What we publish
Stories are the one place on Hedonist where explicit writing is allowed. These rules are how that stays possible. A person reads every story against them before it goes up.
Two shelves
True stories happened to the person who wrote them. Change the names and any detail that would let someone recognise a real person, venue or group, and otherwise tell it as it was. Nothing invented goes on the true shelf.
Fiction is made up, and labelled that way. It can be as dark or as tender as you like, inside the limits below.
Three ratings
Rate your story honestly. The reviewer can raise a rating on the way through, and will.
- Frank: what happened and how it felt, and the camera cuts away before the sex. Anyone can read these.
- Sensual: scene-level detail, the rope, the sounds, the aftercare, without a play-by-play. Anyone can read these.
- Explicit: graphic, written to arouse. Readers confirm they're 18 or older first, and where the law requires it they pass a real age check. Explicit pages are labelled as adult content for search engines.
Never, at any rating
- Anyone under 18, or anyone who reads as under 18, in any sexual context. That includes flashbacks, 'barely legal', school settings and age play. Reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
- Sex without consent written as the turn-on, including someone asleep, unconscious, drugged or too drunk to agree. A consensual scene that plays at non-consent has to show the negotiation or the safeword on the page.
- Incest, including step-family and role-play framed as family.
- Animals.
- Blood, broken skin, mutilation or permanent harm; bodily waste.
- Real, identifiable people. No names, no handles, no venue plus date that points at someone.
- Contact details, links, or anything for sale.
When something went wrong
A true story about a scene that went badly, or about a consent violation you lived through, is welcome on the true shelf, rated frank, with nobody identifiable. It isn't the place to name the person; that's what the confidential consent-incident report is for.
Your story stays yours
You keep the copyright. By submitting you let Hedonist publish it on this site, with your pen name, for as long as you leave it up. You can take it down yourself at any time from the page where you submitted it.
Reporting a story
If you recognise yourself or someone else in a story, or it breaks a rule here, use the report link at the bottom of the story or the report form. Stories identifying a real person come down first and get looked at second.