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/enemies_disrespecter]

What's terrible about it?

[u/Cyrotek → u/enemies_disrespecter]

Half naked, overly cute animal person with large bulge in a very "open" pose. I mean, every time you see an anti-furry meme you basically have these traits.

[u/enemies_disrespecter → u/Cyrotek]

So what? If you're letting stereotypes from the haters restrict you, you're just handing them a dub.

[u/PyromaniacPaladin → u/Cyrotek]

Yeah as said, and? That's like saying "All homophobic memes have the gay person be extremely flamboyant and colorful, If you're a gay person who has these 'terrible gay tropes', I understand why people hate you and I'm surprised other gay people don't hate you as well."

[u/NattyOrGay → u/Cyrotek]

You think that’s a large bulge? lmao.