Why I make sexual things

#Why do I create sexual things?

# Because I’m a human being. Duh.

#No, but really… why??

# Because if I’m honest with myself, I genuinely enjoy sexual things.
Sexuality is not something you can just switch off. It’s a part of you
from the start, and sooner or later you discover it. My stories have
recurring cliches and fetishes. This is not really by choice.
Artistically it’s pretty dull.

# The true reasons are fairly psychological and personal, and far more inter-related than you’d expect. It might surprise some people, but I actually have an immense hang-up when it comes to rape in real-life. Specifically involving grown men with females. It comes from some extreme portrayals of "feminism" that were common when I was young. In my naivety, I generalized and aspired to be a person that girls would like; Because I liked them, and I wanted them to like me back. The ideal of feminism is simply equality. That’s not the problem. But the way it was portrayed just after 1980’s was sometimes something much more extreme. Often proclaiming all men had inherently evil tendencies on a biological level causing all war and suffering in the world. At that age I didn’t know this was an alternative viewpoint. I couldn’t separate other people’s interpretations from the underlying concept. I thought it was all one thing. I only knew that it was something good and that I should care about it. The most vocal perspectives were pretty extreme, but I never ended up hating myself… almost, but not quite. I knew for certain that my intentions were good. But it all left me with a relentless doubt that no woman would ever believe that. And if women could not enjoy sex then they couldn’t share my feelings or understand them. So I believed they could never truly be comfortable around me. So I completely gave up that hope. It pretty much destroyed by sexual self-confidence. I chose to use art as a deliberately harmless outlet for my sexuality from that point on. An alternative to something I was led to believe was inherently dangerous and unethical in real-life… at least when coming from a guy. The flaws of these old notions are mostly obvious to me now after all these years. It turned out that many of my favorite adult artists happened to be women. But old habits die hard, and your first impressions form the foundation that you compare everything else to, and have a pesky way of coloring all of your thoughts from that point on, even when you are aware of them.

#What’s with all the fetishes?

Bestiality

# Bestiality, tentacles, straight-shota, lesbians… they’re all convenient subsitutes; A comfortable way to watch women get aroused without the distracting guilt-trip of seeing a man getting involved. This is just a psychological hang-up I have. I enjoy bestial themes in the same way I enjoy tentacle porn. I don’t watch it for the tentacles. I watch it to see a woman get overwhelmed and aroused by something relentless. Their arousal becomes my arousal.

# For the longest time, I didn’t even realize that I was incorporating elements of this fetish into my works. In my mind it wasn’t “real” sex, it was just a girl getting turned on by being licked.

# Many years later, I stumbled across an interesting online discussion about the subject and discovered something peculiar: People who claim to be interested in this concept might actually be talking about two very different things. I would describe it as “voyeuristic” interest VS “vicarious” interest. Wanting to see something is definitely not the same as wanting to do something.

# My interest is voyeuristic.

Straight-Shota

# In hentai anime, it always bothered me how most guys were portrayed as cruel rapists. Being a guy, this has given me a bit of a guilt complex, which often keeps me from putting guys in my own games. So I always use lesbians and forest creatures as the aggressors in my games.
However, when I was younger I sometimes imagined what it might be like to have an older sister or a babysitter who was willing to introduce me to sex. This was obviously an idealized fantasy, but I found it comforting. I later discovered that hentai portrays these things as “Straight-Shota”

# This is not the face of a rapist. Straight-shota works fairly well as a subsitute to including grown men. A younger character’s age conveys a comfortably harmless character to relate to; And because of this, the concept of an older girl pursuing a boy can be deeply reassuring.

Lolis

#Something Obvious

# Let’s be honest, nobody ever waits until they’re 18 before becoming interested in sex, so naturally there was a time when I looked for drawings of girls my own age. Of course there were still some pictures that looked too young to me even back then, but there were other pictures that where crafted so well that I simply could not overlook their quality.

… And now I know why.

#Loli’s Are Different From Kids

# They are short characters in “child” roles, who tend to look and act more like short women.

They're often not shaped like kids

They definitely don't act like kids

# … And this is intentional.

#So what is this… thing??

# It’s convenient.
A “loli” is a contrived character design for a sexual story. It fills a “child” role in ways that a realistic kid definitely wouldn’t. Unrealistic characters create unrealistic situations in order to portray inherently unrealistic fantasies. Simulating reality is obviously not the goal.

# Convenient for sex stories Not convenient

# Sprites are particularly weird. Their apparent “age” mostly seems to be relative to other nearby sprites and dependent on the story. It’s a side-effect of their minimal details.

# Is she a teenager?...or is she a kid?

# How minimal? Well by changing only 4 pixels, this character suddenly looks older in comparison, and I didn’t even change her body.

#Okay but… why?

# Arousal is arousing. An inexperienced character will likely be surprised and overwhelmed by something as new as a first-time sexual encounter so their arousal will be intense and therefore it will be very fun to watch.

# On top of this, small characters automatically have a size-difference with almost any male encounter, which means that sex will almost always feel physically intense for the loli.

# Empathy is a human instinct. First-time arousal and size-differences take advantage of this. The audience feels what the character feels. If a story’s goal is to make the audience horny, the most effective way is to show a character becoming horny.

# Naive characters also create a lot of sexual suspense. They’ll walk straight into sexy situations while missing all the obvious clues being presented for the audience. This allows the story to clearly promise a sexual outcome for the audience to anticipate, and build sexy tension from the start. It’s perfect for creating suspense.

# Loli characters also tend to have an authority imbalance with other characters which makes it easy for a story to put them into situations, often repeatedly.

# Or you can reverse traditional roles to create unexpected and surprising situations. A loli could be precocious and unexpectedly naughty; Or she could be naive and unwittingly direct other people into compromising situations; Or perhaps she is aggressively curious.

#Design Example:

# “Little” Red Riding Hood
Goal: A sexy girl who’s always walking right into sexy situations.

Sexy (big boobs)
Endlessly curious and naive
Exaggerated gullibility

# Real kids learn. This one doesn’t.

#How can you draw loli without being attracted to kids?

# The same way I can draw Princess Sally without being attracted to squirrels. I’m not attracted to kids. I’m attracted to cartoon characters. I want the pictures to look unrealistic.

#Isn’t this stuff illegal?

# No. Imaginary things are not illegal. Hurting real people is. In the US, there used to be a law way back in 1996 criminalizing any depiction of minors in a sexual context, which also included fictional characters for some reason. By 2002, courts realized that worrying about imaginary people obviously wasn’t going to protect any real people. In their words, fictional depictions “… record no crime and create no victims by their production.” After all, the entire purpose of such laws is to prevent harm to people who actually exist, not waste time on those who don’t. Chasing shadows would just consume resources that could have been used to protect real children.

#But it’s wrong!

# It’s unrealistic.
But that doesn’t make it a problem. That makes it fiction.

# Like most fictional stories, it’s obvious that re-creating these situations in real-life would be very wrong, and the likely outcomes would be terrible for everyone; But I don’t believe in thought-crime. You can’t choose your tastes. You discover them. But you can always choose your actions. So what would a good person do if they discovered they had an unrealistic interest? They go to the movies and watch it like everybody else. They choose a harmless outlet. You can safely draw or write about anything you can imagine. Choose to do no harm.

# Any law can change tomorrow of course, but your personal tastes won’t. No matter what fictional concepts you happen to enjoy, the best way to approach unrealistic interests is with un-real outlets.

Fiction is how normal people safely enjoy dangerous things.

#Why are they games?

# Sexuality is artistically distracting by its very nature. Programming provides one way for me to escape its instinctive hold on me by losing myself in another hobby: The immensely engaging craft of coding. Sometimes I tell myself the programming is a means to a sexual end. But I also know that’s really just an excuse to get me started. Once I’m actually coding, things like content become incidental as I lose myself in all the wonderfully intricate puzzles. For me, programming is the perfect puzzle game: The overall challenge is always different because I choose it based on a present need. I puzzle over how it can theoretically be accomplished. When something goes wrong, I get to investigate the clues like a detective. And after I “win” this game I’m left with a genuinely useful tool which can be employed in future “games” of programming. Almost by accident, the act of programming feels like playing a well-crafted video game, and it never gets old.

#… and level-editors too??

# When I was growing up, finding a game with a level editor was almost unheard-of. Most of the time, being able to create a game, or even just a custom level seemed like a mythical dream beyond the means of mere mortals. Such arcane arts were reserved for the likes of professionals like Nintendo and Sega. As a kid, stumbling across level editors for games like Boulder Dash on an old Atari computer and Monkey Shines on the old Classic Macintosh were rare and amazing treats. Growing up, I had always wished that every game I loved came with a level editor so that it would never end. And so in principle, I always include a level editor with nearly every project I create.

# There’s another reason too. Most of my games and Flash-stories are all created using the same game engine and editor, so it’s actually very easy for me to provide an editor with them. Because it already exists.

#What’s the point of all this?

# I have no overall goal. I don’t care about changing the world with my art or teaching people a bunch of profound insights. Life does that on its own. This is just selfish play and honest happiness. It doesn’t need to be anything else. If other people happen to enjoy my stuff, then great! If not, there’s no shortage of other great artists out there. We live in wonderful times with a luxury of choices.

# Beyond that, I have already accomplished almost everything I ever dreamed of as a kid. I can create platformers like Super Metroid . I can create RPG's like Chrono Trigger . And it’s all easy to do . Sure, that’s all pretty low-tech by today’s standards. But happiness isn’t about chasing all the things you don’t have, it’s about recognizing all the things you do have. When I was a kid the most impossibly amazing thing I could imagine was a game console that would play both SNES and Sega Genesis games… and we’re already light-years beyond that! …no complaints here.