Res ipsa loquitur

armadillo1976 - "I'd appreciate a few words about navigating the issues of kids growing up and having the "mommy writes fanfic, mainly erotica, and mommy's using this word just because it sounds better than porn" conversation. My kiddo is only 5 now, and I have only written one story and am in the middle one the second one, but I see myself writing more, so I've been wondering how this conversation goes."

I asked terminally_underwhelmed to share memories from the kid side, but it's finals week, so that got me a sigh I could hear for ninety miles. If they're reading this, I hereby invite them to comment later if they feel like it.

My general approach to sex ed was to provide books and try to be so matter-of-fact about things that it wouldn't seem like a big deal to ask me to explain tampons in Target. And my general approach to smut was to remember that I personally was reading a hell of a lot of sex writing when I was twelve, most of it much less life-affirming than fanfic. But of course none of that is the same thing as "Oh, god, this is a sex scene that was written for the purpose of turning my mother on."

At first what kept my fanfic habit out of the family circle was limitations in technology. I could only afford a desktop computer, because laptops were super high-tech and very expensive in the early aughts, so I could only use the computer upstairs in the dusty office, not downstairs where the family was. I only had a dial-up modem, so "the world wide web" was a bunch of MySpace pages that took forever to load; mostly I was on mailing lists sending and receiving fanfic in emails, which don't look very tempting to a kid.

Back before the kidlet was born, when I was a journalist, I was able to compose anything on a keyboard, but by the time I got into fandom, I had lost that ability, so I was (and still am) doing all fiction composition in longhand, which again doesn't look very tempting to a kid; I was more worried about a stranger looking over my shoulder in the coffee area of Barnes & Noble.

And my fanfic hobby was already kind of self-contained; I wasn't in the habit of talking about it except to the people I was doing it with. The spouse knows I write fic, but he hasn't read anything I wrote since Sentinel. I only started going to Wiscon a couple of years ago, and before that I'd only met two fannish people in person. I'm shy. I like friendships that happen in texts.

So I think I just never brought it up until after they discovered it on their own, but I don't remember how we had the "Well, I write it as well as reading it" conversation.

I dug back through my Dreamwidth entries and my imported LiveJournal entries, and there's nothing at all until at age 13 I find a quote where the kidlet is asking me, "Who do they slash Loki with?" and then by age 14 I'm overhearing their middle-school friends talking about, like, what constitutes sufficient lubricant in a story.

And I don't remember what happened in between. I don't ever remember having a conversation about fanfic, erotica, porn, romance, anything about the internet beyond "Don't give anybody your real name or where you live," until they were old enough for me to offer them a Dreamwidth invite.

The Dreamwidth thing would have told them who I was in here, if they didn't already know, and at that point they could find anything I'd written -- I treasure a set of screenshots of the texts they sent me when they stayed up all night long reading Transfigurations, but they were sixteen by then and it didn't seem like a big deal; I figured if they wanted to skip the sex scenes they could do that.

I have a terrible memory. I wish I'd started sooner keeping a journal.














( Prompts and How To Leave One - behind cut )

New Draco-centric story from the kidlet over at AO3! I betaed. I even offered some comments that were not smiley faces.

I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine (24327 words) by terminally_underwhelmed
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Pre-Harry/Draco - Relationship
Characaters: Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Narcissa Black Malfoy, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Blaise Zabini, Luna Lovegood, Arthur Weasley, Astoria Greengrass, more like ace-storia amirite, various OCs, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Epilogue What Epilogue, War Aftermath, Emotional Growth, Bureaucracy, Pre-Slash, Friendship, headcanon dump
Series: Part 1 of Solitaire/Mercenary
Summary:

They're together when the Dark Lord falls.

Draco is barely aware of his own senses, half-blind and exhausted from months upon months of corrosive fear, and whatever shred of reality is still allotted to him is in his father’s urgent grip on his shoulder and his mother’s hands around his and the way he leans on both of them.

It's a day every mother dreams of: the kidlet makes their fannish debut with a story I'm not even a little bit biased about ...

make my wish come true (12296 words) by terminally_underwhelmed
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Characters: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley
Additional Tags: Epilogue What Epilogue, Post-War, magical amnesia, Mariah Carey, Fluff & Angst, Slightly Dubious Motivations
Summary:

Ten minutes later Harry’s drying his hair while staring in his own eyes in the mirror and not moping. Never mind that he's twenty-four and already feels due for a midlife crisis. Never mind that he’s desperate enough for human company that he's considering getting a haircut just for the awkward scalp massage (and even more awkward questions about his scar) while being shampooed and then inviting Dudley out for drinks. He is a fully grown adult making the adult decision of working the entire week leading up to Christmas Day, since there’s a conspicuous lack of other places to be, and he isn't going to start moping about it now.

“I'm not,” he tells his reflection decisively. His voice is hoarse from lack of use.

The reflection has no response.

kass asks: What do you enjoy most about parenting a kidlet of this age?

Oh, man, this age is the best. This age is ... when I think about it, it almost seems unethical. I have basically genetically engineered and hand-trained my own ideal roommate.

The parenting role starts out every-waking-hour-and-then-some at birth, and gradually, pretty steadily, shrinks. Getting accustomed to the shrinkage may be the challenge of parenthood -- remembering that six-year-olds don't need you to be responsible for most of their clothing choices and ten-year-olds don't need you to be responsible for their bladders and fourteen-year-olds don't need you to be responsible for their friendships.

By now, I don't really have to exercise my "authority." I have just enough superiority in life experience that I'm occasionally called upon to give advice, which is good for my ego, and just enough difference in personality type that I'm the Family List-Keeper, and that's about it.

(I didn't mind exercising authority when the kidlet was smaller and life required it, but it does take energy. It's very restful to be able to say, "Well, if you make that choice, what do you predict the consequences will be? OK, does that sound good to you? Cool, you've made a decision. Good talk.")

So the only thing I don't like about it is looking at the pileup of college mailings and knowing how soon it's going to end!


Go here to add your own question.

( The questions thus far are under here. )

mific asks: Do you enjoy Christmas more, or less, now the kidlet's older?

I have mixed feelings. Every now and then I catch myself looking longingly at a toy catalog or a coloring book. Little kids actually like toys and play with them. Teenagers give you a sympathetic glance full of shared nostalgia, but really all they want is money.

On the other hand, when your kid is a high school senior:

- Yes, there are still kids' performances to go to this time of year, but they're well-done and genuinely entertaining.
- If something needs assembly, you can hand it to the kid and say, "Here. Your eyes are better than mine."
- You don't have that period right after a gift-giving holiday when your living room is so full of brightly colored plastic that you can't walk across it.
- Teenagers know their limits, so you don't have to be the one doing all the tantrum-prevention duty.

I got particularly lucky because the kidlet's new favorite thing to do on Christmas morning is cook a huge breakfast.

So I'd have to say that on the whole the balance is with the older kid.

On the other hand, my best friend, who got her spawning done much younger than I did, has been rewarded with a brand-new grandchild, and that's looking like it might be the best option of all.



Go here to add your own question.

( The questions thus far are under here. )

Round about the middle of January I got a text from the kidlet that said, "I may or may not be in the process of reading through ur entire Kidlet tag." Followed quickly by "I s2g all ur friends fangirl me," which is true.

So I promised to post some more overheards (even though almost none of them are by the kidlet this time), and to let you all know that they're foxfire99 on Tumblr and eager to have more followers if you're so inclined. If you have a personal age policy, they're 16. Please don't attempt to involve them in any Nigerian banking scams.

Meanwhile, mostly work-related overheards this time:

"The client told me he'd have the form today. I constantly remind my daughter not to believe anything a man tells her.”

( Read more... )

indywind offers this invitation to self-indulgence: an anecdote from your real life. (Your kidlet says the darnedest things, and I love how you share overheard remarks in such a way that I can practically hear them myself).

I'll give you two, one spouse-related and one kidlet-related.

1. So I'm sitting with my laptop, and the spouse gets up to go to bed, and I say, "Could you put out the lamp while you're up?"

He says, "I will put it out, and then I will put it out," and looks at me expectantly, and when I don't get it, he says, "It's from Othello." And he goes to walk upstairs.

"Hang on," I said, "can you put out the lamp?"

"Didn't I do that?" he says.

"No," I said, "you just made Shakespearean allusions at it."

2. So the spouse and I are complaining, which is one of our favorite pastimes: my co-worker talks all day and never does any work, and his classmates are slackers who don't do the required reading, and winter came too early, and I hate talking on the phone but my brother won't text, and so on.

The conversation turns to the children of one of our neighbors, and the spouse says to the kidlet, "You're not really doing your part in demonstrating the behavior expected of a teenager, you know."

"No, because you two are doing a better job of it."

The kidlet has decided that their dream job is being on the team of people who take a book/fairy tale/whatever and make decisions about how to create the visuals of a movie -- the characters, the clothes, the architecture, etc.

Anybody have any knowledge of that field? I promised them I'd poll my community and see if we could find (1) anybody who had suggestions for them or (2) anybody actually working in the field whom they could fanperson.



edited 2019 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns

I'm in salary-negotiation limbo right now, and I won't feel confident until we have a salary agreement and a start date and I've emailed back the magic words "I accept this offer" -- but ...

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