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i’m so tired of authors not tagging correctly because they don’t want to “spoil the fic”
correctly tagging your fic allows readers who DON’T want to read things like major character death, gore, mpreg or whatever may be their squick to filter your fic out from the main ship/fandom tag. not including the correct tags on your fic is harmful to readers and i’m tired of pretending it’s not.
“don’t like don’t read” great! i won’t! tag your fic correctly next time ffs
Ao3's tag system is a great tool that helps sensitive readers take more educated risks, but if we're jumping all the way to 'if you don't tag my squick then you are HARMING me' then we've gone waaay too far.
(If OP had just been talking about failing to follow Ao3's rules around the major warnings that would be one thing, but they also threw in 'mpreg or whatever may be their squick' so now it's rant time.)
I do think warning your readers about major common squicks outside the archive warnings is a great impulse! I do it myself! And yet it's also true that literally anything can be a squick or trigger. A potential trigger may seem obvious to you while being totally unnoticeable to the author, and vice versa. Maybe you remembered to tag mpreg, but did you tag for needles? Vomiting? Menstruation? Blood? Doctor's offices? Drug use (because the character takes tylenol one time)? Car crashes? Underage drinking (that isn't considered underage in your country of residence or the time period in which your story is set)? Fatphobia? Character skipping meals? Racial slurs (against Vulcans)? Child endangerment? These are all things that might be reasonably expected to squick or trigger readers because they bring to mind real-world awfulness. I see all of these used as content tags sometimes, but waaaaay less than they 'should' be if authors were truly obligated to protect us from being squicked. And that's not even getting into common narrative or sexual squicks that might be a huge deal to some (unprotected sex, unlubed anal sex, rimming, ass to mouth, breeding kink, daddy kink, undernegotiated D/S, etc) but are so entirely within the realm of normal for others it would never occur to them to tag.
I certainly encourage authors to use tags to help readers find what they're looking for and avoid what they don't want, but enthusiasm for Ao3's tagging system can go too far, wherein readers with specific squicks or triggers begin to hold authors more accountable than they hold themselves. Tagging literally everything is impossible, and there is no fandom consensus on what has to be tagged other than the standard archive warnings.
Creating a new fandom consensus on what MUST be tagged beyond the existing consensus of rape, under-18 sex, graphic violence, and major character death would be incredibly fraught. Standardizing a warning is a powerful normative act, one that can easily inflate existing personal feelings into harsher moral judgments. "We all agree this topic is so upsetting it MUST be warned for" is one step down from declaring a topic entirely taboo. And that has consequences. Victims of rape and child abuse talk about how psychologically damaging it can be to have to cordon off a major part of your own life experiences lest they discomfort others; it can easily feel like you yourself are being declared a blight rather than the harm that was done to you.
Awareness of this impact is why I confess I do find it concerning that the untagged sqicks people get most vocal about tend to involve deviation from sex and gender norms. I understand that pregnancy is a horrifying threat to many fanfic readers and that a lot of us have deep discomfort with our sexual traits, which can naturally lead to us only being able to enjoy a narrower slice of available fictional content, but I never see anybody up in arms about undeniably negative shit like untagged car crashes the way I see some people up in arms about having to occasionally encounter neutral things like untagged mpreg or omegaverse or gender-atypical genitalia.
This is always especially unnerving to me when the offending topic is something that is both inherently morally neutral and entirely possible to encounter among real-life strangers in a positive context. Sure, getting hit with a wave of gender dysphoria when you're trying to read erotica is a bad time, and it's entirely logical to want to select your erotica according to your own genital preferences, but the level of moral outrage people occasionally exhibit when they encounter unexpected genital configurations in erotic fanfic tends to be, uh, pretty unmistakably hostile towards trans bodies, even when it's coming from trans people. Like, okay, say mpreg is a trigger for you because you associate it with threats of corrective rape and you don't want to read about it in your escapist fanfic—fair enough. Do you also ask real pregnant trans men in real life to put content warnings on their happy selfies of themselves just existing? Do you get why that would be fucked up? Do you get how it would be extra fucked up to make that request mandatory at an institutional level? Especially if cis pregnancy didn't require any warnings?
Then there's the structural question.
Ao3 content tags were designed to be used positively—the 'exclude' feature did not exist at launch—and as such there was an implied expectation that if you tagged your story as x, you were putting the tag there for people who might want to filter FOR stories with x. That meant a very brief mention of x occurring offscreen wouldn't merit an x tag; nobody came to a fic tagged Arranged Marriage expecting to hear about the main character's cousin having an arranged marriage.
The recent push to use content tags as warnings has led to aggressive overtagging of minor mentions of x, making the x tag less and less useful as a positive filter. This is somewhat mitigated by people using 'minor x' or 'x mention' instead of clogging the 'x' tag (shoutout to people putting background ships in the content tags instead of the ship tags!) which I appreciate. However, this points to a fundamental tension in the practical use of Ao3 tags now that we do have the 'exclude' feature.
If the point is to help readers avoid things, authors will tag very differently than if the point is to help readers find things they might like. And the original structural design of content tags was to help readers find things they might like. Ao3 is firstly for authors to archive their fics and secondarily to help readers find those fics. Only thirdly is it optimized to help readers NOT find fics.
Talking like the 'correct' use of Ao3 tags is to optimize exclusion means you've got your understanding of Ao3 tags backwards.
tl;dr:
there is no standardized list of minor archive warnings; squicks/triggers are so varied it would be impossible to mandate warning for all of them
mandating warnings for x inherently imposes a structural & cultural penalty against x content
ao3 is structured to favor positive content tags (help readers find) over warning tags (help readers avoid)
Authors can be expected to tag the stuff they personally find most relevant about their fic, in much the same way a book in the library has a few major keywords attached. More granular content warnings are a bonus. If you as a reader are highly sensitive to encountering a type of content that falls outside of the major archive warnings, you have to take responsibility for that yourself; it will never be reasonable to 100% conclude that a given fic lacks your squick just because your squick isn't tagged. Unless somebody is blatantly lying about archive warnings or actively mis-tagging, they are not tagging their fic 'incorrectly.'
It's great to encourage people to tag more comprehensively! Explaining why certain tags are of interest to readers would be a good start, or perhaps explaining how to maximize the use of filterable tags that work as both positive and negative simultaneously. But OP's post is neither helpful nor accurate.
A 🔞 horror novel about a starving boy and the many hands around his neck.
"You put your prayers on a wolf, you'll only make it hungrier for you."
In the wake of his mother's death, Nelly drowns in the palms of his small religious town where folks believe wolves stalk the woods to punish selfish, godless men. At home, Nelly's resentful uncle keeps Nelly on a tight leash while the townsfolk sing the man's praises. At night, Nelly sneaks out to catch glimpses of the new neighbor who has taken to feeding Nelly like a stray animal. Deep down in his rotten red insides, Nelly knows he is a wolf.
Stats: approx. 125,000 words | Explicit Sex & Violence | Body Horror & Transformations
Cover Art by KM Claude
Title treatment and first reader help by KMO
Edited by Beleghir
Formatting, proofreading, & interior decoration by subvertebra
FLAMECON Pick up orders here!
General pre-orders here!
This book contains disturbing imagery intended for responsible adults only. More info here.
A 🔞 horror novel about a starving boy and the many hands around his neck.
"You put your prayers on a wolf, you'll only make it hungrier for you."
In the wake of his mother's death, Nelly drowns in the palms of his small religious town where folks believe wolves stalk the woods to punish selfish, godless men. At home, Nelly's resentful uncle keeps Nelly on a tight leash while the townsfolk sing the man's praises. At night, Nelly sneaks out to catch glimpses of the new neighbor who has taken to feeding Nelly like a stray animal. Deep down in his rotten red insides, Nelly knows he is a wolf.
Stats: approx. 125,000 words | Explicit Sex & Violence | Body Horror & Transformations
Cover Art by KM Claude
Title treatment and first reader help by KMO
Edited by Beleghir
Formatting, proofreading, & interior decoration by subvertebra
FLAMECON Pick up orders here!
General pre-orders here!
This book contains disturbing imagery intended for responsible adults only. More info here.
A 🔞 horror novel about a starving boy and the many hands around his neck.
"You put your prayers on a wolf, you'll only make it hungrier for you."
In the wake of his mother's death, Nelly drowns in the palms of his small religious town where folks believe wolves stalk the woods to punish selfish, godless men. At home, Nelly's resentful uncle keeps Nelly on a tight leash while the townsfolk sing the man's praises. At night, Nelly sneaks out to catch glimpses of the new neighbor who has taken to feeding Nelly like a stray animal. Deep down in his rotten red insides, Nelly knows he is a wolf.
Stats: approx. 125,000 words | Explicit Sex & Violence | Body Horror & Transformations
Cover Art by KM Claude
Title treatment and first reader help by KMO
Edited by Beleghir
Formatting, proofreading, & interior decoration by subvertebra
FLAMECON Pick up orders here!
General pre-orders here!
This book contains disturbing imagery intended for responsible adults only. More info here.
Fucking mutt.
You animal.
You ain't a real wolf.
A wolf is not to be trusted.
There is no wolf at all.
"I'll kill anyone. Anyone who gets in the way."
coming this August. a 125k word standalone erohorror novel.
stunning cover art by @kmclaude
title treatment and first reader help by KMO
edited by beleghir
arranged for print and proofread by subvertebra
This book will be debuting at FLAMECON 2026 in softcover. Starting in September, the book will begin to release serially online one chapter at a time. Please enjoy the full cover wrap with back text.
GOOD FOLKS DON'T PRAY TO THINGS LIKE WOLVES.
After his mother's death, Nelly drowns in the palms of his small religious town where folks believe wolves stalk the woods to punish men. At home, Nelly's resentful uncle keeps him on a tight leash. At night, Nelly sneaks out to catch glimpses of the older man who has taken to feeding Nelly like a stray animal. Deep down in his rotten red insides, Nelly knows he is a wolf.
This book may contain disturbing content and is intended for mature adults only.
I'm back to reflect on another important event representing the show getting a full letter grade worse in my opinion lol spoilers ahead for part two of death note.
My perception is that, by and large, we all accept that after L dies, the show becomes less entertaining. rip to Near and Mello but turns out when you split one very good fun character in half to distribute their genes evenly, it just makes two less fun characters. Mello is basically staring in his own completely different anime off screen while Near gives negative rizz to the camera. Mello can be fun to watch! But he does not give a single shit about Light or anyone the audience has been taught to care about. It's a weird place for the show to land in.
Near and Mello are just a literalization of the previous idea that the show has been putting forth about cops and criminals being made of the same stuff. Near goes full cop and Mello goes full underground criminal, because these two are just L pushed to his two different extremes. Unfortunately, by now, I wicked get the point and this is just overkill to me. Mello adds basically nothing except someone for Near to be in competition with, which is frankly unnecessary because Near is already fighting Kira. Mello has nothing interesting to add to Light's story—remember Light? he's the protagonist of the show or something.
Mello is a Near by-product like how they pull CBD out of weed and it has no effects. We need Near because he is the one who is going to catch Light. We don't need Mello, even though he has far more verve as a character. The real tragedy is that Near also brings nothing, emotionally speaking. Near has no personal stake in this outside of wanting to be L's successor which we also essentially never get any explanation as to why or how he feels about it. He's just a shota with crime solving autism and virtually no interiority. This of course is WHY he's able to win in the end. L wanted to be friends with Light in a genuine way and that was his mistake, he got too close or whatever. This is a logical thematic decision to say "well the only person who could catch Light is L with no emotions" it's just that, sometimes the logical answer is way less entertaining to watch.
And ya know, it is a statement in and of itself that the new successful L is literally a child. Again we are seeing cops going to any length to catch criminals, including child labor! It's fucked up to essentially groom a child to want to become a machine that solves crimes. I hear you, Ohba, I just wish Near was interesting to watch. If this is the direction you want to pursue, you can at least create tension with the characters around Near trying to find what humanity he has. Give us a conversation where Near discusses his time with Mello in the home! Show us an adult being weirded out by Near's fucked up little mind. Anything, please, I am dying for a hint of texture off this character.
It REALLY gets ham-fisted with the introduction of Teru Mikami, who I honestly like. I think he fits into the cast perfectly, I love his stupid "delete" slogan, but by the time we get to him, he is just Another Fucking Guy to keep track of. Prosecutor turned serial killer, yes yes I GET IT. All people drawn to absolute versions of justice will inevitably become corrupted no matter what side of the law they are on. When we start getting into "Kira's World", it's a fun V for Vendetta ass exploration of the rise of fascism, and I do appreciate that the story is willing to show you how far things are going but at this point in the narrative, there are simply too many spinning plates when all I ever want is to see those highly tense one-on-one psychological battles.
While we're talking about useless characters, Sidoh, the new shinigami who shows up, does literally nothing. He's funny! I laughed when he was following Ryuk around. But he is truly just a plot contrivance that allows Mello to pass information on to Near, rather than having Near come to these conclusions on his own. We're past the realm of interesting problem solving and are just here to watch people pass chess pieces to one another, which is not what I came to death note for.
Matsuda and Aizawa are by far the most interesting subplots happening in the back half of this show. Matsuda slowly but surely getting corrupted by the idea that Kira is a good guy and maybe they should just let him work vs Aizawa waking up to the reality that he has cozied up to a very dangerous person? It's very good. Every second Aizawa is on screen, I am clenched because he is one wrong move away from getting killed. That's fucking great! And you keep wondering how far Matsuda is going to go in his defense of Kira. This is good shit, I love this social/philosophical drama happening with characters who we've been following from the start. These two are genuinely being changed by the story, it rules. And it's a shame that Light is less of a character than ever, because I want to see him interacting with his team more!
Speaking of characters changed by the narrative, I love Misa slowly but surely succumbing to a horrible depression. That one shot of her sitting on the couch wearing lingerie with a wretchedly vacant expression where she literally looks like a real doll as Light's dialogue says "She's become a normal woman" is so fucking haunted! This is how Light sees people who are not useful to him!! It's absolutely fucked and you love to see it. She's in her Eva Monster era getting drunk and picking fights. I remember how her story ends and I do think they do a pretty good job telegraphing that. That said, Misa is the only girl in this story's world who gets a decent arc with follow-through. RIP to Light's sister and mother who literally vanish like ghosts from the show lol. Ohba-sensei, you are not good at writing women, but Misa is at least very fun.
Once Light's father dies (RIP King you had a fucking sick ass finale with the shinigami eyes), we are thrust into a world where literally no one is safe from Light, and yet, for some reason Light still feels the need to pretend that he's a police officer. Obviously this very fact is what represents Light's achilles heel! If he were willing to out himself as Kira and just kill everyone he was working with, you get the impression that he would have "won". We see this when the entire US government is like "hail kira, we're out of here". Light's problem is that he wants the people around him to believe that he is good, and yet he KNOWS that if they find out he's Kira, they'll turn on him. He is psychologically caught in a never-ending loop of needing outside validation just as much as he needs power. I so desperately wish that this is what the show was really focused in on with a magnifying glass after L dies, rather than a series of increasingly yakety sax "how's he gonna get out of THIS one" mousetraps. (Although if you like those kinds of mousetraps, I recommend M Night Shyamalan's TRAP. Talk about yakety sax deeply unserious mousetraps.)
I know it's poison to be like "here's how i would fix this" but truly, I cannot stop thinking about the version of this show where, after L dies, Light's primary focus goes into maintaining active friendships with the people who are trying to catch him. Light is so obviously concerned with appearances! I want to see him ingratiating himself to them all. Imagine how much more fucked the climax of the show would be if we'd spent screen time showing Light and Aizawa and Matsuda and Mogi just like, hanging out after work and asking Light for advice with their personal problems. Show me Light hanging out with Aizawa's child! Put that pressure directly in front of us so we know, oh shit, Light knows Aizawa's daughter's name and face. Is Yagami Light going to ice a child? WOAH
Some of the best parts of this show are when Light and L are literally playing tennis going "if I lose on purpose will he think I'm kira" or "if light wins i will know he's kira" and we could have had more of that if the focus went to Light's obsession with appearances and convincing everyone on the taskforce that he's so normal, actually. Give me Light freaking out about what song he's going to pick at boy's karaoke night so nobody figures out he's Kira.
I also think it would make so much more sense if we never saw Near or Mello on screen, and they just start getting transmissions from a new L that everyone is very conflicted about trusting. You could have everyone on the Japanese task force figuring out at different times that this new L is actually two people! Woah! How cool. Plus you get the added benefit of positioning the audience with Light while he scrambles to get information on this faceless entity. I want to watch Light try to deploy the same friendship moves on N/M as he did on L and have them fail. I want to stay with Light as things get more dire.
I almost never want to see a brand new character working out a puzzle that we already spent an entire season solving (Near and Mello determining there are two notes and that shinigami are real, etc). When you're solving the same puzzle twice, you want to be given the joy of genuinely understanding how one character's personality and position in the world allows for them to find the same conclusion from a different angle (or, they come to a different conclusion and it screws them over!). If your characters aren't deep enough, all you get is two people putting the same puzzle together. That's not fun. I already saw a guy I like way better do this 12 episodes ago, why am I watching it again with zero swag? L was in danger the whole time he was putting this together, we watched him slowly become more real, and therefore more vulnerable, as he got closer to the truth and it was deeply exciting. Mello and Near are never truly vulnerable, and it's just not exciting.
When we start getting to the point where Light, Near, Mello, Mikami, and Aizawa are all lowkey protagonist coded, and three of those people are new characters, it gets really thin. And again, this thinness is in essence what gets Light in the end, because a control freak like him is unable to ever truly share and we're basically seeing the fascist machine eating itself alive. It makes sense! It's just worse television.
The "logical" answer is not always the best choice for good storytelling.
THE WOLF & THE WATCHMAN was very good, i like it more the longer i think about it. good historical crime fiction with Holmes inspo but not shackled to it. also one of the grosser books I've read, right up there with THE NORTH WATER.
for years i've joked about having The ConsumptionTM but Cecil Winge actually has it and i love reading about him, every five minutes he's like "well jean mikel this is it, i'm going to die now". Cardell is also just a big beautiful mastiff of a man with a wooden arm that he can't stop crunching into people's faces like a fucking rock-em-sock-em robot. 10 outta 10, would watch them solve many more crimes while europe has a continental panic attack about the french revolution
This is an awesome use of what is probably a master's degree if not a doctorate and I am 100% thrilled that she shared it even though it was embarrassing and she squeaked.
Californian (sup, fellow desert-havers) i've been using this since i saw it and it works so fucken good dude (i often have to put like 8 dogs in my car, so it's extra important my car isn't attempting to go super-nova when we get in)
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