Hmmm...

[moonlettuce]

So, there's a bit of a discussion going on in torchwoodslash about warnings due to someone posting a story that had Ianto raping and murdering a prepubescent girl. (And my question is, this was posted in a slash comm why?)

And one of the comments that's got me slightly puzzled is this one regarding which age of consent to use.

Mainly because all I can think is, why go for the American age of consent instead of following the one that's already set out in UK law. Which is, y'know, where the show happens to be set...

Because, if I write a Jack/Ianto-as-17-year-old, I'm not going to mark it as underage. Because it's not.

Now, I really should go and get ready since alyse will be here any minute now ::grin::

Comments

[fides.livejournal.com]

Plus Jack/17 year old is Torchwood canon

[moonlettuce.livejournal.com]

So's John/poodle, almost ;)

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

People act as if image and text are treated the same way by LJ - we've already seen LJ be very literal about art - but I really doubt they'd be that way about fiction featuring 17 year olds.

(While the written word seems to be treated quite differently, I've always thought that writing stuff about prepubescents on LJ is like shouting 'Come on, if you think you're hard enough'. )

[moonlettuce.livejournal.com]

I honestly get the feeling the author wrote the stories not because she wanted to but because she was trying to find the thing that would shock the most. Thing is, you could pretty much cut&paste Ianto's name with any other character and it wouldn't make any difference to the story.

[libitina]

Ummm... wait - why was the age of consent relevant when he was raping her?

(and now I'm curious - did he really in the story or just vividly remember that he had because of Spike?)

[fides.livejournal.com]

It wasn't per say.

As part of the continued discussion one of the commentators asked whether statutory rape (which may be consensual) should be distinguished from child rape and queried what counted as statutory rape for the purposes of the community as the age of consent varies.

The mod seems to be saying that the age of consent will be taken as 18 because LJ is American so anything with a character under 18 is sex with a minor and therefore child rape. Ummm. Which doesn't seem quite right so possibly I am misunderstanding.

[moonlettuce.livejournal.com]

I got the the 'under 18 is underage' thing as well. Which, y'know, for Torchwood, it really isn't ::grin::

[moonlettuce.livejournal.com]

Like fides mentioned, it was an off-shoot comment from the main discussion.

In the story he has the body in his bed and he thinks back about doing it (from what I skim read).

[spikeface.livejournal.com]

I love how the underage rape is getting all this attention, while the murder -- equally illegal and hopefully equally squicky -- just sits quietly by. If you're going to get up in arms about depictions of fictional people raping poor innocent fictional people, you might as well get pissed when the fictional people get murdered, too.

If I roll my eyes any harder I'm going to strain something.

[moonlettuce.livejournal.com]

If I roll my eyes any harder I'm going to strain something.

::grin::

It is kinda fascinating to watch. My view was more of the question of why she thought a slash comm would be the place to post this when the slash content (Ianto blowing Jack) seems totally pastede on, yay.