To my fellow artists: Stop trying to win against these people. You wanna know why?
Because this is their game where they're automatically the winner. I've seen it over the years how artists cowtowed to concerns over this by plastering "ALL CHARACTERS ARE AGED +18" notices all over not just their profiles but their artwork, right now you DESPERATELY try to shake off concerns by deriding and criticizing people who care a little bit too much about "fictional characters", basicaly painting a target on yourselves by saying "their age doesn't matter" when that's not the crux of the issue here.
It's perfectly natural feeling to want to be seen as a moral guardian to your kin by encouraging good conduct, and with all the epstein and discord groomer allegations being tossed around on a daily basis, naturally the concept of "canonically underage" characters attracts a class of people looking for what's essentially a drug hit.
It's LITERALLY a non-issue that only becomes a problem because the people that do it, the people that report these drawings, the people that contact site owners, sic their online mobs on unsuspecting creators, are all looking for a pat on the back for hitting an easy target, and causing emotional turmoil where you're the morally virtuous winner BY DEFAULT hits like Heroin to these people.
Newgrounds in this sense, is only hurting their public image by cowtowing to these same people and giving them an even greater moral victory in their social issue that they invented. Because it will not stop here, it will consume everything because no one really knows that at the heart of any issue, individuals are responsible for it, so what they think and what they feel matters, because it will be extremely helpful when a massive pushback forms to tell these people to fuck off.
It's your life vs. kids whose most spiritually uplifting audio-visual experience was watching Avengers Endgame in theatres.
Your livelihood/artistic expression falling prey to daft dimwits looking for praise from their group chat on discord.
