The Philosophy and Ethics Behind It All
By U. Kage
The world is a mess. Then again, it always has been.
Competing factions, different ideologies, scarce resources, and everyone convinced they are right. I try to have more questions than answers, but I still have my opinions.
People—societies, organizations, groups, tribes, call them what you will—have always viewed “different” as bad. Bad is a threat. Therefore, bad is dangerous and must be converted or eliminated.
Nothing about what is happening now is fundamentally different from any other point in human history. The change is in visibility and awareness. Arguably, there is less fighting now than at many points in the past, simply because more of it is visible. If two factions in the middle of nowhere go to war, it will eventually show up in your social media feed.
But real violence still simmers under the surface. Most of us feel it. We are a violent species. Nature is violent. Physics is violent. The laws of physics shape nature, and we evolved inside that system. To survive, our ancestors had to be capable of violence. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.
Hence the quandary. As a species, we have tamed much of our environment and made our daily lives less overtly violent. At the same time, we’re sitting on the edge of perhaps the greatest disruption in human history: artificial intelligence. It has the potential to fundamentally change one of our oldest problems—distribution. For decades, we’ve produced “enough,” but we’ve never had a truly adequate way to get resources where they need to go. AI could realistically help solve that. If it does, it might remove one of the primary sources of conflict that has plagued us since the first stick was picked up over water, food, shelter, or a mate.
That would leave one primary source of conflict standing in the way of peace. It’s an age old problem that would come roaring to the foreground, making the old new again: ideology. It is the one thing that keeps me awake at night (besides my regrets).
Ideology is a human invention. It helps our small brains cope with a world that is too complex to hold all at once. We are still wired to live in caves, thinking fire is good, and anything unfamiliar is dangerous. We sort everything into familiar (okay) or different (bad), and “bad” becomes something that must be converted, tamed, or eliminated.
After that preamble, we finally arrive at my ethical dilemma. I understand the need to respect people’s boundaries and try to live by that creed when I interact with others in real life. But as a reader and art lover, part of the thrill of a story or a piece of art is the raw emotion and surprise that come from walking into the unknown.
As a writer, my goal is to take you deep into my characters’ lives. If you feel as if you’re in the room with them—shocked, thrilled, happy, distraught, sad, or joyous—and you feel that in your soul, then I’ve done my job. From that standpoint, I instinctively resist content and trigger warnings. They feel like fences around the emotional landscape.
At the same time, I know that people have real histories and real wounds. To respect people’s mental spaces, I accept that warnings are needed and expected, especially now and especially from new authors. They are part of modern culture.
For a long time, I struggled with the necessity of them, beyond marketing and positioning. Then I reframed it. I would never walk up to a stranger and grope them. If I’m doing my job as a writer, the scenes I create are vividly real inside your mind and body. In that sense, dumping someone into an extreme scene with no warning at all can be its own kind of violation—an unwanted grab at their mental space.
In kink, a scene should be negotiated before it happens. In fiction, I’ve come to see content warnings as a form of negotiation. They give readers a chance to say “yes,” “no,” or “not today” before they invest themselves in a character or story.
So, with that said, I don’t mean to sound dismissive of content and trigger warnings. But I’ll be honest: the list of things that are not in my books is shorter than the list of things that are.
Here are two lines I do not cross on the page:
- Intentional, on page child abuse depicted in detail. (It may be referenced or implied as trauma; in Henry, for example, there is unintentional harm and off page abuse in characters’ histories.)
- On page sexual acts involving prepubescent children. (Again, these may be referenced or implied in backstory, but not shown on the page.)
Please note that I distinguish between “pedophilia” and underage sex based on how most legal jurisdictions define them. There are situations in my work involving underage sex between similarly aged teenagers. When that occurs, I flag it clearly in the content warnings.
Beyond those lines, I will write openly and honestly about almost anything. If a scene or situation benefits from it, I will describe it graphically and explicitly. My intention is not to shock for its own sake or to sensationalize. I include something only if it has a meaningful impact on the story or the characters. Be warned, though: consequences in these books may not appear until two or three volumes later. The series is written as a single, long story that has been broken into separate books, so you don’t have to carry around one enormous tome.
This is where the metaphor comes back in. The books are, for me, a way to explore ideology and its fallout. The subtext is about the friction between different “normals,” different chains, and the damage that friction causes. In my view, those differences are going to become an increasingly large, existential problem for everyone on Earth. History may not repeat, but it rhymes, and the pattern points toward confrontation.
Unless—unless people from many walks of life manage to choose a new path. That has never happened at scale. It is possible, but at this moment, I don’t think it’s likely. The invisible chains that bind us pull in a predictable direction. We rarely see how short our leash truly is, or how hard it yanks. It is always easier to see other people’s chains. Our own chain we call “normal.” Ours feels familiar and good; “theirs” doesn’t.
In some small way, I hope these stories offer perspectives I don’t see in most mainstream or conventional outlets. So many people are busy trying to be right—or at least prove “others” wrong. I’m more interested in asking questions and offering alternate points of view. I see a global problem that will require a global solution, and that alone makes any solution harder.
I suspect that any lasting answer would involve some kind of true individuality, which our social, binary brains struggle to handle at scale. We are pack animals who think in “good vs. bad.” That is precisely why my stories are dark and push against the boundaries of what is acceptable: they are metaphors. I want to question the status quo, ask pointed questions, and offer different perspectives. Not because I have the answer—I absolutely don’t—but because I’m not hearing these questions asked from the angles and voices that matter to me. The old questions keep leading to the same answers. Maybe it’s time to start asking new ones.
I hope you’ll take this journey with me, and that at some point, I can make you pause—even briefly—and see the world a little differently, if only for a moment.
May peace find us all,
— U. Kage