nefelegies

[nefelegies]

IMPORTANT ROUNDUP: asks, statistics, "good science", and "the follow up video". i would really appreciate if you gave me your attention span for this one.

an update i gave on youtube that i don't know if people here saw: i may be doing a follow up after all now that i'm slightly less freaked, because my data was way too much of a mess and i would feel guilty if people began taking it and running with it while unaware of the informality and weakness of my study. i am potentially working with some people on discord to do a pedantically objective demographic study that will help clear the air but it will take some time to come out. the sampling methods and the questions being asked are very different, but/as such, the percentages that are coming out of that one are admittedly less bleak; this is of course a good thing! i am not a defeatist i am not blackpill or whatever i WANT things to not suck. i very badly want them to not suck. this new study (at least in its current stage) is more about objective demographic measures and not necessarily the far more subjective or qualitative or "investment gauging" measures i considered in my original; although i believe strongly that these measures matter, i don't know if any metrics i originally considered can give an accurate picture. i guess in a way i wish i had either taken way more time on the data gathered, engaged with it differently, or presented the video solely as a matter of opinion, but i felt that no amount of talk piece would get me taken seriously. to be clear: all the data presented is the data i collected. the data i collected was collected in the exact way described by the video. i just am not sure that my methods produced results i may "responsibly" draw conclusions about, especially when people start taking them as gospel (guys please i tried to disclaimer not to do this....).

regardless of whether you agree with my rhetoric (and i of course agree with my own rhetoric), the truth of science is that research conducted with the intent of proving a truth the author is already convinced of (see: anything published by BYU about you know. lol.) is not good research. again, even if intentions are pure and that truth was held to be objective, setting out to prove it would be contrary to the philosophy of science and "good practice". even if these things are abstract to you, they do matter greatly to me, as this is my career path, and if i knew when i started that i'd hit 100k and not like. 500 people total, i wouldn't have taken the tongue-in-cheek approach i did.

i worried about whether or not it is irresponsible to leave the video up in its current form but i am also worried that with its current spread, any move on my part to take it down would see it reuploaded by someone else, at which point i would be powerless to provide disclaimers such as these. so it remains up, but with some added context like this in the description, and comments are still disabled to try and .... slow down the spread. i guess.

all that being said: as i will likely mention in my follow up, the inability to objectively measure "who cares about what characters" does not change the reality so many people have come to me to talk about. i don't know yet if i'll compile for the video the legitimately HUNDREDS of testimonies of people telling me they've been noticing this attitude in artist circles for years, but it will be trivial to do so if i want. even if these things resist the clear quantification i would like to be able to provide (i've always been a literal thinker), the impact on countless artists' and creatives' lived experiences is undeniable. there is also something ironic about the fact that, in making a video claiming the community secretly harbored misogyny, i have been targeted by all manner of explicitly misogynistic and homophobic harassment. i wonder if the video may have been received differently if i had clarified that i am dysphoric, or that i use any pronouns, or if i had made my cishet brother do my voiceover.

i don't really know where i'm going, this got meandering. i guess what i mean to say with all of this is: i am grateful to everyone who has felt touched or even vindicated by my video; i am grateful to everyone who has approached the topic with deep self reflection; i am grateful to everyone that has reached out with a newfound commitment to be the change. i stand by every opinion presented in my video and maybe one day i will make a pure opinion piece on this same topic where i really try and grapple with "why". i just wish i had been more careful to shove messy numbers into the world i suppose.

also, about asks:

good lord there is Many Asks. um. like Many A Lot. i don't know if i should reply to them individually publicly because this is meant to be an art account and presumably none of you want your dashboards flooded with them but i also don't know if people would be underwhelmed to receive private replies????? i considered grouping at least all the positive asks into one big post but i didn't want that to come off as dismissive(?). i hope everyone knows i have been reading them as they arrive but i just. it's a weird time for me right now mentally and i somehow picked the busiest irl period of my life to instigate all of this and the idea of how long it will take to actually reply to everyone is becoming a looming threat.

thank you to everyone that actually read all this. p.s. someone made a really thoughtful response that you should watch--it's in spanish but has english subs.

[nefelegies]

I'm turning off anon. I will do my best to reply to the thoughtful comments in my inbox in due time, including those that are critical but respectful. All I am asking is that you are respectful and engage with me in good faith, because my video was done honestly and in good faith. The harassment campaign against me is genuinely sapping my energy and not allowing me to sleep or eat. I had to leave work today and I feel nauseated and hypervigilant worse than I have in a very long time. Before you try and contact me regarding my video ask yourself this: Did you take time and consider that I am a normal, real person approaching what they view as a real extant issue in the only way that made sense to them at the time? and that has never had 55k+ eyes on them at the same time even in their worst nightmares? Can you imagine how you would have acted in my shoes, making a thinkpiece for fun and thinking you are sending it into the void as with everything else you've ever made that no one has ever noticed, and then being attacked at this scale?

I am trying to avoid stepping back entirely because I started this discussion and I bear responsibility from that and I don't want anyone to think I'm a coward or that I'm walking back on my beliefs. But I may have to disconnect from everything for a little while. This has just gotten really really out of hand.

[nefelegies]

I'm going to be blunt: You had the right idea, but I really, really think that you should have rethought the idea of using such sloppy evidence. I say this not as a hater, but as someone who really, really likes the idea of the research. I get that you didn't set out to make something truly scientific, and you meant to make some casual food for thought, but instead you now have people convinced you're just full of shit. Show them wrong: do a proper study. 1/2

(if you have sent me an ask and not received a reply it is because i have no brainpower left so it will take me time, i am not ignoring you.)

i'm going to be so completely honest, if this video has taught me anything it is that i am never putting myself out there again because i cannot function as a ""public figure"". i'm sorry if that's disappointing to hear, but as much as i completely agree and would love to see this undertaken a lot more rigorously (and would obviously be willing to accept it if a data set 10x the size of mine found different proportions), i cannot and will not be the one to do that. or rather: if i do it, no one online will be hearing about it publicly 👍 although my passion and curiosity for this topic have not diminished, the vitriol directed at me over the past days across youtube, my inbox here (i have not been publishing asks i find hateful and unproductive but trust me the number is high !), the art fight discord server, and even anonymous internet drama forums has thrown me into a pit of stress so deep i've had one meal since monday and vomited twice 👍 i don't say this to "guilt" or "appeal to emotion", i say it to be extremely transparent about why i do not think i will be making a follow up and it has taken a lot out of me to not straight up delete my youtube account. i understand my video was not perfect but it was my first time ever attempting anything like this and i did not feel like anyone was willing to give me any grace or even consider i might be a person behind the screen. i am grateful to the people who have enjoyed my work, and i am also grateful to the users like this anon who want to actually discuss things with me or give me constructive feedback--those are awesome, and i DO concede that if i had a do-over, there are things i would have done differently. but i've been getting called straight up slurs and i've watched as a group of people who clearly didn't think i was around to see their messages proudly called me delusional in the same breath as they admitted that they didn't watch the video and are going off of other people's descriptions of it. i am really just not cut out for this i am a very solitary and private person and this entire situation has wrecked me.

[nefelegies]

So by your logic that non binary characters are slotted to the closest binary gender based on how they look, are all your characters men? Cause they don't look like women at all. I don't mean you should make them look more fem, I just mean your characters look like dudes. Also your weird tone and attitude about gender has this fishy stench of terf double speak. How dare 12 year olds on art fight not have female characters, meanwhile you don't appear to either.

i'm actually obsessed with the fact that you managed to ignore when I said exactly how I made my categorizations while also being extremely sexist lmao. The majority of nonbinary characters were put into an "other" gender category. Any character that was considered man aligned or woman aligned was not done based off of appearance because that is a stupid metric; like I said in the video, characters in, say, the woman aligned category were characters with listed genders such as "demigirl", characters with multiple pronoun sets such as "she/they", or characters that were listed as "lesbian" or "sapphic" or "wlw" while not being stated to be binary women.

regardless: it is absolutely fucking delusional to tell me that my female characters look like men and baselessly call me a terf in the same breath. If you can't understand how much cognitive dissonance this is showing, you are beyond help. Genuinely: what does a woman look like to you?

[nefelegies]

Hi, just another person who wanted to give some positive feedback on the video 👋 I really appreciate how frank it was and how little you try to coddle the audience. As someone who went into it admittedly a bit defensive, it was honestly a valuable little shock to my system to prompt me to think harder about why I shy away from writing female characters. I feel like you were very fair and even-handed, and I really hope both for your sake and theirs that anyone who comes away from the video feeling upset will take some time to cool off and interrogate where those emotions are coming from.

i really hope so. every person I can convince to re-examine their preconceived notions and the views they espouse through their art is a huge win to me :)

[nefelegies]

Thank you for the food. 🥘 🍲 🍱 it was so good. 🍔 Your video has made me viscerally upset at the world because I’m now realizing how bad it is out there when I never have before. I am just thankful to god someone cares about their woman ocs as much as I do (my characters are also all women or like nonbinary but a little lesbian with it) and I didn’t realize how bad it was out there because I’ve basically just been playing dolls with them for years and didn’t realize how awful things could get. Some of the response on that video also kills me I wish people could take a second and use critical thinking without making excuses for themselves. It won’t kill you. You don’t even need to change your worldview about it. Just listen and take a little bit of something away from it (my message to the world). This is word salad I’m tired. Thank you for the food 🍕

thank youu ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥🥹 it's to be expected because people get very defensive when you ask them to consider the effect of society on the individual and the individual on society 

[nefelegies]

it's insane that some people are now trying to say that you were too harsh when i thought that your video was very mild (in terms of bitterness) and if i were in your place i would not be this kind at allll lol. people were caught red handed being bigoted and are now angry that they're being politely told they're in the wrong. writing the very same excuses you were debunking... it's so sad man

you have to understand anon :( a woman told them to examine their actions on the internet and that preferences aren't apolitical which is basically the same thing as shooting their dog

[nefelegies]

hi, I know it's as stupid as asking for permission to ask a question but I have many thoughts about The Video. They are quite mixed in flavor, it's not a compliment and it's not hate mail. How do you feel about getting these asks? I was wondering if you still have any desire to discuss it at all considering the comments getting paused, I have things to say but I also don't want to contribute to overwhelming you further.

i'm open to discussing things, although obviously if it's a very complicated message to reply to I might be slow! The comments were paused because of people who were very much not interested in respectful discussion lmaoo. If you want to be able to communicate a little bit more freely, please don't hesitate to shoot me a DM. I think I should have them open for everyone :)

[nefelegies]

I just want you to know you are the GOAT for your video, no other comment just thank you for making it!

^^ me

[nefelegies]

hey I loved your video you did on artfight and its women characters. Your research is incredibly well documented and spread out, and is very clear and nice. It kinda helped me realize my own bias with my characters/the ones I put on artfight and that's now something I am actively trying to improve and look into more on my own time. Thank you

Thank you so much :') I think that's a great goal to have for this year!!!

[nefelegies]

"it really wasn’t planned out or executed nearly airtight enough for this amount of scrutiny, if I had known, I would have explained myself a lot better and not been so emotional" - artfight characters are just that. Poorly planned, just for fun, and you blamed people for that. You made a sloppy research and tossed it into the wild, thinking it won't attract attention - and it did. Wishing you only the best, but maybe next time collaborate with social studies degree someone for burden like this

you seem to believe that me putting a "poorly planned" "just for fun" video out in the world expecting no one will see it has the potential to be harmful; if this is the case, why are people who are putting "poorly planned" "just for fun" characters into the wild expecting no one will see them not being held to that same standard? i saw them, and they affected me negatively to experience. am i not allowed to be affected by content posted to a public forum and attempt to grapple with it? if you can "blame" me for my work, why can i not "blame" them? not to mention that, unlike the way people have been *personally* attacking me over the opinions i presented, i have made a point of anonymizing my data, and have not personally attacked nor encouraged the harassment of a single person involved, regardless of how objectionable i found their work.

i stand by all of the points and rhetoric portrayed in my video, and for what it's worth, i do believe my findings are accurate; a look through the comments on there and the asks i have received on here will make it clear how many other people have similar testimonies.

i don't understand why certain people have been acting like i called for the immediate and brutal crucifixion of 90% of the art fight userbase when what i did was create a video in which

i disclaimed the limited scope of my study at the start,

i presented my data as openly as possible, and it is clear that i present purely observational data and all analyses thereof are matters of opinion,

i severely UNDERstated my personal qualifications to carry out a study like this in the introduction,

i even make a joke abt the study being pseudoscientific, all of these points having the express purpose of people not lending me absolute authority and not taking my word as gospel,

all in service of the premise "i have noticed demographic disparities that bother me and which i think are born of unconscious bias, and i want to encourage everyone to overturn the status quo." i was clearly being confrontational and dramatic in the video, but i fail to understand in what world asking people to self-reflect and unlearn biases constitutes a harm.

[nefelegies]

I know you're probably getting an influx of messages from your video, but just wanted to say its my first year on art fight as an Old Person with free time due to Circumstances, and you really encapsulated every emotion felt just looking through the Recent Characters page, or searching for anyone to attack in general this past few weeks. At first I thought it was because it was mostly minors and teens participating, but I quickly learned by actually viewing user profiles that the OC Misogyny Problem is still as prevalent as ever, regardless of demographic. You can go pages and pages without even glancing a single Real Woman with a bio, especially any character older than 20. Literally saw a character today and her only descriptor was that she was "kind of retarded" (mentioned after her only other information, being her height, weight, and bust size).

Great work on the data collection, and a bit of truth many need to confront within themselves even if it makes them feel bad. Shouldn't make you feel bad by proxy, either. Keep up the great work, and I'll be watching your speedpaints if you choose to keep the channel going and upload more. Cheers :^)

oh my god that profile sounds genuinely dire. and i 100% believe it because i literally saw throughout the course of my study other ones exactly as bad. one user w only male characters had a single female character that was someone else's mother and her bio was the most overtly vitriolic thing i've ever read and called her everything short of a crackwhore. it's so hard!!! like genuinely i have memories of opening recent characters to seek out targets, seeing 9 out of the 30 characters were women, and digging into every single one of their bios to see the characters were all substanceless aesthetic-over-all 16-23yearolds. that sort of experience is why i went through all of this. it's insane. it's why i really tried to focus so much on the "quality" component because i have had people telling me "i open the site and see women, checkmate" and it's like... is a single one of them a Real Character though??????????

[nefelegies]

another person here from the video, don't want to stress you out any more than already given the video's reach so I'm hoping a positive message doesn't make things worse ^^"! just wanted to say I really appreciate the work that you did in order to prove the bias that's been evidently there for a long time. I've noticed as a repeat participant in art fight that the same bias exists in the characters people choose to attack - checked with my friends, and all of us have had our men drawn wayyyy more often than our women, even when designs aren't gendered or the characters we have listed are a different ratio. it's reassuring in a sad way to know that the data is there to back up that personal experience, and I'm really grateful that you put so much thought into sharing that data. I really hope things calm down soon, and that the people being hostile to you about it can knock it off. hope you're having a good day!

i am actually so mad at myself that i ran out of steam and didn't end up collecting statistics on what characters are more likely to get attacked, because i have actually noticed this too (anecdotally of course) and it is part of the reason why i took my own male ocs down from the site completely! i felt like they were always being disproportionately favored, especially considering how low in preference i would rank them. i'd love to see someone else collect those numbers. thank you for your kind words 🥲🥲

[nefelegies]

I just watched your video and it’s so refreshing to see other people noticing and pointing this out?? Especially with like, actual statistics behind it. It really makes me feel not crazy lol. I’ve always focused on female characters, especially ones that align with my sexuality (lesbian rights wahoo). And specifically with that, I feel like whenever I see lesbian characters (if at all), they’re always hyper feminine and oftentimes white and skinny. It really sucks that people are scared of drawing more masculine or androgynous women. (Or just any women that aren’t the standard you see on TV and such). I want butch representation! I don’t know why that’s so hard for some people. (And to be honest I’ve gotta do some introspection and make some more masculine women since some of these characters are a wee bit old).

Plus, since I’m a bit younger I always feel like… too woke sometimes? At least that’s how some adults like to talk about people my age. At times it felt like I was making shit up when it came to misogyny I’d perceived in the spaces I’m in. But thank god I’m not.

Rambling aside, your art is very cool and I hope you have a very nice rest of your week!

I FELT THIS LIKE CRAZY i have some opinions regarding how women should and shouldn't be depicted that i didn't share at all in my video because they make me feel like That One Friend That's Too Woke and i knew even saying "write women as you would men" would get some people bewildered. just know i am pro butch forever (as my work hopefully makes clear) and as someone who is lesbian & pretty masc/doesnt relate to the femme experience at all irl, i do really wish i saw more representation of my type of women and even more butch4butch content. Outside of niche tumblr circles it is just so entirely completely absent :(

[nefelegies]

I'm currently setting up my profile for Artfight again this year, and watching your video made me pause for a second and look at the characters I have on Artfight vs my Toyhouse. On Toyhouse I have a relatively even mix of genders// split into characters that use she/her they/other/multiple pronouns and he/him. I looked at the 13 character I have on Artfight and not ONE single character was fem/fem aligned. I had planned to finish a fem oc's bio to put on but it was kind of shocking for myself.

this is actually really interesting to hear! at the end of the day, it's impossible to know how representative the art fight sample is of a user's true OC roster. I do think that generally what characters get put up has a lot to do with favoritism, but if there are people who realize they were subconsciously overlooking this sort of thing because of my video, then that's exactly the sort of thing I hoped to achieve :D

[nefelegies]

the artfight video is pretty solid, but it feels like you’re ignoring a massive elephant in the room of trans representation, ESPECIALLY transfemininity. i wouldn’t be surprised if the disparity between male and female characters is even more extreme when looking at exclusively transgender characters, given how transmisogynistic the internet is. that might be something good to analyze in a followup video. it might also be interesting to analyze attacks and the statistics of those.

I had someone leave the same comment under the video and I addressed it in a lot more detail there, so I will append that reply: (some of these points may not make total sense outside of the context of what I was replying to, but I hope it's clear enough)

but tl;dr. I actually never intended to tackle any topic outside of gender distribution, and the only reason the other stats were there was because people asked me for them directly and i felt like i should include them in the final breakdown since i had the data. I'm actually kind of sorry that i ended up doing a very strangely picked out scope of video instead of focusing solely on the core thesis because I realize that as a result, anything I didn't directly address ended up feeling like an intentional omission. There are actually many other factors I would have liked to dive into if I was conducting this study again. as for whether I will redo this or conduct a follow up, it is extremely up in the air right now I have no idea! 

[nefelegies]

Hi I wanted to send an ask to tell you that your video is fantastic and I've been a fan of your artwork for a while and feel genuinely vindicated by the data you've found. It analyzes biases I felt like I was crazy for seeing while nobody outside of my circle of friends and mutuals cared. Regardless of the naysayers I think your video will hopefully spark a bomb under people's asses who dont give a rat's ass about making women characters three-dimensional... it makes me realize that i self-scrutinize a lot while a lot of other people DON'T. which is crazy. If you unlist the video it's totally understandable (I also know what it's like to get a lot of unwanted and unexpected attention online, it's scary af) but just know you made a butch very happy today. Thank you for it!!!

Thank you so much 😭 i am always blown away to hear that people enjoy my art because i feel like my reach is too tiny for anyone to get invested. i've felt much the same way in the time leading up to making this video because i swear every time i step outside of my close circle of genius friends it's a complete wasteland. i am optimistic for sure about the video because i have seen so many people saying they're taking my challenge and doing the writing exercise and reconsidering their priorities. hopefully just pausing the comments which i just did will be enough to clear the air of some of the really malicious people i've had and then i can open things up again to allow the discussion to continue :')