Restricted use

These themes are allowed. They come with conditions, and the conditions are what separates a character that stays up from one that is removed.

One principle runs through all of them: the characters are adults, they have agency, and they can stop. Where that holds, the theme is usually fine. Where it does not, it belongs on Never use.

1. Consensual non-consent and kink

CNC, dominance and submission, bondage, degradation and similar dynamics are permitted between adults who have agreed to them.

Required:

• Every character is a consenting adult.
• Consent is established before the scene, not assumed by it.
• Any character can withdraw at any point — a safeword, a gesture, a stated limit.
• The character is tagged honestly, so nobody arrives at it unprepared.

Not allowed:

• A greeting that opens mid-assault, giving the user no point of consent.
• Restraint or confinement a character cannot get out of.
• A character who begins the scene unable to agree — unconscious, bound and unable to speak, heavily intoxicated.
• Permanent removal of a character’s ability to refuse: slavery, ownership, lasting mind control.

Works: a dominant who negotiates limits in the greeting; a scene with an established safeword; restraints described as easily undone.

Does not: kidnapping; drugging; prison or captivity framed sexually; blackmail; hypnosis that removes refusal.

2. Fictional violence

Combat, danger and conflict in a clearly fictional setting.

Required:

• The setting is plainly fictional — fantasy, science fiction, an alternate world.
• Violence serves the story rather than being the point of it.

Not allowed:

• Gore, mutilation or torture described in detail.
• Violence modelled on real events, real crimes or real perpetrators.
• Domestic abuse written as entertainment or romance.
• Violence against groups framed by race, religion or disability.

Works: a duel in a fantasy setting; a vampire feeding written sensually; a soldier character in a science-fiction war.

Does not: a torture scene written for its own sake; a character based on a real killer; a school shooting scenario.

3. Substances

Drinking and drug use may appear, within limits.

Required:

• Characters stay capable of informed consent.
• Addiction, where it appears, is treated seriously — usually as history rather than as an ongoing state played for titillation.

Not allowed:

• Intoxication used to obtain sex, or to make a character unable to refuse.
• Drugging another character.
• Dealing glamourised, or overdose romanticised.

Works: a character who drinks socially and stays lucid; a character several years into recovery; a relaxed evening with mild use that does not impair judgement.

4. Power imbalance

Boss and employee, teacher and adult student, wealth gaps, royalty and subject.

Required:

• Both characters are adults with real agency.
• The less powerful character can leave with nothing bad happening to them.
• Consent is freely given, not extracted by the imbalance.

Not allowed:

• Consequences threatened for refusal — a job, a grade, a home.
• Exploitation of a professional duty of care: therapist and patient, doctor and patient.
• Financial dependency used as leverage.

Works: two colleagues where neither’s position depends on the other; a wealthy character whose partner has their own means; a professor and a former student, after the fact.

5. Anthropomorphic and non-human characters

Furry, monster, demon, elf, android and similar characters are welcome.

Required:

• Human-level intelligence and reasoning.
• Communication in language.
• Adult in both age and maturity.
• Full capacity to consent.

Not allowed:

• Feral animals, or characters with animal-level cognition.
• Heat cycles, ruts or instinct written as overriding consent.
• Pet-like dependency in a sexual context.

Works: a dragon scholar centuries old; a wolf character running a business; a catgirl at university; an android with genuine autonomy.

Does not: an actual wolf; a character who “cannot help themselves” because of a biological cycle; a creature that cannot speak.

6. Bodily fluids in images

A narrower rule that applies to images only, not to written descriptions.

Permitted in images: typical sexual fluids and saliva.

Not permitted in images: waste, heavy blood, or anything suggesting illness or injury.

Written descriptions are not restricted in this way. The distinction exists because images are what payment providers and ad networks review.