Teach Your 14-Year-Old How To Write Gay Fanfic Porn

Skrike discovered a lengthy primer at Fanthropology on teaching 14-year-olds how to write better explicit gay fanfic.  Here’s some of their advice:

So how do you make a fourteen year old write better fan fiction? More important,
according to a fourteen year old acquaintance, how do you make your fourteen
year olds write better m/m slash?

Sex and intimacy, important components of slash and good slash. Another
component is fan fiction, m/m slash culture. The last component, and possibly
the most important one, is putting all of that stuff together.

Teaching
all this is not a simple thing. Remember, this age group isn’t always the most
receptive to valuing feedback in certain forms, isn’t necessarily writing to
learn about writing to become better writers. They write for fun, like feedback,
can and do use it to become better writers.

But hot damned, how do you teach a person to write in character? How do you
teach your teenage m/m slash fan to write in character in the context of a story
involving two guys going at it? There are two options that come immediately to
mind.

Sex and intimacy. Ouch and wow. My fourteen year old Good Charlotte slash
writing buddy’s answer to teaching her teen friends on how to write better
slash? Pop them all in front of a television, watch a little gay porn and they
should be set. My reaction to that as a twenty-five year old not interested in
gay porn was horror. There is this double edged sword here. Younger writers can
teach their own, to a certain degree, about the sexually explicit material and
how to write it using those examples. Adults teaching a fourteen year old how to
write erotic or pornographic sex scenes featuring two guys, citing pornography
and adult material, this might be a bit of an ethical nightmare and legal
liability.

The next thing to do is create general rec
lists of stories featuring m/m sex scenes. To cover your butt legally,
make sure the story ratings and contents are spelled out and don’t
explicitly label your rec list as “Read these teenage writers! Read
them and behold the writing of good m/m slashy sex scenes that will
make you wet! Yeah!” Try for something a bit more subdued and less
obvious. You get good examples out there and no one needs to be the
wiser that you have ulterior motives of teaching the teeny fangirls how
to become better m/m slash writers.

If it wasn’t for the good people at Fanthropology, imagine all the poor kids who wouldn’t have a clue how to write convincing fanfic sex scenes for Kirk and Spock, Harry and Ron,  and Willy Wonka and friends. Thank you, Fanthropology, for this important public service. I’m sure pedophiles everywhere appreciate it.

Maybe now professor Robin Reid will write an article for kids on how to write "Real Person Slash Fanfic." Wouldn’t that be nice?

34 thoughts on “Teach Your 14-Year-Old How To Write Gay Fanfic Porn”

  1. This blog is educational in ways I never would have imagined. I vastly preferred Jessica Simpson’s cleavage to this post, but on the other hand, I was just writing over on Eric Mayer’s blog about a Catholic shrine that’s supposed to have the foreskin of Christ displayed in it, which I suppose just goes to show how educational the Internet can be … and perhaps reinforces the the world is really, REALLY weird.
    Best,
    Mark Terry
    p.s. Wow, that was kind of satisfying, mentioning gay slasher-fan porn fiction, Christ’s foreskin and Jessica Simpson’s cleavage in one blog entry. Now, could I have fit in mention of Gilligan’s Island somehow?

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  2. OK, this has nothing to do with teenage gay fanfic porn, but I wanted to thank you, Lee, for your enjoyable presentation to our Mystery Readers group on Friday. I really enjoyed meeting you and hearing your stories, and I’m currently reading “The Man With the Iron-On Badge” and enjoying it a lot. Looking forward to the “Monk” books!

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  3. Lee, you are such a reactonist sensation mongering twat, taking quotes out of context. Way to go, wannabe online celebrity. You do realize that by now you have gained so many giggles, you have been slashed yourself, don’t you?

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  4. Anyone interested can read the objectionable and excreble slop in its unedited entirety. It’s much worse than what Lee quoted.
    But just in case you missed the link to TEACHING A 14-YEAR-OLD TO WRITE M/M SLASH, here it is:
    http://www.livejournal.com/community/fanthropology/153933.html
    Look quick. I wouldn’t be surprised if Fanthropology takes it down soon to avoid a call from a sex crimes detective and the inevitable, and deserved, backlash against fanfiction.

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  5. Too late, it has been deleted. The author of the piece, PurplePopple, explains at FandomWank:
    “The entry was deleted at the request of DragonScholar, the community admin, because he didn’t want the community to be associated with pedophilia.”
    To which I say, DUHHHHHH!

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  6. I’m glad the post has been deleted. It was repugnant and irresponsible. You’d think even the “fanfiction community” would have enough common sense and social responsibility to recognize that. They should have been first to condemn the article and the person who wrote it if, for no other reason, than their own survival. The fact that they didn’t says all you need to know about the character of the people who write and read fanfiction. As a parent of two children, I am outraged by the behavior of the so-called adults involved in this. Shame on you.
    Thank you, Mr. Goldberg, for exposing this pedophile. I have no doubt the attention you brought to this is what prompted the deletion of the article.

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  7. It’s true that Ms. Purplepopple has removed her polemic, but further excerpts including the travails of a heroic commenter on her thread can be found in an adjunct post to the one Lee references above. It’s here:
    http://skrikespeaks.blogspot.com/2005/11/oh-dear-purple-popple-seems-to-have.html
    And, of course, those fun folks at Fandom Wank are beating themselves into a tizzy over it. That folderol can be found here:
    http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/833452.html

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  8. Thanks for the links, Skrike. I’ll be interested to follow this up and see what sort of justification this is getting out there in fandom land.
    The original LJ post slid past my eyes the other day. The community is on my list of watched communities but I have had other non-fandom things to think about this past week or so.

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  9. I’m glad the post has been deleted. It was repugnant and irresponsible. You’d think even the “fanfiction community” would have enough common sense and social responsibility to recognize that.
    As you can see from the post above yours, it was the fanfiction community who got rid of the article, so I would say that your request has been answered.
    Mostly, that article was just asking for trouble. It’s illegal to not at least require minors to lie about their age before they can read adult fiction, let alone write the stuff for submission.

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  10. Hmmm… Lee’s hit count must have been down! 😉
    Considering that the people who write and read this stuff are generally teens themselves, it’s not pedophilia. The number of regressed adults who participate in this “community” is small. The latter would be the only perverts involved. The rest are just kids searching for a little whacking material.

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  11. I don’t know about that- the idea of specifically teaching underage kids to write porn (fanfiction or not- I’d say that’s the last thing to worry about here) coming from an adult sounds like some sort of pedophlilia to me. A twenty-five year old with a “fourteen year old Good Charlotte slash writing buddy”? I can not imagine the situation where this could be healthy.

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  12. I can not imagine the situation where this could be healthy.
    While I am not endorsing the article by any means, I do think that this reaction is a bit extreme. Granted, I’m not saying this is a good thing, but the fact that the two persons in question here write Good Charlotte slash and have a fairly significant age difference does not equal that the adult is being a creepy sex fiend.

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  13. I’m a parent and if some adult was giving my underage child pointers on writing sexually explicit stories, I would immediately call my good friend Det. Paul Bishop over at the Sex Crimes unit of the LAPD.

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  14. I’m a parent and if some adult was giving my underage child pointers on writing sexually explicit stories, I would immediately call my good friend Det. Paul Bishop over at the Sex Crimes unit of the LAPD.
    Thank You Lee!
    We had a discussion with these guys for almost two weeks. They told us this over and over that this did not happen and we insisted it did. PP post proves our point. They’re really glib and at times we wondered if we were nuts. Apparently we’re not. Thanks for the reality check.
    _Jen_

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  15. I’m a parent and if some adult was giving my underage child pointers on writing sexually explicit stories, I would immediately call my good friend Det. Paul Bishop over at the Sex Crimes unit of the LAPD.
    Ditto. Though I’d just being calling the cops, as I don’t know any detectives…yet.

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  16. I’m a parent and if some adult was giving my underage child pointers on writing sexually explicit stories, I would immediately call my good friend Det. Paul Bishop over at the Sex Crimes unit of the LAPD.
    That would definitely be a solid course of action (not that you need my approval or anything, but you’ve got it anyway). As I said, I’m not in favor of this sort of behavior by a very long, long shot.

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  17. Jocko, the main problem is not that teens write fanfic, or that teens write m/m slash. It’s that an adult is talking about teaching 14 year olds to write about sex. If you can’t see how utterly repugnant that is, then you have bigger problems than you realise.
    Alice: it’s not the age difference per se. It’s that one of them is 14. That’s definitely in “creepy sex fiend” territory.
    If it was my kid? I’d find the adult involved, and beat the living crap out of them. Then call the cops.

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  18. Alice: it’s not the age difference per se. It’s that one of them is 14. That’s definitely in “creepy sex fiend” territory.
    I’m not disagreeing with this. The implication in one of the earlier posts did sound a bit like this would always mean that the adult was at least trying to sleep with the child, but I’m beginning to think I misread. In any case, again, I’m not a fan of this behavior and I’m glad the article was pulled.

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  19. Ah, well, that’s PurplePopple (Laura Hale) for you. I know plenty of folk in online fandom who have longstanding bets as to how long it’ll be before she gets arrested for harassment, making false claims, fraud, and now, apparently, rather unsavory involvement with a minor. For the record, I doubt she actually wants to have sex with her underage writing “buddy”; she’s just been so warped by so many years spent buried in the sickest parts of online fandom that her entire value system has been turned upside down – writing a “Mary Sue” character is to her, an unforgivable crime, but encouraging underage teens to pen explicit sexual stories – and giving them the “pointers” with which to do so – is par for the course. She is certainly a smug and repellent example of the fanfic writing set, though, I would say, hopefully not typical.

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  20. Harsh, Mal. I can’t help but to think that, the post in reference aside, your vitriol is more personal than this issue would imply.
    On a different note, perhaps changing the age at which fanfiction writers can utilize FictionAlley or Fanfiction.net (or whatever myriad sites exist) to something greater than 13 would help to alleviate the problem? The way it’s set out currently allows for this kind of thing to occur without legal ramification, save online vilification.

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  21. Why would fanfiction.net or fictionalley change their terms and conditions? “Adult” (NC17 or equivalent) fanfiction is not allowed on either of those sites and if you do find it, report it and it will be removed.
    Sites where it is allowed, are (IME) clearly marked, and do not permit posting by anyone under 18. One the sites I know of, accounts which turn out to be held by under 18s are deleted, as is any fiction they may have posted.
    Still, I would imagine that it gives some of you a frisson of excitement to imagine that fandom doesn’t police itself, and who am I to deprive you of what may be your only pleasure in life by pointing out the truth?

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  22. I have to admit that I find it totally normal that fourteen year olds start to explore sexuality – I certainly did. And if they do so by writing slash I think that’s far safer than a few things I could imagine.
    However, if they write – slash or whatever – they should write as well as they possibly can, orthographically and grammatically correct and stylistically interesting. Why is it wrong to show them how? Its not as if the poster made formerly uninterested teens into slash-fiends, she only wondered how to teach already slash writing teenage girls how to do so in a better way.
    I do so look forward to the day Lee’s daughter will be a teenager and discover Harry Potter slash….
    kete

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  23. There’s nothing wrong with teaching a teenager how to write. There’s something very wrong about an adult having a relationship with said teenager based primarily on exchanging sexually explicit materials. Even if this particular individual has nothing but noble intentions, you have to see how this kind of relationship would be very attractive to someone who had other things in mind.

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