Self censorship

I think it's important to draw a line between censorship and filtering. Filtering may not even be the best word for it, but bare with me.

I don't think creators should censor their work. There will always be a group of people out there who don't like what you have to say or how you say it. Yes, we want people to enjoy our work but I believe we have to first tell our stories for ourselves. Censoring our work, in my opinion, waters it down and dilutes it from the heart of thoughts were probably trying to paint.

That being said, we as creative also need filters. We need to know how far is far enough, not because someone else will be offended, but because at a certain point we start to become counter productive. We have to know what is necessary. And that's not censorship.

Censorship is like throwing away ingredients. Filtering is like having ingredients but choosing what to use and how much of it to use so your recipe turns out right, and sometimes that means very little or not at all.

I think our responsibility is to tell an honest story and introduce new ideas. And we can do that with tactic without censorship.

Now, will people be happy? Will everyone agree? Probably not. But every story isn't for everyone. Every idea doesn't need to cater to the masses. It's better to be bold and authentic and hated than it is to be watered down bland and possibly liked...in my opinion anyway.

Yes. I certainly do. There are some topics that are too difficult for me to tackle in some stupid webcomic, and parts of life that I just don't want to put into my fiction because they're too depressing/real.. So I guess I censor myself out of fantasy and not being a skilled enough writer to tackle "serious" topics.

I don't make a living out of my writing so everything I write is for myself and as such I never censor it. That being said, I like to read the room, so to say, before I share a story with a specific group of people or on a specific website, because I couldn't care less about people complaining about the story not being their thing. I'd rather have them enjoy the story and focus on the story itself.

I intentionally go for what is called 'clean comedy', so I don't swear or joke about things that are considered to be too blue. Aside from that, I don't censor myself in any way. In fact, the second episode of my series is called Deadname the Pirate. Censorship seeks only to erase progress in the name of some phony nonsense about not hurting people's feelings. Well, here's some news, life isn't a liberal arts college campus. Life sucks. Life hurts. Think of everything horrible that you've ever heard of. All of those things exist exclusively in life. Part of what makes it tolerable is cold-hearted (and warm-hearted) comedy. It's just the nature of the beast. Stab it with your steely knives all you want, she ain't going anywhere and it's certainly not getting any better because some dink thinks that you shouldn't use certain words because they're going to get their feelings hurt, whether or not that's even true. It's all or nothing.

I'd probably only censor my work because I am posting on sites like tapas and webtoon. But I could care less if someone gets offended over a bad word. After all I make my comic for myself too. If my heart isn't in it then why should other people put theirs in it?

I do things my way, and if people like it then they can come along the journey. If they don't... well there are lots of other comics around

On that question. Not really, mostly cus I'm not making cash and it's not like i have a big Audience so my writing is self indulgent normally.

I'm a huge fan of highly violent splatterpunk gore so if I can I include alot, mostly cus that's what enjoy and I know there would be an Audience for it and that's the audience I want. People who could cheer, laugh, be in awe and gawk at fictional gore. ( Im a softie with irl violence thou. cant with even stand watching a real punch without panicing).

Same with sex cus I know my tastes are kinda trashy at the end of the day so might as well acceot lol . As said before best use content warnings cus really that's what you can do.

I guess there's times I hace to mostly in regards to writing a game I wanted to be 15+ so yeah held myself back. As well as certain subject matter mostly cus of the plateform.

If I was making games on itch.io or like a book for kindle I would go much futher cus I know the Audience is there. But not on tapas.

There were some moments I rewrote that was a bit of self censorship but it was less that and more... it would make the story flow much better and honestly there's one moment that I haven't upload yet that I'm wondering if I should still keep a certain line. But we'll see.

At the end of the day the quest to please everyone pleases no one

Fanfiction is a diffrent story though. I just write whatever gross stuff I want under an anonymous account and go full steam head .

Only like a handful reads it any way.

Theres this one idea I had that I know wouldnt fly here. But I really really like it. Most likely I would do it eventually and switch plateform but for now it's in my head to develop

I truly believe if it's part of the story, anything is fair game. Apart from keeping it to the rating of the site you need to publish on (their guidelines), nothing is off limits. Racism, sexism, murder, rape, everything can be show to fit the rating. All those things also happen in the real world so if it helps you tell your story, I see no reason not to put it in the story. I personally know the story I'm telling and know what I need to show to tell that story. Some times you have to be creative to put in the story, but most of the time you can. Hurting other feelings should not be a consideration. Fantastic movies have been made about absolutely horrible situations.

I honestly think it’s a combination between you being responsible and the reader’s responsibility as well. This is something I’ve been struggling with a lot as I’ve been thinking over my relationship with writing abd my creative works in general and confronting my anxiety regarding it. There’s only one thing you can 100% control and that is yourself. Everything else is up to the others response wise if that makes sense. So I feel that even though you should be responsible and say if you’re writing a horror story with cute characters to let people know in advance that it’s not for kids abd someone’s kid does read it abd get scared despite your warmings, then that’s on the parent abd kid if that makes sense because you already did all you could to warn people about the contents of your story.

I restrict myself; but for family reasons. Y'know I could have great great great great great grandchildren and see what type of person I was. One trick I do is I restrain myself depending on what my brother, sister, mother, and father think. Which is fine. I use these limitations to think creatively and come up with better jokes. Whenever I do something potentially edgy in my stories I'm like "What would my family think?". I get my best jokes with this method since they have a little more bite. The only thing I refuse to do is blasphemy for religion in general. In fact, I'll probably edit That Stick Figure Isekai if I do something a trusted priest thinks is wrong.

I think the stuff I'm lax on is violence.... despite me having a strong no swear rule (I'm officially stopping after Season 2). Another thing I do is I have no problem making people from every group (including ones I'm included in) as flawed or horrible people. I think this mindset came from the fact that I was seen as an outcast in one of the most diverse schools in the most diverse city in the United States (I just saw the worst out of everyone including myself, it was a SUPER complicated time lmao). As a result my brain just goes autopilot when I'm picking the identity of a character because that's how it is in real life. Circumstance.

End of the day, always find that middle ground without being a jerk.

I think I engage in self-censorship a lot, and often at its most basic level: removing curse words. ^^;

I actually use a lot of profanity in my head, and a little bit of it comes out when I'm typing stuff on the internet, but just like I can't bring myself to say those things IRL, I can't bring myself to write them coming out of a character's mouth. Even when said character is an adult and it might be more realistic...;_;

And I think part of that is because of my usual intended audience: I still think of myself as writing primarily for older kids and pre-teens. And it's not that I think an audience of that age can't handle profanity or that they won't understand it...the true question is, if I decide to write in a character cursing a blue streak, will they (and/or their loved ones) still think this story is 'for them'? Am I creating a story environment that's welcoming to the demographic it's actually meant for?

This is why I think the point @TheLemmaLlama made about accessibility is actually the simplest way to look at the issue. Forget morals, forget societal norms; push all that to the side for a second: the essential question is, how will these creative decisions affect the intended audience of the story? If you're trying to teach them something, are you teaching them? If you're trying to make them feel better about something, are you actually making them feel better? If you're trying to help them, are you actually helping??

And I think the reason a lot of discussions about subject matter and censorship can get so heated is because either (a) people aren't actually considering these questions, or (b) people have incongruent answers about them. Especially in the case of (b): just try to have any kind of meaningful critical discussion about media when you can't even agree on who the intended audience is. ^^;

(a), on the other hand, is primarily the creators' responsibility: you have to consider those questions, because if you don't your viewers will consider them for you...and that's when things tend to get ugly.

For one thing, I think more creators need to start admitting that their intended audience is simpler than they want to think it is. Pretending you have a larger, philosophical goal when you actually don't will do more harm than good to EVERYONE involved, particularly by inviting deep criticism that you probably don't actually want and aren't prepared for.
It makes sense not to bother with self-censorship when you create a story for 'people who like to look at violence'. It makes less sense when you create a story for 'victims of violence seeking closure and understanding for their trauma'. Being honest with yourself and your audience will be better for you in the long run than maintaining some nebulous 'moral high ground'; I guarantee it.

Now, for another thing, I think even more creators need to realize that failing to reach your target audience is a normal occurrence that can happen to anyone: i.e. you're not 'above' offending people or disappointing them. No one is; that's not how it works. ^^;
Those essential questions I proposed like "if you're trying to help, are you actually helping" are just meant to get a creator to consider how their work will affect others, and put in the effort to get those effects to align as closely to their actual goals as possible. That's when self-censorship is at its most valuable, I think: when you don't see it as a way to prevent future criticism or controversy, but as a way to keep your work focused on doing what it's supposed to do and saying what it's supposed to say. It's really just a form of editing.

And on that note, I think it's a little silly to take pride in refusing to self-censor; to me that sounds like refusing to spell-check. ^^; There's nothing really wrong with it, as long as you (a) realize that if you do make a mistake, someone else is probably gonna catch it eventually, and (b) don't give in to that pride and start getting belligerent if someone decides to point that mistake out to you. When you decide not to double-check things or consider the unexpected, you leave yourself open to those outcomes, and the least you can do is own up to them.

Society changes, people evolve, somethings don't age well. I think it is important to be somewhat worldly aware and not to have a huge ego about your own work. It's OK to admit that a joke you might have wrote 10 to 15 years ago might not age well for current audiences. I have seen some people fix issues in older works or tell adaptions to leave parts out from the OG work. I have heard animators on Disney's Peter Pan sort of regretting the Native American scenes, they do admit they were in poor taste.

I will even admit I have changed some jokes in my older works because I think they joke hasn't aged well. There is also one comic I made that I will not be posting to Tapas because I am worried some people might find it sort of offensive. I personally am not too upset about it, it's not like the comic has an amazing story or anything but I can also see someone nitpicking it.

A really interesting case of self censorship is the Stark Raving Dad episode of the Simpsons, aka the Micheal Jackson episode. Despite people blaming Disney for it missing on streaming platforms, they are not to blame. The episode got removed because the creators felt they were sort of responsible for children ending up in inappropriate situations with Micheal Jackson. They felt the episode groomed kids and some of the scenes are a bit uncomfortable when you think about it. I do wonder if the creators will change their mind down the road about banning the episode now that MJ has been dead for many years and children are no longer the target audience for the show.

Self-censorship, good for society, bad for creativity​

There is a difference between being an ignorant asshole and writing honest, plain-spoken things without hiding uncomfortable details "because kids may get scared". Writing about controversial things is absolutely ok if it's done right - with good research, without stretching the truth or romanticising the negative aspects, without the pure shock value. Hiding the problem won't make the problem disappear. Let's look at the current situation, the Russian-Ukrainian war. There is a lot of explicit photos/videos with massacred bodies and ruined buildings but that's the truth. Raw, bare truth.

It's also nice to add some content warnings because not everyone likes controversial things.

I censor things just because Tapas/Webtoon have content guidelines and I respect that. I will post uncensored version somewhere else.

Counterpoint for the sake of debate: Is it bad for creativity though?

I might argue, as I touched on in an earlier post, that being forced to think more about what you put in your work, not just freely use the first thing that comes into your head, requires more effort.

Sometimes, to get around rules or just sensitivity that would make you unable or unwise to state or show something directly in a work, or to depict lazy stereotypes, you need to rely on allegory, or perhaps hint at things in a clever way, or say things without directly saying them. In which case... doesn't it actually encourage creative solutions?

Example: Pyscho. The iconic shower scene in the movie Psycho, you never actually see the woman get stabbed. You see a knife moving up and down, you see a woman's face screaming, you hear stabbing violin stings, and you see some blood (actually chocolate syrup) running down a drain... but it's still a very intense depiction of a violent stabbing. Would it have felt so intense if you'd actually seem a knife go into a body? Or does not seeing it actually somehow make it feel more intense because your imagination fills in the gaps?

I remember in an interview, Brian K Vaughan, the creator of the Marvel series "The Runaways" said words to the effect that 'the comics we write for teens, we have to be very careful how we phrase things, and we have to use a lot of innuendo... and it ends up making the jokes way dirtier."

There's a joke in Runaways where a character remarks that defeating some supervillains has created a "Power Vacuum" and then another member of the team remarks that "Power Vacuum" should be another member of the team's code name. This other member of the team is his girlfriend . They got around not being able to swear and somehow managed to make even dirtier jokes through having to hint at things.

Sometimes, maybe it's important to just directly show the ugly truth, or to show full nudity without restraint... but I'd argue that having to find ways around it doesn't always mean less creativity. Sometimes it means more, because you're forced to come up with a creative solution to the problem of "I can't just show exactly what I want to show."

Everyone does it to varying degrees in real life. You might not talk to your grandma the same way you talk to your sister, or your sister the same way you talk to your best friend. What do you want to communicate to your audience? What kind of people's interest do you want to attract? You may or may not have even considered the possibility of attracting the wrong audience, even unintentionally, can have very negative reprocussions.

It boils down to demographic choices. Letting go of the wheel and making the car take control might leave you becoming too obscure. Putting the car on rails might give you wide demographic advantage, but leaves no room for creative freedom. In some cases, it may even lead people to think they are in control of your car. People are eager to insert themselves into the works of others, and they will get angry if you disrupt their personal notions of YOUR work.

Consider what you value most from the demographic you are trying to connect to. And think carefully about what you want to communicate.

I don't really believe in censorship. But I have to abide by various platforms' rules and recommendations.