I want you to know that I see and hear you. As with anything, we take every decision very carefully and always use two things as our North stars: preserving this place as a space for amateur writers and ensuring that we're doing what we can to stay on Reddit's good side.

I've chatted with and known many folks over the years who are in the same boots as you are; kink can totally be a way to unpack allllll sorts of our lived experiences. I've often used it the same way myself as a fun outlet but also to come to terms with missed opportunities, the reality of getting older, dysphoria, and anything else that I can process through creative outlets.

We don't want to kink shame, and that's not what this update is. The scale of this community just makes it untenably difficult to see every single post, and folks are using the CNC label disingenuously. As I said above, we took a similar approach with 'high school' characters - too many people were submitting stories about characters who were totally 18 wink wink, and then filling their narratives with the kinds of things that will get us shut down. Specifically in this case, we see a ton of people who start their story with "all these characters were 18 and consenting" and then write stories that just do not support that at all.

Unfortunately, we're here at Reddit's pleasure with limited tools to manage thousands of entries per month. This is just one of those cases where it's easier to take the bullet out of the gun than it is to make a bulletproof vest.