What Does Lime Mean?
Content TermDated fandom slang for a suggestive but non-explicit fic — sexual content implied or faded-to-black rather than shown. The milder half of the old lemon/lime citrus scale.
Lime in Practice
Lime occupied the middle band of the FFN-era citrus system: where a lemon showed explicit content, a lime steamed up the windows and closed the door — innuendo, heated scenes that cut away, intimacy described in soft focus. The distinction mattered in communities where granular ratings were unavailable and summary-line codes carried the disclosure burden, and the citrus vocabulary became fluent second language to a fandom generation. Like lemon, the term retired as AO3's Mature rating and fade-to-black tagging absorbed its function, surviving as nostalgia and era-marker; fans who reminisce about limes are dating themselves as precisely as fans who remember disclaimer rituals. The concept it labeled, of course, never went anywhere — the archive simply files it under different words now.
Example usage
"By the old rules this chapter is a lime at most — the camera pans to the fireplace at the critical moment."
Related Terms
Lemon
Dated fandom slang for an explicit fic — sexual content shown on the page. A staple warning label of the FanFiction.Net era, now mostly retired in favor of ratings and tags.
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Explicit (Rating)
AO3's highest content rating, marking works with graphic sexual content or extreme violence. The red-square 'E' in the rating system above Mature.
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FanFiction.Net (FFN)
The veteran mega-archive of fanfiction, launched in 1998 and dominant through the 2000s. Abbreviated FFN or FF.net, and remembered as the formative home of a fandom generation.
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Smut
Fandom's standard word for sexually explicit fic content. A fic can be smut, contain smut, or be smut-free, and tags generally make clear which.
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