Five Things
Updated: 8th January 2026
There are a few things you'll need to consider before commissioning me. I understand that my words here may sound forbidding, but please indulge me. I need to be direct here, and not mince my words. I've been commissioned in the past by clients who wanted to idealise suffering, and I want to head those off because I find them too toxic to work on.
2 Case Studies
I initially wrote the Five Things during his retaliation.
Another client wanted to include a scene of child sexual exploitation in his story, to "show how messed up the culture [was]". While I could have reluctantly accepted this, as children are indeed exploited in real life, I didn't believe he was able to demonstrate this with any degree of sensitivity. He showed me the story segment, which treated the exploitation flippantly at best, and could be read as endorsing it. I turned down any further work with this client.
Almost all of my clients are lovely people with curious minds, and a willingness to look deeper into their works to make them more internally consistent, and psychologically realistic. Most of you are nothing like the above clients, and simply have works that explore dark themes, and want to develop them respectfully. Therefore, I sincerely appreciate you checking this page and doing your own due diligence so that we both know you're going to get the experience you want from commissioning me.
Onto the Five Things.
I offer a worldbuilding service. That means it's my job to look for any gaps or inconsistencies in your work and point them out to you. Please be prepared for this. Furthermore, I do not usually offer solutions to worldbulding gaps or snarls at first. This is to allow you to drive the development of your work in accordance with your creative vision, and to avoid depriving you of the pleasure of worldbuilding for yourself. If you really seem stuck, then I'll offer suggestions, but I will aim to avoid hijacking your project.
Please consider whether worldbuilding is what you actually want to do. If questions such as "where does this species get their food from?", "what plants exist on this world?", or "how did society recover after the latest war ended?" bore you, then I recommend you present your creative project to a writer instead of commissioning me, and have them write your fantasy as it is.
My service has psychological realism at its core. That means that I explore the impact of the events that happen to your character/s. I strongly suggest you bring any variations of "this person/species wouldn't get traumatised by this situation" to my attention before commissioning me, as this is often, though not always, used in works that fetishise abuse (see point 5), which often requires ignoring psychological realism.
My services are unusual, so I highly recommend that you read my Terms of Service prior to commissioning me so you know what to expect.
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I can work with projects that contain pornographic or fetish elements, however I strongly recommend you bring any pornographic content or fetish themes in your project to my attention prior to requesting a commission.
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I decline commissions that treat trauma or abuse in the following ways:
- by fetishising it
- by minimising it
- by glamourising it
- by using it for comedy value
- as an attempt to be edgy
It is your responsibility to inform me if trauma or abuse occurs in your project. I will check the relevant section of your questionnaire, if you filled one in, prior to accepting payment, put won't read entire stories, graphic novels, etc. due to time constraints. If you neglect to inform me before you pay for your commission and it turns out that the trauma and abuse are not treated with due sensitivity, then once I spot it I will terminate your commission. I do not offer refunds under these circumstances.
Potentially contentious topics include, but are not limited to:
- abandonment of children, vulnerable adults, or animals
- abusive parents
- cannibalism
- child conscription / child soldiers
- coercion
- concentration camps
- disability
- dissociation (numbing of emotions)
- drug abuse
- dubious consent
- ethnic cleansing
- execution
- genocide
- gore
- hentai
- infantilization
- mental illness
- mind control (“mind rape”)
- murder
- named real-life political groups, e.g. the Nazis
- non-con/nonconsensual sexual activity
- paedophilia/pedophilia or ephebophilia
- political oppression
- psychosis
- racism
- rape
- sexual assault
- slavery
- suicide or suicidal thoughts
- terrorism
- torture
- violence
- waifu
Examples of Acceptable Works
Alleneia is a half-unicorn, and lives in a world where unicorns are fetishised. Her relationship with the unicorn side of her heritage is uncomfortable for her, and she manages it as well as possible, given that having a horn on one's forehead is difficult to hide. After some nasty experiences, including kidnapping, she eventually finds somebody who loves her for who she is, and spends the rest of her life with him.
The focus of her story isn't how 'sexy' it is that she can't hide her attributes, and she doesn't enjoy being kidnapped or held hostage. Instead, she acts as people tend to when held captive: she does what she needs to do to survive while quietly seeking a way out. The author didn't even want to explore how much fawning she might have to do while captive, nor how desperate she would feel.
The emotional scars of Alleneia's experiences remained with her; she didn't 'get over it' as soon as she was free, but spent the rest of her life with one eye over her shoulder, and mourning the fact that she couldn't return to her home village, where she might be found again. This is far more accurately representative of a real kidnapping experience.
Taylor
One of several young boys adopted by a single male foster-carer. While the care represented may not necessarily reflect reality perfectly (I have little experience with fostering or adoption to draw on while writing the boys' stories), Taylor's setting explores themes of safety and growth in a nurturing environment. While exploitation could easily have been a part of Taylor's, and his foster-brothers' stories, usually they center around neglect, which tends to be PG-rated as opposed to most other forms of abuse.
Nemaia
Nemaia is a half-tiefling. By the time she's learned that she has to be careful who she lets her guard down around, her mother has already done all she can to protect her, and given up and put her in an orphanage. Supplies can be short at the orphanage, and the orphanage itself is run by professional soldiers, not broody adults, so tenderness is hard to come by.
Between being discriminated against for being half-tiefling and having a half-orc friend who is also marginalised, Nemaia grows up with a keen disdain for greed. She learns to be a 'squeaky wheel' and to steal discretely; whatever will help her get by. As an adult, rather than continue to fight against a society she finds unjust, she learns how to sew and becomes a seamstress, allowing her to operate on the right side of the law. The implication from her creator was that she wasn't particularly willing to be 'good' and become a law-abiding citizen, rather that fighting an entire society is exhausting and that she chose the alternative.
Nemaia is a young adult and her creator didn't want to explore what her middle- and old-age looked like, so we stopped there, but I wonder how she would feel as she grew older.
Cornerstone
We didn't get to explore Cornerstone for very long, but to explore it we took a dive into the realistic implications of a huge nation, including an exploration of its rich-poor divide. This divide was surprising because Cornerstone is a nation on Veon, which was owned by somebody other than Cornerstone's creator and was intended to be a utopia.
I hope the above examples help to demonstrate that I'm not averse to working with dark topics, so long as they're treated realistically - fantasy and sci-fi elements notwithstanding - and without fetishising or idealising anything.
Please quote "Potassium" if you have read this document.