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I don't care if someone is an adult who is exclusively into children's/YA media because that's their business but frankly I'm at a point where I have no interest at all in reading their opinions on adult media and adult queer stories or pretending that I do.
This whole discussion about "messy queer stories" has really hammered home to me that people whose only frame of reference for queer fiction is She-Ra and Voltron and other children's media are not having the same conversation as people talking about queer media made for adults.
And it's not even that we're having different conversations, it's that their frame of reference for queer media and the limits of that frame make it impossible for them to even engage in conversations about queer adult media in a way that is coherent or matters.
I am very much team read/watch/play what you want but I also think you have to actually engage with certain media to be able to talk about it and form opinions on it. When you literally only engage with children's media, what conversation can you have about adult media?
When the only queer media you engage with is meant for preschool or middle school aged audiences and you try to judge adult queer media through that lens, your view of that media is distorted. You base its quality on what's appropriate for children.
You base its morality on whether a child can understand it. You judge the tropes used, the execution of them based on things you learned from shows that have to be understandable for kids. When adult media is 'too adult' you then find it inherently bad or 'problematic'.
There are people here who judge adult queer media based on whether it's appropriate for children, can be understood by children, or is palpable to people who have consumed nothing but children's media. The fact that this media is for adults is frequently downplayed or forgotten.
The entire subject of queer media on this app is so dominated by this kind of mindset that even when people express that they want more 'messy' queer stories they get rec'd children's media anyway because the thought that people might want adult media doesn't even occur to some.
There's nothing wrong with children's media or adults who are into it exclusively, but it's been forgotten by many of those adults that children's media is inherently limited as a genre because it's meant for children. There are certain things that simply can't happen there.
These people forget that and then go on to expect adult media to adhere to the same limitations of children's media -- and then judge it harshly when it doesn't, when it's more sexual or violent and contains other adult themes.
The conversations that follow are usually tedious and unnecessarily nasty because you're trying to talk about adult media with someone who is starting from a place where the entire concept of *adult* media is repulsive and morally bankrupt because it isn't meant for kids.
