The rules, in plain words

01What Parallel Pens is

Parallel Pens is a place to read and write branching stories. Some stories are written by us, some by readers, and some scenes are written by AI as you play. You can keep the path you took as a book, publish it, and continue anyone else’s.

02Your account

• Anyone can read published books without an account. Playing, writing, liking, commenting and publishing need one.
• You must be at least 13, and old enough where you live to agree to these terms.
• Use a real email address and keep your sign-in to yourself. You’re responsible for what happens on your account.
• Your username is public. Don’t choose one that pretends to be someone else.

03What you own

• You own the stories and scenes you write, including those the AI writes at your request, as far as the law lets anyone own them.
• When you publish a book, you let us show it publicly, and you let other readers continue it from any scene: their story copies the scenes up to that point and goes its own way. Their new scenes are theirs.
• Private stories stay private. We open them only to keep the service running, to investigate a report of abuse, or when the law requires it.
• You can unpublish or delete a story, or your whole account, at any time. Scenes that others continued from stay readable as part of their books, without your name.

04What isn’t allowed

• Sexual content involving anyone under 18, in any form. We report it.
• Sexual content in published books, graphic gore for its own sake, hate, harassment, or content that encourages self-harm.
• Other people’s private information, or anything that breaks the law or someone else’s rights.
• Copying other authors’ text, published books or series into a book as if it were yours.
• Stories built on someone else’s characters, worlds or plots that are still protected by copyright (a TV series, film, game or recent book), unless the work is in the public domain.
• Spam, fake likes or accounts, scripts that get around AI limits, or attempts to break, overload or reverse-engineer the service.

We can hide a book or comment while we look at a report, remove it, and suspend accounts that break these rules. If you think we got it wrong, write to [email protected].

05Other people’s work, and asking us to remove something

Stories here must be your own, or based on works that are free for anyone to adapt (the public domain). Our own stories are original. We check published books for stories built on protected works and hide them.

If you hold the rights in a work and something here uses it, write to [email protected] with a link to the book or page, the work it uses, and how we can reach you. We hide the content while we look, usually within one working day, and tell its author. If the author believes it is theirs to publish, they can write to us with their reasons.

Accounts that keep publishing other people’s protected work lose the right to publish, and in the end their account.

06AI-written scenes and pictures

• AI can be wrong, strange or unsuitable despite our filters. Scenes are fiction: don’t rely on them for advice of any kind.
• AI scenes and pictures have daily limits, which depend on your plan, and need a confirmed email address.
• We may change providers, models or limits to keep the service running and affordable.

07Plus, pictures and payments

• Plus is a subscription, monthly or yearly, that renews until you cancel. You can cancel any time from Settings → Plan; you keep Plus until the end of the period you paid for and aren’t charged again.
• Illustrate this story is a one-off purchase: pictures for the scenes of one story, up to the number shown when you buy, kept with that story. If you delete the story, its pictures go with it.
• Payments are taken by Dodo Payments, our merchant of record, which handles billing, taxes and receipts under its own terms. Prices are shown before you pay and include or add tax as checkout shows.
• We may change prices or what a plan includes; a price change applies from your next renewal, and we tell you before it does.

08Refunds

If something went wrong, write to [email protected] within 14 days of a payment and we’ll refund it: a first Plus payment or a renewal you forgot to cancel, and an “Illustrate this story” purchase whose pictures you haven’t used. A refunded purchase’s unused pictures are removed; pictures already drawn stay.

This doesn’t limit any right to a refund you have under the law where you live.

09No warranty, and limits on liability

We work hard to keep Parallel Pens running and your stories safe, but the service is provided “as is”, without guarantees that it will always be available or free of errors. As far as the law allows, we aren’t liable for indirect or consequential losses, and our total liability to you is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim. Nothing here limits liability that can’t be limited by law.

10Changes to these terms

When these terms change, we update the date at the top. For a change that matters, we tell you by email or on the site before it applies, and you can delete your account if you don’t agree.

11Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected], or the help page.