It's About Having Fun~

I dunno if you guessed it, but I like drawing cute little ponies....fanart of a children's cartoon. And every so often, someone feels the need to tell me that my personal interest is stupid, childish, cancerous....."cringe-y". Boy howdy, do I hear that word tossed around a lot. Cringe, cringe, cringe. We're all afraid of making something cringe-worthy. Something that could end up in those lovely "Bad OC" cringe compilations. I see other artists, especially young creators, getting policed and attacked for creating something that could-gasp!- be interpreted as the dreaded Mary Sue. So artists stifle themselves. Can't make your OC too colorful. Don't you dare make them related to a canon character! Better watch that backstory, lest somebody decry your character as an edgelord. You can have a nerdy interest, but you better not be too fucking passionate about it. Watch yourself. Don't be too different. Don't be cringe-y.

So here's my question to ye gatekeepers of content, ye knowers of all things cringe-worthy, ye adamant enforcers of creative conformity...........Who cares?

Really. Why. Why is "cringe" an issue? So what if someone makes an edgy black-and-red OC, or a sparkly mary sue alicorn princess? So what if somebody makes up an over-powered self-insert and ships them with a canon character? So what if somebody dares to be unironically passionate about a fandom or interest considered less-than-cool? Who cares if people have imperfect, cliche-riddled characters they love?

Cringe culture is mean-spirited. It demands creators conform. It's perpetuated by people who, quite oddly, get really bent out of shape at the sight of people unironically enjoying harmless things.

I say forget it. Trample it. Let people have fun. Especially don't be cruel to young creators- nobody learns to be a skilled artist or writer overnight. And this is by no means a statement against criticism, even harsh criticism.....but there's a big, big difference between giving constructive criticism, vs choosing to crap on somebody for having a "cringe-y" interest. Clicking on someone's work to tell them that it's cringe, or cancer, or that they should kill themselves.....that's not criticism. It's cruelty. The only point of it is to discourage and shame creators, often young, vulnerable ones. There is nothing heroic or helpful about this behavior. This is what I am standing against. To make things clear, I am not anti-criticism. I am anti-bullying.

Idk. I'm a teacher with an Art Education degree, and I believe one of the most important things is to encourage people's interest in the arts, not push them away (out of a mean-spirited attempt to seem cooler by proxy). My favorite Mister Rogers quote (applies to artists of all ages):

Join my Cringe Challenge here! Cringey Pony OC Challengefigured my last status would work better as a journal SO
I've got a little challenge for all my artists that love making MLP OCs~
if you want to, i'd sure appreciate if ya'll would design the "cringiest", most "mary-sue/gary stu" pony your brain can concoct, and submit your design to this journal in a comment. I'd like to do a piece about how cringe culture restricts our freedom as makers and consumers of content, so I'll be picking one of your "cringe" designs and drawing it! I'd like to make clear that this is not meant to be mean-spirited, your mock OC will be drawn respectfully, and hopefully be used to get those haters of "cringe-y OCs" to question why they feel the need to mock other people's harmless interests.
You can go however nuts you want. Break every OC-designing rule, design however you goddamn want. Wanna show me a rainbow-haired alicorn with jewel eyes and two sets of wings? Go for it! Make a black and red overpowered dark lord that cries ink black tears. This OC was designed by , their original (much better, lol) drawing is here:

edit: comments disabled because it's late and i'm tired, and some of ya'll are getting real huffy about a drawing of a rainbow horse with a flowery anti-bullying message. will probably turn comments back on later. For now i think i'm good on being told to kill myself. Great job convincing me cringe culture is totes necessary tho!

urgh