#fictional age discourse

[elf-trash]

reposting this bc the OP blocked me (and is blocking anyone else who disagrees which means blocked people can't reblog) and i want to say this loud and with my whole chest!!!!!

another Dragon Age fic was recently outed as being AI, and this is what the writer had to say for themselves about it:

so actually, Grammarly uses generative AI and is just as bad as ChatGPT. it also objectively makes your writing worse, it sucks the voice out of your prose and turns it into corporate sounding homogenized paste. it's also unethical for all the same reasons any generative AI is unethical. get a writing group and have a real human beta read for you if you don't trust yourself to check your own grammar etc. but honestly something unpolished and written entirely by your human brain and human imagination will ALWAYS be better than AI slop.

also, the part about published authors doing this is patently untrue. i know this is a huge problem in the self-publishing space, but most publishers now are including clauses in their contracts that expressly forbid the use of AI in ANY part of the creative process. this includes using ChatGPT to generate or clean up outlines or Grammarly to spellcheck and revise. so if you're trying to publish, don't fucking do this or you could literally be asked to return an advance if you get caught.

i've posted about this in the past, but AI detectors are actually shocking accurate these days. i've tested them extensively recently and they can consistently and correctly flag individual sentences written by ChatGPT in an otherwise original passage. and they almost never flag false positives. so the argument that AI detectors can't be trusted is just flat out wrong. are they correct 100% of the time? no. but can they indicate with a high degree of accuracy if AI was used in some capacity? absolutely, especially if there is additional evidence.

and for all the people hand wringing about AI detectors flagging false positives, let me just say this: if something is not AI written it is very easy to prove. you can't write anything of any considerable length without leaving a massive paper trail of notes and drafts. almost all writing software tracks changes and makes it very easy to prove you wrote something yourself. being falsely being accused of AI isn't actually a real problem and is only being made to seem as such by people who are trying to get away with and justify using AI or who are worried about getting caught.

i think a lot of people are just lured by a seemingly easy shortcut, and to their untrained eye, what the AI is spitting out feels "better" to them than their own writing. but i promise you it's not. trust your own brain and put in the work to improve at your craft rather than outsourcing the gift of your imagination to a robot that steals from other people's work.

i will continue to die on this hill!!!!!

[fabled-lady-twilla]

How it feels being a ShigaDeku shipper in this fandom. Why is everyone so mean? 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[420technoblazeit]

i keep seeing people make the argument that hobie's WAY older than gwen and pavitr despite the fact that they're all really close friends in the movie. and i get that there's no canon established age for him in atsv yet but let's be honest. it's because he's black and miles is 'less threatening' than him isn't it

[vilsoo]

my mutuals (majority that had bigger blogs) have all been dropping like dead flies because of a toxic, pathetic writer on this app that drove all them off. rip to munsonsins, getoswhore, kazushawty, literally everyone. and those that have heen affected yet still continue to stay on this app, i hope you’re all doing fine. but these ppl were driven off all because of jealousy reasons, false plagiarism accusations, death threats, cyberbullying, you fucking name it. we lose so much good works and genuine people on here that created their own platforms for the purposes of consuming fanfiction/writing fanfiction 😐 but since they were being dragged into discourse with a certain someone on this app, it’s crazy how their followers dickride the shit out of that thing and send hate/death threats to them through anon like wowww. 😹

[harbingerofsoup]

i bet the in universe daniel molloy discourse is a thing of beauty

[watcher0033]

Great take on the Hobbie Age discourse!!!

Honestly it should be like this instead of some moral posturing that strip off the agency and personalities of the characters and casually throwing out heavy-loaded words like a huge stick picked out from the ground and waving it around as if it couldn’t poke somebody’s eye out and be an all around kill joy about it.

Ugh.

Not to mention there’s multiple sources who have said Hobie’s 15 (Phil Lord), 19-20 (some of the animation crew), and his canonical comic age is 16-17. And apparently PunkFlower already has a cult following SINCE their comic era so there’s that too.

On the other hand, I can’t help but laugh at the meta-comedic aspect of it all that of everyone, even his own creators, trying to put a label on a character who has claimed his dislike for said labels and doesn’t believe in consistency.

Da Powarh, Ser.

Cannot be contained, refuses to be contained. 🫡

Meta-humor aside, I completely agree with your essay there. I think the age discourse happened not just because of shipping reasons but also for the fact that he looked ambiguously older but still have more prominent bonds with the teenage-Spiders that the Adults— which should already be telling, c’mon.

But there’s also the fact that harsh experiences ages a person. Grief, stress, and depression affects people physically and not just mentally. Like, just look at Miles-42 with his harsher facial lines and overall “mature” look compared to our Miles. Look at the world he’s living in, the grief that he’s surely carrying about his father’s death.

We describe him as a darker version of Miles but we did not uniformly conclude that he’s older than him, or that he’s a more troubled adult version of himself now, did we?

Apply that same logic to Hobie with his surely troubled background of young teen vigilantism and political activism and the effects it had on him over the years, and that’s the chai honestly.

Thing is Hobie's age could add to the tragedy of his story because every spiderman story where the spiderhero is a teenager and has to risk their life to keep thousands or millions of people safe because of an incompetent safety system and capitalist greed is tragic. Why should a high schooler bear the responsibility of what hundreds of grown adults should be doing, and why does a high schooler need to be the one to clean up their messes and mistakes? And then that high schooler will have grown adults trying to kill them, entire police forces trying to arrest them, news media smearing their name, strangers always trying to take pictures or expose their identity, and always always always the uncertainty of family acceptance at the end of it all.

So with Hobie (bear in mind i don't know much about him) if he's really 16-17 in Across the Spiderverse, that means he's already been through a lot of the same shit that nearly every other spidey had to go through but at a younger age probably (and that Gwen was able to avoid and that Miles is trying to prevent). I didn't get the sense that he'd just come from a massive tragedy when we saw him in the movie. If he's had a police chief close to him die or be killed (by him maybe, idk) that's a lot for a kid to go through. Every other spidey offering advice to Miles was an adult. I'm not saying their Uncle Bens or Police Chief Scenarios weren't as bad, but they don't have the same freshness with it, you know? It's been years, maybe even decades.

Versus if he's on the older side, like 19 to 20, there's been more time to process, i think. More hindsight, more growth, which might give Hobie the best idea out of all of them of what Miles is about to go through because it hasn't been too long, but it's still fresh enough on his mind that he's got a semi-healed rawness that others might not (plus him being anti establishment/the "fuck canon" character would also make him want to help miles).

[rafyki]

I really can't understand why, but there's so much useless discourse in the pjo fandom - about ships, about interpretation of characters, about headcanons, and all stuff like that. Like, are most people in this fandom unable to have fun?

I mean, I've been in the fandom for ten years now, and (maybe it was bc back in the day I was in the Italian fandom) but back then there wasn't this much discourse???

Please, just learn to have fun, that's literally what fandoms are made for

[sekaithemystic]

as veilguard approaches and the dragon age fandom finally wakes up after years of slumbering, discourses have been going around as well and this is my state of mind while i navigate through the minefield of this fandom

[maedelin]

Just wondering, folks. Have you ever considered, with all the lives and thoughts in Rogue's head, she's lived centuries more than him? I mean, since that seems to be an extremely large part of the argument I'm seeing. I just don't understand. No one argues about this with pretty much every other character set out there. Thor/Quite a few of the Terrans he's loved, Steve/Anyone that is from the Silent Generation (Pre-1928) and on, RoLo, Mystique/Maybe anyone and everyone at this point, IDK how old she is. Or...

[ii-meeple-confessions]

random age hc ramble time ..!!! yay!!!

i like to think theres two age “factors” that a mephone (technically all meeplings but i like the phones the most. 💔) has, technical and . like. mental?

technical age corresponds with when their apple equivalent release date (since they’re the same? im guessing idk), so like 3GS is 15, 4 is 14, etc. basically how old their body/hardware is. shrugs!!!

mental is how long they were/have been like, active. but it’s odd ??? i need to flesh this out more but sometimes they have a “set” age at first 🤨 like 5S and 5C wouldn’t be super young mentally (i see them as like a middle aged married couple HELPP) but like idek how that’d work LMFAO

but the main example !! this is how i see 4 being the “older brother” role, because he’s been active for much longer (3GS would be younger despite being technically older due to. being. you know. shut down in the closet)

idek if any of this makes sense. funny little robots i like to play around with

- 3G anon

.

[bitchy-peachy]

I really wish that antis stopped using real life sa victims in their shit especially since they tell real life sa victims that we deserved our assaults cos we all handle our trauma differently.

[heroes-never-discourse]

How to immediately lose me in your critique of a fantasy story involving a monster x human romance: Bringing up a 100+ age gap as a legitimate problem within the relationship.

Like what are we doing here, why are we talking about impossible age gaps as if it's a genuine concern. Who are we trying to protect. Get a grip please.

[54prowl]

more female villains?

god forbid women commit manslaughter?

you can't even handle Makima's existence what do you mean 'be gay do crime' huh??

[shrimpmandan]

ngl it's funny as fuck to me how the enjoyment of fanfiction, ships, selfships, fanart, etc. that happens to incidentally involve an underage character is always positioned by antis as a CLEAR and OBVIOUS sign of pedophilia when like 99% of the time when I see people with that kinda stuff bookmarked or publicly endorsed it's literally just bc they glanced at the tags and went "eh whatever, it's hot anyways" and stopped caring because that's what. normal people do

[an-entity-i-think]

*sees something really annoying and stupid and Purity Culture*

*clicks on their profile*

- age: 16 -

"Ah. You are young and have time to grow. Its not your fault that you are surrounded by poison in our current media that confuses fiction with real life. I wish you well, friend."

*blocks profile and moves on with no interaction*

[emeraldspiral]

Looking at Invader Zim age discourse trying to claim that X number of years in one species's lifespan is the equivalent of 1 human year makes all of my brain cells want to commit die. It's "Loki is 16" all over again. I'm begging yall to get off social media and take a science class cause Jesus Christ how do you function in society being this ignorant?

Different species do not mature at the same rate relative to their lifespan. Grogu being a toddler for 50 years is not a thing that actually happens in nature.

Let's look at dogs for a second. It's commonly said that a dog ages 7 years per 1 human year. Most dogs live about 10-13 years, or 70-91 years, which sounds about right, doesn't it? But some dogs live to see 20-31, or 140-217, way longer than any human has ever lived. But let's also consider their early development. Dogs can start walking after just a couple of weeks while human babies take several months. Dogs can reach adulthood and sexual maturity in less than a year. Some 7 year old children do experience premature puberty, but this is far from being the norm and does not mean they are fully mature adults. Additionally, it is said that a fully adult dog only has the cognition of a 3-5 year-old human child. No matter which way you look at it, you can not equate the way a dog matures and ages to human development and lifespan.

Most newborn animal species, regardless of how long or short their lives are, are much further along in their development than human babies are, closer to toddlers than infants. Many are able to walk or crawl within a few days or even minutes after birth. Compared to most animal babies, human babies would be considered extremely premature.

With Zim, we saw onscreen that as a newborn he could walk, stand upright, jump, grab and hold things, and speak, more like a human 3-5 year-old than an infant. If we were going by the logic of "1 Irken year is 10 human years" that goes around in fanon, 10-year-old Zim should still be a baby, only barely be able to walk, pick up objects, and say a few words. But in the unfinished episode The Trial, concept art for 10-year-old Zim shows him looking like about what you'd expect the actual Irken equivalent of a 10-year-old to look like; taller than a newborn, but smaller than an adult, which for Irkens doesn't get much taller than a human 12-year-old with rare exceptions. There really is no basis what-so-ever to assume that Zim has only developed to the equivalent of 12 or 16, especially when he has a job in the military and lives on his own with no supervision. I don't know why anybody who headcanons that for shipping reasons would even want that to be the case when by that logic it would mean Dib and Gaz and any other human characters they want to pair him with would very quickly grow up to be adults while he remained a child.

In most cases, when dealing with extremely long-lived fantasy/sci-fi races, if the rate of aging is addressed at all, it is much more likely that the characters develop at the same rate as humans until they reach their 20s, at which point they'd be fully mature physically and from then on their bodies would simply not break down and display signs of aging as quickly as a humans. It makes no sense for a humanoid species to remain in a state of helpless infancy for decades or spend hundreds of years going through puberty. The only times you'll usually ever see something like that in fiction is if it's being played for a joke, or because the writers actually wanted to address how messed-up it would be to be to go through developmental stages like that for so long. Usually it's not even a matter of aging, the characters are just vampires or androids or something stuck at whatever age for eternity, yearning to grow up but never being able to.

Keep in mind however, that physical age and maturity are separate things. There's no reason to think that just because a character is immortal or long-lived that they mature as slowly as they age. Maturity has a lot more to do with life experience than physical growth, especially once your brain finishes developing at around 25. Often in fiction, when dealing with an immortal adolescent, being condescended to as if they were a child is a source of great frustration because they do have the mind of an adult. On the flip side, even in real life some people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s may be stuck in a state of arrested development, with teenagers surpassing their level of maturity.

My personal interpretation of Zim is that he's a manchild. He probably aged more or less like a human until his 20s and then stayed physically 20-25 for decades or centuries until the time the show takes place. He's just so immature he finds his equal in a 12-year-old human child. However, if he were to stay on earth long enough, I could see him maturing along with his peers at skool and starting to act more his age when they get into their 20s, (assuming he actually follows them to hi skool and college and doesn't just keep repeating 6th grade forever). If he stuck around Dib and Gaz into their 30s and beyond, I could see him continuing to match their level of maturity into their old age while he remains physically young.

If you have a problem with Zim being canonically an adult pretending to be a child, I don't know what to tell you guys. Like, if you think it's sad, that's the point. Literally, in the commentary for Mortos, Jhonen says that's the joke. That Zim's "basically an old man" getting into slap-fights with actual children and it's funny because it's so pathetic. If you think it's creepy, that's also kinda the point. He's a villain. The fact that he's not even human and that he's plotting the demise of the human race is already disturbing. He steals a bunch of children's organs in like, the third episode. He used time-traveling rubber piggies to maim and eventually kill Dib starting from when he was a toddler and then took a victory sip after watching the life leave his eyes. The entire concept of Zim is inherently sinister and predatory. But at the same time, Zim being a sexual threat is completely off the table. Canonically, he's aroace. He has no reproductive organs and no sex drive. He finds humans repulsive, and between that, his germophobia, and general paranoia it would be far more in-character for him to be terrified of the prospect of unwanted sexual advances than to be a sexual predator himself. That's why I don't think anybody thought too hard about Zim trying to woo Tak when he thought she was an actual human child, and why you shouldn't either. Yes, he had ill intentions toward her, because he is a bad guy, but those intentions were entirely chaste. Zim is not a threat to children because he might try to manipulate them into inappropriate relationships, he's a threat to children because he might manipulate them into helping him enslave their race.

There's no need to hand-wring about problematic age discourse. We're talking about a horror comedy that was cancelled two decades ago where the prospect of romance was never on the table to begin with. There is no such thing as a canon-compliant romance fanfic, and all fanfic by definition is non-canon anyway so it doesn't even matter. Make the characters whatever ages you want and tweak their characterization or circumstances in whatever ways you need to make whatever the fuck story you wanna tell work. It's all make-believe anyway. You don't need to make up fake quotes or deny or creatively interpret real quotes or bend yourselves into pretzels to prove the age headcanons you use to justify why you do or don't like a ship.

But for fucks sake, if you're gonna go there at least pretend like you know a single goddamned thing about the way aging, development, and maturity work before you unironically make talking points following the same logic as "According to my calculations, this character first portrayed by Tom Hiddleston at age 29 is actually 16".