i designed Erika this way pretty intentionally-- ghost clothes did not make sense on her. they just didn't work narratively; there's no single outfit that it makes sense for her to wear forever and having her change clothes is kinda goofy in a way that doesn't really work either, even though i do a lot of goofs. no clothes had the right vibe. so i went with barbie doll nudity. common workaround! the Ranma Strategy! AND STILL:
-bluesky's stupid AI moderation immediately clocked the heresy and flagged this image sexually suggestive. it was un-flagged on appeal and does not even appear to have a cartoon nudity flag applied.
-i marked it mature here on tumblr because i know it's just going to get flagged anyway. i do not think it actually constitutes mature content. 🫠 but tumblr rules are opaque on whether or not nipple-less boobs, specifically, are a problem, so i erred on the side of caution to avoid getting dinged.
-i literally could not find a clear rule on pillowfort or the mastodon instance i'm on about whether or not this needs to be flagged as mature/adult content/nsfw/whatever. these places do allow mature content. i just... don't know whether they count this as mature.
-i don't know if i can post this on Cara because they just say "no NSFW" with no explanation of what constitutes "NSFW". is artistic nudity NSFW? we just don't know.
-if i posted this on Ko-Fi, i would most likely have to mark my entire Ko-Fi as 18+, forever, because it contains, again, BARBIE DOLL NUDITY.
toyhouse and sheezyart say it's fine. it's not mature content to them. i don't have to flag it as anything. Art Fight would also not impose a filter requirement. shoutout to all of them for being fucking normal about it (and for having clear rules regarding nipples and lack thereof).
Sailor Moon aired on TV in the 90s with transformation sequences that were about the same level of implied magical nudity and it was fucking fine. meanwhile, i feel like i'm kinda rolling the dice whenever i post art of this character. mature or not mature? who fucking knows! probably comes down to individual moderators!
here's the kicker: while waiting for the bluesky moderation appeal i drew 5 lines onto her and posted it again. sort of as a joke. 5 lines. to give her the appearance of wearing a bodysuit instead of implied nudity.
i was like, oh it'll probably still pick out the Woman Shape and that'll be it. stock photo pose artists like AdorkaStock and TrueRef (this is an endorsement btw. give them money) get flagged all the time even though they are fully clothed in bodysuits/athleticwear. but no. the AI trained on like all the porn on the internet saw the laziest bodysuit anyone has ever drawn and was easily duped. this version did not get the auto flag. pure luck, maybe, but it was still just like... are you fucking serious? are you for real????
what's my point? i just think this is a really good litmus test for how stupid cultural rules (specifically american cultural rules i guess) are around nudity. you can argue i have an edge case here, i guess, but it's just so absurd. it's so silly. there are cities in europe with infinitely naked-er statues, outdoors, that children walk by all the time and nobody bursts into flames. Animal Crossing, the world's most E-rated game, has nude statues in it. no reported deaths!!!! i never even heard of anyone complaining about that and it came out in 2020. a huge year for mindless conservative shrieking!
what really put the frenzy damage meter on me, is like: the day i posted this, it was Easter, and my timelines on every website were full to the brim with anime characters in bunny suits. my feeds were spilling over with bunny-suited tiddies of every gender. those are pretty indisputably A Horny Thing. like, it takes all kinds to make an earth, i'm sure there are people out there drawing bunny suits for non-horny reasons somewhere, but they are definitely a minority. if Erika were wearing a bunny suit here, i could post her on Ko-Fi without marking my page NSFW. i could be certain that it'd be safe to post her on Cara. if i put her in a sexy/revealing outfit, i wouldn't have to be as careful, because there are stricter rules around nonsexual nudity than there are about outright fetishistic clothedness. AGGGGHHHHHH.
i am aware of the forces at work. nobody needs to introduce me to the 101 level stuff here re: payment processors, christian fascist billionaire freaks owning everything, etc. i am also aware that actual NSFW artists drawing actual porn have it 5000000% worse than me, which is part of why i'm screaming about this. i've been paying attention. this didn't like, come as a surprise to me. it's just annoying and i refuse to be annoyed quietly. i hope i live to see this white christian nonsense chased back into the megachurches and mcmansions where it belongs.
