[ SECRET POST #5431 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5431 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #777.
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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT
>>So it's really just someone complaining that they can't make both porn and children's fiction under the same penname and be treated seriously as a children's author.
WAIT A SECOND. Isn't YA novels for... Young ADULTS? Why would they want to be trated seriously as a CHILDREN's author?
I get it that you're probably here without the intention of having a serious conversation about these things since it seems you're trolling (if you're not, maybe it's better you rethink how you write comments), but seriously? I'm very confused by this statement.

Definition of Young Adults by Cambridge Dictionary:
young adult
noun; uk /ˌjʌŋ ˈæd.ʌlt/ us /ˌjʌŋ ˈæd.ʌlt/ uk/ˌjʌŋ əˈdʌlt/ us/ˌjʌŋ əˈdʌlt/[ C ]
a person who is in his or her late teenage years or early twenties

[(Anonymous)]

Lol nope.

According to the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), YA books are those aimed at kids aged 12 to 18 years.

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/the-young-adult-book-market-2799954

[(Anonymous)]

SA

BTW, I find it ironic that you're accusing me of trolling and in the same comment you show that you don't know shit about the genre you're discussing and the age group it's aimed at. And the saddest thing is that I don't think you're trolling, I really do believe that you're this ignorant.

How about you study the genre you want to publish in before you cry about not being able to advertise your porn in?

[(Anonymous)]

AYART
I stand corrected. I was under the misguided assumption that the target was actually 16+ years old (which, yeah, not "adult", but close enough). My bad. I have read some YA novels, but not that much, and they treated some very dark themes. So yeah, I was actually THIS ignorant. You have the right of being sad about that.
Nevertheless, I still don't think that calling 12-18 years old "children" is correct and a YA author a "children's author", though.

>>How about you study the genre you want to publish in before you cry about not being able to advertise your porn in?
I'm not a writer nor I have any intention of starting a writing career. I also don't write fanfiction. Who do you think you're replying to? You can accuse me personally of being ignorant, but you seem strangely convinced that anyone trying to debunk your points is either the OP or have some personal stake in this debacle.

Also, do you think that an author have the right to only write one genre or target only a certain demographic for the rest of their lives? I know plenty of authors that wrote ACTUAL children books and then thriller, murder mistery and erotica, too.

And yeah, sorry. It still looks like you're trolling, because I could be ignorant and all, but the way you're writing is just plain rude. BUT I'm urprised and even a little bit touched that you reaplied to my comments. I'm usually late due to time zones so I'm grateful.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for the harsh tone in my previous response, you sound genuinely interested in this discussion.

> Nevertheless, I still don't think that calling 12-18 years old "children" is correct and a YA author a "children's author", though.

According to the definition in nearly every dictionary, anyone below the age of majority is a child, so my use of these terms was not incorrect. We can argue that the term "YA" is a misnomer for the genre aimed at kids, and I agree, but it's still a genre aimed at kids.

> You can accuse me personally of being ignorant, but you seem strangely convinced that anyone trying to debunk your points is either the OP or have some personal stake in this debacle.

My assumption was that people, who are voicing their opinion on the topic of authors trying to break into the YA publishing industry, are either readers or writers or otherwise part of the industry and would have knowledge about who it's aimed at, not just random people stumbling into the thread.

> Also, do you think that an author have the right to only write one genre or target only a certain demographic for the rest of their lives? I know plenty of authors that wrote ACTUAL children books and then thriller, murder mistery and erotica, too.

Of course plenty of authors write both children's fiction and adult fiction, but very rarely under the same pen-name. Daniel Chandler released his children's work as Lemony Snicket, Rowling released her adult works as Robert Galbraith, to give some examples.

If someone specifically goes out of their way to dig through someone's past to find a secret porn account, I'd be completely on the author's side, but I do have something against an author, who doesn't even make an attempt to separate their NSFW works from their children's works, and there's a whole lot of people in fandom who do that. I used to mod a reddit channel for a children's game, and there was not a week when I didn't have to delete a post by someone looking for erotic roleplay partners. Unsurprisingly they got a lot of replies from curious 13 year olds, and nobody could understand why cybering with children is a bad idea.

[(Anonymous)]

AYART

While it's true that I'm not a writer nor an avid YA novels reader, I've always read a lot since I was a child. I'm also kind of old (30+ years old) and not from an English speaking country so probably that hindered my comprehension regarding the age issue.
I think it's really strange that an entire genre has a 12-18 demographic targer since a 12 years old is REALLY different from a 18 years old, which is why I was wrongfully convinced the target was actually 16-21. Like you said, it's a misnomer and I wonder how many people made the same assumption as me.
I was someone that read Dostoevskij, Turgenev etc for fun when I was 13 years old, so I probably really have no idea of what people that age like to read. I read Harry Potter for the first time at 20 years old. So yeah, I really have no idea.
I apologize for stirring up things with my ignorance, but I'm genuinely baffled at these types of discourse.

>>According to the definition in nearly every dictionary, anyone below the age of majority is a child, so my use of these terms was not incorrect.
While children is legally the definition of a minor or anyone below the age of majority, the definition I found on dictionaries includes also: "A person between birth and puberty" which, from my POV and I think a lot of people in the internet, means someone pre-teen, usually someone below the age of 14 years old. I do admit that the age is completely arbitrary.

I think that a lot of people, me included, get really defensive when the term "children" gets thrown around in fandom spaces, especially when it includes teenagers in the 16-18 age rage, because it's tied to the recent "purity culture" that infected all fandom spaces. And YES, while there's a real problem in dividing fandom spaces between adults and children now that everyone and literally their mothers are in the same platforms (twitter, tumblr, reddit etc), I think people are tired of the concept of "problematic ships" and "problematic explicit content" used for cancelling people and policing places. *don't really like the term cancelling here, but it's the simplest one to make my idea come across, I believe.
F!S has an older base than some of other fandom spaces and sometimes we can get defensive on the semantics.

I do think you are correct in wishing people would orphan their explicit fanworks when entering the industry, but that's also what the OP was telling us. The secret explicitly tell us that their real name is NOT their AO3 username, so they are NOT using their real name to invite children etc to read their smut. Problem is, when you become a famous author you can be doxxed or worse and THAT is what the OP is afraid of.

Regarding your modding experience on reddit:
That's really gross and I'm sorry you had to read and moderate those kind of posts. I hope you're in a healthier internet space now.

Appreciate your reply and the shift in tone. I hope you'll have a great day/week-end.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm similarly old and from a non-English country and for a long time I had the same mindset that you did. I used to read porn in my teenage years and I saw nothing wrong with it. I even found it empowering, since I was taught that women aren't supposed to have sexual urges, and fanfiction proved otherwise.

But in the recent years my interests have shifted towards fandoms with a lot of Zoomers, overwhelmingly under 18, and in my experience today's teens are very different from the teens in my youth, and a major reason behind this is the way fandom interactions have moved from being mostly text-based (livejournal, fanfiction-websites and anon-memes), to voice/video/photo-based, such as tiktok, instagram, or discord, where it's very difficult to not notice the age difference among the people participating in the conversation. And based on what my teenage fandom friends have been saying, as well as things that I have witnessed (and the erotic roleplay posts on reddit are barely scratching the surface), there's a whole lot of adults in fandom, who have been smothering the teens with innuendo and smutty material. This is especially unpleasant in fandoms centering around youtubers and twitch streamers, many of them underage, where it's near impossible for the streamer to not see porn of themselves, despite begging people many times to not sexualize them. It has reached the point where teens in fandom are simply sick and tired of anything sexual coming from adults, because of how often that kind of talk leads to grooming (you can't throw a rock on twitch without hitting a streamer who pressured a 15yo for nudes) or other unpleasant situations (I've seen someone post a long rant under a tumblr post of a streamer, who said they didn't like it when fans sexualize them, telling them they have no right to express discomfort with it, because they think of them as a fictional character when they write porn of them.)

You talk about you fear of purity culture, and that's an argument I often see pro-shippers making, I used to parrot it myself not long ago. But after being in those teen-heavy fandoms, I've realized that vast majority of pearl-clutchers in teen-heavy fandoms are teenagers themselves. They don't actually appreciate you fighting valiantly for their right to see people like themselves be sexualized, especially when people doing the sexualizing are adults. Are there exceptions? Sure, but this is by no means a common view among teenagers in fandom. It's not unusual for teens in twitch/youtube fandoms to refuse to interact with adults at all because they're done with the creepy innuendo that seems to always come from them. On one of my discord servers, teenagers made a petition to the mods to create a NSWF channel, so they wouldn't have to see all the sex jokes the adults on the server were making. Teenagers today simply don't want the same things we did when we were their age, and I think we should respect their wishes.

[(Anonymous)]

AYART

Thank you for replying. I think I understand more clearly your point of view and you made a good case for yourself.

I don't think I have much more to add to this conversation, also because it greatly derailed from the original topic, but know that you made me think.

I'll just add this final consideration: I do not personally [fight valiantly for their right to see people like themselves be sexualized] like you said. My only interactions with the fandom are on F!S where I partecipate mostly as a lurker and reading fanfiction for fandom with exclusevly adult characters (I do read problematic stuff without any shame, though). I am lucky enough I don't feel the need to interact much with strangers online, so no contacts with teens for me.
I appreciate you giving me food for thoughts on the situation on fandom for the youths of today. I knew already that the ones fighting for more purity in fandom where teenagers themselves, or at least they are certanly the most vocal. They're right to do that. The problem is that adults and young people don't have different spaces for fandom now so we end up battling each other from two valid points of view and it doesn't benefit anyone because there are not alternatives ATM.
I think it's easy for outsiders like me to project my experiences (like you said, reading porn while young etc) to other people and miss a lot of context. I do not envy young people coming to their first fandoms today. Two decades ago it was unthinkable revealing your age or where you lived to complete strangers and now it's completely different and the dangers are different, too.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

Let me just add something. I read some other new replies below mine and I think that you're hanging around very toxic places. Fandom isn't worth your mental health and I don't think you're taking it as well as you probably think you are. It's not your responsibility to always think and advocate for teenagers in fandom, especially regarding these heavy topics.
Maybe take a break and please stay safe.