Ask an Ex-Fetish Artist!

IMJack

When fetish art was your primary income, about how many hours a week did you put into it? Did you ever struggle to get enough work to make ends meet?

Did you do any live-streaming?

"Deepthroat"

I put about 30-40 hours a week into it- as much as a full time job. I mostly did this in between shifts at my actual, shitty, retail job. My retail job didn't even pay me enough for me to buy food, let alone pay rent. So into the fetish rabbithole () I went. There were a few times at the beginning, before I was well known and had a following where I spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to figure out how I was gonna survive two weeks on a bag of bread (which my shitty roomates ate the next day, but that's a different sad story) and also pay rent. Luckily, once I started getting more niche commissions and more loyal clients, I didn't have to worry about things as much. Well, at least, not things related to money. 

I did do some live streaming, but never once showed my face. The most my clients got was a stream of me working on whatever commission it was that week, while music played over it. I couldn't do my voice because most of the time I was laughing or making fun of the fetish, which would have been suicide for my little art trade. A lot of working in the fetish community is playing nice and being as inoffensive/pleasant as possible. There's a lot of weirder, grosser rules for conduct if you're female/female presenting, though, which I won't get into very much because it'd be a six paragraph angry feminist diatribe. Suffice to say a lot of it was just "never make someone lose their boner".

OwlFancier

I mean, uh, I'd be happy with six paragraphs of angry feminist diatribe about terrible nerd social rules but it's your thread of course.

"Deepthroat"

hooooooo boy strap the fuck in then, folks, we're going on a fucking ride. Before I start tho, I'm just gonna say that if one goddamn person chimes in with #notallmen I'm just gonna assume that you're one of the people that wanted the lactating cumdragon commission.

Alright so there's a lot of unsavory fuckin shit when it comes to treatment of women/feminine presenting peeps in the fetish community. I'm gonna be mostly mentioning women here, but it applies to anyone perceived as/presenting in a feminine way, my own nonbinary ass included. There's a few base categories that the unsavory treatment of women falls into; there's the peeps that think that all women are whores/objects who only exist for the pleasure and titillation of men, there's the peeps that think all women are somehow "other" and either elevate them to an unsustainable level/put them on a pedestal, and there's the ones that fall into a mix of the two. Now, a lot of porn is focused (unfortunately) on the idea that women exist only as seen through the lens of men's pleasure. This is especially true in niche fetish communities. Now, I myself didn't appear in pornography, but because I directly was involved in the creation of it, I had to deal with a lot of really fucked up things, and observed other female fetish artists dealing with the same. 

Most people are familiar with the idea of a Madonna-whore complex. For those of you that aren't, I'll give you a brief rundown. The idea is that women fall into two categories- either they're a virginal Madonna-like saintly figure, untouched by carnal desires and therefore better or above everyone, or they're a whore, who only exist to sate sexual desires and therefore have no intrinsic worth as a human being. This black and white view of women is dangerous for a number of reasons, but the base problem with it is the "othering" of women. They're pushed into a category where they're not humans, with complex feelings, desires, dreams and personalities, but rather a fetish/icon of worship and are not allowed out of whatever category they fall in, lest they be punished severely for it. The fetish community isn't immune from this problem, and it actually mixes with the sexually charged nature of the community and mixes to become a problem for women in the community. It doesn't matter what they do, they'll inevitably piss someone off and then the hunt is on. I knew of one particular artist who actually ended up having to completely nuke her online presence because her fans found out she had a boyfriend, and began doxxing her, sending death threats, and even posting pictures of her house online. And that wasn't an uncommon thing to happen. So generally, you'd have women in the community lean one way heavily and do their best to play the role they'd chosen for their own personal safety.

I mentioned in a previous post about the creepy white knights that started calling me "Goddess" against my wishes and were generally super creepy. I didn't mention a lot of the harassment that came with it, precisely because I didn't wanna go into a massive tangent, but there was a lot of really abhorrent things that were done. I got a lot of inappropriate messages, such as picture messages of the business fursona I made printed out with cum all over it, a picture of someone slapping their dick on my profile page, some guy sent me a video of him fucking himself with a dildo and begging me to kill/castrate him for daring to think of me sexually... It was really gross and fucked up and I ended up having to go over a lot of the worst shit in therapy. Anyway, I was an example of people considering me a "Madonna" figure, because I didn't actively participate in the pornography- some fetish artists create a fursona that they then kinda whore out by saying "for X amount of money I'll draw your fursona fucking mine". I chose not to do that, because 1.) I didn't want to and 2.) I had a SO at the time. (He turned out to be horribly abusive but I was loyal anyway. )

On top of that, you'd have the men who'd have an unhealthy interest in taking women "down a peg". I mentioned the person who wanted to turn the smart, bookish pony into a fuck-toy bimbo pony. He was one of these, but a lot of other men in the community acted the same way towards the women in the community. They'd often search for anything- anything at all, even a single throwaway sentence in a single forum post- to use to demonize her and start a witch hunt for her. They'd spend all their time trying to get these women to either beg forgiveness for whatever the perceived slight was, or trying to ruin her business/presence in the community by spreading hate or lies. The woman I mentioned earlier was one of these- one man had found a post she'd made on a forum that had mentioned she was going to see her boyfriend so they could go on vacation somewhere- obviously something innocuous. But that man took it, clipped the context out, and brought it to her rabid fanbase, many of which also treated her as a Madonna. The knowledge that this woman was an adult with her own life in a happy relationship fucking enraged them, and they did what I mentioned above. I made very sure after that to never, ever, ever mention anything about my social life, and indeed used completely different usernames/details than my actual life. I used a pseudonym, posted often fake things about my life that would keep me safe and the more worrysome of my fans plactated...

It was just a shitshow. At this point, I'd never ever go back to drawing fetish art unless I was truly desperate, and even then, I think I'd make a new persona to post under- a masculine one, for safety.

Antivehicular

What was the weirdest correction/fix someone asked for on one of your pieces? I'm always interested in how goddamn specific these fetishes can be and what tiny details make commissioners lose their boners.

"Deepthroat"

I can't think of a specific instance, but mostly it was the fursona ones that were the worst- some of the furries are extremely specific about their fursonas, down to exact placement of markings, exact length of fur in some areas etc. I did have one guy who was extremely specific on how he wanted the cum/slime mixture to look, tho. His thing was slime girls and he really, really wanted to make it clear that she'd just been bukkake'd and it wasn't just that she was very slimy. Bronies are some of the worst, too. They're extremely fucking picky and I hate working for them. Even now, when I need a little extra money I'll usually do quick clean MLP commissions because they sell the easiest/fastest and I fucking hate dealing with bronies. You can tell the difference between someone who likes the show for nostalgia reasons/just because it's a cute thing/their kid watches it, and a brony. Fuckin' hate bronies. 

Straight White Shark

What was the most boring commission you ever got? Like, did you get any "draw me a woman with [mundane features x, y, and z] doing [completely normal day to day activity with no overt sexual overtones at all] " requests?

"Deepthroat"

I had one dude that wanted me to just draw a lady in a business suit, fully clothed, just sitting in a desk chair and looking vaguely annoyed. I liked that one, because it was literally just like doing a portrait or something. Nice palate cleanser after cumponies.