I’ve already gone on at such extreme lengths about this before, so let me give the short version.
Nobody can literally physically stop you from including dark themes in your work and dark themes aren’t inherently bad. All the hand-wringing about “don’t be afraid! don’t let anybody stop you! be the master of your own fate!” is so useless and people on this forum do it literally every time. “Do it tastefully” is not an answer for “how do I do this tastefully,” and “who cares what about people think?” is a useless statement in a medium like writing that is literally about how people think. Please don’t do this shit.
(Credit where it’s due, Jason thank you for updating your argumentation from the last time this topic came up.)
Anyway, as always, the answer for how to handle dark themes is “don’t unless you have a good reason to.” Including dark themes for shock value or aesthetics is bad, not because it’s immoral or makes you a bad person or because it offends anybody’s sensibilities, but because any plot element included carelessly is bad and because people are very used to media using a hardcore edge to try and add bite where it’s unearned. It’s an eye roller, in the exact same way that it would be if a main character loudly announced that they have the power of friendship on their side. Tired, played out, cliche, boring.
If you’re playing with a dark theme then, ideally, you have something to say with it, and it serves a utility for the plot that could not be swapped out for another equivalent plot point. If you don’t have a reason to play with a dark theme, then nobody can stop you from doing it, but you’re risking making your story worse. If you don’t care about your game’s reception and just want to write some edgelord shit bc it’s fun, then literally go for it - I know edgelord has negative connotations but genuinely, have your fun dude, it’s your free time. But people are not obligated to enjoy your work just because you enjoyed making it, and a lot of people will be able to tell when your edgy plot point was included for shock value, or for indulgence, or “the author’s barely disguised fetish,” or whatever else. You’re not obligated to care about that, but you should be aware of it when you release work for public consumption, and the people suggesting you ignore any and all consideration of participants in your story besides yourself are bad writers encouraging you to write badly.
Now I might be sounding a little presumptuous, but that’s because I raise a serious eyebrow when I see a post asking about dark themes to put in a romhack and one of them is incest, one of them is sexual violence, one of them is a horrible desperate act of cannibalism, and then the other three are very typical fantasy tropes. A character risen from death who has thoughts on it is simply not on the same level as “the female protagonist is sexually humiliated as punishment for player failure,” and when I read somebody place these things on the same list as though they’re equivalent, it tells me that they don’t actually understand the severity of the ideas they’re playing with and need to take several steps back in terms of evaluating what is and isn’t tasteless to include.
Flatly, even some of the most sexual horror games of all time written by some of the best writers in the medium have played it extremely safe when it comes to implications of sexual violence, leaving things generally abstract or metaphorical or implied. You are not writing Silent Hill 2; First evaluate whether you need to do these things, and then if you know for a fact you do, then consult the kinds of people who are going to be sensitive to these topics first and foremost and ask them, directly, how to go about it tastefully. Don’t just wing it.
Also please remember what medium you’re using to tell your story. This is a fire emblem hack posted on a fire emblem forum, if you have 3 chapters of a mostly typical fire emblem hack and then suddenly a surprise bit of sexual violence to really heighten the stakes, then content warning or no, you will have created a disastrous tonal dissonance and failed to manage your audience expectations. Your visuals, sound design, and gameplay are all also tools to tell your story; use them, and use them early, such that people understand what they’re getting into, and then by the time they get to the shocking stuff, they’re in that horror genre mindset and prepared to handle such things.
But seriously if nothing else just make sure you have a point. If you’re including this because it’s shocking and “I’m writing a dark story so I should include some dark things,” please just don’t, unless you are perfectly okay with people taking your work at face value as tasteless shockbait. If you care about your writing, you will care about how your audience will receive these plot points, and that means sometimes you don’t get to do every edgy thing that sounds fun to do and have to pick your battles for the ones that are actually meaningful. It’s the exact same as any other bit of writing you choose to include or not include, except that the stakes are higher because a misstep doesn’t just mess up the plot, but it also might just make a player quit your story on the spot if you end up stepping on their toes too much.