A Commentary on Explicit Content in the A-Ware Series -or- On Getting “Real”

Author:	Gregory P. Epley
Published:	11/30/2022
Updated:	09/24/2023
Rated:	M (mature adult content)

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Warning: A reminder that this article is rated M for mature audiences only. If you are not at least 21 years of age or are very sensitive to explicit content, you should close this article. Continuing to read is entirely your own responsibility!

This proved to be a very difficult Author’s Note to write. A primary reason is because it’s not a simple topic. A lot of people claim to be against explicit content for various reasons, only these are usually the same reasons always put forth, as if offering them enough times will somehow lend them more weight. On the one hand, I don’t want to offend or harm sales of my work, but on the other hand, I can’t, in all honesty, just sit back and allow people to run all over me or silence me. We don’t all agree on the same things in the same ways, but this does not necessarily make some of us “right” and anyone who doesn’t agree with us “wrong”. That is how simple some people choose to perceive it, but as I will be pointing out, perceptions can be tricky things.

So, I tried to organize my thoughts and came up with the following list of points:

1. Explicit content exists in the real world
2. The differing perceptions which define the vague adjectives of the legal statutes
3. Strong language and violence
4. The assumptions of textual versus visual content
5. The “theater of the mind” as it applies to textual versus visual content
6. What’s out there in visual content?
7. Conclusions and final notes

1. Explicit content exists in the real world

The A-Ware series was always intended as occurring in a real world which could be our own. I wanted readers to feel the story could be occurring in their real world, or certainly one very much like it. I wanted readers to want to continue coming back to this other world for a time to continue following the story. I wanted readers to feel they might like living in this other universe.

If you set your story on some alien planet or in some sufficiently fantasy setting, perhaps where fantasy or supernatural beings exist among a real world, then you can more easily bend some usual rules without this adversely affecting the end result story. This is because you’re deliberately creating enough of a fantasy setting which your story occurs in. For example, if you dropped storybook characters into our real world, you’d naturally expect some real world rules wouldn’t necessarily apply in the same way. Same thing if you dropped some supernatural characters, like vampires and other supernatural beings into our real world. Your readers should expect all the usual rules don’t necessarily apply.

But, if you establish your story as seeming to be in a real world which is more like the reader’s own, you can’t reasonably bend too many of the usual rules. In our real world, acts of violence, strong language and explicit sexual situations are some of those “givens” one can’t realistically just ignore. More sensitive readers may not like that explicit things exist in our real world, but this doesn’t just make those thing disappear into nothingness. Pretending the proverbial elephant isn’t in the room or the proverbial lump isn’t under the rug changes nothing.

This is something that has usually disturbed me about religious fiction. On the one hand, I get that the author wants to reach and satisfy a certain market of readers. But unless the story is set in some sufficiently isolated setting, you’ll never convince me that outsiders spouting foul language, committing acts of violence and engaging in explicit sexual situations simply aren’t going to occur. They’re GOING to occur, in a “real” world. Every character in the story ISN’T going to behave in an entirely spiritual manner. This simply ISN’T “real”! It’s UNREAL!

One branch of human psychology I was exposed to during college was human sexuality. The professor really didn’t devote as much class time to the human sexuality textbook which was part of the required class materials, but I nevertheless read the textbook, figuring some of its material might end up on a mid-term or final exam. I don’t recall whether it did or not, but the point is that I read that textbook, so I know what I know about the human psychology of human sexuality from the perspectives covered in that text.

So, let’s just establish something most everyone knows, but simply wants to pretend isn’t so, because it otherwise makes them uncomfortable to think about too much. I will strictly focus on heterosexuals, but this respectively applies to all sexual orientations.

At some certain point during puberty, an otherwise normal healthy heterosexual human being IS going to be sexually attracted to their opposite gender human being. No if’s, and’s, but’s or or’s about it. IS. Simply IS.

I don’t care how much scripture you want to spout or what other rationalizations you want to make, this is basic primitive human instinctive hard-wired part of being human. It simply IS, and that’s that! I don’t care what “your spirit” SHOULD be or what you SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be thinking and/or doing. God might know your thoughts and feelings, but NO other human being does. NO other human being, including so-called mentalists or psychics who claim to read minds. NO one can REALLY read YOUR mind, because if they could, this would be obvious.

Such a person would know anything about anyone at any moment. There wouldn’t be certain things they just didn’t know for some convenient excuse. I do NOT accept that such a so-called “gift” would only operate under “certain conditions” versus “consistently”. It makes far more rational sense to me that such a “gift” would work in any situation where wrong should be righted, yet this is clearly not the case since some crimes or wrongs remain unpunished or unsolved.

Does this mean all mentalists or psychics are frauds? I can only reply that I do NOT know, one way or the other. I rather feel that there is perhaps something to it, but as to what that something is, I do NOT know. Again, when the “gift” doesn’t seem to work makes no rational sense. It’s “just not meant to be” is a fluffy deflection I simply do NOT accept, particularly if I am to believe in a so-called “loving God”. While it is true that God’s perspective would naturally be very different from ours, it also follows that God would know something of our perspective, so to leave us saddled with unsolved crimes or mysteries while certain persons present gifts of revelation makes no rational sense.

I also wouldn’t consider reading minds a “gift”. If you really give some thought to it, it would be more a curse than a gift. We THINK we’d want to know what others around us are really thinking, but we really wouldn’t. Oh, it’d be “nice” for a while, until we began getting information we’d just as soon NOT have known.

But, to return to where we were … let’s assume NO other human being can read human minds. That being the case then, none of us really knows what anyone might be thinking at any given moment. They can say whatever they think others will accept and believe about whatever, only none of us can actually verify this under many circumstances. We ultimately just have to trust, or else drive ourselves batty questioning the matter.

It is FACT that people in positions of authority, honor and respect have been caught doing wrong, or having done wrong. This has happened dozens or more times. Enough times that we should never just blindly trust ANYONE in other positions of authority, honor or respect … yet we continue doing so anyway. But my point is that people in such positions have been caught abusing their position, so we know this happens. We know it happens, but we prefer pretending it doesn’t because it makes us uncomfortable thinking that person might be doing something they shouldn’t be doing. Still others of us are trying to focus on the matter from a Christian perspective, thinking the best of others until presented with sufficient reasons to the contrary.

But, again, pretending the proverbial elephant isn’t in the room or that the proverbial lump isn’t under the rug is really just kidding ourselves. It may prevent us from becoming so paranoid that we suffer a severe mental breakdown, but Shakespeare perhaps said it best with, “This above all: to thine own self be true”. If we can’t be genuine and true to ourselves, how can we expect others to be genuine and true to us? Consider what the world could be like if absolutely everyone were true to themselves?

In a “perfect” world, this would all be much easier, but, of course, we don’t live in a “perfect” world. Precisely part of my point. We live in a real world where everything isn’t “perfect” according to our perception of what “perfect” is. For an alleged majority, this is apparently NO violence, NO profanity or strong language, and NO explicit sexual ANYTHING! Basically, a completely whitewashed, unrealistic world.

However, as I should have made clear by this point, the real world we must exist in is NOT “perfect”, so there IS violence, there IS strong language, and there IS explicit sexual actions, thoughts and words!

Does this mean we shouldn’t aspire to something better, something more “perfect”? Not at all. It’s just that one also needs to remain genuine and true to the “real world” they must exist in versus some rose-colored glasses, “everything is beautiful” fantasy world.

So, there will be acts of various levels of violence, profane or strong language, and explicit sexual actions, thoughts and words expressed in the “real world” of this A-Ware series universe, because this is being genuine and true to that real world. If this offends some readers, all I can offer is that I’m sorry for you. If it’s your judgment that I’m headed to hell, my immediate response to that conclusion is that it’s not your call, so to go on and on agonizing or exclaiming over it or trying to change me is your issue, not mine. I’m not presenting any more or less of what’s already been presented before by plenty of others. Which is not to imply I sold out. No, I’m just trying to stay real versus pretending the world is a place it isn’t, and likely never will be. I comfort myself by trying to focus on some universal force still being in control. That may be so much wishful thinking, but it is how I cope with this otherwise real imperfect world.

Finally, this is just a STORY, people! It is NOT “real”! It is FICTION! Inform your perception on the difference between reality and fiction! If you or someone you know are having difficulties perceiving the difference between reality and fiction, seek help! Help is out there! SEEK it! Talk to a pastor or other clergy. Talk to a medical doctor or nurse. If any of these sources are more interested in receiving money before they will help you, then seek someone else, because this is about HELPING people, NOT making a living, or lining the pockets of corporate health care!

HELP is NOT a business or corporate entity focused on profiting from the problems of others! It has been skewed into that purpose by capitalism, but the Christian scripture some of these capitalists cling so tenaciously to did NOT present a Jesus who held a hand out for money in exchange for help! No, the helping hand was offered, and a person helped themselves by accepting help and doing what they had to do to help themselves, and hopefully, helped others as they were later enabled to help. If we had more of that perception at work in this world, we’d all be better off!

UPDATE: I next want to comment on the source of many erotic or sexual topics. A good example showed up in my e-mail Inbox the day I added this update.

Somehow, although I don’t know how, I ended up subscribed to a site named “Medium”. Writers publish various sorts of articles there, from which I believe they derive some income.

The article this day was titled something like, “How I Became Involved in a Reverse Gangbang”. The female writer wrote of being in a sorority. They’d had a party and most everyone had left, but this one guy remained behind. Seven of the sorority sisters got this idea to “bang” this one guy, so they all got naked and took their 3 minutes time with the guy, with him getting to choose which one he finished up with. She also goes on to mention that some of the girls “ did it with one another”, that there were no condoms and that some of the girls had herpes.

Statements of girls “doing it” with one another only aids in perpetuating the notion that girls can’t be friends or roommates with one another without becoming “sexually experimental” with one another. Some females wonder where this comes from. Sometimes, it comes from their own gender, perpetuating it like this. Putting it in their porn they make money from. Putting it in stories they post on the public Internet. Putting it on public message boards. Behind no paywall, whatsoever, in many cases. Some 13-year-old boy reads it or sees it, then assumes it must be so …perpetuating what is most likely a myth.

Now, true, females are generally more “touchy feely”, but this doesn’t assume most go around freely groping and deep kissing one another. It also doesn’t assume most go around half or completely naked, groping and/or masturbating or engaging in oral sex with one another. Perhaps, if their sexual orientation is bisexual or homosexual, but much less likely for heterosexuals.

So, already, most of this story sounds like so much fabrication and perpetuation of female sexual myths, or what some females prefer males believing. Why would any female do this to their gender? Financial gain. Notoriety. Shock value. Superiority. Probably some other reasons I simply can’t think of at the moment.

Mostly the same reasons males perpetuate lots of myths of the male gender. A lot of it is frankly a load of BS, but it has been done for so many centuries or millennia that it has become “acceptable”. Something is “wrong” with you if you DON’T do it, but something is also “wrong” with you if you DO. What insanity!

Don’t get me started on fraternities, sororities or “Greek organizations” in general, but if this presented story is “true”, then I am not at all impressed with the perception being presented. It is nothing to “be proud of”, in other words. Not at all. Of course, the article was tagged as “Humerotica”, in which case it could be that the story is purely erotic fiction.

Still, the story was presented by a female, and as if it could be true … which is where we enter problem territory. For any content presented as if it’s true reinforces any perceptions which might otherwise be pure fiction or myth. Some myths no doubt blossomed from such fiction being circulated as fact or truth.

It is virtually impossible to weed out fact from fiction or myth in today’s connected world because there is no oversight on the medium of the Internet. Everyone are out there presenting as honest and truthful, even if they’re not, and know they’re not. They know they’re kidding, but most of us don’t. Even when some say they’re kidding, one can’t always tell. You’d like to believe they’re kidding, but you don’t know them, so you really can’t be sure.

So, if I should present any such stories, know that they are based on what some females choose to present as some generally “true” thing. It’s often coming from the very gender who gets all bent out of shape because some male presented it, regardless of the true origin, which was probably some female perpetuating some likely “myth”.

The better question might be … why would some females WANT males believing a lot of this “stuff” is TRUE? What exactly are they trying to accomplish? Shock value? Erotic value? That they’re a “hot party girl” who’s ready to “bang” any desired takers? What? Some or all of the above? Or is it simply that there are a lot of really screwed up in the head people out there, of both genders, who crave “attention”, and whatever wild whatever accomplishes that? I leave all that for your consideration.

But, if I present it, I’m just passing along what others have already publicly perpetuated. I’m only repackaging it in a bit of a different setting with my own characters. But its true source was some “attention seeker” who is most likely simply perpetuating some “tall tale” for “attention”.

2. The differing perceptions which define the vague adjectives of the legal statutes

For purposes of simplicity, I will paraphrase one definition of “perception” as “That which is detected by the five senses; not necessarily understood; also that which is detected within consciousness as a thought, intuition and/or deduction”. In brief, “perception” is “our interpretation of things around us”.

An example will help clarify this “interpretation” aspect. Consider a shirt which is of that color some perceive as orange, while others perceive it as pink. If you’ve never encountered that color, then okay, but just stay with me. Who’s “right”? Who decides who’s “right”, and how is this decision arrived at? Or, is it perhaps better to just “agree to disagree”?

For most persons, the most available means to interpret color is eyesight, but as I will be explaining shortly, this means doesn’t come without its flaws. The only second method available is through some sort of artificial electronic optical sensors, but these also present flaws since everything about the means is human, and therefore “imperfect”, in origin. Bottom line, it is too easy for even the slightest of flaws to be introduced into any artificial system.

There are three categories of color blindness. The most common is difficulty perceiving the green component of light. Next comes red, and last or least comes blue. Persons who suffer from color blindness can’t help they are color blind. It is a condition they must learn to cope with. Yet, consider how this impacts their “perception” since it is messing with the sensory input of their eyes.

I submit that just as there can be physical conditions which adversely impact “perception”, that there can also be emotional and/or intellectual (or, psychological) conditions which impact “perception”.

What do I mean by emotional and/or intellectual conditions? Well, I think it’s safe to say that most of us as babies just blindly accepted and trusted anyone who treated us well. We tended to just accept whatever they told us. Those things we were told began further establishing an emotional and/or intellectual foundation of perceptions.

For example, if a person grew up heavily exposed to intellectual pursuits, they would be more likely to continue doing so, and this would cause their perceptions to be more intellectually based. On the other hand, a person who grew up heavily exposed to religious or spiritual pursuits would continue more emotionally and perhaps some intellectually based. Likewise, if a person grew up heavily exposed to a more cruel, unforgiving or unstable situation, their perceptions would tend to form along those lines.

I submit this is self-evident, despite my explaining it. It makes rational sense, psychologically, and as it has been sufficiently proven that how and what we think affects us physically or biologically, this potentially helps explain why some people perceive that shirt as orange, while others perceive it as pink. Perhaps a person who often wore orange was very nice to them as a baby or child, or vice versa, pink. Perhaps it was the other way around, so they’re unconsciously going with the opposite color. Or perhaps they’re just a very arrogant, intellectual, pigheaded type of person who either favors the perceived majority, or prefers standing out as “different” or “opposite”, so they go with the color which will satisfy their “self”.

It is also quite likely that a person was affected by further life events as they grew up into adulthood. So, a person who began in a very intellectual environment might have later been enormously affected by religious or spiritual pursuits. They possibly abandoned a lot of their intellectual since that might not mate well with their religious or spiritual pursuits. Lots of combinations could occur throughout life. But this is how life events can affect our perceptions at any given time. This is the psychology that’s occurring. We just don’t generally go around thinking about it.

Consequently, our perceptions are largely formed by our life experiences, which include the people and other experiences we encounter throughout life. This is why some people seem to “change” from what we once remembered, or how people we would have never thought would perceive things some certain way suddenly seem to “change”. Actions, words and/or thoughts can and DO impact “perception”. This is what’s happening when a seemingly sane person ends up in a cult.

Their “perception” has been skewed to such a degree that they honestly don’t perceive things as those outside the cult do. And given the links between the mind and the body, one can affect the other such that the mind can affect the body and vice versa. Things which wouldn’t seem linked can become that way, and if we’re talking about the mind being affected, that’s psychology, and thus, perception.

Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of this section, perception might also be thought of as “interpretation”. It is something of a vague or virtual entity which isn’t necessarily clearly definable, such as the differences in perception of the color of that shirt some perceive as orange, while others perceive it as pink. Perhaps most people are perceiving the color as directly as it can be perceived, while others are perceiving it in some skewed fashion, but it’s likely difficult to outwardly tell which category a given person falls into. If we could read their mind and emotions, we might be able to tell the difference, but without that, we may never figure out how that person is arriving at their perception.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, some perceptions are further muddied by other factors or properties one might not be able to precisely pin down. Take one definition of the adjective, “obscene”, which is, “Offensive to current standards of decency or morality”.

Most of us feel we completely understand this definition, but consider it more closely. What is “offensive”? One definition is “Causing offense; arousing a visceral reaction of disgust, anger, or hatred”.

Now we may be trying to follow this seemingly never-ending trail of breadcrumbs for “visceral”, and perhaps “disgust”, since most of us probably grasp “anger” and “hatred”. But what we will discover as we follow this trail of “vague adjective breadcrumbs” are yet more “vague adjective breadcrumbs” whose “perception” or “interpretation” very much depends on our life experiences.

To put it another way, what is “obscene” to one person is NOT necessarily “obscene” to another. We may generally be able to agree on something many of us find likewise “obscene”, but as all our life experiences are not precisely the same, variations in perceptions are going to creep in. So, even if we can agree on a dozen things we all find “obscene”, we may discover two dozen more which vary widely among a group of sufficient size. Which is where we get into these debates over what is or isn’t “indecent”, “obscene”, “vulgar” or whatever else. We get into an, “is the shirt orange or pink” debate which likely has NO solution, because the matter is one of “perception” or “interpretation”.

Imagine a person blind from birth. They have never seen ANY colors, so how would you go about teaching them what “orange” is? You can’t say, “it’s halfway between red and yellow”, because they have no concept of what red or yellow are. The best you could hope for would be to correlate color with one or more sensory functions the blind person does possess, like tactile and/or auditory. Temperature variations for tactile, and musical notes for auditory. Warmer colors, warmer temperature, higher notes … cooler colors, cooler temperature, lower notes. It’s still not as good as them actually being able to see orange, but the “halfway between red and yellow” concept could be communicated and understood.

A more liberally-minded person generally isn’t going to perceive “disgusting”, “explicit”, “indecent”, “obscene” and/or “vulgar” the same as a more conservatively-minded person. One’s going to see the “shirt” or “matter” as orange, while the other’s going to perceive it as pink.

What are the conservatives going to focus on? Most likely some religious or spiritual reasons why they’re “right” and liberals are “wrong”. But look at most any definition of “religion”, and you are likely to discover something like, “A set of beliefs”. And a “belief” might also be perceived as a “perception” or “interpretation”. In fact, different religions tend to be comprised of different beliefs. Sometimes there are some common themes, but there are usually a few differences … only each one believes they’re “right”.

But who’s “right”? Are they all “right”? Or, are they all “right” to some degree, even including their differences? We don’t really know for sure. We can do all the studying we like, but we really don’t know. No single human being, or even any group of them, has some direct line to some deity. I don’t care if they claim they do. I can claim I can fly too, but if I’m fool enough to jump off some high place, I’ll plummet to the ground, most likely killing myself in the process. So, just because we believe something doesn’t make it “so”. It is a “perception”. Perhaps one which offers us comfort, security or stability, but a “perception”, nevertheless.

Does this mean there is no room for the “spiritual”? Not at all. I’m simply focusing on how we, as humans, perceive things around us. There is nothing inherently wrong with having faith or hope. In fact, there are many scientific studies which indicate these more positive perceptions are both physically and psychologically beneficial to us as human beings, which is part of the foundation of religion. It’s simply that religion doesn’t eliminate the “givens” or “real” aspects of the world around us, as some persons would prefer it did, or some persons believe it can or does.

Which is NOT to say religion CAN’T overcome “reality”, but we’re also drifting too far off-topic. So, human beings are imperfect creatures. If this weren’t so, then we would be “perfect”, and if we were perfect, then there would never be any automobile accidents or other problems in our world. I won’t speak to other religions, but Christian scripture is said to have been “imbued” or “inspired” to man through God. In other words, we do NOT have some giant golden, unchangeable book or stone tablets which floated down from Heaven (not counting the tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai). Men wrote scripture down. Meanwhile, what happened between the mind and the writing actually making it onto whatever surface? The answer comes down to an aspect called “faith”, through which we are supposed to believe “without proof”.

Now, I am NOT knocking “faith”. Some of my characters in this A-Ware series have their things to say about faith, so I will leave them to do that and let it be. But I could have all the faith I wanted that I could fly, yet kill myself if I tried to jump off some high place. So, I believe one needs to be “realistic” and “reasonable” where faith is concerned, lest they be perceived as “out of their mind”.

It would be foolish, for example, to step off a curb into the path of an oncoming vehicle, expecting some angel and/or God to “save us”. This was a mistake Satan made with Jesus, tempting him to throw himself off the top of the temple, to which Jesus rightly responded, “thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God”. We are rather to use the “brain God gave us” to behave “rationally and/or reasonably” within our “reality” versus behaving “irrationally”. This is the concept of “God helps those who help themselves”. One “uses the brain God granted them” to function in a “rational manner” within “reality”, versus going about behaving as if we do NOT have any free will to behave in a rational manner.

Some human beings become way too easily wound up in a frenzy over things which aren’t as definitive or precise as they would prefer. They lash out in anger, hatred and violence when they don’t get their way. Wars are fought. More people suffer and die. All over a shirt some perceived as orange while others perceived it as pink. That may seem a simplistic way of presenting it, but simple is often best. A lot of things human beings disagree over are akin to that shirt color. We don’t really know who is “right”, and it’s possible both sides are right … from their “perception” or “perspective”.

Now, to those who are busy frantically paging through their Bibles locating and uttering every verse they can find to use to blow me away or prove me “wrong”, I’ll say … calm down. I’m NOT implying or saying your belief or scripture are “wrong”. I just said we could both be “right” … because we are talking about a “perception”.

I am also not trying to imply that perception is some sort of mysterious, vague “thing” without substance. No, perceptions have an ABUNDANCE of substance. Just consider all the human beings who have been murdered or otherwise damaged in their name. Numerous conflicts and even outright WARS fought over differing perceptions, be they political, religious, social or otherwise. Even the physical differences of gender and race are further perceptions.

How are gender and race perceptions? They are perceptions by means of expression. The English word “male” has its counterpart in other languages, so “male” is strictly the English “perception” of the “gender” we’re referring to. If I lost you there, just slow down, read over it again and give it some thought.

Another way a heterosexual person could think of this is that if we “see” an opposite gender person, and that person is “attractive” to us, then we are “attracted” to them. A heterosexual American male sees a sexually attractive Asian, Black or Hispanic female, then experiences sexual attraction toward her, which is his “perception” of her, and perhaps she is experiencing similar for him. Very simple. Not at all complicated.

Still disagree, even to some extent? Then consider the lyrics of a popular children’s spiritual song, “Jesus Loves the Little Children”. The song’s lyrics speak of “red and yellow, black and white” in reference to different skin colors or races of people. It is a clever way of doing this for children, but given how aggressively some people go overboard, getting themselves and others stirred up into a frenzy over every little thing, how long will it be before this song is “banned” in places where it was fine for perhaps a century? I, personally, am not offended by the label “White”, so what is so offensive over any of the other labels?

What makes a label offensive are all the persons who deem themselves something I like to coin, “self-superior to others”. These people believe they are BETTER than everyone else for any variety of reasons, though usually every reason boils down to some sort of perception they have simply thoroughly enough convinced themselves of. It is quite the mental or psychological problem to have, from my outside perspective, feeling themselves superior to others based on ancestral family name, skin color, religion, gender, or how much “money” they’ve got.

Let’s break all of those down to their basics. A family name is really nothing more than a family who encountered mostly good outcomes from efforts to better themselves, because had they encountered enough difficulties or bad outcomes, their name would NOT be so “great”. Money is nothing more than an economic principle conceived to grant certain members of a society with an overabundance while the masses struggle beneath them in servitude for most if not their entire lives.

Setting aside any beliefs of what we do or don’t “choose” of our Earthly life, gender, skin color, religion and many other aspects are perceptions we do NOT have much, if any, control over, though particularly gender and skin color. Yes, even these can be artificially altered if one can afford it and is willing to risk it, but even such things do not really “change” the truth of the matter. The “truth of the matter” is its birth or origin, not whatever came later, usually through some individual means of “change”.

Now, before I offend someone who identifies as a gender opposite the one they were born with, allow me to further explain. For whatever reasons, a person was born appearing of male gender, but as this person develops over time, for whatever other reasons, this person identifies as the opposite gender, or female. We can dig and poke into all the genetics and psychology of these matters, or we can also accept that we do NOT understand EVERYTHING as thoroughly as some of us WISH we did, or would prefer. However, NOTHING changes the fact of the matter, which is that this person was born as male.

The perception at this point can be that this person is some sort of “abomination” or “something of the devil or evil”, but that would be the wrong way to form a perception. Such rash action is that “self-superior” perception making itself known, trying to make another person appear inferior to us so we can be “right” and they can be “wrong”, because WE simply MUST be “right”! We simply MUST be!

There is potentially a great deal going on beneath the surface in examples of this born male identifying later as female. There are possibly issues of genetics the human race simply has not yet developed a full understanding of. Recall that there was a time in the not too distant past of the human race when “a string of genes” was “a string from jeans”. Pay careful attention to the spelling in that last sentence or you’ll miss the point I was trying to make. However, I will move along and note that most, or possibly all the psychology of the born male later identifying as female is genetic or physical, or else we’re dealing with some spiritual component we do not yet fully understand either.

The often immediate response to anyone who are “too different” is that there’s something “wrong” with THEM. Notice that last … wrong “with them”. But is the evil or wrong really with them, or is it NOT possibly more so with those acting in judgment against them? Seems it’s POSSIBLE something is “wrong” with the thinking of those who feel themselves self-superior to others. I cannot help but wonder how such persons would respond if their charmed existence were quite suddenly turned on its head by enough change to cause them to become the formerly inferior. History strongly suggests they would not react well to such change in themselves. Most would likely commit suicide, proving just how inferior they always were, even when they considered themselves superior.

The evil of the problem is this. When you consider yourself superior to others, you are immediately labelling them inferior. You, yourself, do NOT like being considered inferior, so you lash out with how and why you are superior, though the moment you do that, you have become the true problem of the matter. You claim to believe all your Christian religion, yet have thrown asunder the scriptural warning to “judge not lest ye be judged”. You have taken to speaking out of both sides of your mouth …which is to say, you offer one perception out of one side of your mouth, but entirely another out of the other side of your mouth. Another way to perceive this is the classic “forked tongue” generally associated with evil.

Briefly returning to the example of the born male later identifying as female, what if that person became a very beneficial counselor who ultimately helps many tens of thousands of patients with their problems? What if this person manages to talk down dozens of suicides, and because those potential suicides were averted, those suicide persons were later where they needed to be for others? There is too much we humans often do not consider which could be going on right before the “eyes and minds” we claim to “see” with. Too much we DON’T really know but THINK we know. Too much simply being ignored or swept aside because it doesn’t fit with our five senses of awareness and/or is “irrational”. Too much that might carry just as much, if not more weight than the rational, five senses perception.

Totally switching gears, “lust” is a perception. Some of my characters in this A-Ware series present a different perception on “lust”. Is it a legitimate perception? I don’t know, and I doubt even any Biblical scholar knows with any certainty since everyone are “interpreting” scripture.

However, most legal statutes I have researched use these “differing perception” vague adjectives like “current standards of decency or morality”, “indecent”, “obscene” and/or “vulgar”. Each one of them seems defined by yet more vague “matter of perception” adjectives, which causes me to question the validity of these legal statutes, and the sanity of anyone enforcing them.

No one really knows what the “current standard” is because it’s actually whatever it was several centuries or more ago, which has never been revisited, or else is based on statistics which aren’t “current”. If one ends up before one judge, they might at most pay a small fine, whereas if one appears before another judge, they’re practically buried under the jail, with no rhyme or reason to it other than one judge’s “perception” versus another’s. How is that wishy-washy outcome “justice”? How is one to respect such a wishy-washy concept? How can one take it seriously enough to respect when it is in fact so absurd?

Most of us may be able to agree that some certain thing is “indecent”, but differences in the perceptions of all these vague adjectives used in legal statutes is disturbing, to say the least. Some “majority” is of little to no use because majorities change over time. If this weren’t so, then women would all still be clothed neck to ankle, so obviously enough people’s perceptions changed over time to permit the short shorts, revealing tops, revealing swimsuits and sometimes outright birthday suit nakedness which are legally permitted throughout much of the United States. Oh, there are those who “don’t approve”, but they rarely seem to accomplish anything with their opposition, strongly suggesting that the majority has shifted.

3. Strong language and violence

As I established back in section 1, acts of strong language and violence are going to occur in a “real” world setting. There seems to be no clear origin for profanities like “fuck” or “shit”. They appear Germanic in origin, dating back to sometime in the 15th century. I didn’t look deeper for the origins, other than to know “shit” derived from a word related to defecation. I’m not sure about “fuck”, but the point with these two words is that they’re just language people associated with expressing profanity in a situation. Perhaps “fuck” related to some word associated with sex or sexual pleasure, and derived its profane association with the moral concept of “sins of the flesh”.

Not that I possibly didn’t or won’t slip up somewhere, you will generally find I save most of the blasphemous profanities for bad or evil characters who generally don’t believe in any God, while most other characters tend to mostly stick with “damn”, “fuck” and/or “shit”.

You can Google this, but there have been scientific studies which seem to indicate that the use of profanity has some positive benefits. For example, after one strikes the “funny bone” of their elbow, stubs a toe, whacks themselves with a hammer or nicks themselves with a knife or razor, uttering some profanities seems to release some helpful neurochemicals. However, it was also shown that uttering unnecessary profanities, including too consecutively, had negative consequences beyond any religious or spiritual ones. Just Google it and educate yourself.

Having stated that, I can hear some readers exclaiming, “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!”

Indeed. There are also plenty of other sources one shouldn’t implicitly trust, though they do anyway. I rarely use any internet research without finding half a dozen or more references to whatever from typically reputable sources. I don’t implicitly trust the first and take off running with that.

But I digress. Profanity or strong language exists in the “real” world, so I use it to make my characters seem more realistic. If it disturbs or offends you, just try to get past it and let it go.

Now let’s shift gears to violence. Another plot device I realized I needed and wanted early on was the rationale to get some really bad or evil characters “put away” for a while. In the real world, we don’t have “super villains”. I wouldn’t say we generally tend to have the sort of movie or television characters who continue to crawl back out of the proverbial woodwork or “pop up”.

That sort of plot device is usually reserved so the character is around to continue to cause drama for our other characters, preventing us from having to create new characters. But, such a plot device has been overused, and can even become ridiculous in some cases, with the bad guy or gal always managing to “escape justice”. Or, if we do manage to get them “put away”, they somehow “escape”. It might make for good drama for some persons, but I’m not one of them. I generally don’t believe in such “super characters”, so I don’t want to insult my readers with them.

Getting bad or evil characters “put away” for a while presents certain problems since only certain kinds of crimes seem to come with lengthy enough penalties. Murder, drugs and many sex crimes seem to be the best options, but murder has been “done to death” (pun intended), and requires killing off a perfectly good character or characters. Which is not to say I’ll never kill off a perfectly good character; I just don’t want to make too much of a habit of it. Drug crimes are a decent choice, but for the fact I didn’t want to focus on them too exclusively. So, that left me with sex crimes.

The obvious problem with most sex crimes is that they are nonconsensual in nature. This is to say, the victim doesn’t actually WANT to be abducted and held somewhere, raped or otherwise sexually abused. NO sex crime is really consensual. A victim’s cooperation shouldn’t ve twisted around to imply consent when the cooperation was more likely the result of just trying to buy time in hopes of escape or being rescued. Naturally, our so-called justice system allows for the former, which is why I deliberately overhauled the justice system a bit in the A-Ware series.

My trials don’t take nearly as long because I don’t allow for all the bullshit which normally occurs during trials. Might not be very realistic, but it’s better than spending chapter after chapter on a trial which could be over in days or weeks versus months or years. The “drama” permitted in our so-called “just” courts is nothing short of absurd, and yes, I do hold that sort of “justice” in contempt, as any sane person should. I hold any judge presiding over such a “joke” in contempt. I hold their court in contempt. If this is NOT what they want, then they need to run their court in a non-contemptuous fashion which can be respected by the average sane person.

Unfortunately, most of the taboos of the publishing industry involve any sexual activities of a nonconsensual nature, making it beyond difficult to use sex crimes to get bad or evil characters stashed away for a while. The unfair thing about this is how frequently movies and television shows portray a victim being abducted and held, or raped, or otherwise sexually abused. The viewer is treated to enough cues to communicate this, and in some cases, a lot of visual details might even be provided.

For example, the viewer might actually witness the victim being abducted and later see them held. Perhaps just locked up, or some degree of restraint might be involved. But that’s “okay”, because it’s in a movie or television show versus a book. More on a critical key difference between textual and visual content later. Rape scenes in movies and television shows have advanced quite a bit. Nowadays, it’s not at all unusual to see the victim’s face while she’s being raped. We are also generally treated to her gasps and cries, and in enough cases, we see clothing being torn or torn off. We may even be treated to flashes of her bare breasts and/or buttocks, at the very least, assuming we aren’t treated to her being suggestively nude. But this is “okay”, because it’s in a movie or television show, versus a book.

Today’s viewers of movies and television have been so saturated with acts of often brutal, vicious, graphic violence that I fear many have become desensitized to graphic violence. Abductions, imprisonments, rapes, various degrees of sexual abuses, stabbings, shootings, eyes gouged or cut out, tongues cut out, victims gutted, decapitations and cannibalism are but a few examples, but it’s all okay because it’s in some movie or television show versus a book.

Even if a viewer only hears what’s happening, most viewer’s minds, and this includes disturbed or impressionable minds, will fill in the blanks. We all know full well what’s happening. Pretending that particular proverbial elephant isn’t in the room, or that the proverbial lump isn’t under the rug, is a lame duck poor rationalization for allowing such graphic material to be present in a movie or television show but NOT a book.

If all I can relate in a rape scene in a book is that “Sue was violently raped”, the reader lacks enough to really develop proper sympathy for the character’s experience. The reader can imagine whatever they like, but without being told more, the author might or might not meet the reader’s expectations.

If we later want to cover some of the court proceedings, we can’t because this would mean revealing a few too many details which are just taboo in the publishing industry. Convey a little too much for some publisher’s perception and your work is “banned” or “not accepted”. I’m serious, I’m NOT making this up! Yet we can have dozens of movies and television shows fully conveying in audio, and possibly video as well, violent acts of rape and/or murder, and that passes muster!

There are many real-world examples I could use, but I submit one of the worst is the “Saw” series. Only some very psychologically “messed up” people would derive any entertainment value whatsoever from this trash. This series not only crosses lines it shouldn’t, but tramples them as well in the course of presenting some of the most vile acts of death, mutilation and torture ever visually presented. I’m by no means saying it is the “worst” example, but I witnessed the first five movies in the series, so I am not simply operating from the perspective of reviews presented by others.

The reason I cannot review many other examples is that these examples are not offered with any audio description for the visually impaired. All are closed captioned, without fail, but not audio described. But, then, sometimes, the quality of the audio description available isn’t what it could and should be. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched some movie and haven’t been told what the characters look like or what they’re wearing. Okay, this information wouldn’t be of any use to someone who has NEVER had any eyesight, but the fact is that there are likely a majority of people who were once able to see, so they have some understanding of colors and other concepts which can’t really be communicated to someone who has never been able to see anything.

This is why audio description is handled completely differently in the A-Ware series. I have audio description on TV and in movies the way it should have been done back when closed captioning was the big thing one heard about. You remember the announcement, “closed captioning sponsored by” whoever? Why wasn’t audio description being sponsored by anyone? The technical capabilities were there, they just weren’t being used, or else “financial” and/or “legal” rationales were being force-pedaled by the “industry”, knowing there is nothing those who would benefit from the aid can do about the matter.

However, lest I be judged as “unappreciative”, let me state that the availability and quality of the audio description which is now out there as of 2022 is significantly better than it was when I went blind in 2001. It is still not as good as it could and should be, but this still seems due to some combination of poorly constructed content which does not lend itself to time for sufficient audio description, or the usual financial and/or legal rationales which are still being pedaled. Despite the decades which have passed, there is still much need for improvement from the sighted community which controls all this.

4. The assumptions of textual versus visual content

In the prior section, I remarked on some examples of content considered “taboo” in publishing (textual or written content) versus the visual content of movies, television or videos.

The assumption made for textual or written content is that it’s much easier for disturbed or impressionable minds to get their hands on these forms of content, while the assumption made for visual content is that there are enough “adults only” barriers like parental controls on consumption devices and credit cards for subscriptions or services to prevent access to visual content by disturbed or impressionable minds.

In a “perfect” world, these assumptions would work, but as I’ve already pointed out, we don’t live in a “perfect” world. Furthermore, there are plenty of adults out there with disturbed or impressionable minds, who can and WILL provide any form of content they can get their hands on to anyone else. Let’s again recall that NO one can generally READ minds at any given moment’s notice with definitive, infallible precision, admissible in a court of law. And if it isn’t admissible in a court of law, it should be discarded, or else utilized in some more constructive manner, as is the case for A-Set in the A-Ware series novels.

But more directly back on topic, this means that even if a book isn’t available in a public or school library, it can still be obtained from another source and distributed to disturbed or impressionable minds. And the same is true of most forms of visual content.

Yes, there are methods for digitally watermarking still images or video to prevent simple capture by another form of optical means, but such methods must be globally employed, or we have our “hole” into access by anyone. There can be NO “holes” in ANY preventive measure or access CAN and WILL occur!

The argument is made that no adult would pay for any adult subscription or service, then share that for free with any child … but this does NOT address several adults going together on a subscription or service to share the expense, nor does it address whether some or all these adults are sufficiently mentally disturbed or impressionable. How many of us have NOT heard of people sharing Netflix or other streaming service subscriptions? And if these are being shared, you can bet subscriptions to adults only services or sites are being shared. If you believe otherwise, you’re kidding yourself!

Furthermore, the matter of whether an individual adult would or wouldn’t share a subscription or service or its content with minors depends on the given adult’s “perceptions”. One also must factor in whatever else that adult might be doing with those minors. Providing alcohol? Drugs? Lots of “commodities” could be “traded”, which absolutely no authorities are aware of until sometime after the damage has been done.

The argument is made that parents or guardians who educate and stay connected with their children or wards will help prevent such situations from happening, but the reality is that nothing is that certain. Even if there is education, children or young people can still be swayed. Put under enough immediate pressure, the damage is done before anyone can stop it. The same with being connected. Short of parents or guardians maintaining an around-the-clock monitoring, damage is subject to occur before anyone can stop it.

True, education and being connected are better than nothing. They do help under the best of circumstances. But the current assumptions only offer a degree of the intended protection. However, it gets worse, as I will reveal in the next section.

5. The “theater of the mind” as it applies to textual versus visual content

Back in section 3, I mentioned some examples of content considered “taboo” in the publishing industry which are permitted in the visual content form of movies, television shows or videos. The following scene likely wouldn’t be considered “taboo” by the publishing industry, but just stay with me anyway, and consider the following scene in a novel …

Jane, a very sexually attractive brunette dressed in a very sexy bold red string bikini, padded barefoot across the carpet of cool soft green grass toward the house. Much of her once lovely body was covered in bruises and abrasions from the physical abuse she’d suffered at Rick’s hands, but these injuries would fade, given time. Jane quietly entered the house, then smiled as she could hear the shower running upstairs, something unseen as she shifted it from her left to her right hand before heading upstairs. Jane’s smile widening, her eyes filled with glee as the sounds of a man in the tub shower could be heard as she approached and quietly entered the bathroom. Throwing back the curtain, Jane brought the large, vicious looking serrated blade knife down. Rick, whose back was turned toward the curtain in the moment, had no opportunity to defend himself before the blade partially severed his spinal cord about a third of the way down his back. But it was already far too late for him in any case, because now giggling hysterically Jane was yanking the knife out and striking again, Rick’s bright red blood squirting from wounds onto Jane and all over the bathroom while she literally stabbed Rick to death.

Now imagine this scene portrayed in a movie or television show. First of all, the camera will focus on a pair of bare female feet. Then, to heighten the sensuality of Jane, the camera will slowly pan up her lovely body, showing off her sexy legs and very revealing bright red string bikini bottom. On up her lovely body to her plump breasts the camera will pan. We’ll see her bruises and abrasions, but a disturbed or impressionable mind will mostly be focused on the sexy female body in her sexy revealing bikini. As Jane enters the house and we see her heading for the stairs, the camera pans over her body some more. Perhaps, as she’s heading up the stairs, the camera might even focus on her shapely swaying bottom.

Alright, so, since this Jane is going to viciously murder this Rick, perhaps we write the scene in the novel to say she removes her bikini before heading upstairs so she can simply wash all the blood off her nude body once the act is completed. In the movie, we have the camera panning all over her body while she’s removing her bikini, then focusing on all her bared parts, even if these are nothing more than her bare bottom and breasts.

Even if an author offered more details on what Jane’s bare bottom and breasts look like, the reader of a novel, or textual or written content, are having to actively use their “theater of the mind” to picture the scene and derive any sexual titillation from the content. But not so for the movie or television show. No. One just gets to see whatever was exposed for purposes of depicting the scene in the visual form. No “theater of the mind” required! All the work’s been done for the viewer!

No writer can truly write a more erotic scene than can be visually depicted. One might be able to come close, but most people’s imaginations simply aren’t that good. A heterosexual 12-year-old boy would much rather see the movie or television show of this scene than to simply read about it in a book, and depending on how much of the book has to be read before we even reach that scene, the kid might not make it that far.

And yet, the taboos of the publishing industry ensure that any taboo content are unlikely to make it into just anyone’s hands, while few such taboos exist for the visual content industry. The “barriers” many among us believe are working, most likely are NOT … but if we collectively just try not to think about this too much, that will make the problems “go away”. Because, if we believe something strongly enough, that makes it so. Just ask all the people who think these flawed ways.

For example, nonconsensual sexual contact, such as rape, is discouraged in textual content, yet plenty of movies and television shows graphically depict rape. This is done not unlike the book to movie scene with Jane, where the movie did all that panning over Jane’s body, something a writer couldn’t do as effectively. This is simply the nature of a difference between the two forms of content production. You can write that a sexually attractive female character is “naked” or “nude”, but that’s simply not the same as seeing some actress naked or nude in a movie or television show. If you don’t grasp that difference, then you might as well stop reading here and now.

The movie rape might not show all the female’s body parts, but it might flash from her face to some of her clothing being torn or pulled off. It might flash to her bare feet or legs before showing her bra being torn or pulled off, then it might flash so rapidly that more details can’t be seen without going frame by frame through the video, though doing that might reveal her nude backside or her bare breasts. And all the while she’s being raped, the viewer is likely treated to sounds of her being raped. The fear, terror and humiliation.

You’re NOT going to get that much easy to consume content in textual form, but the opposite is going to tend to be true with visual content. In at least a couple of instances, I’ve read accounts of actresses who shot rape scenes for movies or television shows. The actress having to have some time to herself after shooting, likely because she got so into her character and what she was supposed to be experiencing that she suffered some of the emotional toll of the rape, even though the rape wasn’t real. For me, this just further illustrates the greater damage visual content can do, because again, it is just right there, no “theater of the mind” required.

6. What’s out there in visual content?

Now that I’ve established how much more harmful visual content can be, you need to be aware of what’s out there in the world … for no more than the cost of an internet connection. The content itself is entirely free, no credit card required. And a piece of entirely free software can download these videos so they can be distributed to anyone, even if they don’t have access to any internet connection. I cannot confirm whether any content censoring digital watermarking system interferes with the video, but I can report that the audio remains unaffected. I’ll be focusing on explicit sexual content since publishing taboos are primarily focused on sexual content, but you can bet there are plenty of videos out there with lots of explicit or strong language and/or violence in them.

I initially stumbled across this adult website while doing some necessary research to ensure I wasn’t conceiving entirely unrealistic story. But it popped up again, in no less than one of my blindness resources, in the form of mentioning sources which offered audio description for content (because apparently, blind or visually impaired people enjoy their share of porn too).

I’d mention the website, but I’d rather not be party to offering them free advertising. If you try keywords like “porn” and either “hub” or “tube”, you’ll find what I’m referring to. Rather, just imagine your 13-year-old heterosexual daughter or 12-year-old heterosexual son encountering the following in high-quality full color video with sound …

I’ll begin with the more basic, tame material. Completely naked males exposing everything. Completely naked females exposing everything. Close-ups of both genders of genitals and sex organs. Every form of sex act you can imagine, and some you’d rather not. No bestiality that I’ve found yet, and most of the sex acts are probably as fake as three dollar bills, but that’s irrelevant to a disturbed or impressionable mind when a heterosexual child is witnessing what appears to be a bare male penis in a woman’s mouth, or a male doing likewise to a female. Accompanied by all the gasping, moaning and a smattering of profanities. This is NOT the way you want your impressionable children learning of sex!

Moving on up to the stronger stuff … a gracious plenty of intended nonconsensual BDSM. A girl in some alleged school or university. She might be in class with other girls, or she might be alone in some male administrator’s office. But if it’s the latter, she’s often told to fully disrobe, so she’s completely naked when he returns to his office to administer her punishment. She might end up bent over his lap or his desk, receiving a hand spanking, or a short whip or disciplinary cane might be used on her. But videos of such spankings, whippings and canings are plentiful.

Some of the girls are presented as if they could be minors, though the actress is likely 18 or older. Sometimes the female is an alleged wife of the husband who’s spanking or whipping her, because, after all, that’s just how women are supposed to be treated, even though the husband so-called loves them. Or the female might be an employee, being punished by her male boss, as if any female would tolerate that anywhere in the world. There is NO way this stuff would fly in most schools, universities or work settings. It’s all staged and fake as a three dollar bill, but again, that’s irrelevant to a disturbed or impressionable mind.

Occasionally you’ll find what appears to be a Caucasian actress in these next setups, but often the female is Asian, Hispanic, Russian or some other culture or ethnicity. Anyway, she’s restrained somehow. She might be strung up spread eagle, spread out on a bed or table, secured to a punishment horse or some other object, but she’s usually completely naked. She may or may not be gagged, but she might be receiving a bullwhipping over her backside, a spanking, flogging or caning. If the dominant can access her breasts, they might be pinching, twisting and pulling on her nipples, shoving objects up her bottom, torturing her clitoris or shoving objects in her vagina. Anything which will cause her discomfort or pain. More rarely, you’ll find examples of males being dominated by females, because some males are sexually aroused over being dominated, or witnessing other males being dominated, just as apparently some females are sexually aroused over being dominated, or witnessing other females being dominated.

How do I know this much if I’m blind? Well, there are those audio described videos, and there are often comments posted below the videos. Possibly the comments are as fake as the videos, but possibly not. The Asian, Hispanic, Russian and other gals often take quite a bit more torture, having pins or needles stuck in their breasts until they look like a couple of pincushions. Needles in other parts of their body. Lots of clitoral torture with close-ups and split screens so you can see her face while whatever’s being done to her.

Things get kinkier with the videos of alleged teen daughters or stepdaughters caught misbehaving. Often she’s a cheerleader. One or both alleged parents or step-parents physically punishing her bottom. The girl may or may not start out completely naked, but they often end up completely naked before punishment is over, or the bottom, at the very least, is bared for punishment. But even if panties are left in place, no one else should be witnessing this trash! More often than not, it’s “Daddy” doing the punishment, helping himself to enjoying intercourse with his alleged daughter or stepdaughter after the punishment. There seem to be less incidents of males being punished this way, but this by no means suggests it’s not out there.

The degrees of punishment are all over the spectrum. You might encounter one video where the victim’s hardly making a sound, if any sound at all, while being beaten, while the victim in another video is screaming her head off. Obviously fake as three dollar bills are the videos where there is dialogue between the victim and their punisher, where the victim might be howling or screaming in pain one moment, but managing to deliver their line the next moment. The females who scream their head off over only 25 or less strokes, while some other female taking a whopping 300 stroke beating doesn’t offer so much as a gasp or whimper of pain until after 100 or more strokes. It’s not that the latter is simply tougher, but rather that the acting isn’t realistic because the punishment isn’t at all realistic.

Alleged incest is rampant on this site. Of course, all of it is probably as fake as three dollar bills, involving male and female actors who are in no way, shape or form related or family, but that doesn’t matter to a disturbed or impressionable mind, so some 12-year-old heterosexual boy with a 16-year-old stepsister could be watching a video of some brother enjoying sex with his stepsister, triggering potential problems. Mothers or stepmothers with sons or stepsons, fathers or stepfathers with daughters or stepdaughters. Every sex act, punishment, restraint. Some is presented as consensual, while some seems nonconsensual, but it’s quite disturbing to listen to, much less see.

Yet incest of ANY type is a major no-no TABOO in publishing. As is ANY form of nonconsensual sexual contact. Consensual BDSM is tolerated, which is how and why the “Fifty Shades” trilogy made it into print. I confess I’ve never heard of a consensual rape, so all rape would seem to be nonconsensual, yet movies and television can run wild with it without suffering any consequences whatsoever.

But getting back to that free porn website, and moving on to still kinkier things are the guys and gals who get off on “sounding”, which involves inserting a steel rod up the urethra. Videos of males doing this to females with plenty of close-ups. Females doing this stuff to one another. Females fisting one another’s vagina, or worse, fisting one another up the bottom. Certainly working large objects up bottoms and vaginas. Tattoos and/or piercings being applied. I can’t recall coming across any branding, but I wouldn’t swear some’s not out there on this site.

All this is but a sampling of what’s out there. There’s a lot more I won’t mention. Bottom line … there are some really messed up people out there in the world, producing this garbage, and for all one knows, they could be your cashier at Walmart, your waitress at a restaurant, your plumber, electrician or auto mechanic, a neighbor, the man or woman in front of or behind you in line at McDonald’s, or someone who’s around your impressionable children for hours. How are these people NOT recognized? Well, one could easily use camera angles, wigs and other tricks.

How do these people do this stuff and not end up with all sorts of lethal diseases, infections and other health problems? I don’t know. Probably, some of them don’t. Some of these people are in the porn business, so they’d know all the tricks which might prevent problems while keeping it otherwise as real as possible. But they all, amateurs and professionals alike, apparently do it for the money and the fame. Some of the females are fond of showing off their prolapsed vagina and/or rectum. I just know it’s out there. I fortunately never saw it, because it sounds really sick and perverted. Here’s hoping they’re so prolapsed in their 40s that they’re bedridden. Or better yet, dead from AIDS. These are the people who should be blind, deaf, mentally disabled, confined to a wheelchair or otherwise disabled … but no, they’re out there doing all this stuff and enjoying life!

These are merely examples from this one adult website. There are many other sites out there, with most of them offering something for free. There are blogs or message boards devoted to all aspects of BDSM, porn and sex, where one can learn how to do most of these acts I’ve listed. People sell videos demonstrating techniques. Others make and sell gear. I have only heard of convention-like BDSM events where those who share an interest in BDSM can gather, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn of such events in some of these other areas of the porn or sex worker industries.

7. Conclusions and final notes

I was going to list several commercially released films containing questionable scenes of an explicit sexual nature, strong language and/or violence, but you can find lists with a simple Google search such as, “nudity in films” or “cannibalism in films”, as just two examples. Educate yourself on what’s out there, if you dare. Like me, you may later wish you didn’t know some things, but it’s too late then.

A couple of examples I will mention are a film involving a mad scientist who abducts and surgically attaches a Japanese man and two young women together, mouth to anus, in a human centipede. I don’t think more need be said, other than that there are three progressively worse movies in this trilogy.

And then there is a film from 1975 involving four foreign government men who abduct a group of young men and women, then isolate and subject them to all manner of torture, perversions and degradation, with the victims nude throughout most of the movie. This one may be difficult to find in the United States, but I’m sure a determined disturbed or impressionable mind could get their hands on it, or some sufficiently enabled adult could locate it somewhere in the world and share it.

There are, after all, more sources than simply the public internet. There is the dark web, and there is “BitTorrent”, which is a form of peer-to-peer (or computer to computer) file sharing. Pirated books, movies, porn, software, television shows and other forms of videos and information are available to anyone who can download, install and operate the free BitTorrent client software on a wide variety of computing platforms, but the dark web and BitTorrent are also good ways to get your system infected with something malicious if you don’t take precautions. These days, I wouldn’t touch the dark web or BitTorrent, and I know what I’m doing. They’re places best left alone for most people. Akin to avoiding the “bad parts of town”.
Any “gains” aren’t worth the “risks”.

A key concept with publishing taboos is whether the material “titillates” the reader. Yet another one of those differing perception, vague adjectives used to decide what is or isn’t “appropriate” or “harmful”, which themselves are yet more differing perception vague adjectives.

Now, of course, most of us have our perceptions of “appropriate” or “harmful”, along with “decent”, “obscene” or “vulgar”. To some degree, most of us can generally agree on some factors or specifics which detail our perception. Nevertheless, we don’t all agree to the same degree on everything, and it is that variability which brings into question the entire matter of legally deciding the fate of one person’s work over another’s, particularly given the ease with which “inappropriate” or “harmful” content can be obtained and consumed by disturbed or impressionable minds, and the ease with which visual content can be consumed since no “theater of the mind” is required to perceive said content.

For example, female breasts do NOT “titillate” all heterosexual males to the same degree, any more than every heterosexual male has a shoe fetish. We can draw certain assumptions or generalities, but just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should, or that it is “just”.

Consider any website which opens with a page warning of adult content beyond. In some fashion, wording on the page says, “If you are at least 18 years old, of mature mind and aren’t offended by explicit sexual content, then proceed to Enter”, with “Enter” as a link. You are likely also warned to close the browser window or hit the “Back” button on your browser if you do NOT agree to the stated conditions.

I’m sorry, but that system is NOT going to stop ANY sufficiently curious, disturbed or impressionable mind. Legally, it might suffice, but it is ultimately as useless as a restraining order. The latter does no good once damage has been done to the person who obtained the restraining order, which is usually what happens. The defense being that the authorities cannot enforce the restraining order until it is broken. Yes, and as I pointed out, by which time damage has been done. The victim may either be dead, or severely injured to the point that their life will never be “normal” again, all because the authorities, who should be REQUIRED to protect innocent citizens BEFORE any crime can occur … well, you get the idea. I just feel there are certain situations where the authorities could do a better job than they do.

For example, if a woman files a restraining order, that order should be enforced right away, so we KNOW the order is BEING enforced! Otherwise, that order is WORTHLESS! If no one are available to enforce the order, then that would seem to be vocational opportunity which is not being acknowledged. How about an otherwise unemployed security guard? Someone, most anyone, would be preferable to the victim being left totally alone to be victimized by the person named in the restraining order, whom everyone involved in the matter should common sense KNOW are more likely than not to attempt to victimize! Come on! NO police officer, sergeant, detective or whatever REALIZES this? Were these people absent when brains were handed out? This isn’t rocket science people! If I can realize this stuff, so can the professionals in the related fields, so ACT!

This is not unlike those well-known scenes in slasher movies where the guy or gal goes off by themselves, essentially begging the killer to come take them. Who DOESN’T know what’s gonna happen if they’ve seen at least one such scene? The person who’s already been attacked to the point that a restraining order has been filed should NOT be left alone, otherwise the situation is just BEGGING for damage to be done before anyone can stop it!

Ah well. It makes common sense to me, so I don’t get why it isn’t seen to. PREVENT damage before it can be done, because AFTER the damage has been done, it may be too late.

Once I became aware of publishing taboos, I painstakingly went back through all my work and looked for any ways I might sufficiently water down scenes to prevent publishers from rejecting the work without also reducing those scenes to the point that I might as well abandon them altogether. I’m sure I didn’t succeed in absolutely every case, but this is what I tried to do. So, if a scene seems too watered down, you can thank the overly sensitive prudes of a given publisher for that, because it’s their fault I had to water a scene down so much.

However, having stated that, something interesting did come out of having to water some scenes down. Gaps were created which I felt needed to be filled in with something, so I found opportunities to reveal more background on some characters. This is all background the reader was never presented with originally, but which helps fill out the character a bit more when they appear in later books of the series. I consider it a real world example of turning a negative into a positive, as I have some characters doing.

Some readers will no doubt wonder WHY I created legalized prostitution on a federal level in the A-Ware series. The short answer is that I had some characters I wanted to create and some scenes I wanted to occur which could only reasonably happen if prostitution were legalized at the federal level, so I created the FBLP and figured out how it might operate. It is likely as unrealistic as Diuturnalyte and the A-Ware system itself, but the goal was a hopefully entertaining fictional story, not science fiction becoming fact.

I will state here for the record that I only intended readers to be “titillated” by consensual instances of sexual situations. Some examples would be the attendants at the FBLP clubs or a character behaving and/or dressing in some titillating fashion.

However, we all perceive situations differently to the degrees we do, so if any reader is titillated by any nonconsensual sexual situations, that is their business and no one else’s. I can only caution such persons to find ways to deal with their desires in constructive ways which harm no one else and/or themselves.

I tried to be very careful with any rape or child sexual contact situations because my only intent was to convey enough of the victim’s experience to contrast against later healing experiences. My intent was always to eventually reveal the victim’s healing and recovery from their very bad experiences, but what use is this when the reader doesn’t really have sufficient background on the character’s experiences? It is like saying some certain female character was violently raped, then later going on and on about her recovery without any background whatsoever on her rape. You would witness more in movies and television shows of the actual rape, yet that is allowed in movies and/or on television without any regard as to the mental health of all viewers.

The reason I often focused on sex crimes were length and severity of penalties and the fact that other forms of crime have frankly been “done to death”. I had bad or evil characters I wanted to get put away for decades, if not life, and short of murdering perfectly good characters, or getting into enough drug crimes, I wasn’t finding enough other types of crimes to fulfill my needs.

I tried to water down the foul language as much as I felt I could without doing so to such a degree that including any foul language seemed useless and entirely unrealistic. I did try to be mindful of my Christian characters dropping profane uses of God’s name, but possibly missed an instance here or there. Usually I can spot issues, despite having read through the material literally dozens of times, but issues can nevertheless be missed.

One exception to this is the character of Heather Frazier, who tends to sometimes season her language liberally with profanities when she gets very angry or feels people aren’t paying attention to her or taking her seriously. Actually, the character of Laura Johnson will tilt a bit the same way for a while, at least, or possibly longer. I’m not entirely sure since I’m not to such a place in writing the story yet.

Early on, I had written the character of Dr. Jennifer Watson offering her multiple “lordy” exclamations. I debated removing all of them, but ultimately felt this made the character a bit too squeaky clean and wholesome … an impression Jenny isn’t going to be able to maintain due to various events.

Originally, the characters of Dr. Jennifer Watson and Heather Frazier were more alike than different, so I did some reimagining of Heather’s character while pruning taboo material. Not that I didn’t change Jenny a bit here and there, but for the most part, she is still her original character. Heather will necessarily change some more, but I don’t wish to spoil the story any more than I possibly already have through some of these notes, so the best thing for readers to do is to continue reading the story.
hope this Author’s Note has helped shed some useful light on my uses of explicit content in this A-Ware series of novels, along with offering some insights on some elements of the story, such as my efforts to water down content and my intentions with certain kinds of content. Whether I succeeded or not, thanks for reading this Author’s Note!