uhhh yeah they do, there’s a pretty obvious page that asks you if you’re over 18 to proceed. the only way you *don’t* see that is if you’ve already registered and said you were over 18.
that “proceed” page can literally just link you right to the fic. even without an account. no need to enter any info at all. people lie about their ages online bud
so? don’t enter an adult-only space and be surprised it’s for adults?
Dusty, this building with the giant neon VB sign out the front serves alcohol, how was I supposed to know that was gonna be the case?
also, a thirteen year old absolutely can go to the library and borrow something nsfw in many places. That is their right as a borrower, and often parents have to sign a form acknowledging that the librarians are not responsible for what content kids check out, their parents or guardians are responsible. as in, if you take your thirteen year old sister to the library, it’s your job to make sure she doesn’t borrow fifty shades
because it sucksalso, there are adult books that are literally about children but are not for children. lots of them. sometimes authors write books about people without the book being for those people, this is a thing that happens, it has always happened, william shakespeare did not write romeo and juliet as a kids’ play
and if you don’t think people ever lie about their age (or use fake id) to get into 18+ movies (or buy alcohol or cigarettes, or mature rated computer games like gta) when they’re underage, you must only know very, very well-behaved teenagers
Also sometimes there’s a copy of American Psycho in the high school library and neither the librarians nor the parents apparently notice when the seventeen-year-old borrows it and reads it.
That would be the most egregious example I guess. How did that happen? Why would you have that book in a high school library?
I started reading smutty fanfic at about the age of fourteen. Some of it was light, but some of it was stuff I definitely shouldn’t have been reading at that age. Whose fault was that?
Mine.
As inverted as it sounds, give kids some credit. I read all of the warnings hpff.net had to offer. I chose to click on the links marked “mature” and I chose to keep scrolling after reading author’s notes that warned for explicit content. That’s on me, not the people who ran the site, not the people who wrote the fic. It’s not the job of fic housing websites to be parents, babysitters, or moral guardians, and it’s not the job of fic writers to be those things either. If you’re worried about minors being exposed to age-inappropriate content, great! Focus on educating minors about internet safety and making responsible decisions. But blanket “think of the children!” statements don’t actually help .
“I doubt my 13-year-old sister could go to the library and rent something nsfw” have you ever been to a library? actually, no, scratch that, have you ever read a fucking book?
I read books written FOR CHILDREN (as in, they were classified as for ages 10 and up) that very frankly talked about sex. where the characters talked about their breasts growing and dealing with that. periods. having sexy feelings for people. and violent! people fighting, people getting hurt, wars. I read one where the one guy got struck by lightning, it was very graphic.
lots of books written for children aren’t all happiness and fluff.
Or you are a bored ten year old stuck at home i the summer and start reading your dad’s westerns and your grandmother’s romance novels. Not to mention Your brother’s Cujo and It.
Kids will put a book down if it’s too traumatic.
I read vampire erotica in 9th grade biology class. In front of god and everybody. I bought it in front my parents (with my allowance), and the book store owner, and read it in class in front of my teachers.
My husband read “It” when he was 10. It by the way is ABOUT KIDS and trust me when I say G rated things DO NOT happen in that book.
The first time I saw Rocky Horror Picture Show it was with the explicit permission of my mother with firm instructions that if I had any questions or didn’t understand anything that I was to ask. I was 12. I was fine.
Also Jesus Christ have you SEEN some of the things made FOR kids. Dark Crystal? Labyrinth? Animorphs?
Listen there is nothing on AO3 that is gonna mess anyone up like Dark Crystal. And trust me if there is any one with half a brain who can’t handle it they will click away from it.
Maybe I’m embracing the crab bucket a little here but jees people if a kid wants to consume nonkiddie things no one except maybe maybe their parents will stop them. Children are dark man. Do you not remember being a kid?
The thing in this entire post that leaves me most puzzled is – why shouldn’t a 17-year-old get to read “American Psycho”? And while the librarians presumably noticed – we noticed everything – why should they object to the situation?
Also – know what they’ve got in libraries specifically for kids? Sex ed books. Just saying…
Christ! Did you ever notice these on every bloody fic at AO3? (I guess not, why read the rules when you can ignore them and blame others for your ignorance):
General Audiences
Teen And Up Audiences
Mature
Explicit: only suitable for adults
The work was not given any rating
They are there for a reason, like tags, so you can curate your reading experience responsibly. And by responsibly I mean DON’T FUCKING READ IT IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT OR IF IT IS OBVIOUS IT IS NOT FOR YOU.
As for children accessing A03? Kids are their parents’ responsibility. AO3 writers and librarians and bookstore clerks are not obligated to parent other people’s children who, unsupervised, access material not meant for them.
That said, Infantilising older teens and young adults is frankly offensive to them, like they are three and cannot stomach anything that goes beyond Peppa Pig or Sesame Street.
One thing is right, though. You cannot compare fic with books. Books are aimed at whoever wants to buy them on the mass market, fanfic is targeted to a very small closed group. In smaller ships, often it is less than a handful or two of people. It is tagged, has a declaration of warnings and triggers, it is posted on sites meant for fics, and, oh, it’s free, so you don’t lose anything by clicking the red X in the corner to get out of there.
Books for under 18s that are definitely NOT made for kids –
-The Hunger Games (Because child murder!)
-Animorphs (I love and hate this series)
-Watership Down (Holy fuck guys, this book is amazing and messed the fuck up)
-Lord of the Flies (Woo, hunger and murder!)
Those are just a few examples of books that have seriously fucked UP things that happen in them that are marketed to teenagers or younger.
There’s so many things that teenagers chose to expose themselves too – that I exposed myself to as a kid. We can’t control that. We can only control what we tag things as.
I checked out the Earth’s Children series from my high school library at the tender age of 13. Hello purple prose!
One of my senior friends also gave me a gift, saying if I loved Anne Rice I would love her sleeping beauty series. They hadn’t read it themselves because they weren’t an Anne Rice fan, but they wanted to get me something nice for my birthday.
I hid those books in my room until I moved out to go to college.
So uh… Yeah.
School libraries have some racy shit in them.
thisacelovesheadcanons 