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 "Pet 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
I don't believe they'll actually try to ban porn, I think they just said it to appeal to transphobic morons, and won't really do anything. I am optimistic that the idiotic policies of Agenda 47 and Project 2025 (like "the wall" was in Trump's last presidency) will be recognised as such, and only ever implemented in a half-arsed form, if at all. But if (that's a massive "if". They probably won't) they DO actually try to enact the policies they claimed, I'm seriously considering volunteering for the resistance in the probable civil war (it won't be over porn, but would likely be over the deportation plan). Though considering that the majority of American voters sided with MAGA, I might not bother, and would rather suggest that you flee the country. I am not being hyperbolic. Make a plan to leave the USA, or (if you are willing) to fight a war for your rights. Don't expect to have to act on it, because it is honestly very unlikely that Project 2025 will be enacted, despite Trump's victory. But consider the possibility. It seemed unfathomable to me that Trump could win the election, yet he did. It seems unfathomable that Trump could enact the policies of Project 2025, yet he might. Remember that just over 100 thousand Jews fled Germany in the 1930s, yet millions died, who believed the situation could not get worse and would "blow over". It's not yet obvious whether we are facing a similar scenario. Don't panic, but acknowledge the reality of the situation, and at least prepare for the worst-case even if you probably won't have to act on it. The situation probably isn't as bad as the most extreme alarmists think (a civil war, genocide, or complete collapse of democracy is not inevitable), but I suspect it's still a lot worse than the majority of people think. I can't help but think of the Jews in Nazi Germany. 90%+ of them were wrong about just how fucked they were, and the majority were murdered because they couldn't GTFO once the shit hit the fan. 90%+ of people probably arent wrong again, but they might be, and they shouldn't take the risk. I don't live in the USA. If I did, I wouldn't immediately flee; but I would make sure I had a plan to do so, if necessary. I would also make sure I had a secondary plan, in case the border was closed (honestly, it is extremely unlikely that this would be needed, but why take the risk? Would you bet your life on a 1:1000 chance when the cost is only a few hours of contingency planning?).
I don't believe they'll actually try to ban porn, I think they just said it to appeal to transphobic
I know this will come across as alarmist or a conspiracy theory. Similar warnings in 1936 Germany would have too. I want to emphasise the fact that I don't think the current situation is anywhere as bad as it was back then. I just don't want you or anyone else to take the risk that it might be. I'm probably just being paranoid, and I hope so.
I know this will come across as alarmist or a conspiracy theory. Similar warnings in 1936 Germany wo
