(11-07-2014, 01:24 PM)Tiergan Wrote: 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 fertilization 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.
I think, then, that there is an acknowledged difference between those players engaging in storytelling, and those engaging in predatory or . . .hmm, socially unacceptable behavior that promotes victimization. In which case, I don't think anyone in the thread is encouraging the ooc side of things where people do ic things for personal ooc reasons (ie, pushing a character to do something not because it's something the character would do, but because the player wants it to happen no matter what); none of that is okay, in my book, because real people wind up getting hurt or victimized.
But, yes, there are some rpers who do push boundaries and write questionable material either to push themselves or try out some form of writing (after all, there are plenty of rpers who use rp as a means to practice in the hopes of one day writing something more serious). I agree that they're more likely a minority, however, and honestly I wouldn't be comfortable writing really questionable stuff with people outside of people I've rped with for a long time and have gotten to know oocly for just that reason -- I don't want it to be used as a means of, well, getting someone off.
But, to me, there is a level of squeamishness that I tend to avoid no matter the age of the character, where things go from legitimate attempt to use situation to further story or character development to sheer gratuity. At that point (and I agree, the threshold is lower the younger the character is), to me, it is pointless to write because it has utterly no point beyond the gratuity, and that's where things get dangerous.
But, all of that said, everyone's level of comfort is different, and, you know, the point of a community is to be able to air your opinions -- especially where you fear something is going on that is detrimental to the community. So, I don't think you should feel like people think you're inciting a witchhunt. You're genuinely concerned, and should be applauded for speaking up on a matter you feel is important.
(and, just to be clear on my own end, I'm speaking from the angle of emotionally and physically immature characters (children or teenagers) being written by two adults. I tend to avoid writing anything really awful with people I know are young because there is (usually!) mental and emotional immaturity, and I do believe some things should wait. I know a young man who lied on another site I am on about his age in order to be allowed in, as there is an age limit of 16. While we forbade him to participate in anything questionable until he turned 18, stuff happened as it so often does. He was only 14 or 15 when he joined, and unfortunately he got taken advantage of by a 19 year old girl who, though the age difference wasn't that great, still manipulated and hurt him and some other of our male writers -- unbeknownst to the staff, this kid was getting threats from other guys on site to stay away from her, and it was just this huge cluster. As he told me, he thought he was old enough/mature enough to handle it -- and he wasn't. That's the problem, and where predation becomes such a huge deal)
