post #3730930 post #2562530 post #2684833 post #2130640

A blanket tag for characters who are "not adult" — characters who have a clear physical appearance of being under the age of 18, "underage", "minor", etc.

This covers infancy, childhood, and adolescence, but by itself does not describe any specific stage of development other than "pre-adulthood".

Some common traits of characters who appear young include, but are not limited to...

• A large head-to-body ratio (e.g. the head is larger on a young character than an adult)
• Shorter, slightly stubby limbs
• Rounded face, and "soft" facial features
• Less sexually dimorphic figures than adults, lacking broad shoulders, wide hips, or developed breasts.

Some resources for determining other young or adult physical features can be found here and here

Important Notes:

• As of July 12, 2024, per uploading guidelines, any submissions containing underage human and humanoid characters involved in explicit sexual activities, or featuring those characters nude with visible genitalia and/or anus, are not allowed.

• Tag What You See, Not What You Know, outside information about the character's age should not determine whether a character is tagged as young
• If a character appears young, but is confirmed to be of-age, use young, and adult (lore)
• If a character appears to be an adult, but is confirmed to be underage, use young (lore)

• The tag is just a reflection on the character's appearance, not a label of their actual age. Such information should be written in the post's Description, the character’s Wiki page, and/or represented with lore tags instead. Tags in the general category must describe only what is visible in the post, as they are meant to be used for searching and blacklisting based strictly upon visual appearance, NOT for describing facts about the character.

• This tag applies to all ratings, including safe artwork. It is imperative that all underaged characters are tagged appropriately, as many people do not wish to see explicit young artwork. Please err on the side of caution and tag young even if you suspect they might be 'of age,' but are not sure.

• For fan art involving characters who may be canonically underage, but are drawn in a way that makes their age ambiguous — particularly heavily stylized, toony characters, or characters who are stated to be older teenagers (16-17), but appear indistinguishable from an adult character (commonly seen in anime and manga), avoid using the the young tag.

• Keep in mind that while young characters are often slim and short, some types of adults (e.g. dwarfs, shortstacks, teapots) can be slim and/or short while also displaying more aged qualities.

Young Sub-Tags

Ages/Stage of Development

These tags describe stages of development for young characters. The ages listed here are general guides, reference sheets listing ages or officially listed ages should not be used to guide tagging.

young_[form]

• young anthro
• young feral
• young human
• young humanoid
• young taur

young_[gender]

• young ambiguous
• young female
• young male
• young intersex

Young Related Tags

• adult on young
• dominant young / submissive young
• larger young
• muscular young
• young on young
• young penetrated
• young penetrating
• young raped
• adult raping young

• loli — explicit/suggestive depictions of young_female characters
• shota — explicit/suggestive depictions of young_male characters

Not to be confused with...

• younger_(gender)/younger_(form) tags, (such as younger male), these are relative tags, which inherently involve an older character having to be present, a "younger character" may be an adult who is younger in comparison with an older adult, and an "older character" may still fall under young, but is older than an even younger character
• short stack/teapot figure, for characters with squat, exaggerated proportions, who are typically not underage
• chibi, for stylized, small and youthful looking characters that are not necessarily underage.

See Also

• young (lore) — for characters that are stated to be, or are underage in lore, but is indistinguishable from an adult character
• stated age — a character saying, or text within an image stating, the age of a character
• stated underage — a character saying, or text within a post stating that a character is underage, with or without specifying a specific age