CaitVi Un-Kinktober

First of all, apologies for being a little bit MIA, but I’ve been busily calling, emailing, and writing physical letters to Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, and Stripe. Ever since the majority of my work was de-listed on itch.io along with thousands of other titles primarily produced and developed by marginalized creators, it’s been imperative that we keep the momentum going with the pressure we can all place on payment processors for their unfair practices regarding their willingness to bow to moral tyranny.

With my soapboxing out of the way, we can get into the latest “event” in fandom that has everyone rolling their eyes. This one is an interesting one, I must say, because it’s just a really good example of fandom creating an inhospitable environment for F/F writers and creators. For so long, it’s been a relatively common complaint that there isn’t enough lesbian or generally F/F content made across fandoms that ostensibly should have the occasion to sustain it. Series that have plenty of female characters will often lack F/F representation, as there are just less writers who make queer fem fic or fanworks and for those who do wish to create those kinds of works, they often find that their audiences are less receptive to the tropes or themes they want to put into their stories. They get less engagement with their work, they get more criticisms, and it’s fairly common to hear anecdotes from authors who insist that their female-led fics are more likely to result in hate comments or accusations of intentional misogyny just for their inclusion of normal tropes seen across contemporary fiction novels.

An account on X (Twitter) called CaitviKinktober was established in June of 2025 with the intent of providing a hub of information for a specific sub-event centered around October’s usual “Kinktober.” Kinktober is a decentralized event where lists of fun kinky tropes are created by individuals or groups in order to create a content-heavy month featuring illustrations or fiction works around specific themed kinks. Oftentimes sub-events for Kinktober are created within specific fandoms or ships within those fandoms. One of these is Arcane’s CaitVi, their primary (and canon) FemSlash ship which draws plenty of creators to make compelling art and fiction as their relationship and chemistry on screen is nothing less than electric with a thrilling uneven power dynamic and (according to fans) realistic and endearing sex.

Unfortunately, the CaitviKinktober Twitter page has caused a little bit of a stir as of late as more and more fans caught wind of their intriguing set of “Rules” they’ve decided to impose on those interested in participating in their kink event. Now, having been to real life kink events and knowing the ways that they function, it’s difficult to wrap one’s brain around the types of rules present for a fiction-writing and illustration event, and it’s important to remember that this event is free and open to anyone to submit and does not have set participants the way a zine might have. This is a completely voluntary and optional “side quest” in a creator’s life and it seems like for most the option they’re going to choose is “Skip.”

So how do you manage to turn off creators to your event and ship as a whole? Well, you impose absolutely suffocating regulations that prevent almost anyone from the attempt to conform to them. The CaitviKinktober page’s rules were so unbelievably strict that the page is now locked as they face accusations of transmisogyny, anti-kink bias (the irony is about as stifling as the rulebook), and an “evangelical view of sex as a whole.” It might be impossible to go through each and every rule one by one as about the time I got to the Google page, it had been restricted to members only and I had to make do with screenshot and their Frequently Asked Questions page which included explanations for some of their more bizarre requirements. The very first set of rules that caused the most stir were these:

Consent must be explicit/No non-consensual content in any form. This means absolutely no dubious consent, coercion, manipulation, intoxication, nor unconscious participants. Every act must be enthusiastically consensual, with clear context and intent shown. Absolutely nothing ambiguous or that can be taken out of context from a safe and consensual sex scene.

a. If your content involves the kink of consensual non-consent (CNC), the following requirements must be met:

i. All participants must be in an established relationship.

ii. A scene must be included PRIOR to sex, in which all participants involved discuss boundaries and select safe words.

iii. A scene must be included DURING sex, in which there is a verbal check-in between the participants and consent is enthusiastically given.

iv. A scene must be included AFTER sex, in which aftercare provided to the participant(s) who were in the submissive role.

This is non-negotiable. If you have any questions, please ask any of the event hosts for clarification.

b. It must be thoroughly clear that participants are consenting to and enjoying every (physical, verbal, mental, and emotional) component of the sexual acts.

c. No "corruption" or "breaking" content that implies mental or emotional harm as sexual gratification. If present, it must be fully contextualised as roleplay, and the characters must show joy and agency.

d. Authority-based coercion (e.g. teacher/student, doctor/patient), or similar power dynamics will only be allowed in the form of "roleplay", which must be wholly consensual and negotiated, with no pressure or abuse of power.

Not…exactly…kinky. In real life, some of this could make sense, but these aren’t real life characters and they don’t have agency. They’re not human beings and this is all fantasy. Writing kink negotiations can be sexy but that’s not exactly something commonly written into fantasy kink stories and it doesn’t necessarily preclude “problematic” elements being involved in the story anyway. The organizers also faced some light ribbing from the practicing kink community who are well-versed in actual kink protocol for their ignorance in terms of after-care, a process which includes the dominant partner just as much as it includes the submissive. Kink, after all, is a two-way street! All of this “must be included” and “established relationship,” and “non-negotiable” made eyebrows lift and heads turn and not in the fun kind of way—more like in the “get a load of these assholes” kind of way. Gotta be honest, they kinda deserve what they’ve got from this one. But it doesn’t end here.

Further rules insist that none of the characters included can be animals, men (though a separate tweet states that transmasc depictions are acceptable which struck some critics on both Twitter and BlueSky to be rather TERFy considering that their FAQ had explicitly banned male gender expressions whether cis or trans), related to each other, or can have “presumptively met when one party was an adult and the other was a child.” Now, reading these I would assume they mean these characters would be involved in a sexual context in relation to the story but that’s not actually explicitly laid out so…no dogs at all, you hear?

One of the most giggle-worthy FAQs was number 6: an attempt to explain why accounts may be blocked by their official account. “[…] you have a known history of engaging in problematic behavior, creating/distributing harmful content, and/or contributing to unsafe or discriminatory spaces.” Wow! That’s not utterly subjective or vague at all! Considering the morals that the CaitVi event espouses, they should probably have blocked a good chunk of the fandom as even the canon material would be unwelcome in their event space and the writers of the show should be blocked.

So why have all of these nonsensical rules if you’re allegedly trying to create a “kinkshame-free environment” for your participants? After all, it kinda sounds like you’re the kink-shamers here, as there’s hardly anything left to write after you get through all the rigamarole of trying to cater to the event’s rigid moral control. The suggestion that nothing except perfection in regards to a very specific performance of kink is possibly the least kinky thing I can think of right now. It’s so un-kinky that it’s become the laughingstock of fandom right now, producing an untold number of parody posts, criticisms, and jokes across multiple platforms. As a sort of explanation of themselves, the event “team” (who really believes that there’s any more than one or two people involved here?) put out a stylized statement trying to recontextualize their stance as a “celebration” of realistic kinky sex that the characters might engage in rather than kink that the creator or reader might be interested in, suggesting that their event’s purpose was entirely based in diagetic kink and that this must have simply become lost in translation somewhere.

Hmm. Right.

“What this event is not (not has it ever claimed to be) is an excuse to use Caitlyn and Vi as stand-ins for creator/consumer roleplay.” — So…not fanfiction in the conventional sense of the medium at all and a completely rigid and immovable trope you invented and put in place in an attempt to get other people to write something to your specific taste. I knew it was a little suspicious that one of their FAQs was “Is this a way of trying to generate free content catered specifically to the hosts?” A little on-the-nose here, don’t you guys think? Especially when they insist that the answer is “no” and that they’re not here to “limit anybody’s creativity.” Sure you’re not… That’s why you’ve had to clarify so many of your rules and consistently say “NO” to all kinds of creative questions from possible participants.

No doubt the backlash to this un-kink event will further enrage the mouth-frothing weirdos who insist that people only avoid F/F because of misogyny rather than just avoiding bullshit shenanigans like this being run by complete purity freaks. As someone who writes F/F, events like this aren’t going to make me want to write more and will actively make me avoid the entire fandom. I’ve got way less headaches elsewhere, I’m not going to go out of my way to interact with complete assholes who would accuse me of misogyny for giving a bull dyke some fucking eyeliner.