Unspeakable Archives

A project to document and preserve rare, offensive, highly-suppressed books - as a way to explore and promote Freedom of Expression 📜 (I love getting asks, messages, and comments! 📩)

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[unspeakablearchives]

Does anyone have copies or info on the zine "Forcible," by Joseph something-or-other (it was a pseudonym for Joanna Jeanine Schmidt), published by Coprolaliac Press I think?

It's one of the few works I know of to have been directly inspired by Peter Sotos, along with other older zines that I might call "fucked up edgelord shit" like Full Force Frank and Dr. Randall Phillip (no offense to them personally.

And what makes it really noteworthy to me is that it was written by a woman, which instantly makes it more interesting somehow.

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FLAGBOAT FLAGBOAT L GB T 🏳️‍🌈

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Oh shit, is it pride month?

Here look at this brilliant wordplay of mine that no one cared about lol

[unspeakableasks]

I’m really scared about mentioning this even anonymously but I just really want to tell someone.

I’m a pedophile. I’m mostly attracted to girls between the ages of roughly 2 and 11. I went to prison for child pornography. I’d been watching it for a long time at least a decade. I’m out now and off probation. And yes I now realize how bad and harmful it is and I really regret what I did.

For my whole life the way I always dealt with my feelings was by talking about it or writing about it online. Communicating with other people helps me work through my thoughts and conflicted emotions. But it feels like I can’t do that when it comes to this stuff. No one wants to hear from some convicted child sex offender, no matter how remorseful they are. I tried talking in a lot of different places online and would always get banned pretty fast.

What I have to say is important even if it’s just important to me. But I think other people could benefit from hearing a first hand account from someone like me. It can educate folks about what child pornography is actually like and take away many of the misconceptions and the mystique surrounding it. The reason all that stuff exists is because of all the secrecy and mystery and lack of accurate information out there. I have this opportunity to help sort out my own thoughts while also helping educate others. But I can’t do that.

Think about it. Where could I talk about this stuff openly and honestly? Nowhere on earth no where on the internet would allow it. So this just has me frustrated.

Hmm, this is an interesting one for sure 🤔

Well I do think there's value in a testimony like that. Sometimes the ugliest subjects are precisely the ones people understand the least, because the people with actual firsthand knowledge can't speak about them plainly without being banished on sight.

Not to tell you how to do things, but if you ever do start to write about your experiences, I would really, really strongly suggest you do so without any details that could potentially be used to locate CSAM ("Child Sexual Abuse Material," this is the preferred term for "child pornography" now). In other words: no detailed descriptions of how to find that sort of material, no descriptions of filenames, etc.

Just try to always remember that these victims are still out there and if you are truly remorseful then you should want to do everything in your power to protect the survivors by preventing people from seeking these materials out.

Beyond that, the second issue is one that I have no solution to: having something worth saying does not necessarily mean you have a place to say it. I mean you can't possibly be surprised that no company, no organization, no website wants to be associated with that sort of material?

Well, then again I say that, but I'm running into this same sort of issue myself when it comes to ever potentially making these archives I'm compiling public lol. And I'm also sort of always naively surprised when I get banned from some place. So idk what to tell you on that front.

Best solution? Well, at least for now, maybe finding someone to talk about this privately with, like a therapist, support group, private online community - there's several of them out there for pedophiles who want support to make sure they don't offend.

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How do you research banned books and stuff like that without worrying you'll get put on a list?

Well, maybe some of it is naivety or overconfidence on my part 😅

Or maybe I've just grown to believe that no amount of "good behavior" can protect you from being targeted. In other words: even if you avoid acting suspicious, the government may still fuck with you.

So yeah, I mean, I know that lawful curiosity can be misread as dangerous intent by an opaque and petty bureaucracy. Some asshole authority figure might mistake your inquiry for endorsement.

But I guess I just think it's sad to live your life worried that you might be accumulating invisible points that count against you in some unseen system.

I feel like people living in a free society shouldn't allow themselves to become trained to hide their intellectual curiosity - not even if it's related to ugly, disreputable, or disturbing material.

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My questionable and inflammatory political opinion: I think making AI-generated pornography from your own baby pictures or the baby pictures of somebody else who enthusiastically consented to doing so in person or in another way where it was verifiably them (because of deepfakes and shit) is one of the more ethical applications of AI. I don't like AI but if generating AI slop of yourself keeps you from having actual CSAM on your computer and furthering the abuse and trauma of an existing victim... That's a net positive in my view. Already predicting a lot of backlash for this, but whatever.

Stop. Everyone hold on a minute. This is clearly one of those questions where people’s revulsion gives us an answer faster than our reasoning does, and I do always say that that's a bad sign. I pride myself on being open-minded and thinking things through logically, not just based on emotional gut reactions.

So what I need to do is take my time, meditate, clear my mind, and approach this from a sort of clear, rationalist, philosophical perspective.

Hmm...

Okay.

Yes, there is a real ethical distinction there. If no actual child is being abused, no existing abuse material is being recirculated, and the images are generated from one’s own baby pictures, then that is plainly not the same category as real CSAM. I mean that is true.

Most importantly, it does avoid the central horrors of CSAM: the fact that a real child was sexually exploited, and that the resulting material continues that violation every time it is possessed and shared.

So I do think you're identifying a genuine philosophical point, and I do not think it should just be sort of brushed off due to our instinctual disgust.

In fact, I'll preemptively say that some of the most obvious potential arguments against this material don't really hold water to me:

People might say that a baby can't consent to having porn made of them, even if that is going to happen in the distant future, and even if the person doing so is their future adult self. I don't buy this claim because it starts getting into territory that's weirdly like... metaphysical, I guess? Like, this claim seems to view the infant and the adult as two separate people, one of whom is being wronged by the other across time. But that's just not true. The way human rights are conceptualized is entirely based on the idea that people have an unbroken continuity of their personhood over time (even if it's rarely spelled out because it seems so obvious).

One seemingly strong argument people might make is a sort of social argument: if we were to fully allow synthetic sexual imagery of children’s bodies, even under narrowly defined consensual circumstances, it may start to "normalize" such depictions in ways that subtly and nefariously shifts societal and cultural values over time. But that whole concept really does go against my entire perspective on Free Expression. I think I've been pretty explicit here that I only think media should be outlawed if it causes tangible, direct harm to a specific person. Because once you establish that you can ban something because it might subtly push culture in a bad direction over time, you've set this precedent that WILL be used for other things. It's something that you really can't start making exceptions for.

HOWEVER before I throw my unconditional support behind this concept (and get absolutely cancelled into fucking oblivion in the process lol), I should say that there might still be some other less obvious ethical questions this raises, mainly when it comes to someone consenting to a third party using their photos, and/or when money gets involved:

Not to state the obvious here, but there are already issues regarding the exploitation and coercion of vulnerable individuals in the world of pornography. Is it possible that we might see poor people being offered serious money to allow deepfakes to be made using their childhood photos and video, even if they feel uncomfortable with it?

I'm actually super unclear whether a third-party would be obtaining the rights to the individual's likeness, or just getting the right to use the childhood photos. That might not seem important, but there's a serious difference there that many people might not realize: the person who owns the rights to a photo is almost always the person who actually took the photo. So if this is just about the right to use photos of someone, that raises some red flags. Could a parent sell the rights to use photos they took of their own child in this manner (after the child turns 18)? What about a professional photography studio (yes, they still own the rights to the photo), if the child had previously been working as a model or something? I actually don't know how it would work.

Allowing this could end up potentially causing some evidentiary and enforcement problems. Because in theory, yes we could construct a tiny, carefully walled-off category of "fully consensual, non-abusive synthetic material." But in practice, people lie, verification is messy, provenance is weak, etc. Now, it would be trivially easy to prove that it's you in an AI photo you made of yourself. But I suspect that opening it up to third-parties who have obtained consent from others to use their childhood photos would make things vastly more complicated.

So the strongest argument here can be made regarding someone using their own childhood photos for sexual AI-generated images. I'm actually finding it surprisingly hard to find logical arguments for any direct harm happening there.

But the idea of somebody else consenting to allow a third party to use their childhood photos in this manner raises a lot more questions. Now yes, that is ethically distinct from CSAM - that's absolutely true. But its not like that automatically means ethically good. I'm not saying my answer is definitive on this, but it's just not yet clear to me if there's a way to safely allow this.

Holy shit this is long lol.

But you know what? This topic is complex enough that it requires a long answer.

Now I just sit back and wait for the 10 upvotes to come rolling in lol 😎

[unspeakableasks]

so i just read Header.

what. the. fuck. was that.

and why do i not regret reading it?!!

I feel kind of bad about this one 😭 💀

Also, this Ask was immediately followed up with another one lol:

It's weird because out of all the disturbing things out there, the one that usually upsets me the most is probably the most generic: gore. I just really dislike that a lot 🤢

Also, this is kind of unrelated, but you've got to check out this AMAZING video about the novel "The Bighead" by the same author, Edward Lee. Even though it's a really extreme "low quality" extreme horror novel, this video really brilliantly compares it with early gothic novels, especially "The Monk" by Matthew Gregory Lewis:

This YouTuber, Plagued by Visions, is really amazing overall. Other videos of his that are my personal favorites include:

One about Peter Sotos, focusing on his early zine "Pure"

One about the book "Babyfucker" by Urs Allemann (neat book)

One about controversial and obscene comics, especially Mike Diana

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I have a hard time believing that you are this stupid. Stop talking about Fashioli. Delete it from the iceberg. LT already deleted everything he ever posted. He left LF over a year ago. He does not want this out there. Please respect his wishes. And do not post this ask.

Am I supposed to understand that?

What is with the coded language, are we fucking spies in the Cold War? 😑

[unspeakableasks]

This feels like a catholic confession booth for kinks

😂

Sounds like a good idea for a new #Topic of the Day:

What would you say is the 'strangest' or most 'extreme' kink / attraction that you have?

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New topic for asks if anyone is interested! 🥳

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Hello! Since you've mentioned talking to "Cloverantics" before, do you have any idea if there's a non-censored version of PROSAIC somewhere? I was only able to find this: https://imgsrc.ru/cloverantics/80971999.html#bp

It has the names of all the Ai..."artists"...crossed out. I don't even really care about this subject, I'm just very curious! If something managed to get banned from both ao3 and the wayback machine/internet archive, that means there was something weird in there, right? I don't recognize any of the AI images on my own since I've never been involved in that sort of stuff, so I have literally no leads for who the names mentioned could be. Any info would help! Thanks for being cool!!

Oh god 😩 😮‍💨

Yeah I don't want to be too rude with him because he really was a huge help with the project early on. But Clover was also one of the most singularly infuriating humans I have ever met. Cuz he could never just give me the information outright and had to just hint at everything and make me ask a thousand questions to drag it out of him like he was the goddamn pedophile version of the Riddler.

So his official story was always that he never got around to releasing the version with the names and info uncensored. And that he no longer had the original drafts anymore. And that he didn't remember what site / community it was that had even been writing about in that zine.

Bear in mind that I had met him maybe... I think it was within six months of when that zine was dated? So I would argue that those claims seem unlikely, even bordering on unbelievable.

Well, despite that I haven't been able to track down any further info on a number of his claims: some alleged major clearnet website for photorealistic AI images of children, these alleged "AI artists" mentioned, "Figlet's AI Guide," "Fashioli Magazine," etc. It's frustrating because so many of his other ludicrous claims did end up being true and he even provided the documents to back them up (ie. several of the so-called "pedophile guides).

So whatever. He's currently missing in action anyway. But maybe someone more clever than me can shed some light on all this stuff.

[urban-homesteading]

The tragedy of my life is that I keep acquiring and displaying fetish art and having to be corrected by my friends.

Most recently, a friend came over my house and saw my computer background and went, "Wow, um, I didn't know you were into that." To which I look at the picture of the well drawn muscular female minotaur in historically accurate Greek clothing and I start geeking out about how I love the detail the artist did with the clothing and I point out the period appropriate folds and pins, how the artist even inserted the native plant that was used to dye the clothing this particular shade in the background, and even how the belt has technology AND historically accurate weaving patterns on it.

Then I start explaining how I love the muscular choices of the minotaur, that I was so impressed with the artist's anatomically correct depiction of the muscles converging into the neck. That many people get an upright cow's neck wrong because cow's don't have collarbones, so it can be very difficult to merge the upper arms and a chest of a human with a cow's body. I draw her attention to the beautiful way they've merged the pectoralis major so smoothly while also staying true to how muscular they've depicted the rest of the body.

I finish up with my thoughts on the artist's bold choice to depict the minotaur as a female, and despite the underlying themes of a minotaur being violence, child murder, strength, and muscles. I segue into how unlike bulls, cow are perceived as mothers. That they are the major source of milk in human culture, and that idyllic depictions of them in a field usually depict calves frolicking nearby, yet the minotaur kills and eats children.

I finish and there is a long pause.

"Urban, this is fetish art." and she takes me to the artist's twitter and god dammit it's fetish art, not a bold statement on cultural perceptions of women and violence throughout history. I have been tricked again.

[hareofhrair]

tbh if they put that much thought and research into it and an unaware observer couldn't tell, is it actually fetish art? If it were actually fetish art, does that somehow preclude it from also being a commentary on women and violence?

Some of the boldest political and emotional messages I've ever seen came from straight up no nonsense porn. It's a setting that allows people to approach a major facet of the human experience without shame or obfuscation.

Keep in mind this is coming from an asexual person-- I don't think physical desire is some foundational keystone of life without which one isn't fully human. I think it's as morally neutral as hunger and thirst, and almost as impactful on all of human culture.

So why does the fetish cancel out the art?

Our tendency to dismiss anything associated with sex or the expression of sexual desire as frivelous and meaningless leads a lot of people to forget that pornographic art is still art.

The artist didn't just jerk off on the canvas and a beautiful minotaur appeared. They didn't spend hours researching greek dyemaking and bovine anatomy just because they were horny for muscular women. And their admiration for muscular women doesn't cease to be inherently transgressive of traditional and mainstream views of femininity just because they expressed that admiration in a sexual way.

Francisco Goya's The Nude Maja is a classical masterpiece that took three years to paint and is considered one of the greatest works of art ever made. [^] It's also porn. It was commissioned by a man-- the Prime Minister in fact-- to hang in a private room specifically for his nudes where he "often retired after dinner." It's believed the model depicted may have been his mistress.

In the political climate in which it was made, depicting a fully nude woman was extremely controversial (in fact it's considered one of the earliest western works to depict a woman's pubic hair without obvious negative connotations) especially because Goya painted her looking directly at the viewer, making her an active participant in an exchange of desire, rather than a passive object.

Eight years after it was finished, the Spanish Inquisition raided the Prime Minister's home, stole The Nude Maja and all his other paintings, and put Goya on trial for "moral depravity."

Goya, who had by then been rendered deaf by an unknown illness that may have been cumulative lead poisoning and was already sinking into the deep depression that marked his later years, escaped prosecution only by arguing that The Nude Maja followed in the "respectable" tradition of the classical nude [^^] , despite the fact that the full frontal nudity, pubic hair, direct stare, and the details that established the subject as a modern, living, literal woman, not a mythological figure or allegory-- the very features for which it was considered problematic-- were substantial departures from that tradition.

He could draw enough connections between it and a "respectable" painting in that genre by another lauded Spanish artist, appeasing nationalist egos and satisfying people that he was suitably reverent of the idealized past. Therefore, it wasn't porn. It was valuable, it was a classical nude.

To a modern viewer, it is in fact, more or less indistinguishable from any classical nude, despite the fact that when it was painted, anyone who saw it could have told you it was porn.

Today, The Clothed Maja, an almost identical but less risque painting which he created directly after The Nude Maja [^^^] is one of the paintings included in Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Another painting included in New Leaf is Beauty Looking Back by Hishikawa Moronobu. It's an arch-typical example of the ukiyo-e genre. While far from all ukiyo-e art was erotic, it's not an exaggeration to say the overwhelming majority of it was, at the very least, intended to titillate.

The very name ukiyo-e associates the genre with hedonism, courtesans, brothels and pleasure districts. Beautiful courtesans were the most common subject. Nearly every ukiyo-e master produced explicitly pornographic work at some point in their careers. [^^^^] Beauty Looking Back is a pin up. It would have been recognized in the time it was created as something inherently sensual and referential towards sex, despite not being explicit.

And yet, it's "artistic value" (I do not like this term. The value of art is not and should not be quantifiable) is so unquestionable that Nintendo included it in arguably one of the most family friendly games in their notoriously, stringently family friendly catalog.

What is a fetish, if not a non-sexual element that inspires sexual desire?

What is fetish art, if not a depiction of these non-sexual elements intended, whether explicit or not, to arouse that same desire in the viewer?

What defines something as being outside the boundaries of "normal" sexual desire? Breasts aren't a reproductive organ, they're not inherently sexual. Neither is the ass. But they do inspire sexual desire, at least in those whose cultural back ground has taught them to associate those body parts with sex.

If feeling sexual desire because of anything that isn't genitalia is a fetish, then all erotic art-- from the most explicit adult films to those Levi's billboard ads where the models are doing their best not to wear the jeans they are advertising-- is fetish art.

So when did The Nude Maja and Beauty Looking Back stop being fetish art, and become art?

When does it stop being shameful to admire the beauty and technical skill of a creative work just because it's sexual in nature?

Is it just time? Or have we let ourselves be led into imagining the past was a land of chastity and virtue, its art inherently more valuable and firmly divorced from physical desire-- where men could paint tits all day and other men pay small fortunes to commission and purchase those tit paintings all without a single impure thought-- compared to which our modern age is debauched, immoral, deviant, degenerate?

If that Minotaur was hanging in a museum with a placard that said it was painted in the 1700's, would you, or your friend, still assume it was fetish art?

If you'd come across it in a context where you knew it was sexual, would you still have stopped to notice and appreciate the skill and the research put into the details?

This was a hell of a tangent, and if OP is the kind of person who notices period accurate historical details at a glance and the particulars of bovine anatomy to the degree of being able to make an educated statement about how well someone has accounted for the musculature whilst attaching a cow head to a human body-- probably none of this art history trivia is news to you.

The point is just this. Maybe you weren't "tricked" into seeing the art before the porn.

Maybe your friend was tricked by our deeply sex negative culture into only seeing the porn and missing the art entirely.

[^]: Though he's better known on tumblr for Saturn Devouring His Son, which I'm always delighted to remind people is not a name he gave it. It wasn't discovered until after his death, so we can't know for certain what he intended to depict. The greek myth of Zeus's father eating his children was a best guess and, imo, a way of sanitizing the disturbing nature of the image by framing it as part of the classical tradition of mythological art, rendering it allegorical and academic instead of horrifying and unexplained. It was not the first time Goya's work would rendered more palatable to conservative audiences by claiming it was part of classical tradition, which brings me back to Maja.

[^^]: Physically fighting the urge to add a rant here about fascism and "degenerate" art. Just go watch Jacob Gellar's "Who's Afraid Of Modern Art." He does a better job of it than I would anyway.

[^^^]: presumably also at the Prime Minister's request, with the intention they be displayed together and not, as urban legend likes to say, because the Inquisition forced him to. The concept of creating a clothed and a naked version of the subject so that the viewer can imagine undressing them is a tradition well preserved in commissioned pornographic art today.

[^^^^]: and I do not mean ~artistic nudes~ here. I mean fully explicit art created with the specific intention of being porn. Like I could not post them on tumblr without them being immediately taken down for violating community guidelines, regardless of their "artistic value" as historical works by globally recognized masters of the genre whose non explicit works are so well known and well loved they ended up in ANIMAL CROSSING.

[ingridverse]

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Reposting this quote (originally from @apricops) because this is honestly the main type of art that I care about:

I just don't know how to explain it properly in a way that doesn't make me sound insane.

I don't like it when some story or artwork was made to be palatable to the public in order to be sold and make money.

I like stories and artwork that were made and released publicly because the creator is fucking PASSIONATE about some insane niche fetish. I want to read stories written by someone with a fully deranged autistic fascination with basset hounds or children's feet or farting zombies or getting stung on the dick by wasps or whatever.

Even when I'm not into it, even when kind of upsets me, I love to see the sincere, authentic enthusiasm behind these sorts of creative works and I am not joking.

[wolveria]

“Why is all the best art from this ship artist?”

Because they’re creating what they love.

“Why is all the best art created by this porn artist?”

Because they don’t apologize or censor themselves.

“Why is all the best art created by this artist who likes dark content?”

Because they aren’t tying their hands behind their back. If you worry about morality and “taste” in art, you’ll only make what’s acceptable, rather than what’s interesting.

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opinions on the game “the slaying of sandy hook elementary” and its removal from newgrounds?

(pretty old topic since this happened in like 2013 but im curious on what you think about the controversy surrounding the game)

I actually haven't heard of this game in question, and I'd like to play it before I comment too much. Although Adobe Flash has been fully dead for a few years so I need to figure out how to set this up properly first. I thought I did it but not working yet...

But I will say that, interestingly, there has been a weirdly large number of controversial games (often flash games, or otherwise made by one person) specifically that fictionalize actual school shootings:

Pico’s School (1999), flash game, seemingly inspired by Columbine

Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (2005), RPG Maker game, based on Columbine, creator argued that it took the topic seriously and explored legitimate issues

V-Tech Rampage (2007), flash game, released within a month of the shooting, in an apparent attempt to extort money from people in exchange for taking the game down

School Shooter: North American Tour 2012 (2010-2011), Half-Life 2 mod, multiple levels that appeared to draw inspiration from a number of mass shootings, canceled during development due to controversy

Sonderkommando Revolt (2010–2011), Wolfenstein 3D mod, based on the little-known Auschwitz Sonderkommando revolt, curiously created with positive intentions to portray the Jewish prisoners as ultimately succeeding, but still thought to be tone deaf by some

The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary (2013), flash game, mentioned above

Active Shooter Studios (2020-present?), Roblox mods based on many actual mass shootings, assumedly done as part of a concerted effort to prove that Roblox is the worst game of all time

So it's an interesting phenomenon that's been around for a pretty long time.

[captaincrusher]

Me filtering out kinks I don’t like on AO3. 

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My whole blog

[funeral]

Dale Bailey, American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction

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Haunted House stories:

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"how to make copper scorpions" on the Goodreads list reminds me of those scenes where some tweedy prison newcomer is contrasted with a ton of beefy grizzled long-time inmates

This was so funny, you guys don't understand 😂

So I've been using my Goodreads to occasionally add rare, bizarre, or controversial books that I need to look into more.

However, I have no self-control, so sometimes I add normal books that just look interesting to me personally.

And this is why my "To Read" list is now a national disgrace:

[unspeakablearchives]