Times when the research was against you.

[SimonDoom]

I'm working on a story set in June 1992, and I wanted one of the characters to be reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt… which came out in September that year.

It's not like many people would catch the slight anachronism, but it would bother me if the timeline couldn't be reconciled; I was planning to leave the year unstated, as something readers could work out from various clues if so inclined, and this might spoil that.

Fortunately I'd already established that the character had connections in the publishing industry, so I decided that it must be an Advance Copy. I think that's pretty plausible, as apparently there was a great deal of buzz about it in literary circles ahead of its release—and I will not research the timeline around that any further in case I discover any more contradictions.

Unfortunately that means I'll have to drop the joke where another character glimpses the author name on the cover and thinks Madonna has written another book after Sex, this time called Tart. (Sex only came out in October 1992.)

Would it make a difference if you set the story in 1993?

 

[FeralSmile]

If they are <18 in the original material, you cannot have them (in sexual situations) in a story even if you state that they are >18.

It gets into a bit more of a gray area if the original material includes parts where the characters are both underage and overage, and some common sense must apply, but it's not the case in general that the existence of canon stories where the characters are older than 18 means LE will allow erotic stories set in that timeframe. The safest thing is to avoid situations where there is any doubt whatsoever.

Huh. Thanks, I was unaware. I assumed that if a story says Velma is 20, that she's 20, despite her having appeared in other stories where she was younger. I'm... not sure I fully understand that policy, but fair enough. Sorry that I gave bad advice there; I surely didn't mean to.

 

[u1u1u1]

I’m not a Scooby-Doo expert but there seem to be quite a few stories where the characters are older, like this where they’re adults with jobs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooby-Doo_on_Zombie_Island

 

[MelissaBaby]

If Shakespeare can have Prince Hal about the same age as Henry Percy, aka 'Hotspur,' when in fact Hotspur was 23 years older, I think no one will notice your discrepancy.

Oh yeah? You think?

Because a commenter on Queen of the Roller Derby tried to call me out because the story is set in the mid 1950s and one of her teammates tells the main character that she skates "like Sonja Henie." They insisted that Sonja's fame as an ice skater was early in the 1930s and my characters would be too young to know who she was. But I had done my research, and I knew that she was starring in ice shows well into the 50s and was still probably the most famous skater in the world well past the time the story was set.

But the key point is that such a minor reference drew a reader's attention enough for them to submit a comment questioning its veracity. So, don't assume you'll get away with faking it.

 

[SimonDoom]

Huh. Thanks, I was unaware. I assumed that if a story says Velma is 20, that she's 20, despite her having appeared in other stories where she was younger. I'm... not sure I fully understand that policy, but fair enough. Sorry that I gave bad advice there; I surely didn't mean to.

Some of the "rules" at Literotica don't make any sense unless you look at things from their point of view. They want to avoid attracting a certain sort of readership, I think, and if you write stories about "aged-up" characters who are known primarily as children, there is the concern that this readership will be attracted regardless what you "say" their age is.

But I think the Scooby Doo characters represent a gray area, because to my knowledge their ages are never actually revealed in the cartoon episodes. The male characters speak with obviously post-pubescent voices. All of the characters were played by adult actors in the movies. The way they get around without any adult supervision suggests they could be interpreted as over 18, even if the creators' notes indicate otherwise.

In any event, one can find stories based on Scooby Doo characters here at Literotica, so they appear to be acceptable. One might ask Laurel just to make sure.

 

[FeralSmile]

Some of the "rules" at Literotica don't make any sense unless you look at things from their point of view. They want to avoid attracting a certain sort of readership, I think, and if you write stories about "aged-up" characters who are known primarily as children, there is the concern that this readership will be attracted regardless what you "say" their age is.

I hear you and understand, but at the same time... isn't it possible to "age up" characters who were primarily known as children? Just as it's possible to portray elderly characters as being in the prime of their lives, by changing the time of the setting of stories? What matters, one might argue, is how firmly the author establishes age and age-relevant characteristics. If one writes about Lolita and still describes her as being age 12, or one writes about Juliet and her lover Romeo and still describes them as Shakespeare did, then changing the numbers doesn't suffice, and there's a clear problem, I agree.

But if one treats them fully as older and describes them as such, I don't see what laws or taboos are broken there. People age. We were all children once. Shirley Temple Black was a U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. Should it be forbidden to write about her adult life because she was famous as a child?

I'm sympathetic to the concern, absolutely! But... the policy seems strange, as I now understand it.

 

[TheArsonist]

Some of the "rules" at Literotica don't make any sense unless you look at things from their point of view. They want to avoid attracting a certain sort of readership, I think, and if you write stories about "aged-up" characters who are known primarily as children, there is the concern that this readership will be attracted regardless what you "say" their age is.

There are also laws/legal interpretations in some jurisdictions along similar lines. For example, explicit drawings of Bart and Lisa Simpson, even if depicted as obviously older than in the cartoon, can be considered CP by some courts in some countries. And LE would obviously want to avoid becoming the target of any kind of prosecution, crackdown or moral panic.

Should it be forbidden to write about her adult life because she was famous as a child?

You can write about it, it's just that you (maybe) can't publish it here. Though in fact I don't think the rule applies to real people.

But if you write stories based on pre-existing fictional characters, you are doing so in order to somehow draw on associations with the original stories, right? And if those associations are with the characters as children, that will often be problematic. Sure, you can make up cases that a reasonable person would find acceptable (and if you did try to post such a story you might get away with it), but people are always going to be pushing the boundaries, so there's got to be a pretty broad rule.

To return to the topic at hand, for another story I'm working on, I had a really hard time figuring out how to prevent the main character from recovering a bunch of files from cloud storage after she loses her phone and forgets her account password due to amnesia: I thought having a bunch of custom security questions she would have to research the answers to would work, but Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, etc. have procedures nowadays to recover your account access even if you can't answer the security questions, and they don't fit the story. I eventually decided to just invent a cloud storage provider with the process I needed.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Some of the "rules" at Literotica don't make any sense unless you look at things from their point of view. They want to avoid attracting a certain sort of readership, I think, and if you write stories about "aged-up" characters who are known primarily as children, there is the concern that this readership will be attracted regardless what you "say" their age is.

But I think the Scooby Doo characters represent a gray area, because to my knowledge their ages are never actually revealed in the cartoon episodes. The male characters speak with obviously post-pubescent voices. All of the characters were played by adult actors in the movies. The way they get around without any adult supervision suggests they could be interpreted as over 18, even if the creators' notes indicate otherwise.

In any event, one can find stories based on Scooby Doo characters here at Literotica, so they appear to be acceptable. One might ask Laurel just to make sure.

Ironically, you can age up your own original characters all you want. I did that in my Mary and Alvin series. Two of the main characters, Hannah and Bonita, are born midway through the series, feature in a number of chapters as children and eventually grow up and have their own storylines that include sexual activity.

 

[SimonDoom]

Ironically, you can age up your own original characters all you want. I did that in my Mary and Alvin series. Two of the main characters, Hannah and Bonita, are born midway through the series, feature in a number of chapters as children and eventually grow up and have their own storylines that include sexual activity.

But that makes perfect sense from the logic of the site's rule. What the site is trying to avoid is attracting people who want to fap over Hermione from Harry Potter. It's not an issue with home grown characters.

 

[LupusDei]

I wanted to include the Exxon Valdez in one of my stories but found out it was commissioned five months after my story took place.

Really? Who’d catch it?

I have all sorts of time warps in my current series. Ostensibly the story takes place “today”, but certain scenes worked a whole bunch better with snippets of real places as they existed 5 to 35 years ago. You’d have to work really hard to catch them.

Writing fiction is fun!

In one of my works in progress, set in a concrete, but never clearly stated night of spring 1995, I use currency fazed out nearly a year ago and visit a nightclub not open for another year, but meticulously checked the music was available and the model of the cellphone was plausible. While there's enough information to set the date exactly already (a namesday, orthodox Easter) it may be news on the radio mentioning Oklahoma bombing during as yet unwritten conversation that may date the story for most international audiences.

 

[AchtungNight]

I’d gladly read a story about Daphne and Velma hooking up with a lucky guy or each other after solving a mystery. They look adult enough to me.

 

[StillStunned]

They look adult enough to me.

"But Your Honour, she *looked* adult!"

 

[gunhilltrain]

Oh, come the fuck on! I shouldn't have looked this up, after all there are already tons of Scooby Doo parodies on Lit that have got through no problem. I just had to go and double-check. I guess if I do write this idea, I'm going to be going with a cast of wholey original characters Frank, Delphine, Vera and Nobby and their great dane, Hoobey-Hoo who go around solving enigmas in their Enigma Engine. I suppose they are clearly identified as 'meddling kids' so I've only myself to blame.

When has the research not given you the answer you wanted?

As obsessed with the age limit as Lit is, I doubt that Laurel knows or cares how old the original Scooby-Doo characters were set by their creators in 1969. Although I could be wrong, and now all the parodies will be removed from the site. Fortunately, she is so busy that she probably doesn't have time to look for them all.

My theory for the popularity of Velma is that when the present male Boomers were adolescents back then, many of their female classmates wore knee socks. Having the socks and blouses match in color (orange in this case) was considered to be the height of sexual appeal.