A Lime is a Fanfic in which characters engage in limited sexual activity, without it being portrayed explicitly. Basically, the fanfic equivalent of soft-core porn. The term is less common than it once was, though by no means extinct.
Can be used as either a noun or an adjective: "It's a Lime story" and "It's a Lime" are functionally equivalent. The boundary between Lime and Lemon is not fixed: a reader unaccustomed to sex scenes may see a fic as a Lemon when a more experienced reader would consider it a Lime. But the rule of thumb seems to be that Lime can generally be expected to keep scenes of explicit intercourse entirely off-screen.
The term was originally specific to the anime fanfiction community, although by the early-middle 2000s it had spread to other fandoms alongside the term lemon. Its origin is obscure: most likely, it was formed by analogy to "Lemon." At one time there was an entire "Citrus Scale"
with various fruit code names (Citrus —> Orange —> Lime —> Lemon —> Grapefruit).
Compare Lemon, Porn Without Plot, Ecchi. See also Slash Fic, Rule 34.
- Ambience: A Fleet Symphony
- Kancolle Alt: Chapters 49 and 52, which border on Lemon
- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Tempest Rewrite
- Love at first sight (Harry Potter)
- A Man Of Taste And Breeding: Somewhere between Lime and Lemon, according to its page.
- Morticia Cara Mia
- Morticia Is Pregnant
- Must Love Ned Flanders
- The One I Love Is...: Tagged as such on the Neon Genesis Evangelion Fanfic Recommendation page.
- Other Halves, and Other Tales
- The Return
- Well-Matched
- The Wound's Still Bleeding: Most of the story is clean, but chapter 16 has a sexual scene.
