I have a couple Who writers on my FList. It's still a big fandom over there, strange and ancient.

Squicky -- that's what it sounds like.

Unless, of course, you are also 13 or thereabouts.

(Connie! The picture on the RotK disc -- Aragorn with Anduril held up - you know the one -- you can just see the hilts of the sword. Mmmm.)

The picture on the RotK disc -- Aragorn with Anduril held up - you know the one -- you can just see the hilts of the sword. Mmmm

Mmmmmm.....

t blinks

Where were we?

Oh, right. Cool article here. Interview with some women sf/fantasy writers, and the conversation wanders into the realm of slash and H/C. Pamela Dean comes up with the most concise definition of H/C I've ever seen. Also accurate.

Oh, that Connie. I was going, "Where we talking about swords? I was talking to her in another thread, am I lost?" Some days my brain isn't functioning in true multi-tasking mode.

Sorry -- I thought it was Connie but it was Consuela. . . I'm obviously being distracted by the Numenoreans on my tv screen.

That would do it.

Hey, did you read the post RE the HP actors that just got linked to off of metablog?

Yeah. I cornered shrift last night and made her listen to me talk about it.

Let me say, I'm not endorsing anyone who actually harasses the HP actors. Dan Radcliffe's infamous "towel" story comes to mind. But I was particularly struck by the assertion that if you even think "wrong" things about these kids, you're completely messed up and going to hell. To me, there's a huge difference between all of the following things:

• Jokingly saying, "Oh, my god, I'm going to hell for lusting after a fifteen year-old."
• Saying "Daniel Radcliffe sure looks hot in that latest picture."
• Fantasizing, in the privacy of one's own brain, about these kids.
• Writing explicit HP stories with underage characters.
• Writing explicit HP futurefic and aging the characters.
• Saying apparently earnest and lusty things about the kids in some public forum, including LJ.

I don't understand conflating any of those, and I don't understand trying to judge someone for what goes on in their own private fantasies. Most people are pretty clear on the difference between fantasy and reality, and I get very uncomfortable when people start making blanket "if-then" statements.

If you write a story in which someone is raped, does that make you a degenerate? What about murder? Torture? Sex between two sixteen year-olds? Slash? Serial killers? Mind-control?

Well, I think it's odd to try to back off of saying that you find someone attractive by then saying "oh, I was kidding!" I'm not actually bothered by the idea of a thirty-year-old thinking a post-pubescent teenager is hot. (I'm bothered by the idea of them doing anything about it, but as you point out, that's different.) But dude, own up to your lusts, and don't act all shocked when you say you find a picture droolworthy and people assume you mean it.

(That being the generic "you," of course, not the Dana "you.")

Hm. This whole "adult [females] find preadult [males] attractive" flap sounds like a flap I remember from -- I was probably 14 or 15, so I'm sure I remember it poorly. You guys recall that old Madonna video, where she is all peep-show and bustier for the first 80% of the video, and then at the end goes prancing around in the street, in non-sexy clothes, with a skinny preteen boy? I can't even think of the song, but I remember there being people all het-up in the media about it, that she was imposing adult sexuality on a kid.

She explained it by saying that she fantasized about being a preteen boy herself, and she moved on to industrial-chic and chains, but being a young teenager at the time, I recall being very interested in how strongly people responded to the playing with boundaries in the fantasies about (and about being) preteens.

I don't know as how that's any kind of analytical wisdom that pertains to longing for people from Harry Potter, but that's what popped into my head when I read about the current flap. Personally, I think I have more of a problem with the persistence of adults in fantasizing about their perfect and exciting childhoods than I do with those same adults expressing attraction within their fantasy-adolescent personae.

Also, suddenly in my mind's eye, Madonna's young doxy is Leonardo DiCaprio. How creepy is that??

the persistence of adults in fantasizing about their perfect and exciting childhoods

Which seems to include no one here.

eta: That wasn't to contradict you, Nutty. Just a reaction to the discussion in Natter.