The Secret of How to use NSFW and When

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7. Collaborate like a champ!

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Please meet your forum moderator team!

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@joannekwan - I’ve been a community creator on Tapas for over 5 years now and have been an active participant on the forums for nearly as long. As such, I hope to use my experience with the community to help out where I can. I’ve created many works, notably Demon House, Heavy Horns, and Secunda.

@Jenny-Toons - Hi everyone! The name's Jenny! Been on the forums and Tapas since late 2017, and I'll probably be around for a while longer! I'm one of the newer forum moderators, as well as the creator of Our Universe and My Demon Valentine.

@tapascommunityteam - This is our official moderator team account. It is used by all moderators.

@Ratique - I’ve been a long time community moderator and am the Director of Community at Tapas. I’m also the creator of the webcomic Queen of Gods.

@Victoria1 - I am a Community Marketing Coordinator at Tapas Media! It is always my goal to maintain a positive, supportive atmosphere where creativity can flourish. I truly enjoy seeing all the amazing comics and novels that you all have created, and I look forward to bringing engaging, exciting events for you all.

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Thank you for reading and keeping these guidelines in mind when using our forums. As new situations arise, we find it necessary to modify or expand upon our forum guidelines. If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, please reach out.

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Tapas Team

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Jul 2015

futureboundentertain

apocryphagraphics

I dont disagree with having violence, or even a component of sexuality. All I think is that violence for its own sake, or sexuality for its own sake... is entirely pointless.

If violence amounts to "violence is violence"

and sex "sex is sex"

Then it has no real purpose in the story. You often see the sexual compenent done extremely poorly in french comics, in french comics they basically feel obligated to have some sort of sexual component.

It happens, its boring, it has no bearing on the plot as a whole... and then it vanishes from the story like a rancid dustybunny that was just passing through.

Now what do you think is the greater sin? not portraying sex.. or portraying it so boringly and purposelessly that it loses all meaning and basically becomes a set piece? Whe nit is reduced ot basically the level of a walk cycle..

I will give you a single an example of how I handle Sexuality! Or at least the component of attraction, which is one of the most critically lacking aspects in comics (usually people just tend to draw the same woman over and over again, even for all the characters)

http://tapastic.com/episode/16005728

In Rebel Cowgirls, each character is different... tehy have different hieght, different build, different outlook, attire, facial features... each character is supposed to he attractive in his or her own way.

Its not that sexuality has no place in fiction, its just that if you are convinced taht there is some sort of grand conspiracy against sex, or that it is somehow lacking in the fictional world, you are 100% going to fail at writing it.

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

futureboundentertain

That being said, it doesn't excuse its need to be filtered.

As many people in here have said numerous times already, NSFW is not about being 'bad'. It's about what's suitable for viewing in a casual every day environment in the public, or what's suitable for someone under 18 to be viewing. Even most porn websites still follow these rules and ask you if you're 18 before viewing. If porn creators are decent enough to do it, **why are we suddenly so special and exempt from the rules?

Now you're just taking one thing and making it about something else entirely unrelated to this discussion This isn't about your beliefs in sexual or gender identities, this is about how much respect you have or don't have for your readers as well as the laws that are in place for these types of things. You realize that if NSFW rules are not abided by, Tapastic not only runs the risk of losing the privilege of their iOS app, but the site as well. They need to abide by the laws in this country that are kept in place for a reason, and so do we as creators. Just because we're on a website that we don't technically own, doesn't mean we get off scott-free.

It's not about people's opinions on sex, nor is it about their sexual preferences/identities, nor is it about anything else in between those things, so don't try and bend the reasoning behind NSFW to mean that.

I like this ^^^ I know I follow the same rule when it comes to swearing - more or less in public/discussions as well as comics: if it's something that would be bleeped-out on public cable television, prooobably should be censored or marked NSFW (especially if you feel the language is low brow for your comic, in the sense that language doesn't happen a lot and it might surprise your readers).

futureboundentertain

I would just like to take a moment to clear one thing up (off topic though it may be): My comic4 is not not sex based. Sex happens twice in the span of about 50 chapters, and both instances have a large impact on the story and characters. Any violence of sexual acts are not gratuitous; they all serve a specific purpose to further the plot.

Also, anyone who wants to attend my mythical creature pizza party is welcome We try to get together on Fridays around 7pm. This week it will be hosted at Nessie's house!

Here are the current Tapastic Content Guidelines:4

An excerpt concerning their policy on how they use NSFW on their site. It's their house, so we have to follow their rules. But their rules for NFSW does not apply to the rest of the internet.

We encourage all users to participate in using the ‘Report Link’ which can be found at the end of every episode hosted on Tapastic if they feel that the content violates any of our policies.

It is our aim to be as inclusive as possible in regards to our content policy, we believe that Tapastic is a home, and that everyone should be able to lend a helping hand in maintaining it as a safe and healthy environment.

Content Boundaries
Adult Material: Tapastic ALLOWS mature content featuring nudity, non-graphic sex, extreme violence, and strong language as long as it is behind our NSFW filter. Tapastic DOES NOT ALLOW pornography or hateful content that targets a specific person or group of any kind. Any content deemed unsuitable that is not behind our NSFW will be requested to take action. Failure to comply with this request will result in the image being taken down. Repeat offenses will result in the suspension or removal of the user’s account.

This one is subject to an interesting cultural divide (as is nudity, for that matter; I'm Swedish, nudity is not as censored here as it is in the US). We don't, as a rule, bleep swearing, unless it's a show specifically aimed at children, or one that's been imported and is therefore already bleeped. Swearing is simply not something we care much about.

HOWEVER, being on the internet, I realise that while I can get away with "damn" and profanity of a similar level, there are clearly some words that warrant an nsfw-tag to comply with Tapastic's rules.

I just use not work safe for everything. My work doesn't have nudity but it does have foul language. And people are so sensitive about everything today, it's better to give them fair warning and not deal with any sort of flame war in the future.

My pet is a Balrog. Flame wars are my specialty.

It's actually funny, they used to bleep shows over here, but they stopped doing that, and mostly just restricted shows that had excessive swearing to 18+, in which case they didn't need to do it.

The only show I can think of that still uses the bleeping is Trailer Park Boys and I'm pretty sure they just use it ironically half the time Even Family Guy has stopped using it lol

HOWEVER, being on the internet, I realise that while I can get away with "damn" and profanity of a similar level, there are clearly some words that warrant an nsfw-tag to comply with Tapastic's rules.

The word bitch has always been an allowed word, it seems, and I think it's because it has an actual original dictionary definition, vs. the word "fuck" lol Which is the "starting word" from when people start censoring, from my own experience (although I get these things vary from country to country).

25 days later

My comic is generally "safe" and the most it has going for it (and that I really feel like doing at this point) are some occasional swears. That's a reason I'd feel kind of weird about putting NSFW on pages that just contain one instance of "fuck" or "shit" (and definitely having to put it on my entire comic itself), people might think much more is going on than actually is. Then again, I usually don't consider swearing in itself a big deal.

Yeah, it's pretty much the same situation here in Norway, which is probably why swearing is not a huge deal for me or most people I know here. Excessive swearing is more "annoying" and "unnecessary" than "offensive".

Regarding the NSFW tag, I really think we should have specific content tags (say, "nudity", "violence", "sexual situations", "language" ect.) instead of just one generic "NSFW" flag that can be everything and anything. Makes the actual content more clear, instead of a vague "alright, this might contain nudity, or strong violence, or possibly just some swearing, or all of them? Which one is it?" (Also since a lot of people associate the NSFW term mainly with nudity/porn) Especially because people might not want to read about one of the "NSFW" topics but are fine with others. Say, you don't mind nudity and innuendo, but feel uncomfortable with excessive blood and gore. So you see a comic you're reading has "NSFW" on its newest strip, and while you don't know why it's tagged you just assume it's some nudity or a dirty joke or whatever since this is the most the comic has done so far, but instead you get treated to extremely violent images you weren't prepared for at all.

2 months later

Ressurecting this topic. Is there anyways to when someone click to show the image of a NSFW comic to show all images of the series? I am to release a new serie that has some violence and reference from drugs, but not to much and looking for some NSFW comics in tapastic I saw that every image is locked and I have to click to show each one.

@toonsfera I think you can change this if you go to the Settings. On top of that list is Reading Options, and you can choose to have the NSFW filter on/off, but then they write under it: "We'll always ask whether or not you want to see content tagged NSFW", so that seems contradictory? You can try and see what happens

EDIT: My bad! If you change the NSFW filter to off, then the text beneath it changes to "We'll display NSFW content.", so it just tells you what happens when you turn it on/off. Changing these settings should do the trick then!

Yes! much better! Thanks! ^^

I have a warning in the summary of my comic that it contains mature themes. I have a lot of (nearly) nsfw pages, and I don't mark them nsfw anymore. For me it's sort of the risk of reading my comic.
But maye that's really lazy of me :')

infectedbloodcomics

I think that may get you in trouble, though... Whenever you upload a page, it's clearly stated that you should mark it as NSFW, if needed.

I do mark the heavier things as nsfw but I usually only draw nipple-less naked people so I guess it's already a bit censored.
I haven't had trouble yet, but I'll keep that in mind ^^

It's not like I'm too worried, but the "non-graphic sex" part is confusing. It's not like I'm planning to use photos, and I wonder how far that can go if I ever decide to do an erotic scene.

Usually, "non-graphic" means that you aren't supposed to show genitals, and keep the sticky bits (i.e: various bodily fluids, etc.) to a minimum. Imagine a sex-scene in an average Hollywood movie - the kind they like to shoehorn in together with awkward romantic subplots in action-movies. You know, where the characters kind of roll around on a bed (or wherever it happens to be), with some clothes off and some heavy breathing, and then they wake up the next morning looking a bit tousled. It's something along those lines.

You can push it farther than that and still qualify as non-graphic, but the more details you include, the more likely it is to be NSFW/graphic.

14 days later

So, because I'm a noob looking for a place to publish, I want to get clear on something.

A) There's nudity in my comic.
B) I make sure it's labelled NSFW.
C) It stays on the site.

Yes?

@zjwestbrook This is from tapastic's content guidelines (@abbastudio mentioned it a little earlier in this thread too):

Adult Material: Tapastic ALLOWS mature content featuring nudity, non-graphic sex, extreme violence, and strong language as long as it is behind our NSFW filter. Tapastic DOES NOT ALLOW pornography or hateful content that targets a specific person or group of any kind. Any content deemed unsuitable that is not behind our NSFW will be requested to take action. Failure to comply with this request will result in the image being taken down. Repeat offenses will result in the suspension or removal of the user’s account.

So as long as the nudity isn't pornographic, you're probably fine.