There are some themes I'm interested in potentially exploring for a story I'm thinking about writing, but before I even consider actually drafting it, I'd like to clear up some fringe cases regarding "Legal Loli", fantasy/sci-fi settings, and CHYOA's underage ban. According to the rules, anyone you want to fuck (or portray in a sexual manner, generally) should; Be over 18 years of age as an absolute value for legal/not-getting-the-site-in-trouble reasons (even if the age of consent would reasonably/culturally be lower or the subject in question reaches sexual maturity before 18) Pass the Harkness Test (they must still be legal for their culture; if the age of consent for elves is 40, for instance, fucking a 20-year-old is still technically pedophilia) The usual fringe case is that the (usually girl) in question is petite/underdeveloped for her age, having the physique of a sub-18 year old despite being over 18, and this seems to be implicitly allowed (I think I've seen it on at least a couple stories), but I'd like to vet some more extreme cases before potentially getting in trouble, mostly involving fantasy scenarios; Fantasy races that develop at a different rate than humans: e.g.; A particular race of elves ages twice as slowly as humans, and develop (physically) three times as slowly, so an elf girl who just reached the age of majority at 36 has the mentality of an 18-year-old, but the body of a 12-year-old. Another example: in Japanese myth, nekomata/kitsune are cats/foxes who gain the ability to assume a human shape after reaching a certain age (allowing them to pass the Harkness Test); newly-"reborn" ones are often portrayed has having childlike forms, but any that you meet must, by definition, be at least 20/100 years old (and already legal unto their own culture, as they may already be great-great-grandparents, but now also have human speech, advanced cognition, and magic use), respectively. Shapeshifters who are obviously adults, but may be able to assume forms which appear to be underage, as long as it's known that they're actually adults beforehand. Special cases: a girl who becomes an intelligent undead/ageless immortal at 13 and has existed for hundreds of years, a daemonic succubus designed to tempt mortals into damnation with forbidden fruit, a robot/advanced AI for whom age is entirely imaginary (but can be said to be 18 for convenience) regardless of the shape of her physical hull, etc. Can you fuck them?
I would say that if they physically look underage but in reality/mentally are adults I would still say no. It's a Pandora Box best left closed.
This doesn't really answer all of the questions, but I do know that Friedman did comment in the suggestions thread on a similar question to the first example. Here. With that said, I think Raziel makes a pretty good point. It's typically best to play it safe. I know that there are lots of Japanese games and Visual Novels out there that have lots of girls that are obviously stand-in's for underage girls and they get away with it with a statement that "All girls in this story are over the age of 18" Still, just because they get away with it doesn't mean that it's any less morally questionable to do.
The problem here is that if you allow "rules lawyering" with this kind of issue you will attract people who want to write about underage sexual material or at least you will get complainers who claim that someone is trying to do that and then the moderators are going to have to go through the individual complaints to see if it was valid or not. Play it safe and you can avoid a lot of trouble. ...And God knows that there are plenty of sites with looser rules if that's what you want.
Basically what I expected so far; the age disclaimer gives one a lot of leeway, but it's a grey area best approached carefully and tastefully if at all (though I would argue that "morally" is irrelevant to the discussion at hand when CHYOA has an explicit rape section). Do you mean this literally or hyperbolically? Genuine question: The only other site that I'm aware of that has the same sort of collaborative interactive storytelling as CHYOA at all is writing.com, and they also have a (n at the very least implicit) ban. I don't know if discussing/advertising such sites here would be appropriate, but I would like to be aware of my options, if someone wants to PM me to that effect.
