I know this treads painfully close to The Discourse, but fuck it, the kids are not okay and I have... opinions... and this is not directed at this kid, because I don't know them personally, but it isn't like it's the only time I've seen this in the last few weeks.
A kid on Twitter posts asking about shipping non-canon AtLA ships post-movie and whether it's proship, and I'm just... sweetie they're all 25-29. Like. They're fully adults who are peers. It's fine. It's fine in the context of the show and the context of the cartoon because in either setting it is peers and in both there are... already canon ships... and they were fine. There is no rationale where it becomes fine for the pairing to be inherently Bad only in fanon. The show was already written by adults. It already has ships in it.
If you're a kid and you're uncomfortable with things that aren't age-appropriate for you anyway, then just ship fluff. The franchise is already worksafe, the overwhelming trend within the fandom is to make worksafe stuff. It's already appropriate for your age range, you were the target audience. You don't have to suddenly write or read NSFW just because there was a time skip. You're not responsible for anyone else making art or fic.
I really hate that this has become such an insane culture war talking point, because it is so indicative that these kids in fan spaces where you're supposed to enjoy reading and discussing the media you like with other people are just... not equipped for critical thinking? And if you try to walk them through it, they freeze up, because they come up against a thought terminating cliche and panic. No, there is nothing inherently wrong with an age-appropriate depiction of cartoon teenagers that only crops up once it's queer... please consider why you don't typically ask this about the canon-endorsed straight ship. Please think twice about any of this stuff. You're almost an adult, you need to be able to reason through things that give you pause and come to a rational conclusion about it.
If you're fine with the exact same age gap in peer characters in a SFW setting for a canon ship, you need to be able to work out why you balk from the exact same thing with a pairing that isn't canon. Because there's nothing wrong with it. It's fine. You are writing PG fluff of characters your age. You are not sinning by thinking about romance.
If you're already engaging with content that you're comfortable with because of your age, then no, of course it isn't inherently bad to make more of that appropriate content. No one has a gun to your head saying you can't write fluff. It's actually a very bad sign if people are policing what you can enjoy in your free time and in your head! That's not good for you!
The problem is, the people who will tell you this (correctly) will point out that it's all not real, and those people are proshippers, and that locks you up because "proship bad", but like... you don't have to and should not engage with adults about NSFW period.
And then of course, the problem with all of this, is that you can't just approach random kids on the internet about it, because it is inappropriate to butt in and be like, "hey, you've got an extremely dysfunctional relationship with sex as a topic, and it has made it clear that you've been failed elsewhere in your life because you are old enough to be able to critically think your way out of this, do you need someone to talk to who isn't insane or grooming you into the culture war." This is firmly in the realm of something where the appropriate thing is to intervene only if you know the parents, and only if you know the parents are both sane and safe for those kids to talk to... and overwhelmingly, if they are, then those kids aren't thinking like this already. They've already mentioned it to their parents and been told it sounds like an insane thing to worry about.
Just deeply frustrating from the sidelines, idk. Truly something where the conclusion is that I wish I'd gotten that psych degree after all.
