it's crucial that you untie "special interest" from "expertise". "it's true just trust me bro" doesn't have any extra weight when you add "I know because it's my special interest". you are not immune from falling for misinformation, and you are not immune from sharing misinformation. not to mention the fact that "amount of knowledge" isn't even a requirement for something being classified as a special interest lol!

I think using archaic terms to get around censorship should be the norm. Calling rape ‘grape’ or using the grape emoji is ridiculous, if they’re not going to let us use the correct terminology, let’s go back to saying ‘outraged’. Calling murder ‘unaliving’ or ‘m-word’ is also fucking ridiculous. Let’s start using ‘slain’ again. They can’t ban ‘slay’ and ‘slayed’ because it is such a ubiquitous slang term that going back to the other meaning of the word would be a perfect way to skirt the censors.

All the torso animated studies.

you're just mad because you're hungry and tired and your legs hurt and you head hurts and you're too hot and you have depression

So the new itch.io guidelines are out and they are both predictably bad and also quite unpredictably bad. There's so much to go over here but here are some of the highlights:

First we have the broadly worded content restrictions. So much of this is just strictly bad for several reasons (for example, you cannot have a NSFW game that doesn't even fetishize rape but has rape be an important thematic element under these new rules) but my personal favorite is that these are so broad that huge swaths of content are just banned from itch.io. You like VNs of monster girls having sex? Sorry, but your favorite spider girl VN is animal-related, we cannot prove that you don't want to fuck spiders so its gone.

(a real problem anyone thinks about??????)

Game where you can transformed by magical artifacts and sometimes fucked? Sorry, that's non-consensual content. Banned. You cannot be transformed into a maid against your will. You also cannot have your protagonist call an older woman "mommy" because likeeeee that's incestual right?

"Minor-presenting" what the fuck does this mean. Genuinely. If a grown woman wears a fetish uniform is that minor presenting??? What the fuck are you talking about.

Also by the way if they feel your content is "too bad" for their platform, which includes a list of conditions incredibly broad to contain things like "a woman who likes being gagged during sex", they will just steal your revenue. No no no not just the revenue from the work in question. All of it. This makes any NSFW work a ticking timebomb, especially since itch.io doesn't have the fucking staff to deal with all of this! There's no second chances. You are not protected against fraudulent report or our dumb as fuck employees.

itch.io right now is just not a safe platform for NSFW content, and honestly, it really should be said, a fair swath of SFW content too. Don't use it, find alternative ways to survive in the market right now.

It's not going to be easy, but it's necessary. Here's a link to an article going over some solutions. I cannot personally vouch for any of these in particular but you need to do what you gotta.

Also, harass VISA and Mastercard. Phone calls over emails. Ruin their workflow. Do it for weeks, don't give up.

im joining the war on gross disgusting pornographic content on the side of gross disgusting pornographic content

So Trump's DOJ is suing the state of Washington because WA's new mandated reporting law says that clergy (among many other professions) are legally obligated to report ongoing child abuse if they know about it. And the Christofascists in the Trump regime call that "anti-catholic"

And all I can think of is this iconic post

Museums not giving stolen artifacts and bodies back is bonkers. Like what if someone from China went into Arlington cemetery and dug up JFK’s dead body and took him and his eternal flame back to China and refused to give him back like that would be pretty messed up and kind of weird right like put John back that’s not where he goes but that’s basically what the British museum does every day