What would you not do in your comic?

[carloswebcomic]

Yeah, I'm a bit surprised at the widespread aversion to sex, although it could be a cultural thing.
I have no problem with fan service or sex scenes, but I do have a strong aversion to the glorification of violence and discrimination.

Each to their own I guess.

[alaingrey]

I think the only serious thing I wouldn't do is anything involving minors shown in a sexual manner. Other than that I think risky topics are important and that risking offending a few people on the Internet is worth it if it means you're saying a message important to you. Not included in this would be that your message is hateful. But being able to talk about sex or bad religious experiences or bad drug trips or anything else that probably offends a few people is important and I wouldn't ever want to not pursue any morally ambiguous topics.

Things I wouldn't do out of principle: any sappy romance movie cliches, any offensive token type characters, anything preachy....

Stupid small thing I wouldn't do: put a reference to popular culture without checking the date for it 20000000000 times

[Michelle]

You're also unlikely to see graphic sex-scenes in my work. Not out of any sense of morality/religion - it's just that I don't find it very interesting to draw. I'm on the asexual end of the spectrum - sex just isn't that interesting to me. I have no problem drawing nudity when the situation calls for it, but there probably won't be obvious sex-scenes.

Same here. The avoidance of sexual content isn't a morality or cultural thing, it's just completely uninteresting to me and I feel blatant sex scenes are often unnecessary. :u But it's hard for many to understand that point of view. Though it's good to have seen several other people around here feel the same.

[gateofselidor]

I will never draw characters who smoke. I think it's an awful habit, and I just couldn't enjoy drawing or writing a character who does it, nor do I want to promote it as an acceptable habit.

I won't depict most other kinds of drugs either. I might show characters drinking a little alcohol (but probably not to the point of getting drunk), and I might show characters using drugs for religious rituals if I felt it necessary, but generally speaking it's something I avoid.

[Michelle]

It depends on the kind of precedent you wish to set. If you're all about doing whatever your audience wants and have established yourself as such, by all means.

[joannekwan]

I won't ever depict rape, abuse, hard drug-use, bigotry, racism etc. etc. in a positive light.

I'm okay with most sexual things, but not those really niche fetishes like vore, cake-farting, anything to do with fecal matter, sounding, or anything that makes me cringe.

[R.n.P]

I mainly hate discrimination so I won't allow any of my characters to discriminate someone n let him live without a consequence.
THE LAST SAMURAI

[noctuidae]

• no using rape to create dramatic/traumatic backstory. It seems to be used too often/poorly in fiction, and i think it would be good to keep myself from choosing the easy (and often offensive) plot point.
• on that note im not going to depict explicit sex, partly out of being raised catholic and partly out of being asexual. i can draw nudity if doing anatomy studies, but the moment i have to show any character showing skin then i chicken out. :B
• no dramatic love triangles.
• wanna avoid having a clear split between the good/evil alignment. i'd prefer for all my characters to have a motivation for their actions, have something a little selfish about them and something a little redeeming about them. no characters purely to root for/hate on.

there's not too many things i would say i absolutely would not depict in a comic. i actually sometimes like being repelled, and a story being repelling just for the sake of being repelling is better than a story being repelling because the creator themself is repelling.

of course, the limitations depend on the kind of story being told. swearing, political intrigue, and copious blood and guts, while i'm not opposed to any of it, would look somewhat out of place with my current comic, whose protagonists are mainly children in a subdued society.

[AnnaLandin]

I won't ever depict rape, abuse, hard drug-use, bigotry, racism etc. etc. in a positive light.

Same! It's unfortunate, but there are a lot of stories out there that romanticize abusive and controlling behaviour. I'm definitely trying to avoid that!

cake-farting

... is.. is this a thing? I had no idea.

[joannekwan]

Yes, it's a thing. Pretty much anything can be a thing these days

[purrlpankras]

Fillers?

Obvious tropes and cliches, you can have words of power that aren't the obvious tropes, but it's very hard to make them.

Porn, that includes no weird fetishes you only see on Deviantart

And discrimination

@joannekwan ...Do I dare ask what Cake-farting is? lol

[niinasalmelin]

I'm not sure if I want to say there's something that will forever be off limits for me.

However I would make sure that if I ever pick up some shadier topic, I wouldn't downplay it in any means (like it wasn't that bad because they love each other now TEEHEE). Also like @joannekwan said about portraying racism, abuse etc. I don't like to see those things romanticized, which is what happens pretty often.

Also the pure evil vs pure good is something, like @noctuidae, I don't think I'll ever want to feature in my stories. Grayscale is something I like when it's about characters and their morals. I'm not saying it can't be done well, but it's not something I'm interested in making. At least for now.

I think most important is to be aware of things you put in to your comics and for what reason.

[SpavVy]

Things I'll never do in my comic:

I'll never mush two characters together just because they are being shipped.

I'm not going to spare a character just because a lot of people like them, if the character is destined to die in the story, then they are going to die.

Like Joannekwan, I won't depict rape, abuse, bigotry, racism and so on in a positive light.

[nattbear]

I think it might be worth noting that someone saying "I really dislike this in stories so I would never put it in my own" doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing nobody should do!

I would say that anything can be really good or terrible just depending of the way it's showed in a story. Even the biggest cliché wtv can still looks good. I'm not against chosen ones, only the ones that are boring, predictable and repetitive.

About what I would not do, I was more restrictive in the past, but now it really depends of the story I'm doing...

It would be great if we can simply leave our tastes or preconceptions behind when creating something. It's too hard... But at least try to do some diferent points od view (?)
If we just put our tastes in our characters they'll all end up being the same person.... x.x A world full of me.... What a nightmare... :

[mckarenart]

-Scatologic humor or porn (all right with other kinds of porn XD)
-"And in the end it was all a dream"
-Involve in social topics that I don't have clear... Or take party in a war conflict between two countries... If it's necessary I'd try to show all the complexity of the matter wothout taking party.
-I try not being maniqeist (good vs evil)
.I think I'd never show a character taking drugs...

Now I remember somethong that made me real mad, when I was watching Terminator Salvation SPOILER ALERT when the good cyborg sacrificates himself to save John Connor, and John Connor (who is a good guy, the hero, the savior, a model to follow =_=) ACCEPTS HE DONATES HIS HEART AND DIE. JOHN YOU BE SUPPOSED A GOOD GUY. Well, I hate the thing "this really really bad thing must be made for the sake of a supposed supreme GOOD". That is something that I never want to put in a story.

[Sanz]

It really depends on the story for me. When i do commissions my gimmick is that there is "nothing i wont draw" and there's not....and let me tell yah ive got alot of messed up stuff. But comic wise "if it fits it ships" BUT if i know what people will freak out about and i wont include those things.

[Shanny8]

Given the fact that Terminator Salvation is like almost a decade old, is it REALLY a "spoiler"? Lol...

[mckarenart]

Haha, I SAW IT JUST A WEEK AGO. Oh, in Bambi's movie, SPOILER ALERT Bambi's mother dies.

[Reraser]

I don't think that the opinions people are expressiong could be called aversions to sex; I think we're all adults about its existence, but that we're trying to avoid participating in its... Unnecessary overabundance in stories that are not ABOUT sex. We can all think of an unfortunate sex/makeout scene in a movie that just does noooot need to be there. Some of us have even watched them with family in the room, because that kind of scene wasn't expected- thank goodness I'm not talking about me here. My heart goes out to those that HAVE gone through that though.

As for fanservice, I think probably that's a matter of objectification. It's such a broad term that could be used to excuse a lot of choices that could be dumb for any given story. Some comics are intended for fanservice, but others are an actual piece of media trying to tell a multi-layered story, yet for some reason the artist also has all the women in skimpy gear no matter the setting. It's just cheesey in a lot of cases where fanservice isn't the joke/the point.

[mariusthered]

Bambi's mother dies.

you just had to bring that up

(i was three when i cried at that and had 30 years of piss taking from my brothers GRR!)
LOL