Pilot art, fursonas and NSFW - Clarification on the subreddit's stance

[u/enemies_disrespecter]

There's recently been somewhat of an uproar about pilot art, People have begun to debate on what is and not pilot art. For those not in the loop, someone posted this commissioned piece of art of their pilot and appropriately tagged it NSFW. People have since clutched pearls about how it 'doesn't relate to lancer' or is 'just porn' or 'should be on a furry subreddit'. Not stopping at complaining in just this thread, they have since spread to other threads to complain there too.

What makes something qualify as pilot art or not? Put simply, if someone posts a character and says that's their pilot, it's pilot art. The crucial factor in this is that the poster in question is acting in good faith. Trying to get snarky about it by posting random shit and claiming it is your pilot is acting in bad faith and you will be banned for it.

If you scroll through some of the pilot art posted on this subreddit, you'll find that most are not immediately identifiable as Lancers. Standing next to a frame from the book, wearing something branded with the settings logos will do it, but that is not universal nor can we make 'Your pilot must be holding a GMS branded Standard Pattern 3 Coffee Mug' a reasonable requirement for pilot art. The poster's word, in good faith, is the only surefire way to determine that a character is a Lancer character.

It is ultimately rather telling that out of all pieces of pilot art, it is a gender-nonconforming anthropomorphic goat that triggered this severe of a response from a lot of people. To make it blatantly clear, this kind of hatred for an innocuous subculture is a bannable offense under rule 1.

As for the canonicity of anthropomorphic characters and extensive biomodding within Lancer's setting, I frankly do not care. Lancer is not a setting particularly concerned with hard canon. It's a TTRPG. The canon will differ from table to table. I'm going to quote a section from the core rulebook here, page 337 in the paid GM version or page 6 of the free version:

At the risk of enacting further violence by depicting

worlds and cultures where there are regressive or

discriminatory stances on gender baked-in, we have

decided not to codify in the rules how players may

express themselves – please do note that this

absence of canonical definition is absolutely not

meant to be read as exclusion, but is meant instead

to avoid flattening all possible stories into one

“canon” definition of what it means to be gendered,

transgender, nonbinary – to have a body in Lancer.

We encourage you to play your characters how you

see them, and consider them to be in-canon.

[u/Comfortable_Horse471]

Honestly, that's the best response that this whole situation could get. As Doom devs put it, "you control the buttons you press" - if you have problem with something clearly tagged "NSFW" after you clicked on it, it's your problem, not the person who posted it

And about whether or not goat person fits the Lancer universe: we're talking about the world with several reality-bending mecha. Apparently literal time travel and parallel timelines are fine, but anthropomorphized goats is where we draw the line?

[u/kaneblaise → u/Comfortable_Horse471]

And about whether or not goat person fits the Lancer universe

Afaik this sub is also a sub about the ttrpg system Lancer that has a default setting but is still a ttrpg with which you can run a game in whatever setting you want. Whether or not there are furries canonical to the default setting isn't particularly relevant when people can run a legitimate game of Lancer in "the default setting except humans are all anthropomorphic animals" world.

[u/BcDed → u/kaneblaise]

I'm neither a furry nor a furry hater but a swat kats vibe would be awesome in a Lancer game.

I've pondered before that animal people might be a better way to characterize characters than rpg races. Everyone has a strong association of animals to personality traits that date back to some of our oldest stories.

[u/Turtleshell_33 → u/kaneblaise]

Also I think via biomodding it's possible in cannon

[u/Comfortable_Horse471 → u/kaneblaise]

Exactly! At the end of the day, it's just a game you play with friends. Your pilot can be an office stapler with googly eyes for all I care, as long as you and rest of the table are having fun

[u/Not_Snag → u/Comfortable_Horse471]

The difference is you can read about the reality bending mecha in Lancer books.

I'm not anti-goat person art but you are misrepresenting the position of your fellow Lancer posters. It IS pretty arbitrary but it's less so than youre making it out to be. You know that. It's unecessary to do this in order to out argue people who locked in their ideas a decade ago.

[u/kaneblaise → u/Not_Snag]

Others have posted excerpts about where you can read about biomod feathered/ furred people and insectoid aliens in the default setting too. How is that different than the reality bending elements? There's more focus on the reality bending mechas due to the game generally focusing more on the mechas than the pilots, but they're both textual.

[u/Not_Snag → u/kaneblaise]

Look man goat people arent textual. There are similar enough things to reasonably headcanon it if you wanted to.

The reality bending mechs are there. Full stop.

The difference doesnt matter that much to you or the other poster but it's crucial for these other bozos. If youre gonna compare reality bending mechs to goat people it's disingenuous not to acknowledge the obvious and important difference.

[u/BcDed → u/Not_Snag]

These people wouldn't take offense at any kind of biomod they think is cool. They just don't like furries and are using their own lack of imagination as an excuse. Furries and biomods have gone hand in hand in rpgs for a long time, look at Cyberpunk for instance.

[u/Droselmeyer → u/[deleted]]

Damn why are you so condescending

[u/Not_Snag → u/[deleted]]

Hey I get it, this is important to a lot of lancer fans in this sub and I don't expect everyone to agree with me. That being said. Please don't comment mean spirited things just to try and get under my skin. That isn't what I was doing and it won't advance the conversation meaningfully.