Question about author's disclaimer

[MasterMeat]

Hello, everyone. I'm a new author on Literotica. I have a question about the story submission requirements. Based on my observations, the rules aren't universal.

When I first submitted my story, I placed the the following above my story:

Disclaimer: All characters are of legal age.

But that was deemed unclear and my story was rejected. However, I've seen this disclaimer in several stories on Literotica.

It wasn't until I used the disclaimer below that my story was approved:

Note: All characters depicted in sexual situations are over 18.

Can anyone here explain why this is so?

 

[PennLady]

Hello, everyone. I'm a new author on Literotica. I have a question about the story submission requirements. Based on my observations, the rules aren't universal.

When I first submitted my story, I placed the the following above my story:

Disclaimer: All characters are of legal age.

But that was deemed unclear and my story was rejected. However, I've seen this disclaimer in several stories on Literotica.

It wasn't until I used the disclaimer below that my story was approved:

Note: All characters depicted in sexual situations are over 18.

Can anyone here explain why this is so?

Basically, because one of the absolute "NO"s on this site is underage sex. Legal age can mean various things in various places, so it's better to be clear.

 

[Stella_Omega]

If you saw that wording in other stories, it means that the policy has changed a little bit since those stories were submitted. This site is truly immense, hundreds of thousands of items in the databases. No body is going to work their way through to find and change. (and no one seems to know how to handle DB queries on this scale except Google, so don't go blaming our site's owners for that either)

 

[3113]

"Legal" doesn't always = 18

When I first submitted my story, I placed the the following above my story:

Disclaimer: All characters are of legal age.

But that was deemed unclear and my story was rejected. However, I've seen this disclaimer in several stories on Literotica.

It wasn't until I used the disclaimer below that my story was approved:

Note: All characters depicted in sexual situations are over 18.

Can anyone here explain why this is so?

Simple, actually. In different places around the world, there are different legal ages. In the UK, for example, 16 is the legal age. Literotica, however, is concerned with hassles stemming from the U.S. where anyone under 18 is not of legal age. So, for example, if you had a story set in London, and said that everyone was of legal age, the reader and you, the writer, could presume them to be 16 if you wanted; you could even write them up that way if you liked...and that just not good enough.

All characters in a story must be 18. That is the rule.

As for why you may have seen the disclaimer of "legal age" on other stories--that might have been good enough in the past--and as there are thousands of stories, the owners may not have gotten around to asking authors to change them. So the old ones, which used to be satisfactory, remain. But as more sites like this one get closed down for having stories of underage sex, the owners become more cautious and what worked before may not be good enough now. So, it looks like they are now into making it absolutely, perfectly, undeniably clear to readers that all characters are 18...period.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Jinx, Thirteen!

 

[MasterMeat]

Thanks for the clarification, folks.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Thanks for the clarification, folks.

Hi, Meat, and welcome to Literotica and to the Authors' Hangout. You don't have to include that disclaimer as long as you make it clear, through dialogue or circumstances, that everybody is at least 18 years old.