How do I make sure I don’t accidentally offend someone with my work?

My guy, there’s always gonna be some loony out there who thinks some innocent piece of media is actually a sign that judgment day is coming. No matter what you do, there are gonna be people who find reasons to pick apart your art.

Best you can do is not make your designs with malicious or ignorant intent (which it seems you’re already doing). As long as you’re not trying to hurt people, and admit your mistakes and fix them when you do on accident, you’ll be fine

Probably ask some friends or so if a reasonable person could find any implications you didn’t want there to be without making any arbitrary leaps of logic

I'm OBSESSED with playing around with different cultures/beliefs and implementing them into my stories. Usually when I ask people for their thoughts, I either ask my friends since there'd be some wavelength between us.

Try not to fall into that rabbit hole where you're CONSTANTLY asking everyone because there's like always going to be different perspectives in a community. I remember hearing from people who get hate from their own culture because they write their own little experiences.

I mostly write about cultures/religions/neurodivergent people that I've had experience with personally. "Write what you know" (unless you REALLY want to know another culture then go crazy). Personally, I'm very fond of the irish, Australian, and japanese. Mostly the Irish. God they're so cool. :v

If you are really concerned, you could reach out to other people so see what they think. Sometimes you can simply google something and there is probably a reddit or quora where someone answers your question.

Do people find the Illuminati that offensive? Like there is a Disney character based on the triangle eye, so if it is OK for kids I don't think most people would care. Yes there are some people who think it's satanic, but those are usually the type of people who think everything is satanic.

Who is your target audience? Most people 13+ aren't as concerned about this stuff.

You can’t really please everyone, just ask yourself who your target audience is, and just be respectful.
Try not to overthink it Conspiracy theorist will find a conspiracy in anything if they really want to I get it, I have relatives who are like that too, I just kind of leave them in their own space and do my own thing.

So uh the whole "benevolent tech company" is a bit weird, I take that this is based in some part off of robocop. Which is satire. A cop dies in a shootout and a tech company steals his corpse and forces him back to "life" (a big part of robocop is "hey is this just a robot with a corpse inside?") and then uses this atrocity as PR to show how cool and benevolent they are by turning a dead guy into a police tank. This whole scathing critique got lost over the sequels and spin-offs until it was a generic superhero fic.

You doing the same story is fine, saying that philanthropic tech companies are behind it is... weird but also fine. The secret societies that are totally unrelated to the rich tech companies may be interpreted as antisemitic as that's what most globalist nonsense is actually about.

I would recommend tweaking the story so the tech company is part of the secret societies and that your MC goes rouge from them to dismantle their systems of power. this would also distance your idea from robocop who is incredibly linked to his corporate overlords, while your MC rebelled against theirs.

As for any other stuff that comes up during production, try to respond to feedback to the best of your ability and don't be an asshole. If you do something stupid, apologise and move on, sticking to your guns will only alienate your audience.

It's easy to say "oh there's always gonna be someone out there who'll read all kind of stuff into your work, just forget about 'em", but if you're worried about people you actually personally care about, that's a bit of a different topic ...

My solution is to harden my heart and ruthlessly cut out anyone who can't be respectful about their disagreement with my work and point out my mistakes without jumping to conclusions about my intent But it's completely understandable if you don't want to go down that route XD

Aside from that, I'd agree with talking to the people you're worried about offending. If you're close (and I assume they care about you as much as you care about them), I'd imagine you'll be reasonably safe doing so. Doesn't make it easy, of course; I guess it's up to you to weigh the pros and cons of asking them about these things beforehand vs risking them reacting poorly afterwards

This is just for people you care about though; I wouldn't recommend doing this for absolutely anyone who might be offended by your work, because that's a great way to go into a reassurance-seeking spiral and never get started :'D Don't deliberately do stuff you know is offensive ofc, but for those 'gray areas' that people are gonna debate the 'okayness' of until hell freezes over, my plan at least is to keep a 'master list' of content warnings that people can look at if they want and that I'll add to if complaints come up. That way, at least people can avoid the things they'd rather not see :]

Honestly... in my experience, the best thing you can do is be kind and use your common sense, but even then, some people's trauma is so unique that they may still get triggered. When that happens, the sensitive though stand your ground that you didn't know and never meant to hurt the person.

Also, some people are just trolls who take advantage of the whole "political correctness" movement in which they claim everything offends them. Or they're just extremists. I am all for inclusion, kindness, not making suffering into a joke and not using prejudice slurs or stereotyping any specific group as evil, BUT at one point, it gets ridiculous. You should be able to write a story that addresses trauma without being accused of condoning it. Also, you don't owe the audience a type of character, romance or anything.

In other words, sometimes will get offended no matter what you do, but 90% of the time, if people are claiming that your character/story/whatever offends them for a reason one would have to research and look for with a fine comb, this person is either trolling you or they're not offended just entitled.

I'm afraid the only way not to offend people by accident is by offending people on purpose

The only way to avoid accidentally offending people is to just try your best to keep up with current discourse by having a diverse friend group and talking to people. Sometimes you might slip up by not knowing something is considered inappropriate now that used to be seen as okay, or being ignorant of something, like for example if you watch a lot of 90s sitcoms and English is your second language, you might innocently use the word "sp**z" without knowing it's now offensive. Or if you're not from the UK, you might say Scottish people are "English" rather than British and make them angry. In these cases, the important thing is to just apologise and change it if you can, or take down the offensive work or put up a content warning, NOT to dig in, get angry at people for being offended or to make a big post about how you're not changing it because you think people who got offended are wrong.

Because the thing to remember is, most people who everyone gets really angry at aren't being accidentally offensive any more. They've usually been told politely and refused to change it, or even doubled down.

And on the illuminati thing... er... who is offended by the concept of illuminati? Like... even if it DID look like the "illuminati symbol" (which it doesn't particularly, it's just an eye, kind of reminds me of the Inquisition symbol from Dragon Age), are members of the illuminati an oppressed group who are regularly struggling with being dehumanised or negative stereotypes that stop them from getting ahead in life? Er... no. Like, even if we assumed they existed, they'd be the most powerful people in the world, a tiny cabal of people with incredible political power and the idea that you're making their lives hard by.... putting a symbol vaguely similar to theirs on a character just doesn't make sense.
When thinking about what characteristics and symbols you should be careful of in character design, you should think more in terms of:

"Am I promoting negative stereotypes or dehumanising a marginalised group?" - ie. If all your Irish characters have bright red hair, comically exaggerated accents and are foolish alcoholics. OR there's only one autistic character in the story, and they're cold, robotic, emotionless, only care about their obsession with Star Trek and creep the other characters out, functioning only as a burden or problem.

"Am I promoting or glamorising real life symbols, phrases or words associated with hate groups?" ie. Do your good guys wear equipment that very clearly evokes German WWII uniforms and it's presented as really stylish, intimidating and sexy?

Try to consider whether your work could lead to people who often face violence, bullying, oppression or being kept out of opportunities to have a worse time by encouraging people to believe stereotypes about them or glamorising groups that hurt them rather than fretting over like.... "does this symbol look maybe a bit like a symbol some people decided is the symbol for a shadowy all-powerful organisation they believe exists?"

Like in any other form of communication. How do you speak without offending people that you don´t want to offend?
And when you say something and it offends someone, will it bother you or not?

It really doesn't matter in my opinion. Make what you want to make.
Worrying incessantly about offending people will keep you from getting anything done.

A lot of people will like your work a whole lot more if you don't worry about that kind of stuff. I personally think that acting like you're offended by some artist's work is a really bad look.

Hahahaha, I guess if somebody watched that movie without critical analysis and thought of the protagonists as "good guys"? Could say the same thing about Warhammer 40k (which I should say, I'm a big fan of, I even collect Space Marines, so I'm not against fascist symbolism being used in this kind of satire, but I also agree with a lot of the criticism of media that frames the Imperium as the "heroes" in that universe).

One thing you should never forget is you can't please everyone. There will always be someone who gets offended by anything you do.
If you don't see any issue with it, just ignore it and focus on what makes you happy.

And the themes you tackle on aren't that new. Everyone has done something similar in some way from time to time.
(Also, I can't see the connection to the Illuminati in your drawing. Well, only if you had the weird pyramid with one eye hidden on it somewhere, then yes. But like I said I can't see anything similar to it. )