Per the wiki's content policy, there is a content range we strive for on this site, as explained here
. We can't be too crude and perverted, but neither do we want to sanitize pages on works that involve sexual content. This is a site for discussing tropes and how they relate to fiction, not for being lewd or prudish.
Specifically, if a work has sexual content, we shouldn't be graphic in writing about it, nor should we pretend the sexual content isn't there.
No Lewdness:
Sometimes examples have a tendency to stray from the path of "funny, but informative" into the land of "downright lewd". Lewd writing is flat out pornographic. If you see it, clean up. Examples can be written without creepiness. If there is something sexual, it's best to just state the facts and move on.
"Lewdness" is more than just being about something sexual or potentially sexual. Here are some signs of lewd writing:
- Personal opinions on hotness. Examples should stand on their own without the introduction of YMMV material. Adding your own thoughts and feelings on an example is an opinion, same as calling an example good or bad. Don't do it. Don't try and extend your feelings to a larger group of fans either, e.g. "...and fangirls everywhere rejoiced". You're not fooling anyone.
- Overly detailed examples. The example doesn't need to be an exact sensory account of the event. Too much of that and you end up sounding like you're writing porn. When in doubt, drop a few adjectives.
- Unrelated fanservice mentions. If the hot bits aren't related to the example, they don't belong in the example.
- Pornographic writing. If you're writing porn, it should be somewhere other than the wiki. Keep it Family Friendly.
- Titillation links. Tell, don't show. We don't need screen shots to illustrate NSFW fanservice. If a reader is really curious, they can go look it up on Google. (See also Weblinks Are Not Examples.)
- Pedo gushing. We don't need to describe children sexually. This should be cut immediately. We're not interested in hosting pedophilia fantasies. Period. If a work contains children having sex and/or sexualizes children in a titillating way, even if portrayed negatively (e.g. Kodomo no Jikan), flag it◊ as explained here.
- Talking about actors instead of characters. An actor is not the character they play. When you're writing an example about a work, refer to the character, not the actor. This applies to non-sexual references, but too often it's tropers writing about how they find certain actors hot. That doesn't fit in character examples.
- Thinking a page with a Not Safe for Work subject is license to be lewd. Even when we discuss erotic material, we are about just stating the facts.
- Fanfic Recs for underage sex. We will not host any recommendation for fics that have explicit sex involving people apparently or actually younger than 16. Period. We categorically do not recommend fics with sex in which at least one participant:
- This applies even if all parties are underage.
If a page seems to be infested with lewdness, and you don't feel up to tackling it yourself — or if you're not sure whether it's lewd enough to fall afoul of this guideline — please report it here.
No Prudishness:
On the flipside of this, it's possible to be too prudish as well. The wiki is always going to discuss sex and sexuality because it's one of the driving forces behind most media productions; if you think sex is evil, you are unlikely to be happy with the approach TV Tropes takes.
Merely being about something sexual or potentially sexual does not mean that a work or trope page is fair game for chopping on the grounds that it's creepy or perverse. There are things to avoid.
- Don't cutlist or gut pages just because they're about sexual topics. Sex exists. It's used in media a lot. You'll just need to cope with that fact. Relationships, fanservice, and sexual activity all fall into their own tropes as a result.
- Don't be a Bluenose Bowdlerizer. We're not looking to censor all sex off the wiki. If the sex and sexuality is an honest part of the work and relevant to the example, it belongs there.
- The wiki is not rated G. We aren't sanitizing the wiki for small children. Sex and sexuality are part of media and we aren't going to ignore them. This wiki is Family Friendly, not Unsupervised Small Child Friendly. This isn't an excuse to make work pages dirtier than the work itself, as the above No Lewdness section makes clear, but neither is it an excuse to make those pages cleaner than the work itself.
Personal Content
This policy applies to personal areas of the site as well as to media articles. Please do not describe your fetishes or your violent fantasies in reviews, liveblogs, discussion pages, on your Tropers page, or in forum conversations.
