when a person becomes 19, there isn't a switch in the brain that gets flipped and gives them fucking Death Note Shinigami eyes but for people under 18!
also this is a really shallow kind of approach, because, like... people don't always look their age! both ways! are you saying that a person who looks younger than they are shouldn't get into a relationship or else it's problematic?
which, yes, I know that's an argument some people make, and that's how we get "short people are child coded" or "this immortal food gijinka is a minor because her breasts are small" BUT IT'S STILL A STUPID DAMN ARGUMENT
if you're 30 but you still get mistaken for a teenager.... obviously you can't date teens but if another 30-year-old dates you it might look problematic???
anyway there was more to this post i'm complaining about - they referenced people who defend ao3 as a 'cult' for example - but i may be getting into a rumble with this person so i'll keep you all updated on this personal hell i subject myself to
whenever I hear arguments like this I remember the interview about the anime Free where the director said she told the artists to draw the teens with the physique of adult men to pull primarily adult women into the audience and I just...
you can tell people like this exist in a very small media bubble, because teen romance, including erotic parts, is a thing in a shitton of YA literature
social justice warped into simple black and white terms when the issue isn't, plus influence by the warped views of sex in the usa and being taken advantage by scumbags like a non-zero amount of radfems
oh totally, but the fact that their targets and tactics mirror those of every other conservative group that tries to censor fiction they didn't read and know nothing about is telling
and it's funny, because we do have a case study example of how "normal people" react to harassment and cancel campaigns because of underage nsfw fan content
someone got a bee in their bonnet about a fanfic she wrote with rape in it (technically rape recovery, but these fucks never read tags) and started a huge harassment campaign on Tumblr, even went so far as to dox her and threaten her job
it sucks because i really do wish ao3 tags had a way of sorting between 'underage between two teenagers of roughly the same age' and 'underage between a child and an adult' because i think those are roughly different things and dynamics. but. uh. this is not at all what the fandomentalists are on about.
but the kicker is, part of her job involved freelance writing, including episodes for Welcome to Nightvail, and the lead producers for that show were pissed about the harassment
i think if you put in "age gap" as an additional tag, that helps? but it's still ultimately a "getting people to tag properly" sort of issue, and that's a community thing that needs working on
iirc, WtNV actually released a statement about it and affirmed they were against censorship of media with dark themes, and she stayed with them as a writer for at least a bit, I fell out of that fandom because of grad school, so I don't know if she still works for them now
number one: if you still on tumblr, stop including yourself with 'the normal people' because you ain't. two: so can we tell y'all that's it's inappropriate for y'all to be creating/consuming erotic content of characters over 18? because this shit goes both ways.
ladies and gentlemen, neither or both or inbetween. I'm clearly a pedophile because I think tom holland is cute. never mind the fact that he's actually only six years younger than me, if anything his mostly teenage fanbase is inappropriate if you wanna go the route OP wants to take.
like, and then you have absurdity when i basically couldn't hang out in the fe3h rarepairings discord with my flayn ships because flayn's listed age was 17
I admit to being guilty of tagging fics with teens having sex with other teens “underage” just in case haha... but yeah if it’s an adult/minor thing age gap or other related tags should be included too
it also makes it more hilarious when people complain about the tag being "everywhere", because 1, it isn't, it's less than 5% of the whole archive, and 2, some of those works are teens being horny with classmates
like most of these people use AO3. they should know... it's almost like they want absolute control over the content period. which hmmm, who are the only other people that like doing that huh? i wonder.
once again I am asking fandomentalists to approach fandom criticism normally instead of acting like your card carrying christian parents/family when they see stuff they don't like.
currently there are: total fics - 7,050,572 underage fics - 167,497 [2.4% of all fics] rape/non-con fics - 177,565 [2.5% of all fics] underage rape/non-con fics - 38,830 [0.5% of all fics]
if we add in all mature fics 1,071,647 (another 16%) for a total of 2,216,505 (31.4%) M & E rated fics, that still leaves more than 2/3 of the entirety of AO3 rated T & below.
i can't help but feel like they search and dig for this just to scream about it and try to cancel people over it cause even searching on the first page of a lot of my fandoms it's usually a really long chat fic or coffee shop AU fic
Normal people find it creepy to have a person over 18 creating and/or consuming erotic content of characters under 18.never mind the fact that he's actually only six years younger than me, if anything his mostly teenage fanbase is inappropriate if you wanna go the route OP wants to take.total fics - 7,050,572
underage fics - 167,497 [2.4% of all fics]
rape/non-con fics - 177,565 [2.5% of all fics]
underage rape/non-con fics - 38,830 [0.5% of all fics]