Opinions run rampant in this blog. "I'm just saying" covers what is discussed here, tbh. You've been warned.

Google makes things so very easy to look up word definitions; simply type in "define: ..." followed by the word (replace the ellipsis with the intended word). For example, look up "define: ocean" and a little box will appear at the top of the page with a definition for ocean taken straight from several sources. It works with almost any word and many phrases - and the ones mentioned in the title are among them.

By defintion, these things are very different. Two share similar traits, and one could not truly belong in a category with the other two.

I'm twenty two years old, and even I had trouble separating some key differences from each.

Ageplay or age play is a form of roleplaying in which an individual acts or treats another as if they were a different age...[ageplay] is roleplaying between adults, and involves consent from all parties. (source: Wikipedia which isn't exactly credible but it will do here) You'll see this a lot in adult films; actors and actresses claiming to be 18 and 19 to appeal to that "ooh just barely legal" grossness that turns some viewers on. Notice the keywords here: "adults" and "consent."

Daddy!k*nk (I'm sure you can fill in the rest of the word) was a little harder to find a credible source on, considering it's an idea one won't exactly find in a dictionary. Urban Dictionary has an entry, but come on, it's UD. Onto the meaning. You could argue that this is a sub-area of age play, involving a consenting pair of adults, usually an older male with a partner, that participate in roleplay where the use of patriarchal terminology (e.g. calling one partner "Daddy" or some other form of the word father) is put into play. Once again, take note of the keywords "consenting pair of adults."

And now comes the Word We Must Not Use for Fear of Google Mislabeling Our Website: p******lia. Use your imagination, you know exactly what p-word I'm talking about in an article talking about daddy!k*nk, for crying out loud.

It is not age play. It is not between two consenting adults. It involves someone under the legal age of consent and someone over the legal age of consent, and in the eyes of the law that is a very serious crime. Rarely will you find someone with an opinion like, "Oh yeah, that? Totally cool, to each their own," because, put simply, it involves children and when something involves children, majority of people are not going to react very well to it.

Now...why does AFF crack down on this subject in stories? Well...let's open up a scenario here. Anyone who is of the appropriate age according to United States law (18 years of age) can visit sites like adultfanfiction and the site that starts with liter- and ends in -otica. Even adult writing sites, WHERE ALL OF THE STORIES CONTAIN SOME SERIOUSLY GRAPHIC STUFF, do not allow content concerning characters that are underage, because that is like waving a red flag to the internet police (haha) saying, "Come and get us. Come and shut us down. Come and make life extremely uncomfortable for us." You also have to remember that AFF is, well...a smallerish site compared to big ones like livejournal and AO3. Smaller staff, less of a budget, and a teensy bit more control on content allowed. Site policy is not always dictated by law, but heck, I know there will be (and probably have been) some angry parents banging on the doors of the moderators and the administrator if they discovered this site allowed explicit content involving underage characters. I don't know about you guys, but I really don't want to be remembered as the site who allowed crap like that.

You wanna write ageplay? Cool. You wanna write daddy!k*nk? Super. Those are fine to write if you actually use the consenting adults that, you know, kinda make them what they are. Don't hide actual underage stuff behind labels like that, because mature readers can and will call you out on it, and make you feel rather silly. If you just seriously have got to write it, leave it off AFF or else risk getting it taken down by a mod.

TL;DR - don't mislabel ya nasty stuff as ageplay or daddy!k*nk okay okay #goodbye