COMMUNITY GUIDELINES

FableHatch is a home for visual storytellers. Our goal is to keep it generous, brave, and weird — a place where creators can take risks and readers can find work that delights them. These guidelines describe what we encourage, what we don’t allow, and how moderation works.

What we celebrate

• Original stories, characters, and worlds — finished works, works-in-progress, fan creations attributed to their source, and ambitious experiments alike.
• In-character voice. Posting and commenting “as” one of your characters is a feature, not a violation. Just don’t use it to impersonate a real person.
• Generous feedback. Honest critique with care for the human on the other side.
• Diverse storytelling, including stories that explore difficult themes thoughtfully.

What we don’t allow

Harassment and hate

No targeted harassment, threats, or coordinated abuse. No hate speech, slurs, or content that attacks people based on protected characteristics (race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, and similar).

Sexual content involving minors

Sexually explicit content involving minors is never allowed, including realistic-looking artwork or written depictions. We report applicable content to authorities.

Sexual content generally

Sexually explicit imagery is not currently allowed on FableHatch. Sensual, romantic, or implied content is fine when it serves the story; gratuitous explicitness is not.

Graphic violence

Storytelling can include violence — but content that exists purely to glorify suffering, or that depicts real-world violence in a way that targets specific people or groups, is not allowed.

Self-harm and suicide

Stories may engage with these themes thoughtfully. We don’t allow content that promotes, encourages, or provides instructions for self-harm or suicide.

Impersonation

Don’t pretend to be a real person you’re not. Fan characters and pen names are fine — claiming to be a specific real human is not.

Spam and manipulation

No spam, link farms, vote manipulation, follow rings, or any attempt to game ranking or recommendation systems.

Intellectual property

Don’t post work that isn’t yours without permission. Fan work that respects the conventions of fan art (clear attribution, no claim of ownership) is welcome; rebranded wholesale copies of someone else’s work are not.

Illegal activity

Anything that’s illegal in the United States (where we operate) is not allowed.

Doxxing and private information

Don’t share another person’s private information — real name (when not public), home address, phone number, place of work, immigration status, medical history, or anything else that could expose them to harm. This applies to other users, public figures, and minors equally.

Sharing private DMs

Direct messages are private. Don’t screenshot or quote another user’s DMs publicly without their explicit permission, even to call out bad behavior. Use the in-product report flow instead — our moderation team can review the messages without exposing them.

Sock-puppeting and account abuse

One person, one account. Don’t create multiple accounts to dodge a block, inflate engagement on your own work, vote in challenges multiple times, or evade moderation actions. Selling, transferring, or sharing accounts is also not allowed.

Posting as a character

In-character voice is a feature of FableHatch — you can comment, post, and DM as one of your published characters, and we encourage it. It’s a powerful storytelling tool. A few expectations come with it:

• The character’s words are your words. You are the human accountable for what your character does. “My character is mean” is not a defense for harassment.
• Don’t use a character as a costume for behavior you wouldn’t put your name on.If a character’s post would break these guidelines coming from your real account, it breaks them coming from the character too.
• Only post as characters you created.Even if another user’s character is publicly visible, don’t post or DM as them. Fan stories about a character are fine; pretending to be that character is not.
• In-character DMs are still real conversations with real people. The recipient is a human. Romantic roleplay, intense scenes, or anything emotionally heavy should only happen with someone who has clearly opted in. Stop when asked.
• Don’t use a character to impersonate a real person.Same rule as the impersonation section above — costume doesn’t change it.

Direct messages

DMs are higher-stakes than public posts because they’re private and can feel coercive. The same content rules apply (no harassment, no slurs, no minors-in-explicit-content, etc.), plus a few extras:

• No unsolicited explicit content. Sending sexual content to someone who hasn’t indicated they want it is harassment, full stop.
• No persistent contact after the recipient has stopped responding or asked you to stop. If they block you, that answer was final.
• No commercial solicitation, recruiting, or scam attempts. FableHatch DMs are for creative conversation, not cold sales.

AI-generated content

FableHatch welcomes work made with help from AI tools — that includes image generation, writing assistants, voice synthesis, anything. The legal expectations are spelled out in Terms §4 (you have to have the rights, depictions of real people need consent, etc.). On top of that, here’s the community norm we’re trying to build:

• Disclosure when it’s substantial. If AI did meaningful creative work in a story or character (not just a thesaurus pass on the description), mentioning it in your description is the trust-building move. Not a hard rule — yet — but readers and creators tend to value the honesty.
• No passing off other creators’ work as AI-generated to dodge attribution.If you used a specific artist’s work as input, credit them.
• No flooding.AI lowers the cost of publishing — please don’t use it to flood the feed with low-effort bulk content. Quality over volume is the house style.

Comments, critique, and tagging

Most readers come here to enjoy work and most creators come here to grow. Both depend on a comments culture that’s generous and useful. The expectations:

• Critique the work, not the person. “The pacing in chapter two lost me” lands; “you’re a bad writer” doesn’t.
• Don’t demand changes.Suggest, ask, react — sure. Telling a creator their work is wrong unless they fix it isn’t feedback, it’s pressure.
• No review-bombing or coordinated negative campaigns.Disagreeing with someone’s work is fine. Organizing pile-ons isn’t.
• Tag with substance.When you tag another creator’s story or character in a post, give a reason: a recommendation, a thoughtful response, a shoutout. Random tags purely to grab attention read as spam.
• Don’t weaponize the report button. Reports go to a real human and we take them seriously. Filing reports as retaliation, to silence disagreement, or to slow down a competitor is itself a violation.

How moderation works

If you see something that breaks the rules, use the report button on the post, comment, story, character, or message. Reports go to our moderation team. We review every report and may:

• Remove the content.
• Warn the author.
• Restrict the account’s ability to post or message.
• Suspend or terminate the account.

We try to be consistent and humane. We don’t share who reported a piece of content with the person reported.

Block

If a specific user is making your experience worse, you can block them from their profile page. Blocking hides their content from you and prevents them from following, messaging, or commenting on you. It’s silent — they won’t be notified.

Appeals

If we take action on your account or content and you think we got it wrong, email appeals@fablehatch.com with the URL or context and a brief explanation. We’ll review and respond.

Legal

These guidelines complement our Terms of Service. Where they overlap, the Terms of Service govern.