Triggerhappy: Fictional ages
This is gonna be a long rant, since it touches on a personal experience.
There’s a popular mockery on the internet when talking about fictional characters, along the lines of “oh but she’s really a 1000 years old dragon”, used when someone defends a Lolicon or Shotacon character (characters who are clearly undeveloped little kids and are depicted sexualy) using the excuse that in the story, the character is really an adult, or some short of very old creature. The line is mocking the idea that it would be ok to jerk off to a little kid just because the author has slapped a “1000 years old” in their description. And you know, i kind of agree with that.
I do not think that drawings are the same as the real thing; which is a discussion for another day; but i do think that if you’re attracted to the body of a little kid you cannot make it pass as a completely normal thing by mentioning that the character is really a dragon in the body of an 8 yo. You’re not attracted to the number the character has in their ID, you’re attracted to the body, so the “1000 old” part is irrelevant. And i’m not refering to characters who are just short but adult proportioned, like Uzaki-chan or Shuten douji, (or an average Japanese to be honest) i mean those who are clearly little kids, with undeveloped bodies.
But here comes the issue. The same people who will cry pedophilia and use the “1000 years old” mock line for Loli characters, are usually the same people who then will also cry pedophilia when it’s a girl with a completely adult and attractive design, whose ID says she’s 17 at the point the story happens. This is an hypocritical double standard. Either the relevant thing is the fictional age, and as such the 1000 years old loli would be Ok; or the fictional age is irrelevant and what matters is the adulthood of the design, which would make the 17 yo girl totally Ok, since her body is that of a 20+ yo. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot pick and choose when to apply one standard or the other. Choose one, and stick with it.
And for me, the correct stand is to go by the design. Pedophiles are people who are attracted to underdeveloped bodies. They’re not attracted to whatever number says in their ID. They’re not gonna be attracted by an adult character just because the author has slapped a “10 years old” in their description. In the same way, it’s completely natural and normal for an adult to feel attracted to a completely developed, adult and attractive body, regardless of what the description says.
You have to understand that the “age” a fictional character has is not real, and is as mutable as the author wants. The author may decide that the design they made will be 15 years old the same they can decide they will be 20 years old. In fact they usually slap ages like “15” solely because they’re drawing Shonens, which are targeted at teenagers, so they write that age while the character looks like a huge bodybuilder (looking at you, Jotaro) or Miss Universe. Or they can change it anytime. In fact it has happened. For example when games are localized to the west, since Japan and US have different legal ages, sometimes the characters suddenly go up from 16 or 17 to 18 and 19 in their western versions. Exact same design, no changes. Why would the western version be ok and the japanese not?
This is particularly relevant in anime style because characters in anime tend to have kind of “ageless” and stylized designs, that can be used the same for a 14 yo character than for a 30 yo character, or even with more disparity, because you can’t really place an age on them. Just to name some examples. Take a look at this image of Konata and Yoko. Konata is 18 while Yoko is 14. Could you argue that the pedophilia here would be to like Yoko but not Konata? These two are Maya and Aya, one of them is 15 and the other 17, but one year passes in the story so she gets to 18. So one is legal and the other is not. They have literaly the same body and only slight difference in the face. Both have a completely adult and sexy design. Can you really argue that liking one them is pedophilia while the other is not? Now look at the character of Faris. She looks literally the same at age 17 and age 42. And then you have characters who, for whatever story reasons, are only a few years old, or even days old. Geez i myself have an example of that. My race of Panda ants have a lifespan of arround 13 years, so by 3 years old they’re full adults. TicTic and DunDun are 6 years old so they’re technically on their thirties by human standards. Is this pedophilia because they’re 6?
The example in my comic is not a random one. Succubus-chan is a character i created. Me, as the author, can decide, at any time what her age is. So if “pedophilia” was defined by the number the author writes in her age, i could literally make you a pedophile or not at my will. I could tell you the character is 32, and once you’ve recognized she’s attractive, randomly change it to 17, and BOOM you’re a pedo. Sound ridiculous? That’s because it is. But that’s literally the consequence of tying pedophilia to the fictional number of fictional characters. And is not even a stretch. Succubus-chan really does have 32 years old in my main comic. But she also appears in a different comic i do in a totally different world, and i have never said what age does she have in that world. I could decide at literally this instant that she’s 14, and any person who has thought she’s attractive becomes a pedo, if we go by the idea that the fictional age is what defines pedophilia.
And the worse part is that this ridiculous thing i just said literally happens on the internet. I’ve seen a lot of times in which a character starts the serie being underage, then as the story goes they become legaly adult, but retain the exact same design. And if you look at some people in the fandom, they are extremelly worried to know what season a drawing or a screenshot is from, because they think that if the author says “it’s from the first”, it makes it horrible pedophilia, but if the author randomly says “the second” then it’s not. Complete absurdity.
I’m gonna try to explain this in a different way just so you see how ridiculous all of this looks to me. Do you like Scarlett Johanson? I’m gonna asume yes, and if the answer is no, just think about the actress/actor you think is hotter. It’s completely ok to find them hot, right? i mean they’re adults, and with niiice bodies. Ok now let’s say that person acts in a movie set in high school. And yes it’s not really rare that 30 year old actors act as high schoolers. Now if they’re acting as high schooler, it means that in that fictional story, their fictional age is 16-17. So if we go by the idea that the fictional age is what’s relevant, you’re a pedophile for finding that person hot. Sorry i don’t make the rules. If you think fictional age is the most important thing to define pedophilia, this would make you a pedophile. It may have happened already if your favourite actor/actress already acted as high schooler (Megan fox comes to mind). That’s how ridiculous it sounds to me when someone tells me that the fictional age the author wrote for that character who looks totally adult and hot as fuck defines me as a pedophile. You cannot look at this and pretend that anyone who finds it hot is a pedophpile because in the fiction she’s 17. You just can’t. Or you can, but i will laugh in your face, and won’t take you seriously.
And it’s not just physicaly. Anime characters are waaaaaaaaay more mature than their fictional age. It’s a recurring joke in anime how 15 yo students are Nietsche level philosophers. Even at 12 yo like Naruto they’re fucking war experts with Tsun zu level strategies. It’s rare to find an anime character who acts their age.
I said at the beginning that i had a personal experience with this. I was technically “cancelled” years ago, although it wasn’t as big as cancellations nowadays. I was hired to draw a sexual drawing of a character, whom in the story happens to be 17. I didn’t even know she was 17, i was just handed a reference in ageless anime style, and that’s what i drew. Then people started to call me a pedophile (not the client, but me, for some reason). But that wasn’t what really exploded the thing. What made hell rain on me was that, instead of bending the knee, i did an similar drawing mocking the idea of fictional age being more relevant than the design, with the character drawn clearly adult and showing her ID for 20 years old with some mocking text. That drawing really angered people and it got me banned from a couple of sites, losing my ad revenue, and people trying to hack my website on a daily basis.
So it pisses me off all of this stupidity and hypocrisy about the fictional ages of fictional characters. I cannot take seriously anyone who uses that argument, and indeed i won’t be taking seriously anyone who uses that argument in response to this. If you have something to say, it better be something inteligent that i haven’t adressed because i’m not gonna lose my time more than i already have.
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“If lolis are pedo because they look underage, then traps aren’t gay because they look feminine.”
I’ve had a lot of fun with this line (although I can’t look up the exact wording right now because Discord is being its usual shitty self).
Also, fuck yeah Kuku doing Kuku things That mocking picture surely was worth it.
Also pls reenable subscribestar
Subscribestar is enabled, i just don’t upload anything to it
Not gonna disagree much with you here, but it’s always good to have real examples of the social theorems you build. So I’m presenting myself here as one of those people that goes by the official declared age and not the design. Always. In terms of attractiveness, I almost never look at fictional characters “that” way (doesn’t matter if drawn or 3DPD), but if it happens AND then I find out the character is too young… Then I just make a conscious effort to shut off the attraction and it just works. Also, if you are trying to draw a parallel with real life, then you know there is plenty of people around that look a different age than their own; why wouldn’t they exist in fictional fantasy worlds too? Are you confident you could guess the age of everyone you meet, no matter race or clothing, just by their looks (their “design”)? And believe me: I’ve also personally met plenty of people who are literally attracted to numbers on an ID, sometimes not even the Age, just the ID serial number and then they guesstimate the age from there. So yeah, I believe going by the declared age instead of the design is perfectly reasonable, and the correct way to look at this for me. And 800 years old lolis are OK. And traps are gay. And Yoko doesn’t make a good example there because time is explicitly measured differently in TTGL and she’s biologically older.
Acá no voy a estar muy en desacuerdo con vos, pero siempre es bueno tener ejemplos reales de tus “construcciones sociales” (el término académico, no el feminazi, please). Así que me vengo a presentar como una de esas personas que se guía por la edad oficial de los personajes y no su diseño. Siempre. En términos de atracción, casi nunca me fijo en personajes ficticios de “esa” manera (no importa si son dibujos o 3D), pero si me pasó Y ADEMÁS después me entero que son demasiado jóvenes… Entonces solamente hago un esfuerzo consciente por apagar la atracción, funciona y ya. Además, si pretendés trazar un paralelo con la vida real, entonces ya sabés que hay mucha gente dando vueltas que no aparentan su propia edad; ¿por qué no existirían también en mundos ficticios de fantasía? ¿Vos estás seguro de poder adivinar la edad de todos los que conoces, sin importar raza o vestimenta, solamente por su apariencia (su “diseño”)? Y créeme: conozco personalmente a mucha gente que literalmente se siente atraída por un número de documento. a veces ni siquiera por la Edad, sino que sólo se fijan el número de la identificación y medio adivinan la edad a partir de eso. Así que sí, creo que guiarte por la edad oficial en vez del diseño es perfectamente razonable, y la manera correcta de encarar este asunto. Y por favor, en la vida real también guiate por la edad oficial que dice en la identificación. Y las lolis que tienen 800 años están OK. Y los trapos son para putos. Y Yoko no funciona bien como ejemplo ahí porque el tiempo oficialmente se mide de forma diferente en TTGL y ella en realidad es biológicamente mayor.