Word to ya motha, foo.

 

Distressing as it was at the time I can remember my mother used the term 'hols' when I was at school.

And that period of my life ended ten years ago.

So used by teens and parents attempting to be current and 'cool'.

 

Do they not teach children about sex in primary school in the UK. Or at least the tab P goes in slot V part?

 

They do. You have a session in year 5 (age 9-10) and a session in year 6 (age 10-11).

Also, even if Harry doesn't have any close friends at primary school, he's still going to be part of class and the games on the playground. There's no way to avoid it.

 

If people don't want to write about preteens talking about sex (and they probably shouldn't), then just don't. Don't write that scene. Don't write a weird scene, to show how innocent they supposedly are, either.
If you never bring it up, then people will just project their own view of/experience as 12-year-olds upon the characters.

It gets even worse when the characters are teens. Older teens who date are probably also having sex. You don't have to acknowledge it if you don't want to (Rowling didn't), but writing that abstinence scene is so much worse. "We're soulmates and will be together forever, but we won't have sex until we're out of school and are married." <- WTF?

(Maybe their RL friends know their pen-name and they're afraid to be called perverts for shipping young characters.)

 

Related to that, I hate how many authors insist on sticking to traditional relationship stuff. Like asking the father for permission to date his daughter, abstaining until marriage, etc.

I don't know why it is, but far too many writers use these things (quite often in HPHG fics) when in real life this hardly ever fucking happens.

 

Well I think that depends. I can't see two adult people casually dating going to the respective parents for their blessing however I would think most parents would probably meet boyfriends/girlfriends for younger kids. In which case the blessing is needed.

 

Most parents probably would, but that doesn't mean that in real life (or even in HP) kids always do what the parents want, especially since they're teenagers. We don't really see any of that traditional stuff happening in HP.

Even if a fanfic author had to write it, they could tone it down to at least make it somewhat reasonable. It's a little far-fetched to expect teenagers to go about it the way many of the fanfics do it.

 

I never understood that either, I mean many years back sure, but since daughters are no longer the property of their father and hopefully can make their own choices...

 

You obviously don't read a lot of bad FanFics. Apparently, the Wizarding World is Uber-Sexist and Uber-Old-Fashioned.

 

Doesn't explain Harry asking Hermione's Dad anything.

 

Uh. Why would anyone read a lot of bad fanfic?

 

If someone working on Pottermore changed Su Li's name to Sue Li, then they've westernized her name for no apparent reason: A move that will get less play from me than JKR, herself, retconning Hermione's middle name.

Ugh. Too right.

I hate it when those scenes pop up in a story. For one, they're just kind of... gross, in a way. Mainly, though, they simply always ring false. They come across as blatantly artificial in a way that most of the magical things in HP fan fic do not. I can buy soul bonds that create a telepathic link between two people far more easily than I can these awkward, stiffly artificial, conversations between the teens in question and one or more adults, where the teens just robotically* regurgitate sentiments that no normal teen EVER uttered- ever even thought in such formal terms.

"Well, yes, despite the facts that we're intensely in love with each other, think we'll be together forever, are attracted to each other, and firmly in the grip of a tsunami of hormones, we unanimously decided that we feel we're too young to engage in intercou-" AAAHHHHHH KILL ME!!!

If anyone spoke like that around me, I'd be checking them for alien implants, or a power cord... or maybe a bible and 'magic underwear.' The point being that normal people don't say that shit: Not to each other, and certainly not to their friends and EVERY adult they talk to. Fuckin' hell.

One of these days, there will be a story where the teens are saying this shit, and one of their friends, rightly baffled, will say, "Who talks like that? And why wouldn't you want to have sex?" And the people he was talking to will point at him and, wide-eyed, start wailing at the top of their lungs, because they aren't humans, they're the fucking pod people from Invasion of The Body Snatchers.**

Just like mid-chapter author's notes, anachronistic references to current pop songs on iPods that shouldn't exist yet, and anime terminology, will rip me right out of an otherwise engaging story, if a teen couple starts rattling on about how, despite being pubescent teens with all that it implies, they have no interest in having sex with each other, my suspension of disbelief is instantly gone. I'm no longer in a story, I'm in front of my monitor wondering why I'm reading.

Have you ever been watching a movie, and all of a sudden there's a really phony looking bit of CGI on the screen, that takes you right out of the movie? That's what it's like for me when this shit rears its ugly head in a story. It's like the background fades away, Hogwarts castle disappears, and we're left with the people in question standing in an empty, Holo-deck-like room, reciting this gibberish about sex, while the author is behind them, nodding and holding a clipboard.

Those scenes are phony for, paradoxically, the same and yet totally different reasons as the ones in those Kinsfire† stories where Harry is constantly talking about sex and making sexual innuendos, with the professors, the headmaster, other kids' parents... "Let me explain to you how I'm slammin' it to your daughter/student and a few of her friends. Then we can all have a laugh at the clever innuendo I just made, because that's what people do, right?"

Nobody does that!

I can suspend my disbelief for teenage chosen ones and elder wands and even soul bonds, but I simply cannot for the dreaded fanfic-abstinence conversation, and I can't for Kinsfire's "always-sex-talkin'" Harry.

There may be a few mature teens out there who could have a frank and honest discussion with a parent to whom they are close and have a fairly open relationship (the fabled 'cool' parent, I guess) about sex but, for one thing, those are rare, and for the other... this phenomenon we're talking about ain't that. It is its own beast: A beast that was not meant to be.

It's just inhuman.

Like Ayreon said: Don't write that scene. If your characters aren't going to be having sex, why talk about it at all? Just don't touch it! It's like poison ivy, a snapping turtle, a shit-covered stake at the bottom of a jungle pit, or an unexploded bomb - just don't poke at it, step on it, or lick it, and it won't hurt you!

In most scenarios, the only reason for characters to talk about not having sex, is precisely because they want to be having sex and, for whatever reason, can't! (Or, they're a parent, and they're talking about their kids) It's a plot point. Want it, can't get it. Want it, but my girlfriend's parents watch us like a hawk. Want it, but- You get the idea.

In this case, it would be better left unsaid. Just ignore it. If you don't want to write about sex -by all means- don't write about it, but don't have your characters engage in awkward talk about how they're hormonal teenagers who have decided they're made for each other... but they're 'not ready' for sex. Wow, what fascinating little robots†† they are. Now get 'em out of my fuckin' sight.

The fact is, everybody with an able body and normal brain, past a certain age, wants sex; it's the million consequences they're afraid of. Will I get pregnant, will she get pregnant, what will the kids at school think of me, will my parents find out, will I catch a disease...

Remove the consequences and it would be a free-for-all... which, for two tacky but apparently glorious decades in America, was the situation at hand. Too bad it ended when I was 4; right there is an age when you shouldn't be ready... though it didn't stop me from having a 'thing' for Samantha from Bewitched... No, the cartoon version of her from the opening sequence, not the actual woman.

Well, maybe I'm not the baseline by which we should be judging the rest of the population. Fair enough. :facepalm

Well, if it's Harry meeting the parents of a pureblood witch, I can almost see why they'd do this. Most people are of the mindset that the Wizarding World is a lot like Victorian England, with stiffly formal courtship rituals and such (to say nothing of all the contracts...).

But, yeah, with the Grangers it makes no sense; they're modern muggles. Some people don't even bother asking for the parents' blessing when they decide to marry, but a couple of teens deciding to date? No one asks anyone's 'blessing' for that, if they're young enough they just hope they have permission to date anyone at all.

Although, a meeting with the Grangers usually does come complete with the tired old, unfunny, scene where the dad threatens harm on the boyfriend for even looking at his little girl the wrong way, and Harry gulps nervously, despite having faced shit by the time he was 14 that would leave the adult Mr. Granger crying in a corner.

People may not meet the parents and formally request permission to court their daughter, these days, but that doesn't mean kids don't need some kind of permission to leave the house or hang out with certain friends... unless the parents just have zero control over their children, or don't want to put in the time and effort.

Although, when your kids are away together at a co-ed boarding school for nine to ten months of the year, and away at a friend's house with each other for up to another half month during summer break, what exactly are the parents going to do to keep them away from each other? Whine impotently? I'm sure that month and a half you can enforce your lack of permission to date is a real stick in their spokes...

That's not even bringing magic into the equation, but I've discussed that here before.

Spoiler

Once magic enters the equation, all those kids need is a bit of money and an afternoon in Diagon Alley, and they'll be able to run rings around their parents without ever lifting a wand. Oh, they have a multi-locked, magically expanded, trunk and an invisibility cloak? You're fucked, parents! Wait, they also have access to a friendly house elf? You could park that trunk in your living room and still not see your kids until they step back out of it, because their own children are ready to go to Hogwarts.

Just once, though, I would like to see a Hermione who overhears her father telling her mother how he's just itching to threaten the boyfriend, even just for a laugh, and she nips that stupidity in the bud with extreme prejudice.

Spoiler

"That would be embarrassingly primitive behavior, dad. Besides, it wouldn't do you any good, in this case, whether you really meant it or not."

Hermione's father glanced at Harry's not exactly imposing physical presence, then gave his daughter a dubious look.

Sighing, Hermione said, "Look, before you could finish your threat, with a twitch of his hand, Harry could separate your limbs from your torso like a skilled butcher working over a pig carcass, then neatly reattach said limbs and replace your entire memory of the event with one where you cheerfully gave him your blessing, your wallet, your car keys, and a box of extra large prophylactics.

"Q.E.D., you'd only succeed in humiliating yourself, your spouse, and your equally dangerous daughter, so I would council against it. If you need to indulge yourself, have another daughter and hope she grows up to date some skeevy boy who skips school, smokes dope, and doesn't carry a magic wand, so you can threaten him."

Looking back over at Harry, Mr. Granger asked, "Could you really do that?"

Harry waved away the man's concern, looking as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, and said, "Just because I could doesn't mean I would, sir."

Hermione's father was too busy regarding her boyfriend with new and barely concealed horror to notice his wife, eyebrows raised, mouthing, "Extra large?" at their daughter.

Self hatred?
Morbid curiosity?
Desperation?
Bad taste?
Too lazy/frustrated to keep looking for good ones?
Or maybe for the same reason some monks flog themselves?




* Not a word according to most dictionaries.

** Actually, there's a blink-and-you'd-miss-it scene in that satirical fic I was writing, where Harry and Hermione walk past two students talking exactly like this, and Harry just up and kills them, without warning. Hermione flips out, until Harry shows her they were just golems or something. When she asks how he knew, he simply states that no teenager, anywhere, ever talked like that about sex... and then they just move on.

† I won't bother shitting on him, because there's plenty of that here already, but I have no issue addressing this one aspect of his writing, because it really does sort of seem to be the crux of the nexus of the core of the self-defeating aspect of his writing, AFAICT. If you removed it, people probably wouldn't find his writing to be any more uniquely objectionable than the average bad fic - that is to say, just another part of the so-called 90%.

†† Shit, even as an android, Data was fully functional and programmed in many techniques.

 

I had a friend in college who lived in a one-bedroom apartment with his girlfriend (with his parent's full knowledge), yet his parents would not let his girlfriend spend the night over breaks. People are weird about that sort of thing.

 

I cry every time.

 

Ditto.
I feel like pulling my hair out.

 

Even when (especially when) it's actually Ron who happens to be said boyfriend. Almost certain that's happened before, lol.

 

Related:

I love Peggy Sue fics. I probably shouldn't, because so many of them are very similar but i read them anyway. So, when I see a Peggy Sue fic where an adult couple - who are most likely fucking like bunny rabbits in the future - ends up back in time and then say "Oh no, I'm not ready for sex!" I will always go "what?"

Seriously, you are mentally adults. It does not matter that you are now physically young, there is no way in Hell that a couple who ended up back in time would suddenly decided they can't fuck anymore and stop. As long as your various bits are working, you're most likely going to do it with each other.

 

Related.

I'm sure you will like this.

 

I probably would if I wasn't deathly allergic to Naruto.