Community-based NSFW Guidelines

[joannekwan]

Hey y'all, since this question inevitably comes up time and time again, I thought we ought to make a thread laying out some generally agreed upon rules about what we think aligns with Tapas' content guidelines.

To start, here is what is actually in Tapas' content guidelines as pertaining to nudity/sex/violence/gore

Tapas allows mature content featuring violence; strong, vulgar, or lewd language; or non-graphic sex and nudity, as long as it is behind our Mature (aka NSFW) content filter.

Violence primarily intended to be shocking, sensational or disrespectful is not ok, nor is sex or nudity primarily intended to titillate or arouse. Sexually explicit content or pornography is not allowed. Don’t post content that is predominantly sexual in nature, or intended primarily as an aid to sexual gratification. There are already plenty of other places to find that content online.

Providing context and clarifying intent in the content title and description are important. For example, depictions of violence, sex, or nudity for diegetic, artistic, or educational purposes are more likely to be allowed than gratuitously graphic ones.

Yeah, yeah, vague, we all know. SO that's why I wanted to create this thread: to help everyone out.
This thread is meant to be a place for discussion of grey areas so we can come to a consensus on a Rules of Thumb List that anyone asking can quickly refer to. Feel free to debate any points I've made already.

I will try my best to update the following list with agreed upon suggestions.

Please note: The list is not an official end all be all; break these rules if you want. These are merely guidelines to reduce the risk of your series getting flagged.

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Rules of Thumb for NSFW

Nudity and Sex --

Comics
Allowed withOUT Mature tag or censor bars: (PG-13, T for teen) (1) 'Barbie and Ken doll'/unrealistic anatomy as well as extremely cartoony anatomy like Crayon Shin chan (2) Distant shots where details are absent, like if a passerby walks past your computer/phone, they won't do a double-take.

Allowed with Mature tag: (R, M for mature) (1) Non-sexual nudity. Mid-range to close up shots. Keep them dicks flaccid.

Allowed with Mature tag and censoring (bars, mosaics, stickers, draw-ins, etc): (NC-17) (1) Most sex scenes. *If you're showing penetration, fluids, or close-ups of aroused genitalia of any sort, CENSOR it or leave it out altogether and direct your readers to Patreon or something.

Not Allowed: (1) If your comic is mostly sex scenes with a main focus on genitalia and any dialogue is just a lead up to said scenes and there is no real plot or characterizations outside of sex. (up for debate)

Novels
Allowed withOUT Mature tag: (PG-13, T for teen) (1) Really basic written descriptions that take no more than a paragraph. IE: And so the couple fell into each other's embrace, exploring each other's forms, becoming whole.

Allowed with Mature tag: (R, M for mature) (1) Sex scenes at length (I welcome discussion for more details on this lol)

Not allowed: (1) (also up for discussion, particularly my percentages. they're quite arbitrary rn.) If 75%–100% of episodes contains a sex scene even if marked mature?? So it just reads as pure erotica without character development and it's just one sex scene to another??

Violence/Gore -- (totally up for discussion on this, since I personally don't create a lot of content with it and am not as familiar)

Comics
Allowed withOUT Mature tag or censor bars: (PG-13, T for teen) (1) Light to mild physical violence with little blood drawn, run of the mill schoolyard bullies beating up a kid for example. (2) Cartoon violence with simple wounds and blood, like the Naruto anime. (3) Very simplified gore without much consequence to the characters? Like Itchy and Scratchy?

Allowed with Mature tag: (R, M for mature) (1) Medium to large amounts of blood, a la Tarantino (2) More realistic detail (3) Usage of realistic weapons and realistic consequences. (4) Heavier subjects: torture, rape, hard drug use, suicide, child abuse/molestation (5) Detailed open wounds from a far to mid-range shot. (6) Stuff on the level of the Saw movies

Allowed with censoring (black bars, mosaics, etc.): (NC-17) (1) Detailed open wounds in a close up shot (2) Close ups of any viscera.

Not allowed: (1) Really vile and reprehensible content made only to shock and disturb. An example I can think of is A Serbian Film (I advise those who are curious to just watch reviews of it, don't actually watch it). Basically it's about a porn star who gets caught up in some shit, gets and partakes in torture, and in the end unknowingly rapes his own drugged up child (it gets worse than that but that's all I can stomach to type).

Novels (feel free to discuss)
Allowed withOUT Mature tag: (PG-13, T for teen) (1) heavy subject matter only mentioned in passing. As in it is only said it happened and the scene is not described in detail, see below.

Allowed with Mature tag: (R, M for mature) (1) Detailed passages of heavy subject matter: torture, rape, hard drug use, suicide, child abuse/molestation

Strong Language --

Comics and Novels
*As the grayest area, this might be determined on a more case-to-case basis.
Exceptions for strong language: If appearing quite frequently throughout the entirety of comic/novel, to avoid tagging every episode only containing said language and none of the other subjects above (sex/violence), best to have a disclaimer in series description for strong language.

Allowed withOUT Mature tag or censoring: (PG-13, T for teen) (1) If a general swear word like fuck is used sparingly and in normal-sized font. (2) Slurs that have been reclaimed by the group that is historically targeted by it and is used by a character of said group (3) If slur is presented in a neutral, factual, historical context. IE. 1850's white man passively calling a black man the full version of the n-word, without abusing him directly. OR in a neutral, culturally appropriate setting a la Boondocks (whether you should is another issue if you do not belong to said culture). *But do have a disclaimer in the description for these running instances. (4) if slur is used in its other neutral meaning. IE ‘fag’ is used as the slang for cigarette or ‘fagot’ as a term for a bundle of kindling. (interesting note, upon investigating ‘fag’ is also a term for ‘to tire/exhaust’).

Allowed with Mature tag: (R, M for mature) (1) If you include a slur that has historically been used to target a group in a derogatory manner.

Not allowed: (1) True hate speech in which the hate is proselytized by the author.

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Edit log: 1) added ESRB/movie rating equivalents, added 'allowed with mature tag' to novel section under violence. 2) added some clarification for the intent of the thread, modified Strong Language articles, added suicide and child abuse/molestation to 'heavy subject matter'

[OliviaMerteli]

Tagging episode as mature for blood or swears yelled go a little too far in my opinion. At this point, Tapas would do better creating age category for the comics/novels. I'd prefer labelling my comic 13+ or something like that than having to tag some episode as "mature" when they don't contain mature content as the real sense of mature.

[joannekwan]

Mm I said basic swears and blood not used excessively can get by without a M tag. At it's basest use, the M tag is to warn people that the episode contains material that can get them into trouble if caught in a work or general public environment or warn readers sensitive to such content.

I suppose I ought to assign each rank with a perceived ESRB or motion picture rating equivalent.
As for the age ranking, that is up in the air at the moment since the app has been removed from the app store for reasons yet unknown (but my hunch is sexual content).

Like I posted, this thread is for discussion.
I just want to compile enough edits before actually changing the post because I believe there's a limit of 10 edits.

EDIT: I plan to add to the main post this exclusionary clause in the next edit round:

Exceptions for strong language: If appearing quite frequently throughout the entirety of comic/novel, to avoid tagging every episode only containing said language and none of the other subjects above (sex/violence), best to have a disclaimer in series description for strong language.

as well as fix my typo orz

[silverraven0]

Bookmarked for future reference. Thanks for writing this, though I've been dying for examples for the novel one.

I'm kinda disagree a bit for the swears words one tho. :3

Btw, should you also including stuff like triggering and sensitive content like suicide and Child Abuse?

[joannekwan]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll add it to my list. c:

How would you handle swearing and tagging it? It is the grayest of areas I'll admit. What would be your limit?

[silverraven0]

I personally put one asterisk when me myself replying or writing the description, but for the story I wrote, I never censor them.

It it my preference, and I won't be putting M tag for swearing, but I certainly will toggle the M tag when slur and degratory(is this the right word?) us used like f*ggot, n*gga etc, though if there's no intention of it to became a swears/degratory words my characters said, I actually will leave them be.

Example like I wrote the novel name by Agatha Christie by its real, old name, which is Ten Little Nigger (it's called And Then There's None now), I don't think it is necessary to censor it because, hey, it's the real name.

I know there's gonna be backlash but it is personal taste. As a reader I hate seeing asterisk. XD

[joannekwan]

Oh yeah, I personally don't like seeing the asterisk in a body of work and don't censor my words. I was just using asterisks in the opening post to be tasteful but I guess I can remove them for clarity.

[AllynCrowe]

The thing is, that for my Writer's Camp novel I had quite a lot of character development, yet my sex scenes behind mature tags were still disqualified. So I am not sure how Tapas handles these guidelines tbh, and I wasn't removed but still penalised for things their guidelines would admit.

[joannekwan]

Hm, do you have those scenes uploaded elsewhere that you can link here and we can take a look to try and discern the offending elements?

[unknown_user]

Not allowed: (1) Really vile and reprehensible content made only to shock and disturb. An example I can think of is A Serbian Film (I advise those who are curious to just watch reviews of it, don't actually watch it).

1. I'm not sure if it's really made only to shock and disturb. I've personally watched it because of curiosity. My ex-boyfriend said that it is the most evil movie he had seen, so it was curious to learn how far perverted and cruel imagination can go and where is it's limits (if there are any). Spoiler: Actually, you will unlikely learn anything new from this movie after reading Marquis de Sade books. Classic is classic.
2. What about Chak Palanik? His books contain a lot of harsh things (which are "shocking" for the most of readers), but besides this, they also have some interesting ideas and plots, so they have undeniable artistic value.

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I would suggest to add several kinds of "mature" tag. For example, "gore", "guro", "erotic", "porn" etc. I think it would be more informative, because one reader, for example, may like gore, but don't like erotic. And other may be tolerable to erotic, but don't like porn scenes, etc.

Also I wouldn't ban anything which:

• Has a plot. I propose this requirement in order to exclude primitive plotless porn. I don't think that plotless porn should be counted as a creative work, so it shouldn't be placed on site, devoted to creative works, but on porn site. Nevertheless, I have nothing against porn scenes as a part of the plot.
• Is not a spam. Some kinds of advertisement may have an artistic value, but most of them don't.
• Doesn't contain snapshots from real snuff movies, child porn and other illegal stuff.

[AllynCrowe]

You can just read the chapters marked [NSFW] those are all the adult scenes in my stories. I never removed them from the story, since I didn't think they were that offensive.

Silence | Tapas

[Croik]

Violence primarily intended to be shocking, sensational or disrespectful is not ok,

I have no idea what Tapas thinks of as "too far" violence wise, because they say things like this, but then promote premium comics like "Let's Go Running" and "Daily Accidents" which by their very nature exist for a one-shot shock. What could be more "sensational violence" than a man's organs firing out of his body because he exercised too hard?

Of course, because society is weird, two well developed characters sharing intimacy is NOT OKAY while someone's head popping off with a spray of blood IS. That will never make sense to me.

I do wish they would simply implement a rating/age system, because I think we all have a better idea of what we can get away with in a PG-13 vs R movie than vague "does it serve the story?" criteria.

[skicoak]

Just to verify, this is an attempt to guess at the limitations since we really don't have concrete Tapas staff feedback...at this point. Right?

[unknown_user]

Hmmm... I was tend to think that this thread is for suggestions, how to clarify and improve the guidelines?..

[vothnthorvaldson]

I still have this problem with traditional nudity. I find it completely disgusting to have to tag it as 'mature'. I'm already annoyed enough about having to tag any kind of non-sexual nudity in general , but I can get the idea: from far, a colleague may not see what kind of environment is the naked person you are looking at in.

But for trad nudity in particular, it's really tough for me; why should I disrespect a culture to conform myself to the ideal of another culture that can't tolerate to see human beings as they are?

I'm thinking of removing a few scenes of my comic to avoid the problem (censor differently), but it's it's such a shame.

[ISNEKO]

This pretty much.

Because of the things Tapas directly puts in front of its readers, I began holding nothing back at all in my writing.

[LordVincent]

@skicoak In regards to the nudity and sexual content guidelines we have a pretty good idea of what is and isn't allowed in comics, since me and several other creators have been in contact with tapas staff over this issue due to reports about our content (basically tapas has contacted us and told us what we need to censor to keep the content on the site).

The other stuff is up for debate. Sadly a lot of sites have rather vague guidelines (or guidelines that can be interpreted differently depending on who reads an who executes them, due to cultural differences). It is pretty likely that it is that way so that people don't exhibit malicious complience or, to put it figuratively, put on the most macabre and offensive dance they possibly can right up to, but not past, the stated line.

Personally I would still prefer for all sites to have very technical and straightforward instructions on exactly what objects, scenarios, bodyparts (+in which state those bodyparts can be) and actions can be displayed/described, and to what extent.

[skicoak]

In regards to the nudity and sexual content guidelines we have a pretty good idea of what is and isn't allowed in comics, since me and several other creators have been in contact with tapas staff over this issue due to reports about our content (basically tapas has contacted us and told us what we need to censor to keep the content on the site).

I follow that but I'm more concerned somebody reads stuff in this thread and thinks it counts as word from above. Like you stated, some people are looking for the line they can dance right up to... it really isn't the creators line to define.

[joannekwan]

@tired_programmer I'm not familiar with Palanik, but I think overall stuff on 'that' level is generally a good idea to avoid if you're a new creator just starting out here. Since most people asking about the content guidelines on the forums from what I've seen are usually newbies.

True there can be a lot of debate over how sensational a work is and if it's just meant to be torture-porn, some really fucked up shit, or has real commentary. By all means if someone wants to post a work along those lines here and argue for it GO AHEAD, I'm not the site police. I just wanted to give general guidelines if you want a lower chance of getting flagged.

@Croik Maybe it gets a pass because the injuries aren't caused by human on human violence? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I know I had DarkBox and their work in mind as far as the gore/violence standard goes on this site. Perhaps their work is permissible because the style overall is more cartoony and the abusers usually get their comeuppance?

@skicoak Yeah, it's an attempt to guess the limits, except the sex section for comics is mostly solid already.
@tired_programmer (2nd post): I mean I think the general suggestion over all is Tap should make the official guidelines more clear xD

@vothnthorvaldson I suppose since Tap is a U.S.-based company and has their app available through Apple and Google, it's by US-based viewpoints on the matter.

[joannekwan]

Made a second edit to first post.
Also @AllynCrowe I'll take a look at your series when I get the time!