My “Thing”

The other day I was chatting with another hypno-art creator, and she was showing me pictures, mostly from Japanese porn, of hypnotized women acting as human turnstiles, just like in the comic I did as a commissioned work some time ago. 

She said something like “it’s spreading!” and I felt I kind of had to point out that the idea didn’t originate with my comic… and I didn’t come up with it the idea for the comic either. My commissioner had specifically asked for that scenario, AND included some pics from hentai and Japanese porn to show examples. I wrote a story around it, came up with a twist ending just so it would feel more like an actual story, and proceeded to draw the comic that I still think of as the most exhausting comic I’ve ever drawn… SO many characters and background details. I’m still pretty satisfied with the results, especially the twist ending, but I don’t think the comic is particularly representative of me as a writer and artist.

I said, then, that human turnstiles seemed to be more a “Japanese porn” thing, and that I didn’t really want people to start treating it as MY thing… because I really only did that one comic about it, and while I have drawn more character in that pose, all those drawings HAVE been commissioned by the same person.

So she asked me an interesting question: “What IS your ‘thing’?”

I have to admit, I was stumped for an answer. Lots of hypno-creators have a “thing.” Trishbot has her mindless drone girls (usually standing at attention), Lord Solaris has his “Solarisized acolytes” with gigantic tits, hands and feet, SuperTechno234 has his fembots, Curia-DD has her superheroines in peril and knockout scenes,  Toongenio has… Kaa. Lots and lots of Kaa. But what’s MY “thing”? Do I have a “thing”?

Fae and my often erotic take on Faerie? Naked chibis? Snarky dialogue? Sleepwalking? Ironic twist endings? Hypnotized babbling with lots of ellipsises? They’re all heavily featured in my works, but are any of them “my thing”?

A lot of people have described my works as “cute and wholesome.” which… I’m not certain is accurate. Okay, “cute” is fair, but WHOLESOME? With all the blatant non-con stuff I do? Sure, I don’t revel in misogyny or misandry like some erotic creatures, I tend to avoid the “bitch got what she deserved” type revenge porn… outside a couple of parodies… and I try to take care to make the characters appear as people and not just sex dolls… I like having actual stories… and the amount of snuff porn I do is approximately zero. But is it really that wholesome to have a vampire hypnotize and kidnap a bunch of people to partake in a naked Halloween orgy? Or having someone essentially stripped of their identity, repeatedly fucked and in the end turned into a recruiter of more victims?

People have pointed at the Hypno-Pillow comic as an example of how wholesome my work is, but… that was ALSO a commissioned work and not my idea. That comic is even LESS mine than the “Turnstyles” comic, because here I didn’t even write the dialogue. I got a complete script with dialogue and everything; the most I did there was some minor tweaking to certain sentences to make them flow better. (I don’t even identify with the comic; I’m a morning person!)

But perhaps the answer lies within the misunderstanding. Because it seems like people think my work is sweeter and more wholesome than it really is. So perhaps my thing is simply being “deceptively cute”? I’ve had the “50% cute, 50% horny” tagline for ages… it might simply project a cleaner, more “moral” image than I had intended. 

I don’t know. I’d be interested in hearing what other people think. (If I get enough comments on that, maybe I’ll do a follow-up post.)