I am a lot more understanding of two people playing teenaged characters actually, genuinely exploring the awkward clusterfuck that is teenage sexuality even if one is 19 and the other is 17. There's so much potential for hilarious storytelling.
The thing I am more specifically talking about are characters where there is an obvious age gap and we have older characters pursuing ones that are much younger - like a 25 year old hitting on a 15 year old or a 16 year old trying to jump on the bones of a 27 year old.
In terms of the argument that "We do so much worse things like murder, torture, rape, etc in RP!"
Those are all horrible things that we RP as horrible things played for drama and conflict. They also usually happen to adult characters. When they happen to child characters, the horror and impact of it is seen as even worse.
No one can tell me that the dude trying to hit on my friend's young miqo'te teen or my 15 year old lalafell is trying to RP a child-adult romance for the horror and narrative of it. Or that teenaged characters trying to get into Tiergan's pantaloons are doing it as a horrible thing played for drama and conflict. They're usually thinking that they can initiate it the same way as they would any other RP romance and move it along like any other RP relationship.
I know we let a lot of things slide as RPers for story-purposes, but normalizing an adult-child romantic relationship and its fetishization is creepy, enabling of really dangerous behavior, and should just not be one of those things we just let happen, guys.
Call it inciting a witchhunt if you will. At the very least, I shouldn't have to put a "No ERP" tag on my 15 year old character just to avoid it.
EDIT: Most awkward and hilarious typo ever. :V
The thing I am more specifically talking about are characters where there is an obvious age gap and we have older characters pursuing ones that are much younger - like a 25 year old hitting on a 15 year old or a 16 year old trying to jump on the bones of a 27 year old.
In terms of the argument that "We do so much worse things like murder, torture, rape, etc in RP!"
Those are all horrible things that we RP as horrible things played for drama and conflict. They also usually happen to adult characters. When they happen to child characters, the horror and impact of it is seen as even worse.
No one can tell me that the dude trying to hit on my friend's young miqo'te teen or my 15 year old lalafell is trying to RP a child-adult romance for the horror and narrative of it. Or that teenaged characters trying to get into Tiergan's pantaloons are doing it as a horrible thing played for drama and conflict. They're usually thinking that they can initiate it the same way as they would any other RP romance and move it along like any other RP relationship.
I know we let a lot of things slide as RPers for story-purposes, but normalizing an adult-child romantic relationship and its fetishization is creepy, enabling of really dangerous behavior, and should just not be one of those things we just let happen, guys.
Call it inciting a witchhunt if you will. At the very least, I shouldn't have to put a "No ERP" tag on my 15 year old character just to avoid it.
EDIT: Most awkward and hilarious typo ever. :V
