The Pub Discussion Board

Having just posted a fantasy story, (albeit modern rather than classic) perhaps I should respond.

It is simple to write a story where a grown man meets an eight-year-old girl and they both enjoy a risk-free, torrid night of sex. However, it is completely unrealistic for many, many reasons. I find that unsatisfactory. I want my fiction to be at least somewhat realistic.

I also do not like rape stories and personally find them, at least marginally, immoral to write.

The problem, especially with gM material, is that children of that age are not interested in sex, at least in the manner and extent that an adult is. I feel that stories that do not acknowledge that end up with people who are effectively adult. They think like an adult, talk like an adult and act like an adult. While there is certainly a niche there to describe a person who is young only physically and the problems they may encounter, even that will end up with some degree of SF/F elements to explain it.

In our current world, underage sex is anathema. A story where a realistic child is interested and eager will require an extensive set-up to make that believable. They will probably be previously traumatised and relationships outside the couple will be them hiding the affair. That is certainly a rich vein but very limiting and challenging to write well due to the amount of back-story and the closed nature of the relationship. Because the child is damaged, one has to take great care if the adult is not going to be obviously taking advantage of them. It is even more difficult if, say, the child's parents know and approve. We get some extremely unique characters that strain credulity.

In order to have a story where the protagonists' relationship is acceptable without all that work, the author has to change the world. The story will be set on at least an alternate world. I have one world (currently unpublished) where some suffragettes made a mistake and blew up 200 of their own members with a home-made bomb and Archduchess Sofia avoided the first world war. Women's rights received a massive setback. Women and children are men's property. I'm toying with a few more where parents have the right to consent on behalf of their children. Then there's one where the 28th Amendment ensures the absolute right of a parent to determine the education of their children.

Or you can be more SF/F, such as my Bonded story.

But an alternate world, no matter how like our world it is, is a sub-genre of SF/F. That's the case even where the only world-building the author does is to say "underage sex is acceptable."

There are only so many ways to graphically describe the sex act. Peg A goes into slot B. Oh look, slot B doesn't have any hair; this must be a gM story. It is not in the physical act that the emotional pull of a story exists. It is in the emotional and rational relationship between the characters. Even during the sex act, that is the case. It isn't what happened? it is how does does that make you feel?

I want my fiction to be engaging and believable and the characters to act realistically. I want my protagonists to be likeable. In order to achieve that, something in the world has to change. And a changed world is the definition of SF/F.

Last edited by Sam Spayed (2025-06-25 11:39:00)

As a long time reader, I can solidly say that, I prefer the sci fi side of things. I don't really care for the cross over to realism as I am here for things that can never be. I don't and won't read stories with your specific tags unless they are already dropped into a story I am reading and is brief and not the focus of the story.(Such as CAMP) I enjoy the otherworldly that doesn't much match our world, not that anything else is boring but, it's just not my preference. As Eric said, the representation may be somewhat skewed because of the history and origin of the site.