Bitch, please.

[marguerite_26]

First, I am not speaking of any individual when I say this. This is something that has been bothering me for a while because I get told this a lot. Frankly, it is driving me insane.

Harry/Scorpius does not equal chan.

Cross Gen does not equal chan.

Why do people think this? Is ALL Snarry chan? I'm sure there are plenty of Snarry authors that would be unimpressed to hear that. We can accept that in every pairing there are some 'common squicks' that are more prevalent than others, like Harry/Lucius and non-con. But they do not have to go together.

What if people went around saying HP fandom is full of nothing but teens having sex in the Room of Requirement? Ok, granted, some people do say it. Doesn't that make you want to scream? I mean really, wouldn't it drive you nuts if someone reduced your fandom to a bunch of teenage fumblings? Like the entire fandom was restricted to Hogwarts days? The boys could never grow up and get careers?

I've written 8 Cross-gen fics including 6 Harry/Scorpius. NONE are chan. Chan is not implied by ANY pairing. Chan is about the ages of the characters.

Draco/Scorpius implies incest. It just DOES.

Harry/Scorpius DOES NOT IMPLY chan. Please stop assuming that. If you don't want to read the pairing, don't read it. I really don't care. Maybe Harry/Draco is all that you ever want to read. Maybe you don't like age disparity. Maybe the epilogue makes you want to spork you eye out. Totally understandable. But please don't dismiss the pairing because some fics in the ship are chan. There are chan Harry/Scorpius fics. There are also wonderful of fics with Scorpius over 17. If anyone wants non-chan harry/scorpius recs, you just let me know.

*jumps off soapbox*

Comments

[norton-gale.livejournal.com]

What if people went around saying HP fandom is full of nothing but teens having sex in the Room of Requirement?

LOL, what else is the Room of Requirement for? :D

That's amazing how much you've written since you started in HP fandom. You go girl!

As for Harry/Scorpius: everyone will be just fine if they read the warnings.

[piratesmile331.livejournal.com]

So where does one find these chan Harry/Scorpius fics?

PS I agree with you, by the way.

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

Well... the warning thing is a whole different issue. Making sure every fic has the correct warning will certainly help the readers in choosing.

But I know some people see the pairing and assume it must be chan so just skip it. When Strikethrough happened, I wasn't in the HP fandom and I was hearing a lot of 'well what did they expect? they are writing about children having sex.'

I have written a lot. :D And you've beta'd at least half of it. *squishes you*

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

LMAO! I'm working on a Harry/Scorpius rec list at the moment. Should I divide the list into chan and not chan so the chan is nice and easy to find. *g*

♥

[fourth_rose]

*facepalm*

I always thought chan required one of the partners to be underage? (Which leaves the question where you draw the line, because if you go by the British age of consent, Harry/Scorpius with a 16-year-old Scorpius isn't chan either. Personally, I wouldn't call something "chan" unless there was an actual pre-pubescent child involved.)

Then again, I've never got why cross-gen is such a squick to some people. Is it because only the young and pretty are supposed to get some?

[piratesmile331.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that would be wise. A very good idea. Then those of us who are terminally pervy can tolerate chan can read those.

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

*nods* the idea does seem to solve some of these issues.

Now I need to figure out if Scorpius is 16 is considered chan, or is the cut off 17. LOL!

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

The definition of chan is a bit of a mess. I was discussing with people last night about creating an ADI (Age Desparity Indicator) to clear things up.

Like warning: chan(40/15)

meaning Harry is 40, Scorpius 15.

I always thought that 17 would be the age of consent in the Wizarding world because of the whole '17 you are an adult wizard thing.'

But I think you are right, most people go with 16.

[sesheta-66.livejournal.com]

*squishes you*

[fourth_rose]

Age of consent and legal adulthood are often not the same, though (in my country, you come of age at 18, but the age of consent is 14). It would be interesting to speculate about the wizarding age of consent - since, according to JKR's Black family tree, Bellatrix' father was 13 when she was born ;)

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

according to JKR's Black family tree, Bellatrix' father was 13 when she was born

*spits coffee all over keyboard*

oh, JKR! How I love your foibles.

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

LOL! Those are clearly squishes of 'lalala I am soooo staying out of this...'

*squishes you back*

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

OMG!!! My hp_nextgen_fest gift fic!!!!!!!!!!

OMG!!!!!

I have just printed it and have read the first two paragraphs. I am soooooo freaking excited. *stares at pairing list* Wooooot!!!!

ok... gotta go read. :D

[fourth_rose]

*g* There's at least one more 13-year-old father on the family tree, and a 14-year-old as well, if I remember correctly. Perhaps you could tell that to the people who keep complaining about the "chan" issue? ;))

[lotus-lizzy.livejournal.com]

I'm not agreeing with those who call Harry/Scorpius chan, but I think I may know the reason for that misconception.

The problem stems from the books. We only see Albus and Scorpius as little eleven year olds. I myself have trouble seeing them as older (even though I write them as older).

The pairing is new, and so it needs some time to grow into its own fan-canon where it becomes more natural to see Scorpius as an adult next to Harry. We are a little spoiled in our Harry/Draco world of having tons of history behind us BUT there was a time when someone wrote a Harry/Draco and the other shippers went WHAT???

I know its frustrating but I have high hopes that it will get better. *big hugs* my dear.

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

I can see it now:
It's CANON! That's the way those people live. ;)

[fourth_rose]

I've been saying that ever since the Black family tree was published ;))

[leela-cat.livejournal.com]

Umm.... gah?

I've never quite figured out the age limits of chan either, but I always assumed that it was 16 or 17. But then again, Walking the Plank has a chan (16-18) on its archive. I assumed that's about legalities, especially for Australians who aren't legally supposed to read anything sexual with anyone under the age of 18.

For me the lines about 16 for reading and 17 for writing. That's more about personal experience though, and about growing up in countries where the age of consent was 16.

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

*sigh* i think you are right that it stems from the books and Albus and Scorpius being 11 the only time we see them. I mean, I know that and I do understand that somewhat.

My issue is that I would think that as a fandom we've opened our mind to the possiblities of years down the line. If I talked to some misc. fan of the books I met standing in line at the grocery store and mentioned 'Harry/Scorpius is sooooo HAWT'. I would assume she would turn and flee the creepy lady.

But the people in HP have been living and breathing the 'possiblities' this universe gives us for years. There have been so many wonderful fics about adult characters pre-DH or pre-HBP when the kids were all 15, 16 that I don't see why it is so hard to think of Scorpius or Al being 17 or even 24.

I mean, look at AS/S it's not all about two eleven year olds? Or did that take time for people to accept?

sorry if I'm babbling... I'm totally high on cold medication. *sniffle*

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

or me the lines about 16 for reading and 17 for writing.
do you mean you must be 16 to read about sex and 17 to write about sex?

And yeah, either way we define chan I think the easiest is to simply state the age we are talking about because someone is going to define it differently.

[lotus-lizzy.livejournal.com]

No problem. I may be viewing the fandom expierience through my own, as it did take me a while to loosen up to new pairings.

I started reading a few years ago and the fics I read were very canon (ie Ron/Hermione). Then I started to branch out, very slowly. The first time I read an H/D I was blown away. I had never thought about that pairing before and had assumed that they would fight all the time.

Now look at me, I make them lovey dovey and smushy wooshy.

After a few years of h/d I began to read other pairings, but I had the same reservations about snarry as I think most people do about Harry/Scorpius. I thought there would be chan because I saw Snape as so much older than Harry, in age and experience. Harry seemed so vulnerable, so broken in a lot of the stories I read. I was a bit turned off.

But then I read more fics, and found plenty of non-chan, very mature and wonerful snarry fics. I'm not a fan of the pairing, but it did open my eyes.

When I first saw As/s I did thnk of them as eleven. I read a few fics and found the majority of the writiers were writting silly things about them in hogwarts, so that's how I viewed them.

This pairing is new, and a lot of the stories have been a little angsty, and sometimes dark, or maybe thats the only ones I've seen.

The pairing needs some fluff, it needs some campy cracky fluff that just blows that chan fear out of the water. Something where Scorpius is 40 and Harry is 70 and they fight over hot young new hotshot auror with too tight trousers.

I think you should write it. :)

[ravenqueen55.livejournal.com]

I agree with the pre-pubescent comment ~ I said that over on romaine24's LJ yesterday, actually, that for me 'chan' denotes a pre-pubescent character. If the character is 15 or 16, though, it depends on the tone of the fic and how the characters are written. The only time I clearly see a 15 or 16 year old being with an older character as chan is if there has been continuing abuse by the older character, from the time the younger character was a very young child and continuing on through the teen years.

I think that's why it's so challenging for authors to know what to class their fics, because there's no set definition, and each of us have differing views as to what we see chan as.

[leela-cat.livejournal.com]

do you mean you must be 16 to read about sex and 17 to write about sex?

Umm... no. I guess that was completely unclear. I refuse to be a hypocrite about reading and writing about sex, because I was doing both at a very young age (and you can blame my mother's porny bodice rippers for that).

What I meant is that I can read stories where one of the characters is 16, but experience has shown that the youngest age I write it is 17. Although I've written at least one story that implied sex occurred when one of the characters was 16.

And, yes, that's what I do in my warnings. I don't say "chan" but I'll say "Scorpius is 17" as I did for my Snape/Harry/Scorpius (and isn't that some nice cross-gen for you. *g*)

[romaine24.livejournal.com]

OMG that is a great Bunny!!! I'm dying of laughter over it. It would make a great short piece. *sigh* If only I could write short stories.

Your comments are very wise. It will take time for the ship to come into its own. I would just hate to see it defined by a genre so early on.

[marguerite-26.livejournal.com]

The pairing needs some fluff, it needs some campy cracky fluff that just blows that chan fear out of the water.

um... no. just no.

While I don't necessarily like chan, nothing in the world makes me run away screaming faster than cross-gen fluff or crack.

The reason I like cross-gen is because it is complicated and crammed with difficulties. Making a believable, working relationship or even a believable happy ending between Harry/Scorpius takes great writing. That's the charm.

Making it fluff or turning it into crack is like taking the wonderful concept of H/D and saying 'you should make a potion/spell that makes Draco in a girl' and that way the pairing will become popular with het lovers.

I'd rather be true to the pairing and have it unpopular.

eta: but I do see your point, that sometimes a fic with 'general appeal' could open someones eyes to the pairing. :D