Monday, June 17, 2019

Youth escapist media

 I wholeheartedly support the freedom of not-so-young adults to read young adult novels and consume other media aimed at younger people. Anyone who sneers at you for reading/watching something "for kids" isn't worth listening to. It's absolutely okay to read and watch whatever you want!

What isn't okay is demanding that media that isn't meant for you conform to your adult perspective.
In real life, young people have very limited agency over their lives, and virtually no agency to affect the world around them. It's entirely understandable, then, that young people would gravitate to stories in which young characters do exercise agency, fight back, and save the day. If those stories resonate with older fans as well, wonderful! But older readers/viewers don't get to demand that these fictional stories conform to their own beliefs about what the protagonists are "too young" for, or denounce the fictional adults in the fictional story for "endangering" the young protagonists, or denounce a love story on the grounds that the characters are "too young" to fall in love.
In a YA adventure story, young people are going to have adventures. In a YA romance, young people are going to have romance. If that upsets you, perhaps these genres aren't for you. Among other reasons, a story in which the main characters are perfectly safe, perfectly protected, make no significant decisions, have no strong emotions, and encounter no conflict is... a pretty boring story.
You've successfully structured real life to prevent young people from doing anything. Let them have their escapist fantasies of actually doing things.

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