Are nsfw novels okay? I can't find a "Mature" tag for literature

trisharrow 2024-03-22 22:32:04 UTC #1

Hey, my name is Tris Harrow and I'm the author of Wither's Witch Academy on DeviantArt!

I've loved reading on Tapas for a few years now, and while I do see that Tapas allows mature comics, I'm having trouble discovering any nsfw literature.

So I'm wondering if that type of stuff even has a place on Tapas? Should I be wary of posting my fetish content? It is far from extreme, but it can certainly be... descriptive.

The main content is under the "bullying" fetish (set in a college-level academy, 18+ characters), so some scenes can be seen as dub-con/non-con if that is something I need to be concerned about. The overall tone of my work is, however, fairly light-hearted.

ThunderChicken 2024-03-22 22:57:16 UTC #2

I think they let you get away with a little more with novels, truthfully. It can't be smut for the sake of smut, but you can get pretty descriptive - as long as things fall within guidelines (no glorifying suicide/self harm, no depictions of rape, etc)

trisharrow 2024-03-22 22:57:25 UTC #3

Wait! I guess I didn't look that hard. I went down on another user's post on the forum, and their novel actually was marked as mature. Are they just hard to find?

trisharrow 2024-03-22 22:59:04 UTC #4

I have been wanting to publish on Tapas for a while, actually. There is definitely a driving plot, so your response has encouraged me. I think I will give it a try!

joannekwan 2024-03-23 00:44:13 UTC #5

It's best practice to mark individual episodes as mature. If every episode was marked mature, it will confuse readers.

If your story has dark themes overall, simply post a warning before the first episode

You can see how I've done it for my novel Secunda and its sequel Copula.

helldancer 2024-03-23 02:46:36 UTC #6

Hi there and welcome to Tapas on the writer side!
I'm still new myself, but I also write a novel with mature/ nsfw topics. I wrote about these topics in the story description and put a mature tag at every chapter that contains even a hint of one of the topics.
I talked about this with some people in another thread, and I think it's quite safe that way. Also: Everything the others said.

trisharrow 2024-03-23 13:16:55 UTC #7

Excellent. I am honestly really looking forward to publishing on Tapas.

trisharrow 2024-03-23 13:18:30 UTC #8

Thank you. I honestly might need to mark every single episode as mature, as the fetish drives the plot. But there is plot (and a lot of it) so hopefully it winds up being okay