#age discourse

Censorship and moral panic about teens being exposed to Sexual Content isn't new. Far from it. But as recently as, like, 2008, the rationale for the moral panic was "Because HORNY TEENS are HORNY and if a HORNY TEEN sees a BOOB it might make them HORNY and go out and have SEX and make TEEN PREGNANCIES and not be VIRGINS on their WEDDING NIGHT."

In 2017, Tumblr user Xochiquetzl posted an essay in response to discourse about adults in fandom, discussing ageism in fandom and explaining why “your favourite fic author is probably over 30”.

The essay seemed to strike a chord with fans and inspired many to share their own positive stories about their experiences with older fans and the fanworks they created.

Are you curious about this essay? Read more on Fanlore!

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Like im all for protecting minors, but A) zanka isnt a real person and therefore faces no dangerous repercussions from explicit content made about him and B) teenagers??? Have??? Sex???

It feels reminiscent of purity culture to act like Zanka being 17 means you cant picture him in any sexual enviornment EVER. Like for goodness sakes he fights JABBER. Who is only a year older than him! Hell he could be 4 months older than him in that case (I dont remember his exact birthday my apologies)

Teenagers have sex and engage in explicit activities. The important part is not OVER sexualizing them and making sexual context centered around their character as well as not making their age a sexual selling point. Yall- yall watched euphoria right? Sure grown adults were playing these characters but a lot of em had to be canonically under 18?

What I don't really get are the mind acrobatics who go "Well, if this character were x years older then I could read/write about them having sex!!". I don't get it, but if it helps you sleep at night, you do you.

But what just completely escapes me are the people who then, additionally, come into smut set in canon and clutch their pearls pretending like you are the weirdo here for... looking at the source material as is, seeing the chemistry between the characters and going "Yeah, they should fuck nasty". Who make their own moral dilemma everybody else's problem.

Even though that one is so much weirder than people who write based on canon because, big news: You still thought about that teenaged character fucking!! In fact, you thought about it much harder than the person who just wrote about the sex, because you needed to additionally make up a new scenario that would "justify" that teenaged character having sex! You needed that teenaged character to have sex so badly, you had to age them up just so you could write/read about them having sex!

The person who just writes smut set in the canon timeline knows there is nothing wrong with teenagers having sex. Real life teenagers have sex all the time. But these are not real life teenagers, these are teenaged fictional characters. Heck, chances are the very character this is about had sex in canon. Because it is really, really normal for teenaged characters to have sex, not just in fanfiction, but in the source material too.

But the person who thinks there is something wrong with teenaged characters having sex, and they still thought real hard about that teenaged character having sex and had to make up their own fake scenario to justify why they are making that canonically teenaged character have sex? When you don't have to ship teenaged characters, when you don't have to read/write about them having sex if that goes against your own personal morals? But you still chose to do that? Even though you think it's wrong? You went out of your way to make up reasons to do it?

Like, i stg, there are still people who insist Korra is a minor because she was 17 in Book 1, despite the fact that she's 18 in Books 2 & 3, and 21 by the end of the series.

And I'll never forget that one screenshot where some dipshits on Tik Tok said it was creepy that the characters from Naruto canonically grew up and had children.