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

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. )

Maybe you worry too much? If you don't want to accidentally offend anyone, the only sure way is to write nothing. Besides, who said everyone has a right to never be offended, and who said that right has more power than your right to tell your story?? After all, you're not trying to offend, right?

The thing about anxiety, is it often feeds us information that is not true. Do people get offended by an eye symbol on a robot: No. Do people get offended by a small comic about cool robots in a benevolent big tech company: No.

It's hard to do, but sometimes we get this all or nothing response in our bean that makes us assume that everyone is out to get us and that bad things will happen that, if you think about it -- probably would not happen to you. And if it did, and one person left a mad comment, you would be upset, but just delete the comment and move on eventually because you won't be able to make the perfect comic, and you won't become a good comic maker unless you make some mistakes, and that's fine, that's part of growth and improvement.

Like there will always be many ways of interpreting our works and what we say, and a wise person listening will be able to understand they don't need to agree with everything to see the merit and goodness from what you create. In fact, you will not find another human being that agrees with you 100%. That is how humans work.

In music you offend people all the time, they are angry with you, it happens all the time that bandmembers
get verbally and physically attacked. Both happened to me many times and it didn´t even happen with
the bands witch the edgy lyrics. People who didn´t like that we mix this and that music genre, wrong
advertisement/exspectations, sometimes people were angry about lyrics. You spend months writing
the songs, recording the album, put all your time and money in it and then you get reviews from offended
people, offended youtube comments and someone hits a bottle over your head at a concert

The simple answer is: you can’t.

If you think about it, there is no way an artist can make really anything that says anything about important current issues or topics that won’t offend someone, so to ask that artists refrain from making art that offends people is to basically ask that we never make anything that even references real life problems or topics. That’s not only boring, but also extremely concerning from a historical standpoint, given that restricting the arts like that is usually strongly associated with fascism, whether political or religious. Authoritarian bodies don’t like art that challenges people and makes them think about stuff, and they often frame it as “protecting” people from “depravity” and “offensive material,” when really it’s just about control.

The knee-jerk reaction to any recommendations of “avoiding” certain topics in art is to assume that the party asking for that refrain intends to sanitize and censor art, which is never really a good thing if you give it too much consideration. You can’t make people think deeply on important matters if you just let them sit in their comfortable sense of ignorance. There has to be a disturbance, a touch of emotional violence, to get people to really think about their history, their place in the present world, and why some things are the way they are and if they should stay that way.

Yes, the artist does have some responsibility over the impact of their work, but the audience has their own set of obligations when entering the gallery space. Namely, they need to learn not to take things at face value, analyze their initial impressions with additional context, and perhaps most importantly in cases like this, read the wall text. Seriously, if you see something that looks really offensive, 90% of the time it’s made by somebody who’s experienced that nasty thing and wants to drive discussion about it. Rape survivors often depict and discuss rape in their art, not because they want to promote it or hurt anyone else that has experienced it, but because they want to drive social commentary on it, for example. Having context helps a lot if you’re the type who needs it, and most mainstream audiences do kinda need it to really appreciate the work; there’s no shame in that, just be mindful of it.