Tamika Wood’s Birthday Party

& Other Stories by Le Kendall


Content Notes

This post contains content notes and trigger warnings. If content notes or trigger warnings make you uncomfortable or offend you please feel free to skip it! I wouldn’t want you to unexpectedly encounter content which you’d rather avoid during your leisure time.

It isn’t possible to warn for everything, but I have tried to warn for the most common triggers. You may choose not to read this story, to skip certain chapters, or to choose to read certain chapters when you’re feeling mentally and/or emotionally prepared.

Please keep yourself safe and I apologise if I’ve missed anything that negatively affects you. I want reading my stories to be enjoyable. But my stories are not just happy fluffy stories were nothing bad happens. Some bad things happen! Some very bad things happen! I don’t usually write about the bad things in lots of detail.

If you know that you have triggers which are uncommon or I may not have anticipated please feel free to ask me so that I can add them to the content notes or give you spoilers to let you know whether or not something does or does not happen.

Some of these notes may include spoilers.

Not all notes or warnings apply to all stories.

Notes

Queer Identities & Slurs

Many of the characters in Tamika Wood’s Birthday Party are Queer. They think of and refer to themselves and each other as queer, gay and trans. I do not include any other words or terms used as slurs. I’m sure you know plenty of those words but I didn’t want to write any of them down.

Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non binary people are non binary. Non binary people who identify as trans are trans. Non binary people who do not identify as trans are not. People are what they say they are. Sometimes people discover things about themselves and change the way they perceive their identity or the way they identify. If you do not respect these things then please go ahead and read a different story.

If and when dead-name or dead-pronouns appear due to POV obliviousness or unawareness I will include warnings in the content notes for the story or chapter.

No POV character or main character intentionally disrespects anyone who is queer!

My characters, like most people who live in this world encounter and are victims of bigotry which affects them and shapes their experience of themselves, each other and the world. As this is a large part of my story, I won’t warn for every chapter where that affects people, as that is… most of them.

Neurodivergence and Autism

I am autistic and I’m not 100% sure I really understand how allistic (non autistic) people really work. Some of my characters may not strike you as autistic even though they totally are. While Alan Sebastian is more stereotypically autistic than most of the other characters, I have tried to represent some of the other ways that autism can present in people. Many of us are not identified as autistic until later in our lives because we do not present in a stereotypical way and the same goes for my characters.

Ableist language

I try very hard to avoid the use of ableist language. This may make the story feel unrealistic but in this case I do not care (this is in contrast to my attitude about profanity). I will not use ableist insults such as cr*zy, l*me, r*****ed, id**t etc as I believe these words to be harmful and it’s pretty easy to just find other words.

That said: as a human who has grown up in a time and place where such words are routinely used without question it is possible that I have slipped up and not noticed where I have used ableist words. If I have I apologise and I’m happy for you to point them out so that I can change them or warn for them in content notes.

I will try to warn for ableist attitudes or words when they occur.

Racism

I am a white person, and do not have lived experience of being POC or directly encountering racism. For that reason my POV characters are generally white people and I will not use race or racism as plot points or character building. POC in my story do exist! Because the world is not entirely white! You can safely assume that they encounter plausible levels of racism in my stories. My stories will not be “about that”.

I will warn for this stuff, but it is unlikely to be of large impact to my stories.

Warnings

    Child Abuse and Neglect

    Some of my characters had pretty shitty childhoods. I will warn for references and depictions of these things.

    Sexual References

    People have sex in this story. Sometimes I will write about them having sex and the things they do with and to each other. I will add content notes when this happens, in case you want to read about them when you aren’t on the train, or if you want to skip those things.

    Sometimes people have sex in this story, that they are consenting to, but not particularly enjoying. I will include warnings when this happens.

    Sexual Assault

    Some of my characters have been sexually assaulted, taken advantage of or sexually groomed in the past. I do not write about these things in detail, and they do not happen ‘on page’.

    I will warn for references to these off-page events.

    Profanity

    I am Australian. My characters are Australian. They speak like Australian people speak. This story takes place over 20 years and they swear more as young adults than they did as teens and they swear less as older adults than they did as younger adults. I will not warn for this.

    Suicide and Self Harm

    Some of my characters experience thoughts of self harm and suicide. I have not included any descriptions of methods.

    I will include chapter warnings for suicide and self harm.

    I will include spoiler notes about whether anyone actually dies.


    If this post gave you a feeling I would LOVE to know about it.

    2 responses to “Content Notes”

    1. me Avatar
      me

      Loved this page so much! My favorite was the section on ableist language. Below is hopefully-constructive feedback because I get the impression it’s invited.

      Not sure this is the best approach to racial and cultural diversity, you can change someone’s skin color but people grow up in different households with different experiences both at home and in society and changing the color of a character’s skin from white to something else isn’t going to change their experiences, so just magically imagining they’re not white characters almost certainly means you have to also replace a bunch of other details in the story, and then it’s no longer the same story.

      But they also say write what you know!

      I think if I were going to take extra time and Do It Right, I might try to use that time to collaborate on a world with BIPOC authors?

      Missing common triggers: food (fatphobia, EDs), addictions

      Context: I haven’t read the fiction, I came here first.

      1. Le Kendall Avatar

        Thanks for your feedback, definitely appreciated.
        I absolutely agree with the racial diversity part which is why I feel uncomfortable really writing closely about a BIPOC experience/upbringing… I guess what I want to say is ‘this story came out of my head pretty monochrome, and that’s my bad.’ If someone wanted to imagine or headcanon or create transformative works with racebent characters I’d say ‘I love that!’ — in contrast to someone who wanted to do that by making my characters all cishet or neurotypical which would make me say ‘ew, gross’. If that makes sense?
        The reality of my story is that most of my characters relate to aspects of my own experience–none of which is BIPOC (not only in that I am a white person, but that the locations of demographics which formed most of my upbringing were overwhelmingly white). I think I’m extra conscious of this because one reason I don’t write under my wallet name is that my surname is my married name and almost a stereotypical indian name (although my husband is not indian)… and I felt like I really had to not use that name because I didn’t want people to think I had any kind of lived experience there.
        thanks for mentioning those other triggers! I thought I’d mentioned addiction (as it does apply to some parts of the story, but it might only be in the content notes for the specific stories in which it applies)
        Not sure if I should try and list everything on this page–might be a bit much. I think I might generalise it a little more on this page as each story does have its own list of content notes as well!
        Thanks for your comment! I hope you read and enjoy the story too.