Original upload date: 09/23/2023

Before I get into the big meat of my latest round of old-man complaints, I feel the need to preface this with the fact that I am not a fan of UrbanSpook or his series “The Painter”. I have my own criticisms of his work; I feel that it’s lackluster and is too formulaic, reads like a PowerPoint presentation, and has dialogue text that reads clunky and unnatural. Some of the sound design is also personally a little grating, with long, drawn-out segments of very loud sounds that me and my autistic brain find somewhat overstimulating.

Viagra Horse is pretty fucking funny though, not going to lie.

The fact that the series does not align to my personal tastes has nothing to do with the constant, ceaseless droning of “shock value bad!” that I am hearing nonstop from people who cannot leave well enough alone and simply move on to greener pastures and focus more on things they enjoy. Not to mention, much of the complaints of the series being laden with shock value comes from other analog horror creators who use shock value themselves. But since their shock value involves topics other than CSA, somehow that makes them… better. And this throwing of stones from glass houses is where I start to have problems.

To start, and as another preface: shock value almost certainly is not a bad thing inherently. It might not suit everyone’s tastes, but there’s nothing wrong with that. If you don’t like shock value, then you don’t like it. If you do, then that’s also fine. I’ve taken my potshots at The Walten Files and The Mandela Catalogue for containing shock factor of their own while having creators that try to “speak out” against The Painter for having it, but once again it needs to be understood that this comes from the whole “throwing stones from glass houses” shit; I’m fond of both TWF and TMC. The use of blood and gore and violence and the topic of suicide to add a level of shock factor does not detract from my enjoyment, because I do not think the addition of these themes is a bad thing that needs to be sanitized for the comfort of all potential viewers.

That brings us to the use of CSA in The Painter. Is this a very sensitive topic that can be upsetting to people? Sure it is. It’s upsetting to many, and it’s good that it is, because such a thing should always be upsetting. But the inclusion of it as a theme in a fictional story is not an inherent evil, or a sign that the creator is secretly a predator, or something that needs to be removed to make the series more palatable. It is okay if someone is uncomfortable by it; if they are, then they can, and should, stop watching. But lately this has been turned into something of a moral crusade.

There are clamors that this is a topic that shouldn’t be used in analog horror, at all, ever. And the question that needs to be raised to that is: Says who? CSA victims, you might say, but then again there are also CSA victims who do not agree. Which are we to believe? Just the ones who agree with those in opposition? Are the rest the “wrong” kind of victim? Appealing to this group is moot, because you will not get everyone with the same experience to think the same. You need an actual reasoning beyond “some people agree with me”.

The only one I’ve seen is “because this is a thing that happens in real life, and traumatizes people for their entire lives and should not be replicated in a fictional story”.
There’s a lot of issues with this. First of all, do things like murder and suicide not also happen in real life? And do those things not traumatize the people they affect? Both of these things result in a victim dying, and then more often than not saddling bystanders with trauma for the rest of their lives. If someone traumatized by the loss of a loved one to suicide commented on The Mandela Catalogue stating that its use of suicide as a core theme was offensive and upsetting and should be retconned out, then are we to just take that at face value and completely remove that theme as to not upset people? If not, then why are such people valued less than those traumatized by CSA?

What about people affected by murder? If their loved one was murdered, then do they get a say in claiming that horror media depicting murder should be censored? If not, then why do these people also matter less than the victims of CSA? Why are we putting traumatized people on some kind of totem pole?

My point is not that I do not sympathize with people who carry trauma with them in their daily lives. My point is that if we can determine that if certain themes should not be done in media because someone who suffered that event in real life might find it offensive or upsetting, then that same logic needs to apply equally across the board in regards to all potentially traumatic events, otherwise you are admitting that some victims are more “important” than others, or that someone else’s pain is lesser.

My point is also that we should not cater to these things, and that if someone might be upset by the themes in a particular work, then they should make the conscious decision to not engage with it for the sake of their own wellbeing. Artists do not have any obligation to censor themselves for the comfort of others, but they are also not holding anyone at gunpoint to force them to engage with that work.

If the concept of CSA being included in a story is upsetting to you, that is okay. There is nothing wrong with that. But it doesn’t mean you get to attempt to harass creators into submission until they remove it; you need to take responsibility for yourself by not making yourself sit through something that is only going to do you harm.

That brings me to another topic that has arisen out of this: “taking criticism”.

Criticism, when constructive, is usually a good thing. We should all be able to accept it at some point. But there are times and places where it’s not wanted or needed. It is also not required for artists and authors to take all criticism into account when proceeding with their work.

I think people confuse “the right to have an opinion” with “the right to be taken seriously at face value by strangers”.

My opinions on The Painter, as we’ve established, are not entirely positive. I’ve said my piece, and I do not think my statements are unfair criticisms. Fair as they might be though, UrbanSpook is under no moral obligation to take them into account as he continues making The Painter. I’m allowed to have whatever opinion I want. He’s also allowed to think my opinion is dogshit. I do not know him, and he does not know me. So even if you think your opinion on the inclusion of CSA is fair criticism, it needs to be understood that he is not required to change anything if he doesn’t want to. If he has a particular vision for how his series will play out and works toward that unabated, then he’s not in the wrong for doing so. He does not have to please everybody.


In regards to the recent blowup: I’m not going to say it wasn’t excessive. I’m not going to say that the use of “autistic” as an insult wasn’t uncalled for. I do think that’s something he should address.

But I do think it’s disingenuous to claim he just randomly blew up out of nowhere in response to “constructive criticism”, for two reasons: one being that the criticism was not constructive at all, seeing as it was more “shock value bad” and a call to stop supporting people who utilize it (or at least the forms of it that the person in question disapproves of), and the second being that this is just a small part in a constant campaign of harassment instigated by Alex Kister and other creators within his personal circle. It’s something that has been going on for months, with his fans and the fans of other popular analog horror creators going after Urban for refusing to budge on the matter.

His first response to a TMC VA’s criticism of the use of CSA in his story was actually very cordial and polite, warning her that the series would become edgier over time and that he has no plans to change this fact, so it would be best for people upset by such a thing to not continue watching. This, apparently, was the wrong move, as he was expected to just cave in without hesitation.

Before I end this off, something else I wanted to talk about was the complete and utter lack of media literacy displayed by some folks going after him and attempting to make this about his real-world morals. Put simply, the word is that UrbanSpook thinks CSA is funny because “he” called the abused child “Fucktoy Cory”.

It’s ridiculous that this has to be said by someone who doesn’t even like The Painter, but this isn’t what happened, at all. People have somehow completely forgotten what a fictional character is, and that sometimes these characters say and do bad things, and that this doesn’t mean that the author agrees with the things the characters say. In the context of the canon, it is the titular antagonist who titles the paintings. Meaning, it is this antagonist who titled the painting as “Fucktoy Cory”. By writing the character in this way, it does not mean that Urban himself is calling the victim that, all it means is that he has written the antagonist to be the sort of person who would call someone that. If I have to hold your hand and tell you that authors are allowed to write characters as being repulsively bad people sometimes without it being a reflection of themselves, then it might be too late for you.

I don’t really know how to end this off. I just needed a place to put together all my thoughts on the matter, from the perspective of someone who doesn’t care much for the media in question but still thinks this harassment campaign is a load of bullshit driven by a few “big names” who, for some reason, think that they have the power to dictate what is and is not acceptable in analog horror just because they made a few good videos on Youtube.

Viagra Horse is still really fucking funny, though.