I have held back no water in its season

Roy shifted against the bed as Ed's metal fingers pressed deep into him.

Theories about Roy’s injury, how it failed to kill him, and how he might have recovered.

First things first. *growls direly at the writers for such an unlikely combination of indications*

It puzzles me when I come across one of the, increasingly frequent, references to fanfic as a genre that portrays/employs/is hospitable toward/valorizes pedophelia.

Pedophelia is defined, both in dictionaries and in psych manuals as sexual desire harbored by an adult toward children. That is, it is specifically the physical (and possibly mental/emotional) immaturity of the child that is the focus of the adult’s sexual desire.

So, if, to take a nice loaded example, a given story features a sexual relationship between Harry Potter’s Harry and Snape before Harry turns sixteen, and the story spends all its time focusing on Harry’s surprising strength and maturity, and none of its time showing Snape aroused by Harry’s childish body, and barely gives a wave, if that, to their age and/or status difference… that’s not pedophelia. That’s denial. That’s a story that willfully ignores the social dynamics one might ordinarily expect between a child and an adult entering a sexual situation–quite possibly because the author is fascinated enough by how those two character shapes might bounce off each other, erotically, to suspend her and her readers’ disbelief like the Brooklyn Bridge.

A story that lingered on those dynamics, that focused on Harry’s immaturity and the ways that immaturity might arouse Snape, that would be a story about pedophelia. And, if the story was written in a manner intended to titillate, as well, that’s when I, for one, would entertain the argument that the story is not only portraying, but encouraging criminal behavior.

I would really say that a lot of the unreflective fic out there is saved from any accusation of pedophelia by it’s very lack of realism. The adult-child issue is not an issue, because it simply isn’t there. The age difference may be stated, but it’s numbers without a scrap of supporting behavioral evidence. The characters interact exactly as if they were of a similar age, and any descriptions of erotic or aroused moments use age-neutral images.

Anime fandoms have another twist on the whole thing, since the majority of the source texts participate in the idealization of cuteness, which includes infantilization. The girl who is the epitome of Cute behaves very childishly, and she reflects and supports a strong subculture of the eroticization of childishness. The most (in)famous signifier in that subculture is probably the sailor-style school-girl uniform. Victimizability is strongly encoded as erotic, and this translates into the male/male productions as well. In any mass-directed story that features two men in a sexual relationship, one will be very specifically coded as victimizable (small, soft, yielding, weak, submissive, either physically, emotionally or both) in comparison to the other (big, sharp, hard, dominant, aggressive, you get the idea). In good stories, the various signifiers of strength and control may be crossed and mixed between the partners to produce a complex relationship.

This tendency in the source texts lends itself to very pedophilic set-ups, even in unreflective fic.

Even so… let’s take another example that occasioned debate on the whole pedophelia issue. Ed and Roy of Hagane no Renkinjutsushi. Precisely because the source text did not set out to establish these two as sexual partners, nearly all of the victimizable traits are missing from both. The one outstanding one that remains, Ed’s small size, is such a focus of humorous defensiveness and overcompensation in the source text that making it an erotic focus would take some work. (Which is not to say that J-art wasn’t doing it every time I turned around, but my first reaction to those pictures was often “who’s the little blond chick, and why’s she got a metal arm like Ed’s?”)

Again, if the fic focused on Ed’s strength and determination and brilliance, and did not focus on Roy-as-seducer-of-innocence, and ignored or reversed the dependency aspects of their relationship, that’s denial. Not pedophelia. Technically, even if the fic didn’t ignore those things, it still wouldn’t be pedophelia (assuming that Amestris is sort-of Germany, and that Germany’s age of consent is fourteen, and that, in the probable time-frame, the dependent-relationships clause would not yet have been added to the legal canon). But, given the disparity in ages, I’m willing to agree that a fic which did suppose that Ed’s emotional immaturity was arousing to Roy and that Roy employed his rank/experience/knowledge to maneuver or coerce Ed into bed should, indeed, count as pedophelia.

The point being, there are certainly fics which do portray pedophelia, and even fics that romanticize and/or valorize it. But I think it dilutes the seriousness of the accusation to automatically apply it to any fic that features one participant over the age of sixteen and a five year or greater age difference.

So I was, at last, in a mood, yesterday, to watch the second half of FMA.

*pleased*

Maybe it was just that I didn’t have to wait a week for whatever resolution the next ep would deliver, maybe it was that I was primed for a few of the twists, but the second half seemed far less rip-out-your-heart-and-stomp-it-to-bits than the first half. Almost as if the progression went “let’s mash everyone down as far as they can go, until they finally break and start to make a come-back”.

Fic post from my archive.

The Rain

Ed and Roy go for a walk in the rain... at least that was Ed's intention. Fluffy Drama, I-2.

• Associated Fanart: Roy in the Rain by Jedera

"I actually like rain, you know," Roy answered, tone reminiscent. "I used to go out in it all the time when I was little. Especially storms like this. Even when I started specializing, I still liked walking in it. It wasn't until later that it became," he paused a moment before finishing, "inadvisable."

So, a post Trudy made got me thinking once again about one of the things that squicks (or possibly kinks) people about Roy/Ed: the age difference and Ed’s youth.

So, in present-story-time Ed is 15 and Roy is 29.

And?

Most fiction deals with either Everyman characters or extraordinary characters.  In the case of FMA, and these two in particular, they are definitely extraordinary.  In those circumstances, I’d say it’s more enlightening to look at the personalities than immediately hyperventilate over the numbers.  Anything else is too reminiscent of the height rule. The mindset that assigns dominance based purely on inches strikes me as pretty much the same one that assigns naivete/stupidity/perversion based purely on years.

So let’s start with Ed. Is he innocent and/or naive? On most topics, I’d venture a resounding NO, not by the time he’s 15. However, based on his reaction to Psiren, the only time we’ve seen him dealing with sexuality of any kind so far, his flusterment does seem to indicate that he’s not cynical, jaded, or knowing on that topic. So in a sexual situation we might expect 15 year old Ed to lose some of his typical combination of fire and sang froid, and become more hesitant. Possibly even freaked out, depending on the circumstances.

Does this set him up as some kind of innocent victim of sexual predation? I really kind of doubt it. For one thing, if he didn’t have some reason to a) notice and b) accept an advance I’m not sure it would even get past his focus to register at all. (You have to admit, Psiren had all the subtlty of a sledgehammer.) Roy gets past his focus, all right, but Ed’s awareness of him is very adversarial–which gets us to the other thing. Ed is more than capable of taking care of himself. You notice he gets over his flusterment with Psiren and carries through his chosen response without getting sidetracked again.

On to Roy. This is actually the part I consider most problematic–what reason Roy would have to be sexually attracted to a 15 year old that he’s known since the kid was 12. Of course, Ed’s pure jaw-dropping gorgeousness is a darn good place to start, but would that overcome Roy’s presumed awareness that Ed is rather emotionally innocent about romance and sexuality? I don’t think so; I don’t think Roy is the kind to take advantage of Ed’s inexperience (which a manipulator like him probably could), and I certainly don’t think Roy would endanger their working relationship by making a serious pass unless he had some solid indication that Ed would welcome it and be able to keep working with Roy effectively. He’s generally too practical.

That is why I tend to write Ed older in my Roy/Ed fics.

Is this how I feel about real life liasons with this kind of age gap? Why yes, in fact, it is.  It depends on the personalities. Most teenagers do not, fortunately for them, have the life-experience that would catch them up to someone twice their age. That is what makes most cases of sexual relationships with those age figures fine examples of predation.

I would point out that in most cases, it’s up to the partner with greater experience to realize that fact.

I mean, when I was 19 and had an unspeakable crush on a really cool professor (almost exactly twice my age at the time), I would have been perfectly happy to go to bed with him given the slightest opportunity. He was the one who had to be responsible and restrained and think about whether it would be a good idea to sleep with a student who was a) still pretty damn innocent and b) rather messed up into the bargain. Thank goodness he did, too, because it would have been a bad idea.

Hmmm. I hadn’t thought about it before, but it’s quite possible that part of my liking for Roy stems from his similarity to that professor. *collapses laughing* What a thought!

Eh, while we’re on the subject, this is similar to why I’m happy to write present-time Roy/Hughes, provided Gracia knows about it. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary I like to think Gracia has enough faith in Hughes’ obvious deep and abiding love for her to not worry about him occasionally sleeping with his best friend, that Hughes loves his wife far too much for her to be anything but first in his heart, and that Roy would be fine with all this.

Hey, I said I like to pick the non-depressing options to write about.

Fic post from my archive.

Wet

Porn With Insights, I-4.

• Shower Kiss and
• Roy "washing" Ed. Explicit Roy/Ed.

"No one would think you were over thirty," he remarked dryly as Roy drew back.

Fic post from my archive.

Sticky

Porn Without Plot, mildly kinky, I-4.

• Popsicle. Non-explicit Roy/Ed.

Maybe it was heat-stroke, or maybe simply a measure of true desperation, but the next thought to occur to him was Roy. Roy will at least have a fan going.

Fic post from my archive.

Under Cover

For the Put Ed In A Dress challenge. Secret missions, entertaining disguises, pissed off Alchemists. Humor, I-2, no spoilers.

• Associated Fanart: Ed and Roy dancing by Moumusu.

Ed paused, pulling the bodice up, and poked at it suspiciously. "This," he remarked very flatly, "is padded."