Whether it compromises the value of the website as a whole.
And how hard do you really think it is to access the 'darker parts' of the internet? Someone earlier cited WPM trying to aim for the 12+ crowd. Unfortunately, it would more accurately be the 12-16 crowd, because anyone else has likely been on websites such as 4chan and knows the comparison I'm making is hardly a stretch or some sort of subconscious Freudian admission, etc. You are all continually denying the context of 'edgier' Pokémon fanart, which Pokébeach now has placed itself very firmly into, and by continuing to apologize for it is only reinforcing it.
HURR
Why would I be a raging hormonal teenager if I can connect the dots between two similar fan illustrations in an identical context? Frankly, it would make more sense to accuse WPM or the person he commissioned to draw the art of such a thing, but those are petty ad hominems that are symptomatic of an underdeveloped method of discussion. I do not understand why I have received a a warning point earlier for a three letter acronym, but these obnoxious ad hominems are going on entirely undeterred. But this is why I've never done very well at forums anyways.
Speaking of which, no one yet has addressed the consequence of said three letter acronym. These are people ranging from about 17-22, all males, who are familiar with the Pokémon subculture on the internet, but more importantly are familiar with the Japanese otaku/etc. subculture, which is pretty difficult not to be familiar with if you play a lot of video games, watch any number of anime, or read any variety of manga, all aspects Pokémon has associated itself with and thus is included in their context. Through that association, Pokémon fanart has to bear with all the positive and negative contexts that come with that, and WPM's top page banner becomes as guilty and as innocent as an 18+ doujin as a consequence. To continually deny this is to be oblivious to your surroundings as well as a portion of your audience with apparently more knowledge and experience than you have (or are just pretending not to), and I can now see why the video games board on 4chan would rather link to the grammar-defying serebii.net rather than the better kept Pokébeach. The former is entirely oblivious to anything, but the latter is apparently selectively choosing to be oblivious to older more web-savvy gamers, which comes across both as obnoxious but also makes the site look juvenile*.
* The poor blood is a very good example of this, actually, though I've had little interest in discussing it beforehand. The juvenile nature of the blood, one which has a Pokémon's teeth scratching a little anime girl's hand create the impression of bleeding, creates another poor association of another Pokémon fanart subgenre - that is, the very poor sort. Mediocre fanart is one thing, but one that pretends to be better than it is by including blood, as if fanart of an anatomically unusual anime female can actually portray the consequence of human flesh in any convincing matter, tries to give it too much weight. This is actually a bit of a paradox, in that you both try to add too much worth to this piece of a fanart by adding blood, but then deny the sexual subtext that actually does give it some weight, creating the paradox that has caused me to be annoyed and disappointed, and caused my friends on various forums and chat rooms to ask why I'm linking to an amateurish website rather than (ugh) serebii or any other website with a bit more worth to it.
I think the greatest chance for Pokébeach to succeed continually would be to style the site in a visual identity similar to sites such as Joystiq, Kotaku, and tinycartridges (feel free to look any of these up) rather than the sort of thing you might find when you do a quick Google search for "pokemon fan site". I thought I had seen it edging in this direction, filling a niche I've only really seen the German-language filb.de satisfy prior to, but this adamant defense of mediocre fanart seems to put it more in league with the Pokémon Fan Club on Geocities rather than the sort of news/blog website that have seen huge success and influence.
The moral of this story is that I'm actually the one who's entirely wrong, thinking Pokébeach was aimed at *anY* individual with an interest in Pokémon, but only seems to market to a specific niche (the hardcore sort of fan who would actually be aware of the mild backlash against Soul), leaving out the video game fan who may have a casual or even passing interest in the series. For now, the professionalism and cohesive visual identity of a site such as Bulbagarden/Bulbanews will have to do, but there are some flaws with that, since you can see their news site has not updated with any information pertaining to the very exciting Legend TCG set. I don't think leaving this audience out is intentional, in fact I think it's entirely accidental, but it might show WPM doesn't actually know what target audience he's aiming for, and it would explain why the visual identity of his website is so inconsistent (pushing towards Web 2.0/blog/etc. but refusing to let go of more amateurish themes such as fanart and art littered across some of the site's banners). There is a paradox in your website, and those quick enough to pick up on it will be immediately confused and turned off by it.
