I imagine it seems right enough if you are that age. by
Neshomeh
on 2014-04-25 16:30:00 UTC
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It makes me a little uncomfortable, too, but there are a couple of reasons for that:
1. I'm a grown-up. I see teenagers as kids who are still developing and maybe shouldn't be exposed to certain things yet.
2. My culture (national and familial) supports the idea that teenagers and even college-age people aren't full adults, and shouldn't have to do certain things or make certain decisions. My culture does not support the idea of teens with weapons.
However, when you are fourteen (for instance), you're starting to realize that you're an independent person with your own will, and you want the freedom to make decisions and take action for yourself. If you feel passionate about badfic, it probably doesn't seem weird to take matters into your own hands by means of an avatar character who's the same age as yourself.
Furthermore, I've found there's an age range where people feel most strongly about fandoms and such, and about 13-24 (give or take) seems to be it. Once people hit college and working life, most of them seem to be less worried about it. Not that everyone gives up caring about fandom entirely, just that it's a less urgent sort of caring.
So, I say let 'em be fourteen if they're fourteen. Strike while the iron is hot. {= )
~Neshomeh
No problem. ;) by
Huinesoron
on 2014-04-25 16:28:00 UTC
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Wait, did I? I didn't mean to... oh, right, I see. You're right, that was a mistake on my part. In functional terms, though, the fact they they're older now doesn't mean they didn't have to deal with the issue once.
And I'm not as uncomfortable with it as you are, I'm afraid. I should note that Ella was in the DAC, which is not technically an Action Department - and was there because she was so young. Similarly, Elanor Laison joined at 14 and was placed as a secretary until she hit 16. On the flip side, Constance appears to have become an Assassin at 13 - but the Wiki does describe her as 'precocious'. My most recent story suggests in a couple of ways that 12 is the age when HQ-born children begin initial training as an agent; I assumed that would take at least a couple of years, and maybe longer (on the principle of 'we can't start them working yet anyway, so we might as well train them to do it properly').
In-universe, I think a lot of the 2001-2006-era Earth-recruits were movie fangirls, and so hit the demographic for that - 14-15 is a fairly reasonable average age. Nowadays, without the swell of fangirl activism on behalf of the canons, we don't have many people who deliberately seek out the PPC (Constance Sims, Techno-Dann, Nenya and Rosie... it happened a lot), and Narrative Causality seems to lead to older people falling through plotholes.
Ultimately: I remember the 14-15-year-olds who were writing the 14-15-year-old agents. I have no problem with their semi-self-inserts being in the PPC, because I knew the people behind them.
hS rambles incoherently