How graphic is M rated in Tapas?

[itsrue]

Hi everyone, I'm new here.

I planned to write a romance+mafia/crime theme. It includes underground fight, drugs, sex, and mental health. I want it to be quite explicit, but what is the limit? Can I describe how they use drugs/ how they got drugs withdrawal? The symptoms & how it affects the addict etc. How graphic is the fight? Can I describe how they torture & kill their enemy? How graphic is the sex scene? E.g You can write everything but the penetration? or just a hot French kiss is the limit?

When I read on faq I feel like it’s too vague. Can you guys explain it to me? If you write M-rated novel, please share your experience in writing these scenes!

Thank you!

[Johnny]

So, I'm going to try and give off my own experience as far as I can? I've only been here for about over a month so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Most of what Tapas does is just make sure it's not senseless drawings/writings of any degree (to make sure it's not just pornography). That being said, with the novel I wrote, it has really mild to heavy subjects: murder, death, war, cursing, morality, etc. So, far I haven't been giving a warning from the staff at any point. So as long as whatever you're writing has a point, plot, reasoning behind what you write, and you label it as Mature, then you should be fine with whatever you start to publish!

[itsrue]

Thanks for replying! Noted on that! I want to make sure that what I wrote is allowed. I don't like editing my story to fit the rules, so it's better to know the rules first

[crisyah]

Related to this, much when does something warrant the Mature tag? I've put it up just in case, since I drop one or two f-bombs and there's some gore-y descriptions of fights and disturbing monsters. There might be some sexual content coming as well, but nothing too explicit. However, people's mileage vary and if I'm putting the horror and gothic horror tags on it, of course some gore and monsters and some more mature themes are to be expected. Am I being overly cautious?

[joannekwan]

I would say you're being overly cautious.

Tapas does not care about swearing (unless it's like hate speech, obviously). So the only time I personally would mark an episode as mature for swearing is if slurs are included in the text. Slurs that target a minority or marginalized group.

As for violence and disturbing imagery, pretty much anything goes for novels. You could tag it mature for the sake of your audience, but Tapas isn't bothered by it and won't dock you.

As for sex, you can get away with a lot in a novel. I only tag mature if it's actually describing penetration, genitalia, and the like. If it's just fade to black or simply focuses on emotions, it can pass without the tag.

And if you're worried about setting up your audience's expectations, you can simply add a content warning to your series description or as a disclaimer ahead of your first episode.

[crisyah]

Thank you so much for the reply! There are no slurs or hate speech, the sex will be mostly fade to black (if it comes up at all), and I guess the horror tag covers me for the rest? I'll add some trigger warnings for the sake of my audience, I think that's more useful than a generic "mature" tag that tells them nothing. I did think I was being too careful, but didn't wanna get in trouble either, so I'll change it now!