damianblack

[damianblack]

When you thought it would be easy peasy lemon squeezy but it turns out to be difficult difficult lemon difficult.

[damianblack]

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.

[damianblack]

In the D&D campaign I'm running with my wife's siblings, one of them learned about how trolls regenerate within minutes of any damage not caused by fire or acid, and then asked why people don't just like. Cage them and eat them, forever. Why there aren't troll meat dungeons in the king's castle as a safeguard against sieges or famines.

And you know, I thought it was a fair question, so I said that if you eat enough troll meat, you start getting troll-y. And then I went further and just treated it like troll flesh is a general contaminant - if you eat enough troll, you'll turn into a troll, but if you bury enough dead troll flesh in a forest, the trees will start growing in strange ways, and will scream and heal and bleed when you hit them with axes.

I liked this idea. So as we played further, I just played around with the idea of Troll Origins, and I came up with something sort of like the Odyssey, but instead stealing Helios's cattle, it was Hathor's, and the horrible, awful, unending immortality was her curse of the army that pillaged her lands. A god of healing does not condemn you to die, she condemns you to live.

And then I got this fun idea for maybe the king that led the army is still kind of alive in the troll taint. Like a sort of literal fisher king. The kingdom is sick because he is, literally, the kingdom. The trees that bleed, bleed his blood and their screams are his screams. He is both the faintly green bear running down the mountain and the faintly green deer and there is no way past this without suffering. He is the entire ecosystem, and he eats nothing but himself and he dreams nothing but death and yet still, on and on and on and on, he lives.

Anyway they're traveling next session so I'm throwing this shit at them. I already have some gross ideas for like. Describing everything like it's a body (flowers red as blood, white as bone, pink as meat, grass fine as hair) then finally throwing horrible living things at them. Trees that grow eyeballs that turn and stare at them, or flowers with teeth instead of petals and trolls that speak in long dead tongues about how they wish they'd never tried to rob a god.

Anyway I'm passing this on because this is my new troll lore and I want it to become canonized in the way that all D&D lore becomes canonized: By having eople read it and go "oh, neat" then start doing that too.

[damianblack]

reposting from bsky, but heres a cheat sheet for how to properly send a message to payment processing companies over the recent highly conservative shift in where youre allowed to legally spend your money

more info here!

[damianblack]

Visa and Mastercard may be getting a lot of calls about their adult content policies, but I just called in to PayPal and not only was there no wait, the customer service rep I got had never had one of these calls before (they were very nice about it.)

Don't overlook the online processors - even more than Visa and Mastercard they are the ones pressuring online retailers. PayPal is the one that's been pressuring Patreon over the last year or so.

I've had no luck reaching Stripe, all of the numbers people have dug up ring through as disconnected.

[damianblack]

I hate to go through this all over again. On July 23rd, Itch.io, one of the most popular platforms for hosting queer and adult independent media, went through a large-scale crackdown on adult content.

This was primarily aimed at games, but novels and comics were hit in the process. Most adult content has been de-listed from the site's search, and some creators were banned without warning. Any funds banned creators have not been paid are currently being withheld by Itch.io.

This crackdown was done, as it always is, because of payment processors like Mastercard and Visa threatening to pull their services.

The payment processors caved to an influence campaign by Australian extremist anti-pornography group Collective Shout, who have been inundating Visa and Mastercard with calls to force video game platforms to stop hosting adult content - which, of course, includes anything queer.

Collective Shout claim to have sent in 1000 emails to get this result, but there are a WAY more than a thousand of us. We need as many people as possible to make as much noise as we can!

Below the cut are numbers and scripts, all you need to do is follow the step by step guide.

Graphic, contact info, alt text, and script by voiddebris on Bluesky, also available collected in a handy document:

Paypal:

Phone (US): 1-888-221-1161

Phone (outside US): 1-402-935-2050

Hours: 6am - 6pm PT

Online (for non-users or logged out - UK bc US site ONLY allows logged in users)

Mastercard:

Phone (US): 1-800-627-8372

Phone (outside US): 1-636-722-7111

Online form

Visa:

Phone (US): 1-800-847-2911

Non-US numbers

Online form

Script:

Customer Complaint Dept, This message is to lodge an official complaint about the ongoing rampant restrictions your company has placed on legal sales made by legitimate businesses. These restrictions are not only counter to the concept of freedom of speech and expression, but they harm consumers, businesses, and they harm your company’s bottom line. The following actions are absolutely necessary to protect the freedoms of your client base and the sustainability of legitimate business practices: 1. Remove from your Terms of Service any mention barring the use of your service for sale and purchase of legal products. 2. Contact Steam (Valve), Itch.io, and any other company you have previously put pressure on to retract your content restrictions. Put in place protections to prevent such restrictions from being put in place in the future without ample warning and time to contest them. If these changes aren't made then I, along with many others will be forced to seek other options for processing payments. Sincerely, A Concerned Customer

***

OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO

Sign this petition from the ACLU:

Americans - contact your representatives about payment processors acting as censors! You can find your reps’ contact information on 5calls.org.

Script, from here:

Hello Representative/Senator [LAST NAME], -or- Hello office of Representative/Senator [LAST NAME], My name is [YOUR FIRST NAME/SCREEN NAME] and I am one of your constituents. I am calling today to express my concerns with technological censorship. Legal and legitimate adult entertainment is being banned in this country. These bans are not by legislators, but by payment processors like Mastercard and Visa. Mastercard and Visa are improperly creating legislation online through their user and merchant policies. They are banning creator and user access to content that is legal and legitimate. They are inciting fear and panic to encourage censorship. Please take a stand against this impermissible censorship. This is a direct attack on an adult's right to legal content. No one but the legislative branch should be allowed to create legislation. Please support the Federal Trade Commission in their stand against technological censorship to protect the first amendment. Thank you for taking the time to listen today.

[damianblack]

✨COMMISSIONS OPEN✨

Now offering discounts on group illustrations! 20% off for groups of 4 or more~

Currently taking 5 commission slots!

Carrd | Ko-Fi

If you’re interested in a commission or have any questions send me an email at MissSheepyComms@Gmail.com 💌

[damianblack]

Uk media reporting on the OSA:

Reality:

[damianblack]

what YOU can do to fight KOSA

KOSA, or the Kids Online Safety Act, is back after failing to pass last year. If history has taught us anything, blanket censorship poses a very real danger to marginalized peoples including the LGBTQ+ community. Because it's never about the kids.

The best time to fight was yesterday; the second best time to fight is right fucking now. So I've scrounged like a stressed-out raccoon in an unattended garbage bin to dig up a few resources you'll hopefully consider to be helpful.

🪶 Contacting your representative is probably the most obvious step. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has made this easy as shit with a webpage that will message your rep for you. The page provides a template you can use as-is or edit freely, and a short form asking for your name, address, and contact information.

Not that you can't also reach out directly, which I do encourage because the whole process is pretty routine. To find out who to contact, you can look up your House Rep on the official govt site.

🪶 Consider also signing other petitions and supporting organizations dedicated to fighting for a free and open internet.

In addition to the ACLU, I highly recommend Fight for the Future...

... and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

I've also seen the Stop KOSA petition floating around, if you'd like to throw your name into that hat as well.

Stay vigilant and keep fighting, internet enjoyers.

[damianblack]

there are two competing sects on this website - one that uses the word "spicy" to mean "neurodivergent" and one that uses the word "spicy" to mean "sexual content." i do not like either of them

[damianblack]

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

[damianblack]

Nothing hit me like a squelching sound when I touched the foam

WAIT PLEASE CHECK HERE FOR OUR 4K CELEBRATION

Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4

[damianblack]

I have had two sword fights. Both were wonderful.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Part 5

[damianblack]

I’ll make more of these but please be respectful and know it’s not good manners to ask a stranger on the internet their medical history.

Also I reached 2k so please check out that post to help choose the event we should have. ALSO I CAN ACTUALLY DRAW PLEASE GO CHECK MY OTHER WORK 😭

Part1 Part 2 Part 4 Part 5

(Check back on my page for more parts soon :3)

[damianblack]

So two of the kids I watch gathered that I am a witch because A: I like bugs B: My hair is purple and C: my bones make weird sounds. They very much like me and call me the nice witch.

Part 1 here!

Part 3

(Check my page for more stories soon)

[damianblack]

I usually default to the Herobrine one but occasionally I claim that my sister was a bear and we used to fight a lot.

Part 2

[damianblack]

when someone tries to make china out as uniquely evil ('authoritarian') for having official state censorship policies, bear in mind that three usamerican companies are currently globally enforcing censorship policies founded in a right wing christian worldview. this is the 'freedom of speech' capitalism gets you!