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Please be civil in the comment sections!
3 weeks ago
General
Wow, haven't made a journal in a long time, took me awhile to remember how to do it, lmao.
First off, I really and truly appreciate the engagement my comic has received!
I am incredibly honored that people have been so invested in the story, and that so many people have taken time to leave comments expressing their opinions and thoughts.
I have expressed over on bluesky that the quantity of negative comments had been bringing me down, but at this point so many people have reached out with positive things to say that I have developed a bit of a thicker skin about it, and I think it's probably a good thing to create something with so many disparate thoughts.
I don't mind people disliking the actions or motivations of the characters involved, it's totally okay to express your opinions in that manner.
However, I do want to stress: please only read the comic if you are enjoying it.
There are definitely people who only ever comment to complain about this or that, and then reply to other people in the comments to either complain more, or tell the person that they're wrong for enjoying it. I really do want my comment section to be a place where people carry themselves with some level of tact, and I do not want it to devolve into a deluge of negativity. I am absolutely not telling you to not comment your criticism about the characters if that's how you feel, however if you are enjoying the comic, it would be nice to express that as well lmao.
Like I said before, please do not force yourself to read something you do not like, especially if it leads to the spread of negativity to people who are enjoying it, it creates a really toxic environment for everyone.
I am just one person sharing something that I am passionate about, it's really an privilege that so many people are engaged with it, but I do want to create a mostly positive environment for people to engage with it in.
Anyway, that's really all I had to say! Thank you for reading!
First off, I really and truly appreciate the engagement my comic has received!
I am incredibly honored that people have been so invested in the story, and that so many people have taken time to leave comments expressing their opinions and thoughts.
I have expressed over on bluesky that the quantity of negative comments had been bringing me down, but at this point so many people have reached out with positive things to say that I have developed a bit of a thicker skin about it, and I think it's probably a good thing to create something with so many disparate thoughts.
I don't mind people disliking the actions or motivations of the characters involved, it's totally okay to express your opinions in that manner.
However, I do want to stress: please only read the comic if you are enjoying it.
There are definitely people who only ever comment to complain about this or that, and then reply to other people in the comments to either complain more, or tell the person that they're wrong for enjoying it. I really do want my comment section to be a place where people carry themselves with some level of tact, and I do not want it to devolve into a deluge of negativity. I am absolutely not telling you to not comment your criticism about the characters if that's how you feel, however if you are enjoying the comic, it would be nice to express that as well lmao.
Like I said before, please do not force yourself to read something you do not like, especially if it leads to the spread of negativity to people who are enjoying it, it creates a really toxic environment for everyone.
I am just one person sharing something that I am passionate about, it's really an privilege that so many people are engaged with it, but I do want to create a mostly positive environment for people to engage with it in.
Anyway, that's really all I had to say! Thank you for reading!
I Just wanted to chime in to express my support for what you've said. While your comic isn't perfectly suited to my tastes, it also isn't mine: it's yours. I wish that more consumers recognized that they aren't entitled to the content they consume when they have no financial-stake or effort in producing it.
Keep making the art you want to make: it's yours, not ours. <3
I read it, cause I want to support it. i want to see where it may or may no go.
Is it my complete taste? I don't know. Am I enjoying it cause Muhny made it. Yes.
Personally I love the growth of Muhny's art and style as much as I love watching the character building.
Will it hit all my likes? No.
But damn I want to support it anyway I can cause if you bring down the person making it. They might stop making everything in general.
I don't think people realize that. I stopped drawing cause I was doing it for other people. I wasn't doing it for me.
Id hate to see Muhny go through that.
"But they'll still be mean!" Okay. Muhny's journal has far more reach than a few ne'er-do-wells in the comment section of one page of the comic. (And this is a reminder that they are only a few, not "most people hate this actually" like some of them purport!)
You might be right if they don't know any better though since there's other comments in this journal with users apologizing for their previous comments. Normally I just assume anyone acting nasty isn't operating in good faith to begin with, so I'm somewhat surprised by that.
By and large, most of the people I spoke to apologized for it when I explained that what they were doing was not having the effect they thought it was, and that it was causing some harm instead. Faced with that reality, they realized they were taking it a bit too far.
Whatever made you cynical though is valid. There's plenty to be cynical about. We live in a very cruel world. My optimism is a survival tactic. If I believe in nothing then I'll give up and lose the power to affect change myself in my spaces. Not everyone needs to feel that way though, and I genuinely wish you the best.
I think that's the main dilemma here. Maybe a handful of people simply didn't realize how entitled & overbearing they were being and would amend their behavior upon learning so, but my presumption is that the majority view their discomfort with the themes of the comic as being indicative of there being something morally wrong with the comic itself. They therefore see themselves as having the high ground and feel morally righteous in expressing their discontent. They are unable to parse that this emotional uproar is over a work of fiction they don't have to consume, that is from the labor of an artist pursuing what they are passionate about.
Past this journal, I think not engaging is likely the course of action with the best outcome, mainly because choosing to engage involves a lot of emotional labor that often does not change others' behavior. It's certainly frustrating to see so much negativity posted on something you / your partner made and to leave it unaddressed, especially when the internet often doesn't incentivize sharing positive remarks to balance it out, but I hope many of us have now made clear how much we love the comic (as all the coolest people do!)
I think that that labor is worthwhile. If even one person decides to act with even an iota more empathy before they run off at the mouth, it will have been worth speaking out about it.
Seriously the behavior I've seen from some of the users commenting belong to children not grown adults
Hope you continue to feel passionate for the comic, it really is a quality piece of work and I’m sorry if anything I said was upsetting. It was never my intention to hurt any bodies feelings, least of all yours.
Hopefully folks will chill out and review their own typed words before sending them out, and maybe realize what their words are conveying. And if they continue not to, well, that's what the ban hammer's for!
I’m glad you’re not taking the negative comments to heart though. Whether those folks see it or not, you’ve really made something special to a lot of people ;w;
....genuinely I am confused by a lot of the people commenting. I haven't seen moralizing this obnoxious since the last surge of anti-digestion people went around. Even as someone who tends to dislike explicit cruelty in vore stuff, I genuinely don't see why you've been getting the negative attention you have been.
I guess you can interpret it as meaning that people are getting very into your writing, at least! If the characters make them emotional like that, haha...
I'm glad you seem to plan on continuing, though! Make what you like, after all, and don't let other people get you down. You have lots of fans, too!
You are a good.
It's good to occasionally remind the vore folks about the whole - Guys, be nice and normal. Thing hah.
In one way, it's a positive thing, that takes on a negative spin. People find your characters endearing, your story work engaging and grow invested.
But y'know, and this is where the fatal vore thing tends to cause trouble for some.
I for one, really like your fatal stuff, have enjoyed the comics for a good bit now, and probably will continue to do so, your characters are charming, their personalities are fun and the way you draw them is super emotive. Which contrasts nicely with the visceral nature of what happens once inside.
Happy to hear it doesn't bring you down, and good that you're putting something out there. Because it's frankly not fair towards you that people get some form of entitlement or get angry at you or your work for not catering to their specific likes.
I get why. People engage with this kink in wildly different ways. Some for comfort, some for a thrill, some for the fatalistic aspects, etc. And while the narrative often espoused (by me as well, on some occasions) is that people that are into the softer stuff or lean heavily in that direction are more heavily to blame, the other side is not without it's bad actors.
People have a lot of trouble separating how something makes them feel from the personal. By which I mean, people struggle to recognize that feeling bad is not always a bad thing? It's certainly not always a thing that you have a right to express frustration over in vitriolic ways.
There's plenty of art I simply can't engage with because their themes touch a nerve for me in deeply uncomfortable ways, but like... I don't blame the art for that. I just know instinctively that no matter how good it is at communicating itself in it's own beautiful way, I'm just not the person meant to enjoy it.
Muhny has a cartoonish style and pushed that further here by drawing the characters in chibi proportions. People see this and go 'oh fetish stuff with cute characters'. They don't expect sinister betrayal or darker themes to permeate it. And while it's signposted by the everything he made prior to this comic and the actual comic itself (seriously, reread the comic the next time anyone who might be reading this thinks that Lily being like this came out of nowhere. It's extremely evident.) it's still understandable to walk into something, get invested, and then feel betrayed when it stopped being what they wanted.
There's not a lot of solutions to a problem like this. People have deeply personal stakes in this kink. Whole communities filled with found family and deep relationships have sprouted. It's an intrinsic part of people's DNA. And like, let's be honest, a lot of us came to these communities for shelter in part because we struggle with social cues and following decorum. This is a haven for outcasts, and though I wouldn't trade it for anything that does have its disadvantages.
Anger is a wonderful emotion. It's a clear alarm bell telling you exactly how you feel about something. But its job is not to guide one's hand. Anger tells you you're upset. It's not meant to also guide your response. I'd love it a lot if more people could just temper that and understand that while they're entitled to feel the way that they do, the way they choose to express that feeling matters greatly.
And hah, yeah. I personally do the same thing, often I tend to look at the softer side when stuff like this tends to go down, not entirely without reason. But yeah. There's absolutely bad actors all over that spectrum, without a doubt.
Hard agree, often it seems to be the case that people can't separate their feelings and views from some stories, to the point they personally might feel betrayed about what was always forewarned in the tags below. Art and creative work often evokes emotions, that's kind if the idea.
Especially as a writer, you're constantly thinking about story beats, thinking about vibes, how things fit in the overall narrative. How you want to play an manipulate the pieces in play and how they'd interact with one another.
Just because a story goes a direction you don't agree with, as you said, gives you absolutely no right to become a vitriolic asshat about it. It's lame, entitled and kind of misses the point entirely. There needn't be a moral crusade because a character in a story did something you dislike. They're not real. And bad ends are often not only very fun to write but also very interesting to explore narrative wise
And again, big agree. There's plenty of subject matter that I find highly distasteful or dislike the overall feel of- But y'know, not for me. Not my fight, not my problem. I just scroll on- I'm not going to launch into some tirade over it, I'll just ignore it. And if it gets really in my face, just block a tag or something. A bit of emotional maturity isn't a big ask when we're talking content made for a mature audience.
I think you've hit the nail on its head with the cartoonish style bit, for some readers it might give them the idea that it'll be like most other cartoonishly styled works - Only for it to hit them with themes generally less common in the space, betrayal, manipulation, abusive relationships and deception.
But those are super interesting, fulfilling and- Let's be honest. Sometimes really hot themes to work with and play with.
Oh no 100% it's been telegraphed, it's been implied and it's been insinuated all throughout the series.
I really enjoy the casually callous or irreverent/unrepentant predator trope, especially when they've got an outwardly sweet and lovely disposition, the dissonance and two sided nature of it is incredibly fun to explore.
And again- we're of the same mind, this place, by its very nature is on the fringe, it has many wonderful, often somewhat eccentric or otherwise colourful personalities in it. But, that doesn't give them carte blanche to badger, bludgeon or belittle others for liking something what they enjoy, when the entirety of it is squarely fiction, made up, and most of all. Not made specifically for them.
Interacting with stories that might be challenging, hot but confusing, hot but also what the fuck is some of the joy of this particular type of content. I adore writing betrayal, manipulative or casual themes. It's incredibly fun to play with the audience expectation, before a character shows that even cute things have teeth. And claws will do their work, whoever's the one using them.
I really enjoyed your response, it was a lovely read. And found myself agreeing with most, if not all of it. Thank you for your well thought through post.
And now.
WOE WALL OF TEXT UPON YE
It is however been very interesting to read through some of the comments and seeing how engaged folks are in discussion involving what may happen next and theories.