I'm an artist and writer. I write and draw my own webtoon.
This weekend I was invited to a symposium given by the Children of the Corn aka The Manson Family. They invited me as an artist in residence honored guest. The theme was "Appreciation For Mangakas the World Over." They displayed my work as well as many snips and bits of my written works. The posts made me sound like the baddest bad boy. They thought that was a good image for me. (I've blotted out the memory or I'd explain lol). I understood their explanation for the out-of-context posts, of course.
Someone mentioned their reputation for being rude, hostile monsters, but when I found out they'd been raised in the forest by bears and wild boars, my heart went out to them!
(my god. where are these people's parents! lol)
All of my friends had sudden urgent business and couldn't attend unfortunately. One lovely lady, however, invited me to sit at her table and pet her gorgeous kitten. It made all the difference to me. LOL.
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My message has always been about freedom of speech and expression for artists of manga, manhwa, webtoons, and all artists, even if it's your little brother making kiddie drawing up in his room. lol. Please support us all.
Fictional forced sexual encounters are fantasy, highly idealized, romantically lavish stories that come from the imagination and wholly removed from real life. They aren't violent. They are beautiful moving pictures in the imagination of the storyteller. There is nothing wrong with writing, reading, drawing them or making one's own inside one's own imagination. That's the imaginer's private business, not subject to the judgement of any morally self-righteous organized group. I sincerely hope that if you're someone who wants censorship, that you would think again and change your mind. Freedom is something artists must have in order to create. Even if, like me, they are writing shonen ai, they still need the freedom to allow their imaginations to wander.
Recently, compulsive focus on rape in real life has been transferred onto fictional works of the imagination. To me if a person is already infuriated about RL rape, they might not be willing to set aside their rage over society's worst problems. Okay, but that isn't the right frame of mind to relax and read a fantasy story for pleasure. If you've already got a head full of steam over rape beforehand, you'll miss out on the story the artist's and authors have created for you.
I have empathy for rape victims, of course, but I love the art and writings of authors of manga, manhwa etc. I won't start reading any story already biased and projecting things onto stories that aren't there. I want to feel the emotions the author wants to evoke in me as I read. I want to empathize with the characters because the writer brought about those feelings through their storytelling skill and art, not because the mere mention of rape makes me upset. Otherwise you might as well read something that doesn't upset you. My life is difficult and problematic enough already. I don't need more grief when I read, especially knowing that these authors aren't trying to offend at all, and I have tremendous respect and gratitude for their hard work. With all that, I'm keeping my mind open when I read. I surrender myself to the author and go on the journey they've created. I'm not going to get pissed about anything they want to write about and express with their art. There's too much at stake.
Some disagree, but I think that fans shouldn't lean on artists to change their art. If you're against coercion, maybe you should not coerce others. Harassing artists till they finally yield and let themselves have their sacred right to self expression be compromised - there's better ways to spend your time, maybe by supporting artists and writers.
Here's what I think about those who want to accuse you of fetishing whatever. It's what I've always thought about and said about the inspiration for author's have when they create yaoi: For the most part, BL and yao is written by women for women. Those women are not out running all the hell over Manhattan trying to sniff in some gay male vapors for inspiration or sitting in coffee shops, hanging on gay men's every word. hell no. Yaoi authors might be women, but every woman has a man inside, and authors reach down inside themselves to create their male characters and stories. Their characters come from deep inside themselves. No more than mr spock is based on little green aliens is yaoi based on gay men. The characters belong to the authors, the fans, and to the genre itself.
Think about it. Why would yaoi authors write directly about gay men? They don't have the knowledge or experience, and they don't have the disrespect some imply. The characters created by authors of yaoi are the legitimately owned characters they write about. They're not about gay men, they are about the male based characters that come from within the mind. If an author has had the experience of being human. They, we, have every right to make creative works based on our own human experience. I stand with yaoi authors and support them fully.
There are a few ego-maniacs out there who want to make people feel bad about reading yaoi and BL. I don't think they have a leg to stand on.
I've done translation, decensoring, cleaning, redrawing, typesetting, leading a translation team, dealing with international groups, and other shit on stories like Deadlock, Hyacinth, Juliet no Baka, Uchuu no Muzuku, Shoku Chudokuu, Put a Smile On, Get Me Out etc.
This is my Daiya No Ace (Diamond no Ace, Ace of the Diamond) Baseball Story on AAO - titled Miracle Miyuki https://archiveofourown.org/works/20826425/chapters/49508135
feel free to read at will. Please leave my webtoon alone for now.
*boring edit: I said from 10 to 2.7 because I knew of one person who severely downvoted my webcomic a few months ago who. there were two others I knew who had also came from mgo, didn't like my opinions, and dragged hard on my rating. One of the manson family did the same a couple of months ago. In a wip webcomic that hasn't ever been promoted in any way, with little traffic, 4 or 5 people severely downvoting can have a huge impact. I was counting those people in when I said 10. to 2.7. I don't look at those ratings often enough to have a tight grip of every up and down, so I might be off. I don't know. I don't want to know. I'm just a little tired of being called a liar.
Also, anyone who hates a particular manga, manhwa, or webcomic will usually give it somewhere in the range of 5.0 if it has the slightest redeeming value. One star is so outrageously low that it has to be counted as the product of sabotage. Valid or not, however, it's counted as valid. It's unfortunate because those ratings do count for things I guess most people don't think of when they downrate for vengeance.
The entire business with finding out that people I didn't previously know were the same people who knew me only from comments I made in the Put a Smile CS. the manhwa here on mgo. Those people who came from the forum section of mgo created a situation where my webcomic was so blatantly exposed to real harm, and they did it for no other reason than they disagreed with my opinions. I didn't know them at all. in hadn't heard of their actions until their hate campaign was far along. No one told me it was happening. I was completely blindsided. I'm still sorting it all out.
Those people don't actually know my opinions except to deliberately misunderstand them and make me out to be a criminal, pervert in real life. It's not true. Everything I say and have said is within the understanding that it's about written and illustrated fantasy works here on the internet, certainly not about real life as they've misconstrued.
Enough time has gone by and the perps have lied a lot, thinking I don't have any proof of what they did. I've finally decided to post my screen shots. https://www.mangago.me/thing/about/571500/
I... want to make a little disclaimer here. I'm afraid that somewhere in a discussion I said something like rape in fantasy and real life rape both have their purposes and both are needed. omg LOL What I meant to say was Rape in Fantasy and Acting out a consensual fantasy both had their blah blah .... something like that. I can't remember the point I was trying to make, and now I can't find the discussion, so I'm putting this note here so when I find it, if I did indeed make that hairbrained mistake.. lol.. this will serve to say that that's not what I meant to say! lol not at all! sorry!