pretentioussongtitle:

boatsaplenty:

ardwynna:

codenamecesare:

I saw some #discourse go by about how adults shouldn’t be in fandom writing about younger characters because it’s uncomfortable and gross to younger people to have adults ‘thinking about them’ in romantic/sexual terms.

1, This is not a restriction that any writers in any other venue have to deal with, wtf, or the entire YA genre would be banished; 2, Excuse you, children of Tumblr, no one is thinking about you.

If other people in fandom are older than you, by definition, they have been your age. When fans write about younger characters, we’re not peering through a keyhole at young people now and creeping on them.

We are drawing on our own experiences, thoughts, feelings and memories of what it was like when we were that age.

No one has the right to ask older writers to cut themselves off from their own past just because young’uns don’t want to acknowledge that people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, all of them, were also young once. I’m 41, but I remember vividly what it was like to be 14. If I write a high school AU, it’s about my high school experience, even if I were to set it in the present day and decorate it with some (probably comically out of touch) Stuff The Kids Are Into Now. If I write a high school AU with sex, it’s because I remember that too! I’m not thinking about kids today, why would I– I have my own experiences to draw on. And honestly, sometimes there are things about being young that you don’t really understand until you’re much older and have some perspective– and that’s worth writing about.

If someone is genuinely a creeper, you’ll know, because they’ll ask you questions about you. But people who aren’t even directly interacting with you, who are just expressing themselves in fiction, are not a threat to you, and it’s not creepy for them to draw on their own experiences and their own past to write about younger characters.

Some responses from younger people here, and in other similar discussions:

1) We’re making them uncomfortable by writing teen characters

2) there are all these adult characters we should be writing about instead

3) they’re here for escapism and don’t like being reminded of ‘things like that’

To which it must be said:

1) if you’re uncomfortable, stop reading it. It’s not our job to babyproof fandom for you. It’s your job to recognize personal boundaries and protect yourself. Fandom is a shared space. Get used to it.

2) we write about the characters we find interesting, same way you do. Age has very little to do with that. I know you don’t believe me now, but I also know you’ll understand when you’re older.

3) We’re here for escapism too, buddy, and if that means imaginary harking back to a time before cholesterol tests and taxes, so be it. Not our problem you can’t handle reminders that older people had young lives just like yours, and that you too will be one of us soon enough.

Plucking any one memory from high school out of my past just makes it sound so funny to hear teenagers rallying against sexual content. 

“You can’t write about your own life before 30 because it makes me uncomfortable.”

Then don’t read it. I didn’t write it for you.