A Riskbyte Entry
When we started our youtube career as Fluffbyte we did so under a premise that we felt a sense of radical intersectionality that drove us to analyze stuff (and simply exist) while being openly a babyfur. This felt radical to us because wanting to make videos about our favorite anime and video games and talk about stuff from a anarchist (and of course social justice) lens while also existing as transexual baby furry cartoon characters, felt absolutely absurd and surreal, both from the perspective of a weird kinkster who would generally seek to not draw aggro from puritains and normies for safety and from the perspective of someone who knows that any work they put out will be disqualified as valid by many people because of the cringe associated with some of our identities. But we felt strongly that there was value in the intersectionality we sought to cultivate, more so as we met folks in flesh space who were anarchists, 24/7 kinksters, and queer but for whom some worlds could never overlap. And even among kinksters being outed as a bab,little,caregiver,ABDL(Adult baby/diaper lover),age regressor, or anything related could be a career or friendship (or marrige!) ruining event. Same for being outed as a babyfur in wider furry community.
it just seemed like If we wanted to make art and talk about art and politics or attempt to be a public figure at all ,even if we did it like todd in the shadows or something,we might as well be upfront about our eccentricities that we think are important, and inform our world and frameworks. That was the honorable framing of that decision but the more fearful side of it was not wanting to live in fear that being a little or a furry could be used against us in a gotcha. If a google doc mentioned it, well it was already public knowledge. When we started trying to exist as a content creator it was just as covid was getting bad and there was a surge of interest in folks like streamers and vtubers and many folks were discovering long neglected or invisible parts of themselves. More littles. More out queer folks. More anime fans. Many self revelations. It was exciting, but still we saw how communities tore artists of any size apart for doing shit that does material harm to no one. It scared to fuck out of us that we were choosing to open ourselves up to possible harm, social death, doxxing, ect out the gate because we were trading the opportunity to hide the gross or weird parts of ourself for making ourself an acceptable target immediately.
Recently a babyfur vtuber and streamer Tygre got on the front page of twitch and got mass reported by anti woke and generally reactionary communities. Eventually, and not in more than a week, her account got unsuspended. She is a popular streamer in abdl community that was breaching containment. This concept of being seen in the perview of normies, and thus drawing aggro is common with fandoms and subcultures. Something similar happens when a wave of hate passes over our social media timeline from previously unaware folks just finding out that Saba exists or finally got around to watching Made in Abyss. From within the community a frustration, and a worry of the wider world about to slam down the hammer on that nail that sticks out. Many folks shared sympathy to Tygre, but we did so some critical thought in the Babyfur community that by accepting the offer from twitch to be on the front page, Tygre was putting the community in the crosshair of bigots,even more so with the current fascist politics that run a lot of culture right now. The added context of Tygre being the head of a stream team of ageplayers also came into play, as if she stayed suspended theat team might dissolve, which could legitimately make folks destitute.
But a lot of criticism came from the simple place. Folks in the abdl and babyfur communities who simply wanted to stay under the radar, knowing that harassment for folks like us is on the rise, and that we’ve always been acceptable targets of puritan politics.
Babyfur and abdl communities are very very indie art driven but now there are more opportunities to make a living out of it. And the rise of streamers has expanded this. Folks used to mostly be able to make money in the community from art like commissions of written fiction as well as digital and traditional art or some sort of physical craft like furniture or clothes, maybe a hypno tape or ASMR. But streaming in kink or subculture community has sustained folks’ career. Not to mention that many artists like the ones we talked about also stream their process. Suffice to say the visibility and community a stream team provides can help even the most niche streamer find an audience. All that being said hearing this criticism felt alienating for us.
From the Very beginning of Our youtube and twitch career we’ve always been trying to cross streams so to speak. We never intended to only exist in Babyfur spaces. Though the intention was more to take up space in sex positive adult spaces with interest in popculture (anime and videogames) with a political awareness. We used to proudly think of ourselves as the babyfur contrapoints. (feels weird we’re more radical than her now). A lot of our videos have tried to interrogate how people are infantalized (say as a young person, a disabled person, a queer person) from the perspective of one with interest in initialization. Its lead us to interesting and thoughtful places. Honestly we were a little jealous, because the only reason we’ve never gotten the criticism of making folks too aware of babyfurs existing was that we’re not visible enough as a public figure to warrant it.But its kind of our own fault.
We had intentionally diminished our presence online out of fear. Fear of being harassed once we got even a modicum of popularity. Our heart hasn’t been in putting ourselves out there in the ways most streamers do because we feel like the embodiment of the nail sticking out if there ever was one. The small taste of harassment or bad faith attention we’ve gotten has discouraged and scarred us. But the thing is for a while we were fearful in the same way we were trying to avoid with being an out babyfur, but about cub and lolisho. And because we exist in several communities at once, the cognitive load was several fold. The last two years we’ve been increasingly public about it but it was very hard to bear and we still hold our breath when we say it outloud sometimes. We kinda developed a trauma response lol
But Tygre for their part has been continuing to trail blaze. The stream that got her suspended had a huge turnout, and its hard to believe that only littles were watching, with 3.8k watching her at one point. She’s not deterred by the hate she received. Although its safe to say most of her community are ageplayers, we’ve found that streams cross rather often. We have a friend whos a babyfur vtuber and streamer who is on a esports team, and is the only little on the team. I think the path to acceptance includes bridging gaps, thru community building. Just because we are historically misunderstood, doesn’t mean we have to stay that way.
Tygre’s attitude fills us with determination. We’ve seen how public sentiment has crushed other artists from niche communities, and the hate we’ve gotten for existing in the spaces we dare to tread has been very dysregulation until recently. honestly we’re still struggling but doing our best to not be afraid of the limelight. But if Tygre who’s brand is much sillier than ours can persist in the harsh internet wastelands we find ourselves in,then we think we can too.
Sometimes streams cross without one even wanting to too, and when that happens you make the most of it.
The vtuber most qualified to be called our Oshi (as in the vtuber who we admire and most want to push forward the most), Bungo Taiga was forcibly outed as a little in a attempt to cancel her but that was only a small part of the callout. The callout included tons of real and fabricated screenshots attempting to throw as many moral offenses as possible at a person for maximum damage to reputation. When it happened , many in our orbit warned us of the tea. Any affiliation with Taiga’s content was liable to get you a side eye at the very least, and I’m not talking about in the abdl community but the vtuber community at large. Tagia’s name was mostly cleared when it was made public that the one who assembled and distributed the doc was a spurred ex moderator in Tai’s community. Many of the allegations were recognized as false, but Taiga did turn out to be an ageplayer and shotacon. And has since been open about both, which has inadvertently taught a lot of people about littles from a sympathetic perspective and allowed Taiga’s fanbase to grow to have space for littles.
Not all vtubers are okay with abdl or even lolisho, its really a case by case basis. Many popular indie vtubers and copros have teased ageplay in their content to some degree, usually something small like clipping a pacifier to their model. But normalization has opened the door with vtuber and anime communities. Not all vtubers who are littles are public about it, but the tides have changed in the years since the attempt to social death Taiga. Taiga had appeal to littles before (not to mention abdl are multifaced people who can have many interests) but the core audience has generally been anime fans and femboy enthusiasts, with a decent concentration of loli/shotacon. Which meant that if you are a taiga fan you kinda have to accept the two communities can coexist.
In the years since, we’ve seen lots of vtubers in all sorts of sub communities get called out for interest in harder kink. Feral, lolisho and yes abdl are seen as smoking guns of probable harm. The current cultural moment under fascism means a lot of censoship and deplatforming making surviving as a 18+ creator ,even just to the extent of cultivating an explicitly 18+ audience in a sfw setting, a hostile environment. That being the case there is a break in hostilities among communities that wouldn’t usually be in solidarity. When speaking of the push against visa and mastercard for their unfair moral censorship of adult (and sometimes queer) content you may have for example anti-woke gamers doing similar calls to action as the queer anarchists such as ourselves. Its a strange time to be alive.
we recognize that some solidary in this moment is paper thin, however there are bridges forming in some of the communities we are a part of that has been making us feel the intersectionality we’ve longed to forge in our own context is present in others, and thus has made the cognitive load so much more bearable. And given us hope that not everyone is operating on a framework motivated by disgust or trauma. Its been a silver lining in all the woe of the world. We have friends and colleagues who respect us as a video game pundant (is that what we are?) and look at us being into diapers as a quirk as much as being a furry and the more that happens the more surreal it feels. And likewise we know folks who engage with us mostly about little and game stuff and don’t engage with the political stuff as much. Its a mixed bag. but the lines have been blurring.
More streamers like Snapcube coming out as ageplayers, Taigai embracing both the lolisho and abdl community, and even Ana Valens conceding that the fight against censorship should have recognized the attacks on lolisho content as the canary in the cole mines years ago and basically dropping her anti fiction stance have all been major moments to behold.
if you don’t know who Ana Valens is she’s a trans vtuber and journalist whos been at the forefront of reporting on artistic censorship in this era, particularly in video games and related media when it comes to adult content. She also makes adult content like lewd asmr, and sometimes have giantess streams. She’s lowkey an inspiration. A creator who has sex positive and kink content AND does thoughtful journalism. Another figure who operates in several spaces at once that folks would think would conflict. She gives us hope in our own art journey.
Even before her heel turn, we’ve cited her work a lot. Her coverage of censorship has helped us shape our takes and coverage on the matter.
But we’re still troubled. On the morning of writing this (dec 4th) a fairly large figure in the the ageplay community, a furry streamer, fiction writer and vtuber with visibility in the babyfur community; Jimmy Wuffster has decided to leave the abdl and babyfur community. Here is his statement which he shared on bluesky.
We want to be as respectful as possible with talking about this. We wish no ill will toward Jimmy and wish him luck in his processing. But it resonated with us like a ping on the opposite wavelength and we wanted to unpack that , and put it into words in a way we’ve struggled to. The thing about Jimmy’s statement that made us want to talk about it in particular in a wider convo about intersectional community solidarity is because he tries to assert his own boundaries and place in the community without making it a fight. Calling attention to where he stands while trying not to insult anyone. Its not exactly good faith, but its neutral? Regardless the points Jimmy makes shakes something loose in us thats been hard to put to words previously. So lets break it down a bit
The central cause of Jimmy’s disengaging from abdl and babyfur community come from feeling alienated from those communities because of the integration and acceptance of cub content (ie sexual cub art, basically furry lolisho) across those wider communities. And the amount of financial support folks are willing to give is more than he could have imagined.
He is right that the wider ageplay community used to fucking excommunicate you if you were found to explicitly make sexualized cub content. I am very aware of this because I’ve seen folks driven out of the community for have a secret alt. In fact if you were an artist that uploaded on a site like inkbunny you had to have a lot of trust in the community built up in order to keep your reputation, even if you only drew nonsexual bab art. But as I’ve been saying, things have been changing. Not all at once but its been noticeable. But it pains us to see a peer feeling alienated by the exact thing thats been making us feel less afraid.
The thing Jimmy talks about in regards to “more important battles” is actually something thats been worrying us in wider community. So many folks are galvonized by whats happening with payment processors and looking past their own personal comfort to fight for art that they would never want to consume and we always felt that was a good thing, but then when news started pouring in in the video game industry about collective shout’s gambit with no mercy and explicitly going after a game “no one would defend” (according places like rock paper shotgun) to open the doors to massive censorship of any game that could be frame as harmful to women and children, we got nervous.
Nervous that people would backpedal if a group like collective shout found a sufficiently degenerate target, that the flimsy solidary wouldn't survive long enough to reverse the ongoing attempts to sanitize the internet. And even worse that the art we enjoyed, and even made would only be considered defensible if someone else’s art was also going to be attacked. Like the value of that art only extended to its purpose as a wedge. It sucks. But because of my intersectional framework I recognize that some would see our abdl art that way, not just our lolisho or cub stuff.
Jimmy thought the babyfur community would as a hard rule never accept cub in its spaces. I have to say we were surprised too, but I think the choice to leave the community, at least in name is a little rash. I think if someone wants to cultivate a community that doesn’t allow cub, they are free to. But no community is a monolith. I run a community that allows the two to overlap, but not all do. We don’t post cub in communities that wouldn’t be okay with it, just like we are in furry community that would rather not see babyfur posting regardless of context. Not all community spaces are the same, and preserving some peace for yourself thru curation of your social media feed or only participating in certain discords, is valid and I’d like that to be a more common way of navigating this sort of thing.
Jimmy is a community leader in the ageplay community. A lot of streamers have a dynamic with their audience of a safe space to be themselves, and with littles its a fragile peace. so its even more so. Some folks only share this side of themselves with close friends or online, some pecause of it being a very private thing others because they have been hurt when someone in their life finds out. And if you age regress, particularly if u don’t have control of it, it can be something you have to make sure doesn’t slip out in the rest of your life. A lot of people in the community are leaders not just because they make good art or are nice to listen to but because they have a handle on balance or stability that others are striving for.
I can only imagine the fear and anxiety The folks who reached out to Jimmy had. How scared they were. Feeling a loss of safe space. It echos the sentiments we’re heard from our cluster of community, folks who were relived to finally find a place they could be a babyfur into dark stuff without being kicked out of a space, or slandered. Having been harassed or driven to isolate. Or simply overclocked with the cognitive load of not being sure which artists work is safe to share, even safe to commission.
I think these conversations can easily become a competition of trauma, and I don’t want that. Especially since there is so much cross pollination. There are some who come to both cub and babyfur with similar worries, similar beliefs and having had an experiences of being similarly persecuted. And while on the topic of triggers, there are as many triggers as people in a community, we know folks who cannot handle bad end kink stories of any kind that involve ego death or folks who get nauseated when seeing a messy diaper, erotic or otherwise. Trigger warnings, suggestive and explicit material toggles, black lists and separate challenges in a discord servers are all tools that help us share community with others who we may otherwise have friction with beasuce of triggers.Its always hit or miss if someone will be comfortable will the social spaces you take up but furries at large did not used to hold space for babyfurs. And that changed over time, but there is still a sizable portion of furries who have a negative reaction to seeing babyfur stuff. I think we should try to afford the patience and grace we would ask of others among ourselves. And that is harder than just separating ones self entirety, at least we think so.
Jimmy says he talked to supporters of cub content to hear their side of things and that didn’t change his view of things. For him a core piece of the abdl community was that if you made cub content you had to leave the abdl community, you couldn’t have both. When he lays it out like that we do recognize that we are at an impasse with this frame of thought. Our take is that it is unfair to make someone choose.
There was figure in the abdl community a while back who was discovered to have a shotacon alt and was run out of the community for it. We remember it well because we followed both aliases and didn’t know they were the same person until they got canceled. They deleted or archived their little accounts and just stuck to their shota account and even ended up adding a stipulation to their art TOS that they don’t draw diapers anymore, so don’t ask. They seemed to be trying to avoid any further negative attention. It stays with us for many reasons, not insubstantially because of the fact that that creator was non binary, and it stayed true to a pattern of vulnerable people, many trans or queer being ousted from community whole sale because of involvement with cub, lolisho, or even drawing sexual abdl in a chibi style.
This isn’t to say the abdl or babyfur community has been overly queerphobic (most community leaders are queer in some way in fact) but there is a concentration of marginalized and queer creators in niche communities like vtubing and abdl, middle and kid core who have been treated poorly and for whom once they are ousted from community, little and otherwise for exploring taboo art and being less than acceptable. There is literally a babyfur transgirl lolicon whisper network because of how common social death is. I don’t think it was better before when someone could lose all their friends and following and livlihood from having multiple niches.
the hard truth is that if the community stayed as it was we would have low key never got into drawing as we draw inspirations from all over. In fact a lot of our greatest inspiration have either gotten harassed out of making taboo art publicly, paywalls all their stuff, or has simply vanished.
Jimmy is right, it is no longer the case that artists and supporters have to choose between abdl and cub or loisho or feral, or some other potentially divisive subject. It is actually sort of amazing that right now with censorship barring down on all of us that enough folks are accepting nuance that its creating a visible shift. I don;t want people to be repressed or afraid of their friends, or scared of getting blacklisted from commission some artists if they commission others. It saddens us we cannot see eye to eye.
There isn’t too much to say about the rest of this, Jimmy’s feelings are his own and he is entitled to them. At no point do I want to say someone’s emotions are wrong. Emotions cant be wrong. And if he doesn't feel safe in the community as its changed that is understandable. I don’t know if there is some silent majority, but I do wanna say they folks might get caught up thinking people not opposing something means they are enthusiastically for it. We have a number of abdl and babyfur friends who are not into cub, are perhaps ambivalent about it, and even some who had to do some real interrogation on their views before being okay sharing space with us. Again, we know its not easy. Hell Ana Valens not going after lolisho anymore is a great example of this
Valen’s isn’t suddenly into lolisho, she doesn’t allow it in her own space, but she does see how it can be used as a wedge for getting censorship off the ground, its an easy target. So is ageplay. From Jimmy’s statement I do see overlap with how Ana thinks and what Jimmy thought the ageplay community's stance on cub was, a battle to be temporarily put on hold; but heres the thing. That attitude leaves the door ajar for another attempt at censorship. Afterall social outrage against questionable art has been a common occurrence in politics.
We wish Jimmy peace and clarity while navigating this. But we hope folks who think like him can learn to curate space that feels safe to them without it being a harsh split in the community, what counts as cub or loli is a sliding scale. Art style creates a grey area for example, and what some folks consider too young looking to lewd is something everyone decides individually. Everyone has their own contexts. But we think coexistence is resistance