Age of Consent... and Costuming

So, here's a weird question. What if you are writing a story, and everyone in it is 18 and up, but they are costumed as and referred to as characters who aren't? This is NOT a trick to get around the age of consent rules; I'd find such ideas deplorable. This is directly relevant to this thread. I've decided to fill my own request, due to collective disinterest, but I'm worried that an explicitly 18 year-old (or older) girl dressed as a technically younger character might alarm the censors. Thoughts?

Laurel told me that characters *appearing* to be under 18 are verboten. Best way to find out for sure is to write the piece, submit, and see what happens.

So, if we have a clearly 20 year-old girl dressed as Princess Azula for a convention, then that would still likely be out of line? That's fine, I just need to know.

And then the Fire nation attacked. . .

Saucyminx said:

And then the Fire nation attacked. . .

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Right?! I do have a Fire Nation-inspired story, of course using entirely original, age appropriate characters and whatnot. In this case, the story is "real world" setting in which a guy hooks up with a bunch of hot, costumed girls at a convention. I say "real world" in quotes because the plot is flimsy at best; I just need to know who to exclude before I put forth the effort of writing it.

HammerGod said:

So, if we have a clearly 20 year-old girl dressed as Princess Azula for a convention, then that would still likely be out of line? That's fine, I just need to know.

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I'll guess (don't quote me) that an 'adult' dressing as a child but otherwise appearing adult would be just fine, like Angus Young of AC/DC prancing around in schoolboy knickers. If our femme dresses-down to age 14 and is mistaken for and acting like a 14-yr-old, you may have a problem. Or maybe not.

Hypoxia said:

I'll guess (don't quote me) that an 'adult' dressing as a child but otherwise appearing adult would be just fine, like Angus Young of AC/DC prancing around in schoolboy knickers. If our femme dresses-down to age 14 and is mistaken for and acting like a 14-yr-old, you may have a problem. Or maybe not.

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That is a perfect example.

In this story, no one mistakes anyone for being underage; it is all totally above board. I just didn't want the powers-that-be to mistake my costumed con-goers for living loopholes in the very reasonable age restrictions.

I have seen approved stories where one or more of the characters were under 18, and this was explicitly stated in the story. Of course they got reported and pulled.

Yuu can not artificially age a fictional character or a real person.

For example if I wanted to write a Sabrina Carpenter Rowan Blanchard lesbian love fest, I couldn't just say it was taking place 10 years in the future.

You also can't write about Ash Ketcham et al from Pokemon or Lisa Simpson and Milhouse after the prom, and as they are all under 18.

It is also forbidden to say someone is 18 then describe budding breasts just starting to grow off her chest, or just a few fine wispy pubic hairs gorwing around his testicals which had just decesended. These are things that happen well before 18 and they are forbidden.

But writing about a 20 something female who is dressed as Lisa Simpson or Sabrina Carpenter for a halloween party or whatever should be okay. You can always pm laurel a sample of what you are writing and ask it it would pass muster.

That is a good idea, I think I'll do that. And yeah, since these are 18-20 year-olds dressing up as favorite characters, for what is essentially a costume party, it should be fine, but I'll definitely check before submitting.

Hypoxia said:

Laurel told me that characters *appearing* to be under 18 are verboten. Best way to find out for sure is to write the piece, submit, and see what happens.

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Don't know about you, but I spend weeks pulling a story together. There's no way I'd write it and submit it just to see what happened. This is exactly why rules need to be stated clearly and up front.

And yes, the appearance of underage is forbidden, even if no ages are stated, even if the age is stated later in the story and is over 18, even if the character turns out to be non-human - none of that matters. The unstated rule is:

If the character can at any point be mistaken for a under 18 year old human, even if the misapprehension is cleared up later, and has or describes sexual experiences, the story is rejectable.

(I don't know what happens if such a character encourages sexual experiences but fails to get one.)

You're in an interesting grey area. I'm not always one to tell people how to get around the rules but you know Laurel and who ever else mods the stories isn't intimately familiar with every franchise ever. I'd post the story and if it gets kicked back deal with it then.

If they are dressed up as charachters who aren't 18 you should be just fine however. It's a costume and last I checked costumes aren't magical (except when they are), me dressing up as Bart Simpson won't make me twenty plus years younger just like me dressing up as Superman won't let me fly and lift cars so that should be fine.

On the subject of Azula that's a question I've kept putting out there to the mods because nobody can answer what happens to characters who are in multiple stories/franchises whatever. Is Peter Parker (Spiderman) 16/17 and in high school, what about the X-Men? They always seem to make it into the mid 20's but every fifteen or so years the universe has some sort of reboot or reset and they end up back as freshmen in high school. For Azula and the Avatar universe as a whole well Legend of Korra exists. Aang died in his seventies, his children are adults. Katara and Zuko are old and retired. Sokka is presumably dead and Azula's fate is never revealed but there is no reason to believe she was executed. So are they out of bounds because they are "best known" from the original series or in bounds because there is official cannon depicting them as adults. (Unlike adult Bart and Lisa which are always fantasies and non-cannon even by whatever loose standards define Simpsons cannon.) There doesn't seem to be an official answer.

So in short, the OP should be just fine. Though you have to be careful about them acting too kiddy. There is a line where the powers that be don't care how many times you've specified that the characters are thirty.

Maybe it has to do with common perception and first thoughts.

Bart/Lisa ... obviously you think the cartoon, so too young.

X-Men (most of them are written as adults) so Wolvern the Teenage Years never enters your mind, where as Jubilee will be underage because that is how she was commonly seen (at least to me during the cartoon years).

Now if you say ... Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years (too young) but if you say the actresses name in a Fan Fiction setting, I'd imagine you were talking about her as an adult in present time unless stated otherwise.

Perhaps the best thing is not to push gray areas on Lit, you have other sites that welcome all manner of stories, no real need to push those limits here.

I enjoy the grey and see no reason not to play in it. However in this case it's not about the grey, it's about really liking rules that are in plain English and black and white. I'm more than game to see if this or that will fly mind you but I like rules that are clear even ones I don't agree with. I for example do not agree with the fact that while bestiality is not allowed if my rabbit has horns and is thus a Jackalope that it's suddenly in bound. But I understand it, adhere to it and only complain about it as an example of nonsensical rules not rules that are poorly defined and thus difficult at times to actually obey.

The X-men are minus Wolverine and Storm who are almost always adults are not consistently adults. Cyclops, Jean, Iceman, Beast and most of the team bounce around between 15 and 45 so much it's impossible to keep track. Same with Spidey.

Wonder Years was a bit before my time. I'm aware of the show but only in a roundabout way. How bout Boy Meets World? By the end of the show they were in college and now that Girl Meets World exists we know the main characters got married and had a kid. (Same issue as above with Avatar.) Then you also have tons of characters whose ages are never accurately pinned down and who for whatever reason don't fit into various social conventions that would let us gauge them.

Also for the record you can't age characters under copyright. There are the majority of Disney Characters are pulled from fairy tales that aren't under copyright. Legally as Hook demonstrates if you want to write about Peter Pan returning as an adult or aging you could publish that yourself, same with Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy of Oz. Which also technically means they are not parodies or fanfiction in the legal sense of either word.

Sean Renaud said:

Wonder Years was a bit before my time. I'm aware of the show but only in a roundabout way. How bout Boy Meets World? By the end of the show they were in college and now that Girl Meets World exists we know the main characters got married and had a kid.

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I was thinking the same thing with Saved by the Bell.

Sean Renaud said:

it's about really liking rules that are in plain English and black and white.

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I couldn't agree more, but that's not the way it works here. You learn the rules by asking here, or straying over a line.

Unambiguous rules would be helpful to writers - you'd know exactly what not to waste your time on. But I imagine they'd be constricting to Laurel, who presumably enjoys following her instinct on what's going too far and what's acceptable. Rigid rules are annoying to enforce, even while they are simplest to follow.

The best suggestion is - when in doubt, ask Laurel. Show her a sample of writing and see what comes back.

The bestiality problem - bunnies no, jackalopes yes - just strikes me as absurd. Maybe that's because if it isn't a human female there's a zero percent chance I'd find it arousing. But adding a horn to a horse shouldn't change anything.

As far as I can tell, if the character can be interpreted as a surrogate for an underage human, it's disallowed; so presumably a 14 year old elf is out of bounds even if 14 is the legal age of consent for elves in your setting. They're really humans with pointy ears, so no.

The simplest way to view it is probably this: imagine you run the site and you're terrified of lawsuits or negative publicity. You don't let anything even resemble underage sex because someone might raise a fuss. You don't allow sex with animals because someone *would* raise a fuss. But no one's going to raise a fuss over a unicorn.

In short, if the rules don't make sense, it's probably because people don't. Welcome to market forces at work.

HandsInTheDark said:

The simplest way to view it is probably this: imagine you run the site and you're terrified of lawsuits or negative publicity. You don't let anything even resemble underage sex because someone might raise a fuss. You don't allow sex with animals because someone *would* raise a fuss. But no one's going to raise a fuss over a unicorn.

In short, if the rules don't make sense, it's probably because people don't. Welcome to market forces at work.

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That explanation makes sense to/works for me.

Thanks for all the input, folks. Truly appreciated. Let me just clarify a few things:

First, with regard to Azula, we do have a definitive answer. It is (sadly) a no-go. I wrote an Azula femdom piece a while back, with her existing as the adult she would havee been post-Airbender, pre-Korra. Didn't fly with the powers that be, so I did some editing: Fire Lady Azula became Azaria, Lady Infernum, of the Infernal Dominion; an entirely distinct original character in a brand new setting. Perhaps a bit sneaky, but it was technically acceptable.

Now, as for the rules, I do not want to push any boundaries or play in the gray areas. I have very specific, personal distaste for using underage individuals in sexual stories. That's a personal thing for me. I appreciate all the speculation on the gray area, but I'm not wanting to push any boundaries or make anyone uncomfortable.

Now, onto my characters. There is, to my way of thinking, no danger of them being mistaken for children or acting childish. What we have is several 18-20 year-old girls at a ComiCon-esque event, just wearing costumes of several note-worthy characters. Azula from Avatar is one of them, as is Blackfire from Teen Titans. (Now, despite the "Teen" Titans name, Blackfire shouldn't be a problem even in-universe; she is teenage Starfire's OLDER sister, old enough to rule her homeworld.) But either way, the girls don't actually act as their characters, they just dress up as them and have hot, hot fangirl femdom group-sex with a rather unsuspecting guy. My only real concern was that I'd spend over a week working on this story, and then get it tossed back for the Azula/Blackfire costumed girls, and have to do some elaborate rewrites.

If, as costumed as underage known characters, they have hot sex in the story, no, I don't think that will fly here. But I'm not the one it has to pass. Let us know how i worked out.

The over 18 but dressed as an under 18 is verboten in porn film work. It's not just Laurel's rule.

Okay, so a 20 year-old girl in an Azula costume (not dressing like she's young, just wearing the Fire Nation gear), is off limits. Got it. Thank you! (I assume then that a male, like AC/DC's Angus Young, in a schoolboy outfit, is also off limits. That's not my thing, just making sure the rule is applied evenly.)

Except nobody is even close to sure on that Hammer. I'm fairly certain it would fly just fine. Hell that would fly just fine IRL and all the things that aren't allowed wouldn't fly IRL.

R.Richard is dead wrong about dressed as under 18 being verboten in porn film work. We know that much and five minutes on the net can show you that. The youngest Brady is over 18? Bull fucking shit. They aren't even attempting to depict the character as being 18. American Dad's Steve isn't 18 either., the youngest Cosby Girl wasn't either. Anybody ever heard of Southpark? None of them are over 18, hell they made a big deal a year or two back that one hit 13. And I'm only picking from ones that are undeniably underaged. Not ones who are generally underaged like Batgirl or Robin. Nor ones who were aged up like Flintstones porn with Pebbles and Bam Bam. And that's not even going into the the entire teen genre as a whole. So no, you can dress however you want in mainstream porn unless of course you live in a world where adult women routinely dress like this and carry teddy bears in public.

And if I wanted to spend more than five minutes I could dig up a few dozen more. So no, there is no rule against it, not even a particularly strong "tradition" of it. Nor is it illegal to age young characters up. Laurel will not allow it and that's all fine and dandy but not allowed on Lit and verboten are not the same thing. God I hate all the fucking misinformation that people who don't know spread to people around here.

Right now, my chief concern is what's allowed on Lit; though the other input is much appreciated. Should I just post a rough outline of the story, so we have a better idea of my premise?

Apparently not. You're just going to continue to get varied responses from folks who don't count. The submission editor, Laurel is whose opinion counts.

How do I contact her? Sorry, I'm blind. Not being silly either, I'm literally blind, and navigating websites is super tricky for me. (If you've ever read my stories, that's why my descriptions suck, hahaha.)

The only way is through the PM (private message) system, upper right corner of this page. Simply "Laurel" as the address.