#notjustadrawing: Why Cartoons and Fandom Need to be Cleaned Out
In 2019, Disney released a cartoon by the name of Amphibia. The show is about a girl named Anne Boonchuy who opens up a magical box and is transported to a magical world filled with frogs. She meets a young frog named Sprig and the two of them go on various misadventures. The show has been receiving positive reviews and is already renewed for a second season. Sadly, this article is not about how wonderful the show is.
On July 18th, Hannah Ayoubi, a storyboard artist for the show, retweeted a picture featuring Sasha and Grime. Now, what is the problem with this you might ask? Well, Sasha is a teenager and Grime is obviously an adult frog. While Ayoubi claims she sees Grime as a teenager, it’s obvious that he was drawn and written to be an adult. The picture has them drawn in a romantic context: Grime is holding Sasha and they’re both blushing. To make matters worse, Hannah then replied to another piece of romantic art featuring the two characters and this time they were kissing.
Here we have a screenshot of Ayoubi sharing said picture
Anna Lencioni, another artist working on the show, defend Ayoubi and also blocked people who decided to speak out against the art. She was also joined by Sofia E. Alexander and Jessica A.M who also saw no problem with the art that Ayoubi had liked. Even sadder was other adult fans supporting what these artists were saying and seeing no problem with the art.
Sadly, despite working in the animation industry, there are many artists who do not care for the safety or well being of children. Like an industry, animation has its fair share of issues and one of the main issues is pedophilia. This is not the only example of an artist who worked on a cartoon who was revealed to support pedophilic relationships and see no problem with it. This is very dangerous of course but these artists and even fans don’t see the dangers of such artwork.
How the Fandom Responded
From this, a hashtag was created on twitter called notjustadrawing. Fan artists and cartoon fans talked about their stories in which adults used drawn CP (child porn) and other forms of fan content to hurt them. Many brave artists come forward and spoke about their abuse.
For the most part, people were supportive but since this is the internet, you’re bound to attract unpleasant people.
These are just a handful of tweets from people misunderstanding the point of the #notjustadrawingtag. These are just a few tweets that were peppered throughout the tag. Not only did these people fail to understand why the tag was created but they also continued to victim blame children.
It’s the Children who Are Wrong
Yes, literal adults are victim blaming children. Adults who should be looking out for children were blaming children for being victims of pedophiles. Apparently, it’s too much to ask adult artists not to draw or write pornographic content of children. They say we need to educate children and monitor their internet usages, thinking that will solve the problems completely.
This is very upsetting but sadly, this isn’t new. Fandom has had a problem with people openly shipping characters who are minors with adults, drawing CP and sharing it with others. These people don’t want to be held accountable, thinking art has no impact on people when of course, it’s the opposite. Thanks for this, fandoms for children’s cartoons have become extremely unsafe for children.
- Children cannot safely search for images on various search engines without porn popping up. Even with safe search enabled, porn still gets through.
- Drawn child porn is just as dangerous as actual child porn since it has the same effect. A study shows that 85% percent of online offenders who have downloaded explicit content featuring minors have sexually abused minors in real life.
- Many victims of child sexual abuse go to fandoms as a means to escape and seeing drawn CP is potentially triggering.
- A lot of CP features an adult man and a young boy which also continues to perpetuate the stereotype that gay men as predators.
- By allowing fan artists to creature artistic CP, they’re inviting predators into these places and are also giving them media to harm children.
Changing the Industry for the Better
Despite many people coming forward, saying how drawn CP affected them, people refuse to listen. Granted, things are slowly getting better. In 2018, a Buzzfeed article was posted about the sexual abuse and grooming two women faced under John Kricfalusi. Once this was revealed and more evidence came to light, the animation world turned it’s back on Kricfalusi. The creator of Twelve Forever, Julia Vickerman, was also outed as a pedophile and was fired off her own show as well.
Even fans have been able to help take down abusers. An anonymous user informed me how they helped bring down an artist who drew child porn.
The artist was mostly known as Jumpjump in most of his social media accounts. I’ve known of him since 2017 after I discovered the child porn he drew of Loud House characters. We reported him to Tumblr to get him kicked but to no avail. I discovered Internet Watch Foundation after that. I reported every almost all of his cartoon child porn fanart in the hopes that IWF would take the situation seriously. In going through his channels, I discovered that he is located in UK where laws about drawn child porn is more strict. After a day or two, all of his channels are gone. Even the ones that I didn’t know about such as his Youtube channel and Pinterest.
I found out what happened when I talked to one of the Loud House fans.
The conversation went like this:
Me: Hey, I just saw your reply post regarding JJ. I don’t know who said that they lied that JJ traced child porn for his drawings and succeeded in getting him arrested. But here’s the thing and I hope you’ll keep me anonymous. I’ve been reporting every art of JJ to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (yes, you can) and to the Internet Watch Foundation (who are based in UK and acts faster on people who commit a crime based on UK such as JJ). The IWF works with other internet watch organizations around the world to take down obscene material from the hosting companies themselves. The IWF assesses each material and since one can get arrested for obscenity for illustrated child porn, I believe that’s what happened to him. Please keep me anonymous, it’s the only way I can keep tumblr safe in my own way. The funny thing is, I didn’t know about his Pinterest and Youtube account but that was taken down too. So I don’t know if that’s the work of higher authorities or whoever.
LH fan: Oh don’t worry I will! But the thing about the tracing, that came from JumpJump himself. At first, I thought it was just because he got in trouble for his porn art, but that’s what he was saying. Honestly, I feel like it probably was him getting in trouble for drawing porn of cartoon children because I think in the UK they are more strict about it
Me: It is, I’ve read about it. So in your post, who said that they lied? Sorry, I don’t understand.
LH fan: JumpJump made a post and even told me himself that he knows who got him in trouble, and said person apparently told the police he was using real-life child porn to draw his loud house stuff with
LH fan: Again I’m not sure how true it is but that’s what everyone believes now
Also, LH fan mentioned that his kids were taken away from him. I remember after making that IWF report of his childcest porn art, I couldn’t look at my siblings for days.
So JJ says that he was arrested for tracing child porn. I think I got him arrested because I alerted IWF. So in the end, I really have no confirmation if IWF has any part to it.
Are pedophiles invading child spaces and drawing CP still a problem? Yes, of course, it is. The good news is that people are sick of it. People are tired of children being put in danger, people are tired of pedophiles getting jobs in the animation industry and people are tired of the victim blaming. It’s time we stand up for children and it’s time for the animation industry to stop hiring those who do not genuinely care about the safety and well being of children.
