The "omigosh I have a boyfriend a few years older than me and he's really hot yay oh wait there's this gorgeous teacher and he likes me too oops I slept with the teacher oh no now my bf found us but at least I feel better because my long hair is covering me. Oh what the teacher was just using me and hes really in love with my mentor who I guess is evil and is spawning a new race for her own personal gain" trope. Just…no
…The what trope???
It's not really a trope I guess because it only happened in like two books that I can think of right now and I gave it a name but I hate it a lot
The "omigosh I have a boyfriend a few years older than me and he's really hot yay oh wait there's this gorgeous teacher and he likes me too oops I slept with the teacher oh no now my bf found us but at least I feel better because my long hair is covering me. Oh what the teacher was just using me and hes really in love with my mentor who I guess is evil and is spawning a new race for her own personal gain" trope. Just…no
OH MY GOD RIGHT???
why does that exist in the first place
because the second a child is close to 18 ppl like toeing the line
like in cmbyn, like the kid was 17 YEARS OLD
the other guy was 25
i understand it's legal in italy but like,,,,,,,,,,n o
When people write with their daughter, sht gets weird lemme tell you
wait they What
My friend and I played a level of Episode that was a student/teacher relationship and due to how their ages added up (he was 30 and she was 16, and he had a daughter her age) the teacher would have had to have gotten his wife pregnant at age 11.
Anyways, let's burn student/teacher romances please
Anyways, let's burn student/teacher romances please
Even though I don't encounter this one very often, I'd be more than happy if I never saw this trope again. Teacher/student are really weird and gross to me (especially when it's like an underage high school student which is most of them in my experience). There's all kinds of ways you can have a forbidden romance plot line without it being disgusting like that.
Anyways, let's burn student/teacher romances please
Even though I don't encounter this one very often, I'd be more than happy if I never saw this trope again. Teacher/student are really weird and gross to me (especially when it's like an underage high school student which is most of them in my experience). There's all kinds of ways you can have a forbidden romance plot line without it being disgusting like that.
Yeah, between the age gap, the power imbalance (and general abuse of power it is to sleep with someone whose parents entrust you with the safety and education of) and the general squickiness of it….no.
Oh that pedophile culture. It gets its grossness into everything.
KILL IT WITH FIRE!
It's so disgusting like you can literally see characters make excuses and it's dumb excuses and some of them aren't even true like the classic, "he's not that much older than me" or the "I'll be old enough in a few years" like no he's almost thirty and you're barely sixteen
It's rape honey. Damn. That's how you know adult authors had a weird ass teenage life.
Welcome to another episode of "my faith in humanity completely disintegrates", I'm your host, someone kill me
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Or 1000-year-old dragon lady who looks (and acts) like she’s 12, but it’s okay because she’s 1000. Disgusting.
Yeah, or the whole "I'm 1,000 but I like 20 so it's totally okay for be to be with a 17 year old". To get around that in my story, I have it so Fae take decades to develop and do so much slower than humans, so Cedar looks and acts only 2 years older than Giana.
What about an eighteen year old girl with a dude that is 16/300? This one is hella weird. They never have sex as it is one of my books.
A lot of it comes down to whether there is a power imbalance or not, you know?
Yeah
Explain power imbalance. The dude has hella magic powers. but he also has all the emotional stability of a sixteen year old. The girl is better than him at pretty much everything.
Meaning the power dynamic within the relationship. He can't be a controlling, manipulative asshole (Edward Cullen) and she can't be an idiotic, subservient imbecile. (Bella Swan)
It's got to be a healthy relationship. I don't mind if there's a huge age different between some of my characters, as long as it is a proper relationship between two people of like and sound mind. Not two characters where one is and Adult™ and one is a Child™.
Or 1000-year-old dragon lady who looks (and acts) like she’s 12, but it’s okay because she’s 1000. Disgusting.
ALSO WTF????
That seems fairly close to balanced. The thing is, someone with the emotional maturity of an older teen, but hundreds of years of experience? It makes things kind of strange, in a way. But then she's 18, and he's sort of like a 16-year-old, which could pose other problems.
I feel like with your case, it definitely helps that the relationship is not sexual.
It's really a hard line to walk when it comes to immortals/beings that live for a very long time, so I think the best question to ask would be: "Would this make people feel weird/uncomfortable?" If the answer is yes, you might want to make some tweaks to it.
"Power imbalance" is hard to define. I usually take it like this: Does one have way more life experience than the other? Is one currently in a position of power over the other (like the conversation we had about teacher/student romances)? Do they both seem like they can give consent to each other without pressure? That sort of stuff.
Or 1000-year-old dragon lady who looks (and acts) like she’s 12, but it’s okay because she’s 1000. Disgusting.
ALSO WTF????
It's in my favorite game series and I'm mad.
ahem sexual experience doesn't really bother me anymore just because it's such a normal thing in life these days you know? For partners to have varying degrees in 'experience'.
maybe this is an adult way of thinking.
Nevermind me.
ALTHOUGH
Maybe that means we should stop having protags that are 17 and under, because it just doesn't work.
Oh, I meant life experience, if that's what you were referring to. The only time differing levels of sexual experience bothers me is if there's a woman who's super inexperienced and a dude who prides himself in being super experienced. Makes me want to roll my eyes. Bad trope.
(Also this is why we should bring back the New Adult genre!)