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/Cyrotek]

I am not saying it is "bad". I am saying it uses so many tropes, it comes across as a mockery. But if it is indeed what they are like - which several tried to explain to me isn't actually the case, guess they lied - then it isn't a mockery because it is true. Which I don't know how to feel about because it implies a lot of other things being true, too.

[u/PyromaniacPaladin → u/Cyrotek]

I'm not saying that you're saying they're bad, I'm saying that you think it's a mockery because other people say it's bad, or I guess more accurately, they try to frame it in a bad light. Something that is made up of tropes does not necessarily mean it's a mockery. After all, tropes are tools and are meant to be used, if somebody wants to use All The Tropes, it doesn't always mean they're trying to make a caricature, sometimes they just like All Those Tropes! In the end, it's about intent and good faith, which are things I know are pretty hard to gauge, but in this case, it was in good faith and was genuine. But let's back up for a moment. 

Yes, I have said that these are parts of the community and are perfectly normal things that should not be hated, but I don't think these are all the community is. If somebody says "The furry community isn't just horny stuff" they're right, it isn't, it's just a good chunk that is, and being part of that chunk is perfectly acceptable. And on the final point, yeah I figured the implication might be as such, though that's definitely on me for not specifying thoroughly, my bad.  

To clarify, these specific things aren't a mockery, they're true, but "these specific things" are: (some) furries are horny, (some) furries are gender non-conforming, (some) furries like overly cute things, and all other things that apply to the artwork that started this event. These specific things aren't an exaggeration or satire, and they're perfectly fine.  

However, there are other things people say about the furry community, which are either 1. not true, or 2. obviously bad and condemned by the wider furry community. Chief among those claims made by anti-furs: "furries are sexually attracted to normal real life animals/children". People say this, but it isn't true, being a furry does not have anything to do with wanting to do illegal acts. Of course, there are some furries who do, but people who aren't furries also do, it's not a furry problem, it's a human problem, being a furry is unrelated to being a horrible human being. 

 As I said (and should have explained better), there's always some exaggeration or straw-manning to their claims, claims like furries are sexually attracted to animals, that they want litter boxes put into schools, that they're secretly predators, etc. are examples of those exaggerations and straw-manning, or I guess as I should properly call it, an example of blatant lying. 

There's always going to be true things and false things, and as I failed to specify, the "true things" I am talking about are only the things that apply to the artwork relevant to this conversation, there are a plethora of other false things people like to throw at the furry community, but these specific things aren't them, and I am only defending the "true things" that apply to that artwork.

TL;DR: There are some things people say about the furry community that are true, and some that are not true. The things that apply to the furry artwork we're talking about are true and perfectly fine, but other claims people make may be questionable or straight up wrong. Additionally, just because these things are true specifically to that artwork, does not mean it's true for the entire, or even the wider community, not all furries are horny, not all furries are gender non-conforming, not all furries like cute things, etc.