Tongue in cheek. This is going to go off the subject, I just KNOW it.
by Cassandra
(It's probably my work, unless other people have been popping in and putting up pictures of Our B'ys in "questionable" situations when my back was turned.)
We appear to be dealing here with only two ends of one spectrum, the risqué and the pornographic, and that restricts our debate somewhat. You've already agreed that my art is very far from pornographic, and I maintain that I don't consider it to be even risqué, which you feel it is. We don't get very far that way. All we have are opinions pulling the argument two seperate ways.
So why not remove the subject altogether from the spectrum in question? Place it on another one, say the spectrum of the whimsical to the scientific, which begins with, say, the topless centaur ladies in the first Fantasia, and ends with Leonardo da Vinci and anatomy drawings in textbooks. Here, the fact that the bodies depicted are naked is irrelevant. The point of the work is beauty, or poignancy, or interest, or the scientific study of the human body.
On this spectrum, I think my work would come about dead centre. I adore the realistic element in art, whether visual or musical or literary. I like studying proportion and line in a Durer-like way. On the other hand, I haven't got the experience or, at present, the time to introduce a serious, scientific study to my work. But whichever way you look at it, people who appear naked in my artwork do so for a reason other than engendering lust or titillating the senses.
That little monologue didn't have much point to it, I suppose, except to function as a lead-up to the conclusion: Can we therefore leave off the word "risqué"? I'll certainly do you the courtesy of warning you if I think any of my future pics might offend you, but could you do me the courtesy of acknowledging that my work isn't offensive, even in the mildest manner possible? Offensive work has to have some intent to offend or startle behind it, and mine has none.
.... Of course, I tend to treat clothed characters differently. But in that one drawing you mentioned, Remus is in fact wearing a shirt as well as a kilted cloak, you know.