education or ACA? Oh and the first case of bird flu is brewing Canada right now. We all remember how great the last pandemic went...

On porn, it falls under the first amendment and only the most obscene stuff, like real-life CP, isn't protected. They'd have to amend the constitution to completely ban porn or limit free speech. This requires two-thirds in both chambers to do, which they don't have. They can't even break the filibuster with their numbers. The book ban loophole weren't work either because these are private adult websites. They'd have to dig deep to do this one and their currently focused on killing the farming industry without thinking about the consequences. So, yeah, I think sites like this are good for now, but it never hurts to have a back-up plan.

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 4 weeks ago Report

I understand feeling frustrated, but this isn't really the time/place to litigate the election. I did vote in this election and advocated very publicly on every single platform I'm on for other furries to vote as well. I also went into a lot of details about what my fears were surrounding specifically porn; this post is really more about me describing what mitigating steps I'm going to be taking over the next several months - it's not me attempting to convince anypony that there are threats because.. well.. the time for that was before the election.

I think you might be a little over-confident about how a 6-3 Conservative SC will rule about the constitution given their recent track record, but I felt like I was clear from the first uploaded comic that I'm not particularly worried about a federal ban on porn - I'm worried (in part) about the smaller decisions and regulations that lawmakers can make and that they're already making - particularly in Conservative states. Among these are regulations and restrictions that the current Supreme Court has already overruled a stay on.

I am, similar to you, frustrated about the outcome of this election for a lot of reasons beyond just porn; but there is nothing I can do now except move forward the best I can - and this post is a way for me to lay out a subset of decisions I'm making to help do that.

Grapefruitvenison

Posted by Grapefruitvenison 4 weeks ago Report

These are all very good ideas. One thing Americans can do is to create pressure to reinstate the Fair Access to Financial Services (OCC-2020-0042-0001). This would mean banks need to stop industry blacklisting and require specific examples of risk when they blacklist someone. It would lead to sites like Patreon being less ban-heavy. Call or mail your local government official lol

foxyoreos

Posted by foxyoreos 4 weeks ago Report

Fair Access is a good initiative and would help a lot; it is possible it could get passed under a Republican trifecta if Republicans at some point start freaking out about banks. I think it's fairly unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

There are a lot of legislative ways to help with this problem in general, and I was fairly hopeful about several of them going into the election. I'm focusing on them less in this post because I think they're less likely to pass under the current administration.

But, that's not me saying they wouldn't help; they would absolutely help. <3