Being A Splatterpunk And Kink Fan And Trying To Put The Two Together
What the title says.
I'm about 80% of the way through my second book, which is a direct sequel to my first. The first one featured a lot of extreme kinks, but I still feel like it carried a message, and it wasn't designed to give people something to ogle at. Heavy on the punk, light on the splatter; I think that's the best way to describe it. It is gory, it is edgy, but the overarching themes of self discovery, identity and interpersonal relationships still shine through effectively (I think).
For the sequel, I thought I'd throw together all the ideas I didn't put in the first one. I wanted to do something less 'tame', and more edgy for the sake of it. Because I think that's okay, too. Not everything needs to have a deep and profound message. Sometimes it's just a bit of fun, right? So off I went, tippy, tappy, typing.
It's gross. It has every bodily fluid you can think of, sex, violence and gore. And of course, kink and fetish. Cue my first crisis, the ABDL segment.
We all know there's a certain stereotype when it comes to the ABDL community. That's not what I'm here to talk about. The fetish/kink itself should not be shocking, but to a lot of people, it is. It's the perfect scenario for somebody to read about and go, "omg! Ew! So gross! So weird! Look how weird these people are!" And then you add my preferred demographic for this particular chapter, which is big, bearded men. What better concept is there for a vanilla person to gawk and squeal at than a grown man in a romper?
Then it gets even worse, because this book is splatterpunk. There is a whole other rabbit hole here that I could go down, but for the sake of my sanity I will condense it like this- splatterpunk and extreme horror are not the same genre. A lot of people think they are. Splatterpunk inherently carries a message, hence the 'punk' part of its name. Extreme horror, not so much. But with the fact they often get conflated in mind, and the general nature of the rest of this book, I fell into a pit, anxious that I was going to be adding even more stigma to a community that already faces a lot of shit.
So I had to do some self reflection, and bothering of my partner to talk about it.
I have worked in the adult industry for nearly 8 years now, and I have been part of various kink scenes for that whole time, too. I love all of it. I love the people I've met and the perspectives on the world they can offer me. I don't want to villainize any kinks that are healthy and consensual. But am I doing anyone any favours by writing a book that combines kink and horror? To me, things like pet play, fisting, age play, sharps play, CNC etc. are completely normal. To people who are not involved in said scenes, they are not. What I'm getting at, is that I wanted to combine some of my favourite things, in a way that is relatable to likeminded people, but isn't weird exploitation porn for others (vanilla, cis straight people, that means you).
I do want my writing to be transgressive, and in this case I want it to include both splatterpunk and extreme horror elements. Somehow, in amongst that, I've tried to highlight the fact that fetishists and kinksters are probably not as weird and scary as a lot of people think they are. Actually, I think I can find satisfaction in the fact that at some point, somebody is going to get to a segment of my book labelled with 'ABDL', and they're going to be disappointed when they realise how beige it is compared to the other scenes. Of course, there was also the option to axe the ABDL idea altogether, to try and avoid worsening any stereotypes. That option would've been fine, but I prefer trying to cast a more positive light on it and actually putting some realistic (within the confines of a fictional book) examples of the kink out there.
At the end of the day, my writing isn't going to change the world, and I can't control the way people are going to consume it. That has been something I've had to come to terms with when I decided to put my stuff out there in the first place. Everyone will read it through a different pair of eyes, and I cannot change that. I'm lucky enough to have a partner who picks my brain, and he was the one who mentioned in the first place that control was my issue, as opposed to general anxiety about sharing my writing. People should be able to consume art in whichever way they want. Now I've gotten over that (or now I'm starting to get over that), I've realised that maybe it's okay to just... Share things. I can't sit there, over the shoulder of every person reading my book and say 'oh, actually this bit is about...' or 'So I really meant x while I was writing this bit...'.
I haven't received a bad review yet, and I'm sure they'll come. I'll handle that when it does. And I'm sure some people will disagree with the way I've presented certain kinks, or the context they're in. And other people will miss my intention altogether and do their whole "Omg! Ew!" thing. I guess at this point, all I can do is what I'm doing, and answer questions if people have them. I'm proud of TRANSGRESS, but it's taken some time for that pride to settle in. Maybe I'll feel the same way about Snuff Bunny in a few months time, or maybe I'll regret writing it altogether. I don't know. But the fun part is that I'm gonna do it anyway, and figure it out from there.
TRANSGRESS releases on Nov 28th 2025. Here's some of those reviews that made me really happy. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243363492-transgress#CommunityReviews