Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2015-02-06 06:55 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2015-02-06 06:55 pm
[ SECRET POST #2956 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2956 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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09. [ SPOILERS for Fiddler on the Roof ]
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10. [ SPOILERS for A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones]
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11. [ SPOILERS for Agents of Shield ]
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12. [ WARNING for abuse ]
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13. [ WARNING for suicide ]
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14. [ WARNING for rape ]
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #422.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
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(Anonymous) 2015-02-07 12:48 am (UTC)(link)no subject
And for a lot of people it really was unpleasant--stress over grades, still under your parents' thumb, self-consciousness, lack of freedom and control over your own life, relationship drama, friendship drama, lack of free time, not to mention bullying, which is so rampant that it's more surprising to hear of someone who *wasn't* bullied at some point, rather than the other way around.
The lack of freedom and free time is pretty much universal--you have few legal freedoms or rights of self-determination, and you spend 40 hours a week at school plus homework and putting on your make-up or whatever for school.
Why anybody would pick such a time over the glorious FREEDOM of adulthood and an education/work/life you determine the path of is beyond me. Maybe you can explain why somebody would?
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(Anonymous) 2015-02-07 01:14 am (UTC)(link)Oh yeah, I know it definitely was unpleasant for a lot of people. It just was coming across to me that there was this thought that it was impossible for it to not have been unpleasant for some people.
I also think that while it might seem odd, it makes a little sense right now. I mean, look at YA: these are stories mainly about teenagers, who are mainly in high school, and they're incredibly popular among adults. For some reason, there's a bunch of people right now who really, really want to relive that time in their lives, and they're paying money to do it over and over and over again.
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(Anonymous) 2015-02-07 02:04 am (UTC)(link)Plus if you write the high school AU, you're in control, which in real high school you're definitely not.
Where do you work? If you have more freedom in adulthood, I want to work there, too!
Like, stress over grades just turns into stress over your job, and while at school you could be bullied for not looking right, at some workplaces you would have to deal with the potential for losing your job (or at least facing some kind of mild consequence) for not looking professional/wearing work-clothes correctly/etc. Things like self-consciousness, relationship and friendship drama, etc. are pretty much still there in adulthood, just in different forms. I actually had MORE free time as a teenager than I do now, which I suspect is the case for a lot of people (40 hrs/week at school vs 40+ hrs/week working a job). A lot of the freedom and control you get over your life as an adult is more theoretical than practical (there's only so much freedom you can have when you need to pay the bills, after all). While I didn't have to deal with as much parental interference as I grew older, I had a lot of other obligations and people controlling my life at that point than my parents ever did. Which is more likely to result in you losing your home/food/income: showing up late at home, or showing up late at work? Unless you've got abusive parents - which are another can of worms entirely - then your boss is going to demand more of you than your parents.
In other words, I have more freedom in theory as an adult, but up until recently, I had more practical freedom as a teenager because I could do most of what I wanted to do, and only had to keep up my grades to do it (in that my parents were pretty chill about my personal freedom and allowance as long as I kept my grades up). Now, I have to keep my grades up, work, and meet a slew of other Grown-UpTM obligations, which are a much bigger drain on my free time and give me much less self-determination than I had beforehand. And all of THAT was before I decided the Army was my best career move, because yeah, my self-determination and personal freedom have largely gone out the window since then.
So "glorious freedom of adulthood" is, in many ways, meaningless. Having the right to make choices for yourself doesn't automatically translate to ability. I definitely prefer it, but I also miss when I didn't have to worry about the bills.
Re: Where do you work? If you have more freedom in adulthood, I want to work there, too!
The argument I was making/looking at is that being a teenager vs being an adult is comparing "less options, better living" vs "more options, worse living". Ultimately, teenagers and adults both have to face constraints and controls from other people in terms of what you can do for your free time, what you do/work by day, and where you live. These constraints are in different forms, but they still exist, and in general, the difference is mostly just a change of scale rather than a change in fundamental paradigm. Adults have less constraints, but the cost of that is less guarantees/people and places to fall back on. It's also not an absolute - while technically/legally minors are at the mercy of adults, the actual reality is that most have some element of choice in their lives. It's heavily structured and out of limited options (choosing classes, what you do after free time, where you work, etc.), but it's rarely as if someone's every movement as a teenager is being dictated against their will, and conversely, it's very rare that an adult actually has total freedom over their own lives. A lot of the "options" or "alternatives" you have as an adult are only possible in extreme circumstances - just like there often are outs from extreme circumstances as a teenager (i.e. choosing to be homeless and starving to escape a bad work environment vs choosing to be homeless and starving to escape a bad home environment or school - which also goes back to the theoretical vs reality argument I was making, in that legally you can't run away from home as a teenager, but in practice you absolutely can and many people do, sometimes successfully/with good results).
I am very sorry that you spent your teenage years homeless, but that is not even close to what the majority of teenagers are dealing with (at least in America, which I'm assuming is the background or similar to the background from which we are both speaking). I haven't seen any high school AU's that are about homeless teenagers. While I have seen homeless!teen!AUs, those are usually NOT high school AU's. This is, in many ways, what I meant by "a different can of worms altogether" (even if I probably should have realized that abusive parents are not the only contender for another can of worms).