fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3778 ]

[ SECRET POST #3778 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3778 ⌋

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Finally watched the long video on Born Sexy Yesterday, for characters who are essentially children in a sexy adult body and their lack of experience with anything is treated as endearing and sexy. It's usually applied to women, like in Splash, or the 5th Element.

And immediately thought of the trope's counterpart, body of a child but mind of an adult.

So my initial thought was, which is creepier? Do you find one ok and one creepy? Both creepy? Both ok? I am curious!

Both are weird. 3000-Year-Old-Vampire is definitely worse.

Kristen Dunst freaked me the fuck out in Interview with a Vampire, yuck.

For me, I find the Born Sexy Yesterday creepier. I'm one of those people who's short and babyfaced and regularly gets mistaken for being a lot younger than I am. So I tend to see that one as an extreme version of that, where as the Born Sexy Yesterday seems more predatory.

Wanting to reply to myself, it also depends on how hard the story makes sure you know they're an adult. Like I found Batman TAS Babydoll really tragic because they really pushed how she was an adult but looked like a child and it just broke her mentally.

http://www.gunaxin.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Baby-Doll.png

I think also in Western stuff it gets acknowledged as weird and creepy in the story where as the Born Sexy Yesterday is treated as cute. Even if the character is literally only a few days old and chronologically extreme underage no one bats an eye because she looks capable of consenting. So it feels like kind of a "But I didn't know she was 12, officer! She looks old enough"

Sort of like if someone said they found Goofy sexy I wouldn't really be creeped out, but if they said they found Pluto sexy I would be. They're both cartoon dogs, but one's obviously capable of consent and the other acts like an animal.

Body of a child with the mind of an adult is creepier. Wayyyy creepier. Mostly because sexuality can be involved (like with Claudia in Interview With A Vampire).

Tough call, but Born Sexy Yesterday is all about the titillation while Child with an Adult mind is usually horrifying.

Adult character with a child's body is creepier because of the intent. Calling most of the characters in the other example "children in adult bodies" is a little insulting I think, because they never came off to me as being written deliberately to be like children... just ditzy/naive adults, which do actually exist. A sexy-acting adult character that looks like a child, on the other hand, is almost always designed to be pedobait.

In-universe, born sexy yesterday is creepier because of the consent issues of a child who doesn't really understand any sexual advances made towards them. The other version would make me question someone's pedo-inclinations though.

On the meta level, the adult mind/child's body is creepier because of what it potentially says about a creator's interests.

Edited 2017-05-09 00:33 (UTC)

Born Sexy Yesterday is creepier to me because it is more mainstream and generally just used for women. The other one is usually a fringe trope and doesn't have the added sexist layer.

+100

Body of an adult, mind of a child is way creepier to me. At least if the character is mentally an adult, they have the knowledge and worldly experience to be able to fully consent to sex and understand what it is that they're consenting to.

I mean, in terms of real life, having sex with kids is wrong because they don't have the mental and emotional maturity to understand or consent. It has nothing to do with physical maturity/development. The Born Sexy Yesterday trope creeps me out because it's having sex with someone who is mentally a child, even if they have the body of an adult.

It's funny, because in this fic I'm writing the MC is an adult stuck in a child's body... though it's mostly meant to be uncomfortable and sort of creepy for him. He creeps out himself (and puberty is going to be a terrible experience).

I think that I'm a little more bothered by Born Sexy Yesterday because it's more mainstream/acceptable, and ties more directly into ideas about femininity irl. The other one is pretty dang disturbing, but it's more niche I think, or more anime, though I'm pretty sure a live-action film with a sexualized child who's "really an adult" would be horrible^infinity.

I have more experience with the adult in a child's body being used well and non-creepy than with the child in an adult's body being used well and non-creepy. For instance, the anime Erased has an adult in a child's body who's handled in a way I'd describe as non-creepy overall.

Same here; or, at least, my first experience with the adult-mind, child-body idea was the Ray Bradbury story "Hail and Farewell". The main character is a 40-something who permanently looks 12, and who wanders from town to town to find and get taken in by couples who want but can't have children for a couple years before moving on to the next place. It touches lightly on the horror of it (both of a town where they find out his age, and his own realization of just how limiting and isolating his options are), but the trope is presented as more bittersweet than anything else.

There actually was a woman by the name of Barbora Skrovlá who did the almost exact same thing. The horror movie "Orphan" is vaguely based on this story.

Ayrt: belated reply, thanks for that interesting info! Had no idea Orphan was even (loosely) based on anything.

In terms of sex they're both creepy. If sex is not involved, "mind of an adult/body of a child" can be really fun to read and the reverse is more likely to be just cringey to me.

Born Sexy Yesterday, mostly because it feels like watching a "I can mold her into being my ideal woman" sorta thing and it mostly focuses on the guy and his feelings, along with the woman feelings for him.

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[ SECRET POST #3778 ]

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