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Thanks for your thoughts!

I’ve thought a lot about this and actually wrote a long twitter thread about it, which you can read here. I’ll expand on it somewhat.

In short, I’m fine with implementing some kind of visual censorship, such as blurs or black bars for nudity in CGs, because society has very different opinions about visual vs. literary sex and nudity (and also I don’t want streamers to get in trouble).

It’s important to note that “NSFW” means different things to different people. To some people it means “any kind of sex,” to others it means “explicit, pornographic sex written intentionally to arouse.” These are not the same things because the first could suggest someone thinks a work is NSFW because of a general discomfort with sex or it could be contextual discomfort (such as reading sex in public/at work). Those are both fair and specific concerns that fall under my answer of “this game is 18+ and may have contextually inappropriate content; avoid it if that makes you uncomfortable.”

The second interpretation of NSFW, however, is typically the one that gets all the discourse. I encourage everyone to think hard on why they think about NSFW the way they do. For me, I see the situation like this: An anti-NSFW (or NSFW ambivalent) argument that reads NSFW solely as “explicit, pornographic sex written intentionally to arouse” is problematic because it presumes the author’s intention, and generally presumes it is always the same (“only getting the reader off”) with little nuance. It then proceeds to base an argument of “NSFW is unnecessary fan service” or “NSFW is just porn” from there. Therefore, NSFW is “just something you can hide or remove” because it’s not important. It’s fluff. It’s designed to arouse and nothing more.

I think that is a problematic argument because it presumes sex is always something meaningless, and must always be intentionally pornographic, when sex can be some of the most powerful, vulnerable, revealing moments of a novel. You don’t see literary fiction shying away from sex scenes for example, and those aren’t considered pornographic. Indeed, they often end up on popular and very public best-seller lists.

This is why I personally think censoring words, such as writing two completely separate scenes for NSFW vs SFW is fundamentally inappropriate (unless the scene was literally only written to be porn and has no other purpose—a rarity, in most media). Authors are very particular with their words, and I’m trying to communicate some very specific things when I write. If those specific things require some level of explicit detail, then compromising that detail for the sake of being SFW means I’m not communicating what I intended the way I intended, and am essentially self-censoring.

That’s what I mean when I said earlier “if I feel it’s meaningful.” If the sex is developing characters in a meaningful way, it’s important to include it; if it’s not, then I won’t. If that inclusion makes someone uncomfortable, fair enough! Then this story may not be for them. This is also why I don’t want to promise NSFW: I’m not shy about including sex in my writing, but this isn’t a game about sex, so I don’t want readers to be caught up on a promise of something titillating when that’s not a primary focus of the novel. Again: If sex scenes are appropriate to communicate something, I’ll include them. If not, I won’t.

I hope that helps explain my thoughts!