Hello ^__^ I Have A Question That I'm Hoping You Could Educate Me On: I Recently Watched A Video Where

Hello ^__^ I have a question that I'm hoping you could educate me on: I recently watched a video where a reviewer criticized a dark romance book, and kept insisting that the pairing between a male/female student/teacher couple was considered grooming despite the characters both meeting after they were adults & having a 7-year age gap (minimal imo). I understand that there were themes of power-imbalance and possessiveness that might turn readers off, and aside from this being fiction, I'm genuinely curious as to whether this would constitute as grooming in the real-life definition of the term? I'm familiar with this being used to describe CSA, but I know that antis like to warp and abuse certain words, and I just want to make sure I'm not downplaying or brushing off anyone's irl experiences. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Grooming is intentional behavior. It can be done by anyone at any age, although its most commonly (and legally) defined in regards to minors.

While there are inherent power-imbalances and differences in experience with "older age gap" relationships and, as per your example, relationships where one person is in a position of authority over the other, it entirely depends on how the relationship is treated and how the person with the most power treats the person with the least.

Realistically; nobody can control when or with whom they fall in love. Its something that simply happens. However, within the relationship there are easy ways to identify points of concern that turn the relationship into an unhealthy or imbalanced one.

For example: (Assuming the teacher is the male.)

Does he wield his authority over her inappropriately? Does he use it to gain dominance over situations or choices?

Does he use his age, experience, position, ect to benefit from the relationship or choices within the relationship, against her will or to her detriment?

Did he actively pursue her with reasonings relative to her lack of authority against him, the vulnerability or convenience of her being his student, ect?

Is he controlling, manipulative, pushy, overly possessive/jealous, emotionally abusive, ect?

Does he deliberately mislead her or manipulate her with positive emotions, acts and thoughts?

Such behaviors are what constitute as grooming and are what make a relationship between two mature, aware, consenting adults unhealthy and inappropriate.

That said, its a dark romance book. Anyone complaining or criticizing a dark romance book for whatever topics or depictions it may contain are buffoons.

I'm sorry if this is annoying but I wanted advice and you seem very knowledgeable, I'm planning on starting a selfship account. All my selfships are teenage self insert x adult character, do you think anyone would be interested in my art?? I‘d like to share my work with others but I don't know if anyone would want to see it. I'll probably still post it even if nobody likes it, but I was wondering.

I can absolutely promise you that there are people interested in everything and anything. The literal wildest most outlandish shit yo can imagine.

Teenager/Adult selfshipping is vanilla beans compared to stuff I've seen.

Just use the appropriate tags, build a presence and you'll get traction fairly quickly.

Very specific question, but do you (or anyone else) know of how to get rid of that nagging feeling of sharing everything you create?

I'm a writer, both in the fanfic sense and of my own stories. I'm also proship, but nobody I care about knows that fact due to be so severely anti to the point of me mentioning the discourse (to test the waters) gets a blatant "proshippers aren't human beings and should kill themselves".

I really want to write a small fic about a problematic ship (young child x older person) that I don't even actually like! I don't ship it, though I don't care if other people do. But I'm fascinated by the idea of it, the possible dynamic, because it's very popular in the proshipper circle of the fandom and it's been nagging at me. The problem is that I write and then want to share it. Writing for myself feels.... Wrong, almost? But I cannot share it with my loved ones. I had previously already suggested writing a similar idea to a very close friend and he was severely disgusted by it, asked me if I was genuinely considering writing it and I had to very quickly play it off as a joke.

And I know the next suggestion will be the proshipper side of the fandom, but sharing my work online for others I don't know to see makes me personally uncomfortable, which is a major shame.

(I'm not even going to touch the fact that your "loved ones" think people like you should kill themselves.)

But. A good way is to treat them like an assessment opportunity. Make a copy of each piece and use something like Google Documents to annotate and evaluate what you've written. Move all of the originals into a secondary folder.

Not only will this help improve your writing in the long run, but it somewhat changes the intent of the literature from something written to, at its core, be shared, into a personal resource.

There's also the option of making new friends. You don't have to go out and gather people up like a squirrel with a winter store, but even just one likeminded person whom you can get to know well enough to feel comfortable sharing your work can help sate that need to share and engage with someone about what you create. You can send your content to them privately, then, rather than uploading it for the masses.

But. I would just gently like to say that perhaps its not the need to share that you need to reflect on and try to negate. If you have to ask how to stifle yourself so that your loved ones don't think of you as inhuman meat that needs to be slaughtered, perhaps you're asking the wrong questions.

Hi. I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask, but do you think it would be justifiable to write a webcomic where the protagonists are in an incestuous relationship that’s portrayed positively? I’m not sure if I should go this route or if I should just stick to shipping the protagonists together in my mind and not actually making it canon. Incestuous relationships in fiction seem to almost always be portrayed negatively or as a tragedy, so I feel like I would end up alienating most of a potential audience and even opening myself up for harassment/scorn. I’ve written romantic incest fanfiction in the past, but writing an actual comic containing the topic seems like a whole different ballgame.

You'll be opening yourself up to harassment and scorn by depicting incest at all, so if that's one of the deciding factors, I'd chose a different topic entirely.

That said; I stand by the age old wisdom of one's fictional tastes not representing their personal menu. To use The Salmon Analogy, a chef can cook salmon while actually hating the stuff. Or being impartial to it. Or disliking it.

You will inevitably get a barrage of pushback both about depicting incest at all and depicting it romantically, but if its something you want to do, do it. Its fiction. Incestuous fiction doesn't always have to be a Romeo and Juliet story. Give the bloodline fuckers a happy ending if that's what you want. If you want to do it, its worth doing.

Positively portraying incest should have no impact on other people. Fiction is not reality and one romantic portrayal of incest is not going to lead to a sudden pandemic of people fucking their siblings.

You do not have to justify why you wrote something.

Being "incognito" in an antiship space when you are proship and vice versa can genuinely be so dangerous. On both sides. It is absolutely not worth the potential risks. Whatever benefits you think you're gaining form it I can promise you aren't worth it.

Hi there, really enjoying reading through your posts & adding a bunch of antis to my blocklist. It's upsetting to see how old some of them are, I can't imagine any self-respecting person over the age of 20 using the term "proshitter" but I guess this is the playground we're living in now.

I too love when antis try to sound off on my posts and make my tedious chore of blocking them so much easier.

Unfortunately, access to the open world of the internet means that people are exposed to far much more than they might be without it, and it allows them to breed this lasting culture of hate and stupidity. I just take great pleasure in laughing at them and knowing that the only people who just barely respect them are the people who think the same way as them. Which is not a compliment at all.