When I was in my tweens I bought a book for my younger sister for her birthday. She loves dragons so I found a book with a dragon and a woman on the cover. The cover was a little sensual, but I was used to fantasy books being marketed that way for no particular reason and the synopsis on the back sounded like a fun adventure with a female protagonist, so I bought the full series for her. It turned out to contain a ton of sexual content including rape and bestiality. When she told me, I was absolutely mortified and appologetic, but she still enjoyed the story and now it's just a funny story about an honest mistake. That's probably what will happen most times a kid reads something beyond their suggested age-appropriate content.
For the most part yeah I do think that kids should be able to read whatever they want. But I think it’s a nuanced issue. you gotta know what your kids are reading.
Once when I was in elementary school and trying to check out a book, our librarian tried to explain to me about “mature content”. (I don’t remember what book, but it couldn’t have been too terrible bc otherwise why tf would they keep it in an elementary school library)
She ultimately didn’t stop me from checking out the book, just warned me. I didn’t really get what she was trying to do back then, but I do now, and I really appreciate the gesture.
Also. When we were younger, my cousin bought a copy of Flowers in the Attic at the bookstore. The back of the book made it sound like a run-of-the-mill thriller. One of our aunts shrieked when she found out— that book is infamous for ||brother-sister incest|| lmfao.
Learning how to tell when a fic isn’t for you and close the window is a useful life skill. When you read something that upsets you, processing those feelings and/or talking to someone you trust to help are also useful life skills to practice. Nobody is suggesting that you hand a shockfic to a toddler: kids who are old enough to be able to and interested in navigating fanfic websites are old enough to start learning to curate their online experience.
I was a very precocious young reader, and I got ahold of more than a couple of books that I was not ready for. I don’t think those experiences have harmed me at all. Yes, young kids especially deserve to have some guidance so that they can have more positive and enriching reading experiences than negative ones, but it’s also perfectly fine to occasionally stumble into some reading you weren’t prepared to handle.
When I was a young teen, I used to regularly get books from the public library after school, as readers do. I was reading a lot of Pern books at the time, and decided to look at the books an aisle over. 13 year old me was not ready for a thriller after reading (mostly teen friendly) sci fi and kids books.
I sorta want to find out what it was and read the book again, but at the same time, certain parts of that book stuck with me, and not in a good way. It's been over 20 years at this point lol.
I did learn a valuable skill in not just picking up books to read without at least checking blurbs and genres though, so a win? Reading has no need for imposed limits, and I'm all for kids learning their own personal limits for themselves, rather than by adults. Guidelines are a different story. Maybe steer kids away from content they aren't ready for, but give them the tools to become ready to read new things when they are.
Big difference between books and self published fics.
An extreme horror book probably has a gorey or at least bloody cover image, a title in a dripping red font, somewhere there will be a “ NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN”, explanations of how graphic and terrifying it is on the book sleeve.
AO3 DOES have fantastic tagging, but not quite the same punch in the face of NO DO NOT.
(Also given how much of ao3 is porn (NO disrespect to porn authors, I’m a porn author) I wouldn’t let a kid on there generally-)
I fully believe in letting kids read everything they want, but if they’re not old enough to understand the warnings it’s your responsibility to give them warnings they can understand. It’s your responsibility as a parent to look at the books your kids are reading, and make a judgment call of if they understand what they’re getting into.
I might get downvoted here, but I would not let a child onto AO3 or similar. Books at a library? Sure, there will be some disagreeable things, but they got through editing and publishing and landed at the library, so likely have some merit -- at the very least, they're probably worth having a discussion about, even if that discussion is why the author was wrong. AO3 may have some good, well-written gems, I'm sure -- but it is just whatever shit anyone wants to throw up there, and if you glance at the available warnings, you will quickly glean that some of it is pretty gross. Even if those themes appear in books, again, the process of publishing and necessity of commercial success is often going to filter out some of the more insensitive depictions made for the wrong reasons. I think it has a lot more in common with social media than it does with literature. I'm surprised to this day that Tumblr, which seems rather big on "cancel culture" and moral purity, loves AO3 so much.
Actually a lot of people on tumblr hate AO3 because they don’t censor stuff. They mostly still use it but they complain a lot. I agree that I would be very careful about a kid using it and I say that as someone who likes AO3 and generally thinks kids should read what they want. It’s just general internet safety at that point.
ok i agree but i also dont? all i know is that i read the clique book series when i was in like 2nd or 3rd grade and what I got from it was that I should interact with my peers by bullying them and being mean. you can guess how the rest of elementary school went for me...
I think this is where it comes in that adults in a child's life should also talk about the stuff the child reads and watches. They don't need to actuvely read and/or watch whatever the child does, but completely leaving a child with only their underdeveloped mind and lack of experience and social understanding to try and process every single story they come across is not the way. At the very least, you let them talk about it and listen, and if you need to intervene about sonwthing, you do so.
I think kids are generally smarter and more mature than we give then credit for. Not smart or mature enough to be able to handle everything an average adult could handle, but I think that they'll usually be able to parse through complicated topics on their own. This is obviously dependant on the child's age, the topic at hand, and, most importantly, the individual child in question, which is a big part of why I believe an adult should properly interactbwith a kid about their interests
Most of the time it’s not even the kids reading the books that are upset or offended by the content. In fact it’s not even their parents. It’s random Karens who have no kids in the area (or don’t even live in the area) and have never read the books but their church told them the books has gay people in it. So they bus themselves to libraries all over the place to bitch and complain about something that doesn’t even affect them.
I used to read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books growing up. I still do actually but I was getting like hitchhiker's guide as bed time stories before I could even read.
I read a lot of quite adult books, like David Gemmel etc with a lot of adult themes. Basically my dad just told me to come and ask if there was anything I didn't understand. Like learning about prostitutes and the look of moonlight on breasts when I was like 7 lol.
I really don't think it negatively impacted me at all, but it did probably make me much more aware about the world around me, and all that there is to learn.
there’s people that think books that even mention the existence of gay people should be banned from children. hell, there’s people that want to ban the complete book of dogs and cats in schools because it talks about how they reproduce.
The people against it don't fail to realize that they can compete with their own books, they instead realize that no one who writes well agrees with them, no work of art could effectively convince the masses their backwater ideology is worth even half a second of their time. Many kids don't read enough, many more don't read at all. If you want into that market you need a damn good book.
I was sneaking Victorian erotica out of my parents' shelf when I was 10. Makes for a great vocabulary, and greater enjoyment of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
I told my daughter when she was 9 that I would always buy her any book, but that I may have to talk to her about them first to make sure she knew what she was getting into. She pushed that when she asked for a few blatantly smutty books at 16 (I think she was just testing to see what I'd do) so we had a discussion about real life vs fantasy, and about consent, but I still got them for her.
i dont really agree because as a kid i used to have a weird mentality were once i started a book i had to keep reading and would get super immersed. i was a pretty smart kid—>i read books above my age bracket—>they involved animal death and gore—>not good for the mind of a child
I'm all for children learning to find their own way into the wonderful world of books, but there should be some obvious limits. Like, anything by the Marquis de Sade is obviously not something a child should just read, specially without some adult oversight.
Little 11 year old me really thought he was getting away with something when he noticed the library will lend you ANY book.
tumblr handles kinda feel like cheating tbh
Yeah if you name yourself something like “John Waltz 99” you’re defo a spam bot. Genitalia/slur-noun-fandom is the naming convention.
When I was in my tweens I bought a book for my younger sister for her birthday. She loves dragons so I found a book with a dragon and a woman on the cover. The cover was a little sensual, but I was used to fantasy books being marketed that way for no particular reason and the synopsis on the back sounded like a fun adventure with a female protagonist, so I bought the full series for her. It turned out to contain a ton of sexual content including rape and bestiality. When she told me, I was absolutely mortified and appologetic, but she still enjoyed the story and now it's just a funny story about an honest mistake. That's probably what will happen most times a kid reads something beyond their suggested age-appropriate content.
What the hell was this series?!
I wanna know so I can look up the covers, because the series sounds unhinged.
It was the Dragon Temple Saga by Janine Cross. Despite the sexual content in the book, the cover is still a lie.
Oh yeah, I just really love book covers too
I totally won't judge this book by its cover.
Game of thrones
Nope!
Seriously, please come tell us the series lol
The Dragon Temple Saga by Janine Cross.
I wish someone stopped me from reading Roots and IT when I was 12, though
I don't know how it compares, The Shining kind of made its way around my friend group around that time.
For the most part yeah I do think that kids should be able to read whatever they want. But I think it’s a nuanced issue. you gotta know what your kids are reading.
Once when I was in elementary school and trying to check out a book, our librarian tried to explain to me about “mature content”. (I don’t remember what book, but it couldn’t have been too terrible bc otherwise why tf would they keep it in an elementary school library)
She ultimately didn’t stop me from checking out the book, just warned me. I didn’t really get what she was trying to do back then, but I do now, and I really appreciate the gesture.
Also. When we were younger, my cousin bought a copy of Flowers in the Attic at the bookstore. The back of the book made it sound like a run-of-the-mill thriller. One of our aunts shrieked when she found out— that book is infamous for ||brother-sister incest|| lmfao.
What about shockfics
Edit: thanks for the insights
Learning how to tell when a fic isn’t for you and close the window is a useful life skill. When you read something that upsets you, processing those feelings and/or talking to someone you trust to help are also useful life skills to practice. Nobody is suggesting that you hand a shockfic to a toddler: kids who are old enough to be able to and interested in navigating fanfic websites are old enough to start learning to curate their online experience.
I was a very precocious young reader, and I got ahold of more than a couple of books that I was not ready for. I don’t think those experiences have harmed me at all. Yes, young kids especially deserve to have some guidance so that they can have more positive and enriching reading experiences than negative ones, but it’s also perfectly fine to occasionally stumble into some reading you weren’t prepared to handle.
When I was a young teen, I used to regularly get books from the public library after school, as readers do. I was reading a lot of Pern books at the time, and decided to look at the books an aisle over. 13 year old me was not ready for a thriller after reading (mostly teen friendly) sci fi and kids books.
I sorta want to find out what it was and read the book again, but at the same time, certain parts of that book stuck with me, and not in a good way. It's been over 20 years at this point lol.
I did learn a valuable skill in not just picking up books to read without at least checking blurbs and genres though, so a win? Reading has no need for imposed limits, and I'm all for kids learning their own personal limits for themselves, rather than by adults. Guidelines are a different story. Maybe steer kids away from content they aren't ready for, but give them the tools to become ready to read new things when they are.
(Agreeing with you basically)
Big difference between books and self published fics.
An extreme horror book probably has a gorey or at least bloody cover image, a title in a dripping red font, somewhere there will be a “ NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN”, explanations of how graphic and terrifying it is on the book sleeve.
AO3 DOES have fantastic tagging, but not quite the same punch in the face of NO DO NOT.
(Also given how much of ao3 is porn (NO disrespect to porn authors, I’m a porn author) I wouldn’t let a kid on there generally-)
I fully believe in letting kids read everything they want, but if they’re not old enough to understand the warnings it’s your responsibility to give them warnings they can understand. It’s your responsibility as a parent to look at the books your kids are reading, and make a judgment call of if they understand what they’re getting into.
I might get downvoted here, but I would not let a child onto AO3 or similar. Books at a library? Sure, there will be some disagreeable things, but they got through editing and publishing and landed at the library, so likely have some merit -- at the very least, they're probably worth having a discussion about, even if that discussion is why the author was wrong. AO3 may have some good, well-written gems, I'm sure -- but it is just whatever shit anyone wants to throw up there, and if you glance at the available warnings, you will quickly glean that some of it is pretty gross. Even if those themes appear in books, again, the process of publishing and necessity of commercial success is often going to filter out some of the more insensitive depictions made for the wrong reasons. I think it has a lot more in common with social media than it does with literature. I'm surprised to this day that Tumblr, which seems rather big on "cancel culture" and moral purity, loves AO3 so much.
Actually a lot of people on tumblr hate AO3 because they don’t censor stuff. They mostly still use it but they complain a lot. I agree that I would be very careful about a kid using it and I say that as someone who likes AO3 and generally thinks kids should read what they want. It’s just general internet safety at that point.
ok i agree but i also dont? all i know is that i read the clique book series when i was in like 2nd or 3rd grade and what I got from it was that I should interact with my peers by bullying them and being mean. you can guess how the rest of elementary school went for me...
Good thing you didn't read American Psycho.
But at least your knowlegde of pop music wouldn't be too bad.
I think this is where it comes in that adults in a child's life should also talk about the stuff the child reads and watches. They don't need to actuvely read and/or watch whatever the child does, but completely leaving a child with only their underdeveloped mind and lack of experience and social understanding to try and process every single story they come across is not the way. At the very least, you let them talk about it and listen, and if you need to intervene about sonwthing, you do so.
I think kids are generally smarter and more mature than we give then credit for. Not smart or mature enough to be able to handle everything an average adult could handle, but I think that they'll usually be able to parse through complicated topics on their own. This is obviously dependant on the child's age, the topic at hand, and, most importantly, the individual child in question, which is a big part of why I believe an adult should properly interactbwith a kid about their interests
Most of the time it’s not even the kids reading the books that are upset or offended by the content. In fact it’s not even their parents. It’s random Karens who have no kids in the area (or don’t even live in the area) and have never read the books but their church told them the books has gay people in it. So they bus themselves to libraries all over the place to bitch and complain about something that doesn’t even affect them.
Or, it could be that one scene in IT that’s carefully never made it into any of the movie adaptations, because obviously…
I used to read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books growing up. I still do actually but I was getting like hitchhiker's guide as bed time stories before I could even read.
I read a lot of quite adult books, like David Gemmel etc with a lot of adult themes. Basically my dad just told me to come and ask if there was anything I didn't understand. Like learning about prostitutes and the look of moonlight on breasts when I was like 7 lol.
I really don't think it negatively impacted me at all, but it did probably make me much more aware about the world around me, and all that there is to learn.
Is this a controversial topic?
Depends a little on where you’re from but generally yes, censorship is a highly debated topic, especially regarding children.
there’s people that think books that even mention the existence of gay people should be banned from children. hell, there’s people that want to ban the complete book of dogs and cats in schools because it talks about how they reproduce.
The people against it don't fail to realize that they can compete with their own books, they instead realize that no one who writes well agrees with them, no work of art could effectively convince the masses their backwater ideology is worth even half a second of their time. Many kids don't read enough, many more don't read at all. If you want into that market you need a damn good book.
tumblr is a treasure trove for stuff like this. There's a tumblr user called willgrahamscock and he just posts stuff
I was sneaking Victorian erotica out of my parents' shelf when I was 10. Makes for a great vocabulary, and greater enjoyment of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
I told my daughter when she was 9 that I would always buy her any book, but that I may have to talk to her about them first to make sure she knew what she was getting into. She pushed that when she asked for a few blatantly smutty books at 16 (I think she was just testing to see what I'd do) so we had a discussion about real life vs fantasy, and about consent, but I still got them for her.
Kids certainly shouldn’t read any book they want.
i dont really agree because as a kid i used to have a weird mentality were once i started a book i had to keep reading and would get super immersed. i was a pretty smart kid—>i read books above my age bracket—>they involved animal death and gore—>not good for the mind of a child
I'm all for children learning to find their own way into the wonderful world of books, but there should be some obvious limits. Like, anything by the Marquis de Sade is obviously not something a child should just read, specially without some adult oversight.
I read smut fics when I was 15 without being ever in a relationship or anything to ground me in what real sex is like and I turned out completely fine
I can’t find Toodles 🥺🥺🥺