Ages ago, while I was compiling a batch of uploads for the site, I wrote the title of a post that, to my mind, read with the same cadence and rhythm as a Tamarian allegory. I wouldn't consider myself a Trekkie, even though I have admiration for the series (Lower Decks is the best, RIP Lower Decks), but it's one of the few bits of lore I've been exposed to and that I found especially fascinating.

"Kiburi, Under Her Whims" activated my neurons and got me thinking; could I make my own Tamarian allegories? That might be a fun exercise, and I'd love to see if y'all could come up with any yourselves - even from your own or other people's art.

Here's a few examples I cooked up myself:

• "Kiburi, Under Her Whims," Completely lost to and absolutely smitten under someone else's influence. (To be fair, I think there's a few of these in my portfolio. )
• "Chocolate, Drowned in Colour," Overwhelmed by ideas and opportunity to create, to the point of paralysis and discomfort.
• "Ruby, With Eggs Abound," Being thrust into a new and intensely pleasurable situation, possibly without your prior knowledge or intent.
• "Soul, its subjects at ease," Being so completely in control of a situation, with perfect trust and confidence backing you up.
• "Never, On the Changing Table," Getting one's comeuppance.

I know this probably is the equivalent of trying to force a meme, but I just thought it was interesting enough to do something with, and share it for a giggle. x3

This was originally posted to my cohost page, days before it was set to read-only, and its sunsetting began. It was uploaded in two parts, mainly to avoid overshadowing the advice and perspective I gave in the latter half, with the history and background I give in the former. This also made it easier to work on while I was dealing with other important things in my life, which I certainly needed at the time.

I've reposted it here as it will be inaccessible from the start of the new year, and I feel it's worth reminding folks about what happened, in case they need another push to take the steps necessary to protect themselves from the dangers I describe below. I left the post untouched from its original upload, blemishes and all, because the mistakes I may have made in the mad scramble I went through between getting suspended from FA to when cohost would start shutting down is an essential part of the piece.

If you'd like to skip to the second part for the more practical advice, click here.

Over 8 years ago, I suddenly found myself left without any foundation online. The admin team of FurAffinity, the only site I'd been actively maintaining my presence on, neglected to address a fatal vulnerability that had been identified prior to the eventual attack, taking the site offline for weeks.

I spent that time migrating as much of my art as possible to as many sites I was permitted to post them to. I then made some artwork to commemorate completing the task, entitled "Omnipresence." I've never looked back.

Since then, I've always maintained at least 8 separate galleries at any given time, replacing them as they either went down, or kicked me off. Today, I'm revisiting that concept in an effort to share my philosophy of being present online, and encourage others to take a page out of it.

This is long, but if you've seen or felt the effects of sites clamping down on friends or your favourite artists, I believe you owe it to them to read it. Please do either way.

Part 1 of 2

On Belonging Nowhere, As a Digital Kink Artist

I've been thinking about writing this for a long time now, mixed in with my crazy little trans artist life's goings-on, so intertwined with the many folks I care about. I've had a lot on my plate, even without the need for sites I called home either dying or turning hostile towards my existence helping to spice up the pot.

I wish I could've have more time to write this, too. Cohost's planned closure simultaneously stoked and set a hard deadline on the need for putting these tangled, clamoring thoughts and feelings out on digital paper. I didn't want to miss the chance to commit them to the most appropriate canvas before it got frozen in time, in anticipation of its untimely end.

This is something I've felt in the air for a long time now, and the changes have been coming ever more rapidly as time passed. Capitalism and tech's rapid "race to the bottom" continues to increase its kill count with no signs of stopping, and we, the misfits and dreamers who've used this platform - the Internet as a whole - to thrive on for so long have always been the main victims of this creeping malaise's unstoppable march.

I'll try (but fail) not to belabor these points for too long, but I feel they're worth revisiting from a more personal perspective to emphasize the effect this has on us as individuals, as part of a community. I don't want to sound like I'm fishing for sympathy, but the fact remains that they did happen, they happened to people like me, and we shouldn't forget that. This is a trend. It will continue.

Tumblr was the first biggest loss during my career. It was and still remains the fastest growth I've ever seen in my active followers on any single platform. If you've paid attention to my exploits beyond the art I make for any amount of time, you'll know that I've struggled to build my follower counts anywhere as quickly as most of my peers, and it's been a source of stress for just as long as it's been a thing. No adult content or "female presenting nipples" allowed was a dangerous standard they set that would continue for a while.

Several of my friends chose to filter their work to remain active on the platform. Maybe I should've done the same.

I caught wind of a so-called "rogue moderator" on Patreon telling another hypno artist that the implied dubcon of their work was not acceptable on the site. Patreon's terms of service had to be reinterpreted in a form of modern sophistry in order to reach such a verdict, but their decision was ultimately what mattered. I took this as a sign, and although I'm certain that many at the time saw my response as an overreaction - effectively pulling teeth to get myself migrated off of Patreon and onto my own website - I was vindicated four years later when several artists got banned, days before their monthly payout.

The morning that I'm writing this, I saw another furry artist get banned off of the platform.

On the eve of an extremely important trip, I opened a tab I had kept with the comments I received on a recent upload to FA, so I would remember to reply to them later. I wrote my thanks to one, hit reply, and the site responded with notice of my suspension. I should have seen it coming, given that others had also been subjected to this months prior, and even though I'd made a conscious choice not to go along with the change in policy, this was still the one that hurt the most. The ruling was frankly questionable at best, and completely undermines the safety of the site as a whole. Ultimately though, their decision is all that matters.

I could continue to post my work while filtering it accordingly, but I refuse to do so within the broader spaces of the community I've contributed to for most of my life. Even if I did, I can't trust that the rule's catchment won't shift again to have me purged in spite of my compliance.

The confluence of feelings that these events - and more besides - have stoked and kept burning in me for years now have mostly become part of the background radiation of my life. This latest one, though, having come quite literally from inside my own home, has left me feeling pained and restless.

With FA's consistent mismanagement, tumblr's policy change, Twitter's loss of competent leadership, cohost's unfair and untimely demise, AI encroaching upon all of our spaces like some malicious grey goo, and FA now taking a page out of other platforms' censorious playbook, it's hard to stay motivated and feel safe online as a kink artist any more. I also think that this is a breaking point though, and we need to do something about it to avoid things getting any worse.

Centralized administration for hosting art clearly doesn't work long-term, especially when operating within a capitalist society. We need to start reclaiming some form of control through shared acts of community however we can, and I think we should do so by rekindling the older ways of the Internet.

To that end, I have an idea. It's a fairly simple and perhaps somewhat ambitious one, and it'll take time and combined effort, both of which I have little of and even less control over, but I believe it will help, even if in some small way.

I didn't want to risk it getting buried under what might come across as one artist's impotent rage in the form of a long-winded rant, so that'll come in a second part as soon as I can make the time to work that out too.

Please share this around. Either way, stay tuned, and thank you for reading.

Part 2 of 2

Embracing Online Nomadism, and Making it Ours

Okay, so the current ways aren't working for us any longer. What now?

We set ourselves up to be present online more safely. Reclaim our spaces in small but significant ways, while protecting ourselves from policy overreach.

If you'll allow a rabbit in her late 30s to reminisce for a while; back in the day, people made websites. Websites made of pages, rather than databases, which worked more like separate little curiosity shoppes, alcoves and holes in the wall. These were meant for individuals, or smaller groups, to show and share their wares and trinkets - not like the massive town centres we frequent and share nowadays, meant for people to congregate within and yell over one another for attention.

As the latter thrived, grew, and gradually took over, the former became harder to maintain. Now those little establishments have long since been shuttered, and mostly gone forgotten.

While the advent of Web 2.0 did bring improvements for site-making across the board, the massive, centrally maintained content sharing platforms that resulted from it have dominated the web and left little room for much else. I believe that site-making platforms like GeoCities and Angelfire losing popularity has left us far too dependent on more shared, social spaces. These now hold and retain all the power in deciding whether we get to exist on the Internet or, as is often the case, not.

Granted, even if these older platforms had remained as prominent, they most likely would still have similarly restrictive and repressive policies as those that many of us are struggling under today. I'm not naïve, I won't pretend like it would be some kind of utopia online if Twitter or Facebook had never come to power.

However, I think there's a lot to be said about and learned from those older ways. We don't need to do things exactly the same way, but the reliance we've built upon other people allowing us to be present online - in places where everybody else usually is, too - was always going to be risky deal. Now, and for a long while already, many of us are paying dearly for it.

How can that help us today?

As I explained in Part 1, I've had a lot of experience with this sort of thing. If I may be self-serving for a moment here, I've spent a lot of my time and effort over the years yelling about these problems, effectively from the sidelines. It's never felt to me like I reached enough ears to make a difference, so I want to compile my idea of how we should move forward from here. Putting it all into one place will hopefully make it more easily be found and shared around.

I will warn that parts of this plan can and will sound daunting, and that's okay; much like moving out from your parents' house, you must learn skills you need to be more independent online. You also don't need to do everything to the letter; this is just my advice; take and leave whichever parts you feel will work for you.

To sum up my principles of existing online, they go something like this. I'll elaborate more on each of them further below.

1st: "Know Your Standing"

Learn about the sites you're on, their policies and attitudes towards who you are, and the things you're about.

2nd: "Hedge Your Bets"

Spread yourself across the Internet as much as you can comfortably manage, to minimize the harm of losing any one platform.

3rd: "Have a Hub of Things"

Centralize your presence online by making a page linking to your other places on the Internet. Link that page everywhere.

4th: "Own Your Own Thing"

Set up your own place, separate to other centrally managed ones, where people can find you and what you want to share.

New 5th: "Connect Yours with Others'"

Build a network of places by exchanging mutual links to each other, so folks can navigate our distributed communities.

First Principle: "Know Your Standing"

This is, as far as I'm concerned, the bare minimum requirement for being online, and might come across as a tad redundant. If what you're about doesn't sit right with the "normies" in some way, you need to keep tabs on if and how you can work with or around the rules of a platform you want to use.

While I'd prefer not to use "othering" as the basis of any rules or principles, there's no denying that society at large threw the first stone long ago. I actually won't belabor the point but if you're reading this, you're likely an outsider, and there's always going to be someone with you on every space online who would prefer that you weren't there.

Doing your research into the sites you use, their reputation with moderating content, their content policies, the vibe towards what you want to do there, is all essential. Don't leave it up to luck, unless you know what you're risking. Your time and energy are precious, and focusing it on the places you can thrive within will pay dividends in the long run.

It's important to note that this is an ongoing task since, as we know very well by now, this can change overnight. Keep yourself informed and up to date on goings on as best you can. Social media can help with this, but if that's not your jam, checking in on your peers from time to time through journal posts and the like is invaluable too.

Second Principle: "Hedge Your Bets"

Nowadays, you owe it to yourself to maintain some level of redundancy online if you keep a presence online, especially if you're a creative type sharing your things here. The best time to get yourself set up on more than one place was yesterday. The second best time is now.

There's no sugarcoating it; you can't afford to put all your stock into and rely on any one place. You put yourself entirely at the mercy of those running it, which can ruin you sometime down the line. The day that your work might get policed, or worse, banned entirely off of the one site you're on, it will be too late to do anything about it.

As an artist, with a tool like PostyBirb being actively and regularly maintained, there is little to stop you from crossposting to various sites any longer. You don't have to be as crazy about it by posting to 8 or more places at once, but a couple of backups in places which will let you post there can, and will prove invaluable.

As a sideline to this, but still worth mentioning; please, please set up some form of offsite backups for original copies of your work. Under NO circumstances should you rely on someone else's website to safely store your only copy of anything you have ever created, because they can and most likely will delete it if they see fit.

Third Principle: "Have a Hub of Things"

Putting things in their appropriate places is a good start, but being in multiple places at once can get a little confusing or difficult for folks to keep track of. You should ideally have a single place you can point people to, so they can pick whatever it is that fits what they're seeking from you; following you on your socials, finding where to commission you, or simply to be on a platform you both use.

There are many ways to go about this, but with Linktree and Carrd now being a thing, it's easier than ever. If you're doing your thing in more than one place for whatever reason, there's no reason not to have one set up.

Then, link it fucking everywhere - I mean it! I've seen so many folks who have a redirect page set up and then don't have it front and center of their every profile. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making your hub your homepage, so just. Do it.

Fourth Principle: "Own Your Own Thing"

This is where the big guns come in - making your own space. A website.

Unfortunately, this part proved the hardest for me to write, simply because it is such a daunting thing to ask of folks and there being so many variables to it.

Already having my own website and a background in computer science to help with its maintenance means that I'm rather biased on this subject, but I can still fully appreciate that it can seem like an impossible prospect for most folks. Even I feel a little out of my depth managing my site sometimes, but that's because of the way I chose to set it up.

There are far easier and accessible ways to do this, and a little bit of help is never too far away when you really need it. Tutorials for just about anything exist online, and setting up something basic like a WordPress site is more accessible than ever. There are also plenty of technically minded folks out there who could lend a hand if you reach out to them; while I often have my hands full with all of my things, I've always done what I can to offer advice and help when I'm asked for it.

Since explaining the technical parts of this is far too broad and beyond the scope of this post, I'll instead emphasize the fact that - assuming your hosting provider allows the things you're wanting to share on it - once you're set up and ready to go, you are now your own moderator. I cannot overstate how good this sense of freedom really is.

It does come at the cost of the feeling of connectedness that a centralized platform provides, but having somewhere that you can always go back to - barring any major complications - no matter what policy changes those shared sites decide to enact, is invaluable in this day and age.

Which also brings me neatly to my final point, and a brand new principle.

New Fifth Principle: "Connect Yours with Others'"

One of the things people did when they still made and maintained their own sites was join them together in what were known as Webrings. These were made up of interconnected sites that shared a common theme, so that those interested in one site could more easily find more like them too. They were also apparently connected in a circular fashion, but I feel like this part of the structure isn't an essential feature for our present needs.

This is the "Big Idea" some of you may have seen me teasing in places. I feel like it is the next logical step for bolstering our hopefully increasingly and deliberately nomadic, disparate presences online. We are stronger as a community, and since finding any one place to be together in will continue to be a problem, then we should choose to be nowhere other than everywhere - and make it work for us.

What I propose is that folks with their own niche online, from a little links page to a fully-fledged crowdfunding site, should connect with one another in more meaningful ways.

Exchange links with your friends and peers, set up a section or page on your redirector or website to keep them in, and bolster each other’s disparate presence online. It's a small thing, but I believe it's a great way for us to start reclaiming our agency on the Internet again, together.

I've always tried my best to lead by example and, to this end, my friend Gemma and I have already done this with our two websites! We both have a page dedicated to our online friends now, where our visitors can go to find more of what they seek out from us, or things we might like. My crosslinks page is here, while hers is here, though you'll need to register an account to see it.

If you have a landing page or fully-blown website and would like to connect with me, please let me know! You can reach me through any of my socials via https://the.choco.one/#follow or via email if you prefer, at chocosune.artwork [] gmail. I can't promise that I'll accept every request, but please don't let that stop you either way. Encourage your friends to do the same, and connect with one another too.

So, there you have it. I was admittedly very hesitant to post this second part because it seemed like it may come across as entirely obvious or far too broad-strokes to be of any real use to anybody. However, after the wonderful feedback I got from posting the first one, I realized that a lot of what I now take for granted needs to be said out loud and shared around in order to encourage more folks to get on board.

I genuinely believe that this trend of spaces tightening and growing ever more restrictive to folks like us will only continue, and we aren't likely to find the "perfect website" for us to all agree to move to any time soon.

So, why not make our own, on our own terms?

Thank you once again for reading and I genuinely hope this helps, even if in some small way. If you think you know someone who might benefit from this, please consider sharing it with them.

I hope to see you all on the flip side.

It's been a hot minute since the last Art Appraisal, and this one's gonna get a bit meta (go figure).

For CFz's online con in 2020, I took the plunge and did something I'd been wanting to for a very long time: I hosted a panel.

Finding a topic to talk about was a difficult task, and while I don't recall what other options I considered before settling on the one I went with, I know that my hesitation stemmed from feeling like I didn't have any "expert" insight that I could share - nothing I was especially good at that I could tap into my experience and knowledge of to impart to those attending.

So, perhaps rather appropriately, I decided instead to talk about the difficulties that I've dealt with as part of my work. I would host this talk barely half a year after I launched this site, and had also just spent a substantial amount of time grappling with Picarto, which seemed like plenty of material to go off of for an hour long show.

(Video Link) What I ended up with was a rather tell-all series of recent-at-the-time stories about something technical, something logistical, and something creative that I'd been dealing with in my career.

The video is quite long, but I strongly urge you to watch it through before reading on; especially if you're an artist yourself.

I hope that the talk is of some use to you, or that you at least found it interesting to know a little more about what goes on backstage, at least when it comes to my own operations. My intention was to give more transparency in this way, and if you think you know someone who might find it helpful, please do pass it on to them.

One of the myriad things I've been addressing with my therapy is my very strong and habitual tendency of downplaying and otherwise neglecting my own achievements. Every time I overcome a new challenge or milestone in my life, I quickly reframe all of my newfound skills and abilities as the baseline - my new starting point.

This consistently leads me to ignore the past steps I've overcome, taking them pretty much for granted just because the next challenge, the next hurdle is something I've never dealt with before - even if only a small part of it is unfamiliar to me. It's always the next thing that will trip me up. That'll be my undoing - even if I've felt the same way every time prior to that. That'll be when it all catches up to me.

I get so focused on what I'm unsure of, that I seem to forget that I might already know a great deal about what's ahead of me.

This habit more than likely came about as a result of a coping mechanism that I developed over time. I've dealt with a lot of frustration and insecurities about myself and my work for a while, but without going too far into specifics, it helped minimize some of the anxiety that they caused. As I already described, it certainly wasn't without its drawbacks.

The Idea

During our last session, my therapist guided me through a self-reflection exercise where we spoke about some of the bigger hurdles I'd managed to overcome in the past: leaving my first full-time job, making the leap from Patreon to my own platform, that sort of thing. In doing so, she helped me practice acknowledging that in myself a little better.

Even though I've already done this sort of thing with my art, particularly during special event streams, something about it seemed to click with me. In conjunction with my last livestream, which I spent replying to comments on my art, this brought back an idea I'd had floating around my head, and which I'd tweeted about in passing earlier this year.

I want to practice occasionally acknowledging and appraising my own work; looking back on what I've made, talking about what I like about it or could've done or wanted to do differently, and maybe even sharing a little insight into my process of creating it along the way. I believe it'll be good for me, and hopefully interesting to you too.

Originally, the idea was meant for Twitter, but I don't think that sat well with me given how fleeting the platform is; every single post would be quickly buried unless it was lucky enough to get picked up in a wave of attention. Quite frankly, I don't expect this kind of content to resonate with most folks, so why even bother with that while limiting myself to tiny chunks of text writing about complex ideas that I find interesting?

So, here they'll go. I'll be making these "Appraisals" whenever I feel like it - perhaps making up for a lull in creativity, or riding a high, or just because I need a boost in motivation. With a few exceptions wherever I see fit, I'll be putting them up as free posts so they can be shared around with whoever you think might like them. Please do, as it helps me out.

After this post I'll start work on the first instalment, so you can look forward to that. I really hope you'll enjoy them.

While preparing the post about the Yeariversary busts that I made as gifts, I felt the need to write a little about something I've struggled with for as long as I can remember; how I've so often gotten hung up about drawing gifted artwork for friends. I'm only one person and a flawed one at that, too, and I wish I had the time and energy to do this for everyone who's contributed to and supported me at some point during this crazy journey of mine. Limitations unfortunately dictate that whenever I do, I have to start with someone and stop somewhere thereafter, and not long afterwards, too.

To cut to the heart of the matter, picking a subject when making artwork has always seemed to me like it comes at the expense of all others. I never want to give the impression of being deliberate in the latter way (i.e. excluding others) especially when doing these sorts of things for people, but it feels as though it's all too easy to come across that way, even if unintentionally. Surprising folks with art has always been the best thing about my job, but when unsolicited, it gives me pause for thought that it might upset someone else I care about or give the impression that I forgot about them - especially in situations where group projects are involved.

Some would say that I'm well within my right to choose what and who to draw art of. While I don't disagree with that, it's always been a persistent dilemma as part of my work that I'm very conscious of and I felt like it was worth addressing, or at the very least, giving a voice to my own concerns.

Over the weekend, I had a change of plans that had me considering how to best spend my time and fill in the gaps in my schedule - preferably in ways other than binging on YouTube videos or the same 2 or 3 games I've been stuck on lately. While talking to my girlfriend about it, she asked me why I don't use the sketchbooks scattered around my room and my Surface to doodle from time to time, since I couldn't (and wasn't in the mood to) go to my studio to draw.

This sparked some sudden introspection and led me down a mental path I'd been carving out for some time while seeing other artists drawing recreationally or just for the sake of it. The realization hit me that I haven't done this in a very, very long time, and probably indicates that I've lost (or at the very least temporarily misplaced) the ability to draw spontaneously - that is, without having to be in a very specific place at specific times to ever consider doing so.

I talked about this briefly on my Twitter account a little later on, since it's the best place for me to express these thoughts similarly on a whim. As I mentioned in the thread, as far as drawing in general goes I've still retained a lot of that enjoyment despite all the challenges I've faced throughout my career, and I don't regret my decision to take my craft more seriously. It is the single thing that has retained my interest throughout my life, despite various challenges and even stuck with me past several attempts at finding a more "mainstream" career choice to live off of.

That having been said, making it my job has brought with it several implications and impacted how I practice my craft, since there's only so many ways in which I can go about it at any given time. Whether deliberately or not, I've made many decisions over the years; one of which was prioritizing more involved, well thought out projects in favour of the lighter, sketchier work that had been dominating my galleries at the time. This did help me aim higher and strive for more polished work, but while trying so hard to do so, I ended up internalizing that quick and easy artwork within a limited scope was not valuable.

This, combined with the need to manage my time between work and life very carefully had the knock-on effect of basically eliminating quick, anything-goes artwork as an option during my free time. While it's helped mitigate the risk of burnout at the worst of times, I do think it's worth looking into and experimenting with again. It may lead me to places I otherwise wouldn't have seen, but still ultimately results in more art for my fans and supporters to enjoy.

To that end, I later got my Surface set up for some experimental doodling. I learned more about using it in a way that suits me best, as well as getting some ideas for how to improve the button mappings for my joycon shortcuts. It eventually resulted in a drawing of Soul Chocolate.

So, here it is as a little reward for reading this journal.