A controversial question (love interest that look 15 when they're 22)

[Impulse]

I know this is a bit controversial, which is why I wanted to ask and get some opinions before making a final decision on my game. Please be respectful. I'm not trying to offend anyone.

Basically, I'm writing a game about vampires. One of the characters in the story was bitten when she was 15 years old, and she's been a vampire for 7 years which makes her 22 in total (though she still looks 15 since vampires don't age). I intended for her to be the "best friend character" at first, and didn't think much of her appearance, but as I wrote her I really started to like her and now I want to make her a romantic option. The fact she was bitten at 15 is a big part of her backstory, since she had to go through the transition all by herself at such a young age. It forced her to grow up earlier than everyone else and she's constantly trying to act and dress maturely so people will treat her as an adult and not a teenager. The MC is 23 years old which means the real age difference is only 1 year, and they're both consenting adults so there shouldn't technically be a problem.

My intentions are not to create a loli or make her look young for any other reason than character building and backstory. I have no problem in making the sprite look like an adult if that makes people more comfortable playing the game. But I'm still worried about how people will react knowing they can romance someone who is physically 15 but mentally 22. I really don't want to send the wrong signals and are considering changing her backstory for that reason.

What do you think of this? Do you think it's too risky, or would it be okay as long as I'm super clear about her real age?

Edit: I just wanted to be clear that there is not going to be any explicit nudity in this game. I will most likely include optional mild nudity (underwear) and off-camera sex scenes for the sweet ending with each love interest though.

[Imperf3kt]

I'm not sure on this myself, but I would definitely make sure to not include anything sexual at all as it is illegal in most of the world, with the Netherlands having just made it (officially) illegal this week.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_sta ... ing_minors

In some countries, even women who are legally over 18 may still count as minors based entirely on their appearance.

[fleet]

@impulse,
I'm sending you a PM.

[parttimestorier]

I think that's something that a lot of might people might think is in bad taste, even if you keep any sexual content in the story non-explicit and "off-camera." Even if it absolutely wasn't your intention, people who hear about it are likely to get the impression that the vampire thing is a flimsy justification for making it slightly less disturbing to portray someone who looks really young in a sexual relationship - there are plenty of other stories out there that do things like that on purpose, after all. That's not to say that you absolutely can't do it if you feel like it's an important part of your story, but you should probably be prepared to get that kind of criticism.

Have you considered just changing it so that she turned into a vampire at 18 or 19 instead of 15? That's probably a lot more palatable to most readers, and I don't know if her backstory would really have to change all that much. Plenty of people in their late teens are still dependent on their parents, so it could still be true that the change forced her into independence earlier than her peers, and she could still be concerned about people thinking she's immature because she would still look fairly young.

[Shinoki]

In my opinion, physically looking 15 shouldn't be a problem. Even for people who are really 15 instead of just looking 15, 15 is an age where people start getting into relationships (early high school, right?).

Given the general target demographic of visual novels being people who are into anime and such (I may be wrong as I stick more on the jvn playing side... can't say for sure on the evn consumer demographic), I would say that the "older than she looks" character isn't too rare. Since your character isn't a loli anyhow, there isn't the squick of getting together with a prepub. girl who is "magically older than she looks," which can be seen as pandering to pedophiles or something along the lines.

Additionally, if your game has "anime style" art, I don't think many people will notice the age as the biggest factor that usually tells young adult ages in anime style art is height + clothing choices.

Even in real life, there are a decent amount of 20+ year olds who look 15 since puberty and growing to look like an adult happens at different rates for people. On the other hand, I'm sure there are plenty of 15 year olds who look 20 or so.

[papillon]

Some people will find it in poor taste, as they think anime games and fans are overly obsessed with young characters and with trying to find loopholes to excuse sexual content with young characters. A few people will 'ew that's gross' about it. However, if you've set your age at 15, post puberty, there will be a LOT less complaint than if your vampire froze in age at 12, and if you don't make a big deal about it, probably most other people won't either.

The only potential weakness is going to come down to exactly how young she looks and exactly how sexualised the 'underwear' scene is. If it is drawn in a way to look like an adult perving on a child, someone may raise an eyebrow.

For safety's sake, if there's going to be any suggestive content at all, unless I really wanted to gear up for a guns-blazing fight over the morality issue, I personally would tend to set the character as turned at 16 rather than 15. That's still a minor, but it's also falling into an age category where many more people are comfortable with the idea of teenagers at least having desires, and it's the age-of-consent in a lot of places, and with modern food it's likely to look pretty well-developed. Your 16yo vampire would be stuck forever in the stage of looking "mostly adult but not old enough to buy a drink", which gives you some age angst to play with, without looking too child-focused. And she can, of course, legitimately point out that she is NOT 16.

On the other hand if you didn't have the underwear scene, just the off-camera sex, there should be no major problem with it even if she actually WERE 15 IMO. Some people will complain (some people always complain no matter WHAT you do) but not enough to be a problem.

One reason Magical Diary students start at age 16 was because I figured that would be a more acceptable level for the romances, especially given that in the first game I had a teacher/student relationship arc planned.

[Impulse]

I think that's something that a lot of might people might think is in bad taste, even if you keep any sexual content in the story non-explicit and "off-camera." Even if it absolutely wasn't your intention, people who hear about it are likely to get the impression that the vampire thing is a flimsy justification for making it slightly less disturbing to portray someone who looks really young in a sexual relationship - there are plenty of other stories out there that do things like that on purpose, after all. That's not to say that you absolutely can't do it if you feel like it's an important part of your story, but you should probably be prepared to get that kind of criticism.

Have you considered just changing it so that she turned into a vampire at 18 or 19 instead of 15? That's probably a lot more palatable to most readers, and I don't know if her backstory would really have to change all that much. Plenty of people in their late teens are still dependent on their parents, so it could still be true that the change forced her into independence earlier than her peers, and she could still be concerned about people thinking she's immature because she would still look fairly young.

This is exactly what I am worried about. The last thing I want is people thinking I'm doing this because of disturbing reasons, and I also don't want to accidentally attract the wrong audience. I want to avoid any controversy if possible while still staying true to the story I want to tell, but maybe that's not possible if I decide to go through with this idea. You make a good point when you say I could change her "biting age" to 18 instead of 15. It would mean I'd have to change her backstory a little, but it might also make it more interesting. Since I could make something else happen when she was 15, like she ran away from home or something and had to grow up because of that.

I'll have to think about this a little more, but thank you very much for your input

[Impulse]

In my opinion, physically looking 15 shouldn't be a problem. Even for people who are really 15 instead of just looking 15, 15 is an age where people start getting into relationships (early high school, right?).

Given the general target demographic of visual novels being people who are into anime and such (I may be wrong as I stick more on the jvn playing side... can't say for sure on the evn consumer demographic), I would say that the "older than she looks" character isn't too rare. Since your character isn't a loli anyhow, there isn't the squick of getting together with a prepub. girl who is "magically older than she looks," which can be seen as pandering to pedophiles or something along the lines.

Additionally, if your game has "anime style" art, I don't think many people will notice the age as the biggest factor that usually tells young adult ages in anime style art is height + clothing choices.

Even in real life, there are a decent amount of 20+ year olds who look 15 since puberty and growing to look like an adult happens at different rates for people. On the other hand, I'm sure there are plenty of 15 year olds who look 20 or so.

Yes, you're right about the appearance thing. It's easy to make a character look older (or younger) when drawing in anime style. But what I think is the biggest problem isn't the age that the player sees, but the age that the characters sees. Because even if she looks old enough to the player, I will still have to mention the fact she looks younger or else there would be no point to even having that character trait in the first place.

[Impulse]

Some people will find it in poor taste, as they think anime games and fans are overly obsessed with young characters and with trying to find loopholes to excuse sexual content with young characters. A few people will 'ew that's gross' about it. However, if you've set your age at 15, post puberty, there will be a LOT less complaint than if your vampire froze in age at 12, and if you don't make a big deal about it, probably most other people won't either.

The only potential weakness is going to come down to exactly how young she looks and exactly how sexualised the 'underwear' scene is. If it is drawn in a way to look like an adult perving on a child, someone may raise an eyebrow.

For safety's sake, if there's going to be any suggestive content at all, unless I really wanted to gear up for a guns-blazing fight over the morality issue, I personally would tend to set the character as turned at 16 rather than 15. That's still a minor, but it's also falling into an age category where many more people are comfortable with the idea of teenagers at least having desires, and it's the age-of-consent in a lot of places, and with modern food it's likely to look pretty well-developed. Your 16yo vampire would be stuck forever in the stage of looking "mostly adult but not old enough to buy a drink", which gives you some age angst to play with, without looking too child-focused. And she can, of course, legitimately point out that she is NOT 16.

On the other hand if you didn't have the underwear scene, just the off-camera sex, there should be no major problem with it even if she actually WERE 15 IMO. Some people will complain (some people always complain no matter WHAT you do) but not enough to be a problem.

One reason Magical Diary students start at age 16 was because I figured that would be a more acceptable level for the romances, especially given that in the first game I had a teacher/student relationship arc planned.

You make a lot of good points. Yes, 15 is definitely better than 12 and I think most would agree on that. However, you're also right that there will be some people complaining no matter what as long as she's underage. Even if I made her 16 there would most likely be people complaining or assuming things. Someone else suggested making her "biting age" 18 just to be safe and I think that's a fair compromise even if it means I'll have to change her backstory.

[verysunshine]

Is there a good plot reason for having her look like she's 15? What changes if she's 16, 20, or 45? If there is a good plot reason for her being 15, is there a good plot reason for her to be involved in semi-clothed or sex scenes?

I would consider a 23-year-old pursuing a character who looks to be 15 a bit icky. When JRPGs are adapted for Western markets, they will sometimes increase the ages of their characters to make romantic scenes more acceptable. You could go this route.

Changing her backstory is okay. Sometimes things have to change to serve the overall story.

[arty]

Short answer: Don't do it.

Long answer: Normally I would immediately nope out of the thread after the short answer, but this case is actually one that made me think. We're apparently dealing with a character who is mentally mature enough for dating a 23-year-old. But the fact that her body is still that of a minor is still an immediate "no" for me. What will the MC - and by extension, the player - find attractive about this character? You said there won't be any explicit sexual scenes, but then mention mild nudity and the off-screen ones.

So for me, it's safe to assume that we will pursue a sexual relationship... Sexual relationships TYPICALLY don't ignore the body of the partner. There will be intimate contact with the body...in this case, a body that belongs to a minor, not an adult. Not even a minor who looks older. You stated she looks 15. Why does the MC want to be intimate with a minor's body? Why do we, as the player, want this?

Not to mention the legal implications. You will have trouble marketing your game and you or your players might even get into actual trouble.

Not to mention the crowd you will attract. Are you okay with that?

Not to mention that as the creator of media, you have a responsibility. Your work doesn't exist in a vacuum - you are sending a message. Think about it: What is the message you will send with this content, and do you want to send it?

You as the author have complete control over your characters and their existence. You made her bitten at 15 through a conscious decision of yours. It's not a fact of life, it's something you made up. You can change it. Heck, if you want to keep her backstory at any cost, you can even make up something about why her body has aged to a certain degree anyway. It's all fantasy. Literally nothing is stopping you.

Things to consider.

Cheers,
arty

[Zelan]

Hey Impulse! It's great to see you here on the forums again! (:

It seems like there's a lot of opinions here on this thread, ranging from "you definitely should not do this" to "it's probably doable as long as you do _____." Ultimately there's probably not one correct way to do it, and it seems like you've already got a pretty good idea of what you want to do with this, but I'll list out the things people have said here that I think are probably going to be the most helpful to keep in mind:

-Explicit sexual content involving minors/characters who look like minors tends to be legally murky if not outright illegal (keyword here is "explicit" - some YA fiction, for example, includes sex scenes between consenting minors that is very vague in terms of what actually happens, so that it can't be considered pornographic in nature, but it is very clear that sex is taking place).
-Making her bite age a bit older but still within her teens could probably allow you to keep the backstory mostly the same (depends on your exact backstory).
-If her youthfulness isn't apparent/emphasized, it will be more clear that you aren't including the character as fetish fuel.

Regardless of what you decide to do here, I'm excited for your project! There are so many cool things that you can do with vampire stories and I love reading them ^_^ and I'm interested to see how you explore this concept in particular, I can tell that you're very concerned about how the character comes off which makes me personally a lot more comfortable with questionable content. (:

[Impulse]

Short answer: Don't do it.

Long answer: Normally I would immediately nope out of the thread after the short answer, but this case is actually one that made me think. We're apparently dealing with a character who is mentally mature enough for dating a 23-year-old. But the fact that her body is still that of a minor is still an immediate "no" for me. What will the MC - and by extension, the player - find attractive about this character? You said there won't be any explicit sexual scenes, but then mention mild nudity and the off-screen ones.

So for me, it's safe to assume that we will pursue a sexual relationship... Sexual relationships TYPICALLY don't ignore the body of the partner. There will be intimate contact with the body...in this case, a body that belongs to a minor, not an adult. Not even a minor who looks older. You stated she looks 15. Why does the MC want to be intimate with a minor's body? Why do we, as the player, want this?

Not to mention the legal implications. You will have trouble marketing your game and you or your players might even get into actual trouble.

Not to mention the crowd you will attract. Are you okay with that?

Not to mention that as the creator of media, you have a responsibility. Your work doesn't exist in a vacuum - you are sending a message. Think about it: What is the message you will send with this content, and do you want to send it?

You as the author have complete control over your characters and their existence. You made her bitten at 15 through a conscious decision of yours. It's not a fact of life, it's something you made up. You can change it. Heck, if you want to keep her backstory at any cost, you can even make up something about why her body has aged to a certain degree anyway. It's all fantasy. Literally nothing is stopping you.

Things to consider.

Cheers,
arty

Thank you for your in-dept answer. The romance in the game will focus on friendship, romance and character growth 99 % of the time, and the furthest they'll go on-screen is a kiss. The sexual part of the relationship won't be a focus, but is a natural part of most realistic relationships which is why I wanted to include off-screen sexual content for the sweet/best ending with each love interest. I want the romance to be mature and for an older audience, so I think it makes sense to include even if the reader won't see it.

As mentioned before, I didn't intend for this particular character to be a love interest at first. It just naturally happened as I thought more about my story and the relationship between her and the main character. I've been working on this story for a over a year now seeing her only as the best friend character, and doing a drastic change felt wrong since I grew to relate and like her so much. In other words, I was blinded by my own creation and felt that if I changed her it would "ruin" her character. The fact it could send the wrong message or leave a bad taste in other people's mouths didn't even occur to me until I started creating her sprite and realized it probably wasn't such a good idea after all.

I definitely don't want to attract the wrong kind of readers or ruin the reputation for my game before I even get the chance to publish it. Because of that I've done some thinking and come to the conclusion that I'm going to change her "biting age" and in turn physical age to 18. I've also changed her backstory so she has a different reason for having to grow up quickly (teenage homelessness). Her sprite will look the appropriate age and instead of having her look young, I've decided to play with the idea of her being a young vampire (as in, she only turned a few years ago). I think this will be a much better choice when it comes to how readers percieve her character and it also makes me feel a lot more comfortable knowing I won't send the wrong message.

Thank you again for your thoughts

[Impulse]

Hey Impulse! It's great to see you here on the forums again! (:

It seems like there's a lot of opinions here on this thread, ranging from "you definitely should not do this" to "it's probably doable as long as you do _____." Ultimately there's probably not one correct way to do it, and it seems like you've already got a pretty good idea of what you want to do with this, but I'll list out the things people have said here that I think are probably going to be the most helpful to keep in mind:

-Explicit sexual content involving minors/characters who look like minors tends to be legally murky if not outright illegal (keyword here is "explicit" - some YA fiction, for example, includes sex scenes between consenting minors that is very vague in terms of what actually happens, so that it can't be considered pornographic in nature, but it is very clear that sex is taking place).
-Making her bite age a bit older but still within her teens could probably allow you to keep the backstory mostly the same (depends on your exact backstory).
-If her youthfulness isn't apparent/emphasized, it will be more clear that you aren't including the character as fetish fuel.

Regardless of what you decide to do here, I'm excited for your project! There are so many cool things that you can do with vampire stories and I love reading them ^_^ and I'm interested to see how you explore this concept in particular, I can tell that you're very concerned about how the character comes off which makes me personally a lot more comfortable with questionable content. (:

Hello Zelan, it's been a while Glad to see you're still on here and are rooting for me even though I dropped my last project.... Vampires are one of my personal favourite supernatural beings along with ghosts. I've always been fascinated by them and wanted to write my own story about it since I was little. I've actually been writing this particular story for over a year now but as a novel instead of a visual novel. I don't want to reveal too much since it's still a long way before I can even announce it as WIP, but just know that these vampires don't sparkle ^^

Your list was really helpful. It organised everyone's thought neatly and in turn helped me come to a conculsion. I just responded to the comment above yours going a bit more in-dept about my thought process and what I want to do going forward with this question. The short answer is that I've decided to change her physical age to 18 and also changed her backstory in a way that lets me keep most of her character traits without attracting the wrong audience. Trying to jump through hoops in a way to justify her appearance seems unneccesary when you think about it which is why I feel like this is the best choice

[SinaAzad]

Well, this subject, is something that I find kind of complex, yet for me the answer is simple.
you see... I don't think that there is anything wrong with doing that... it is like a porn star trying to act as a minor or something so she is 22 but looks like 15... there are people in real life that are that way, you don't get arrested if you, ehm, errr hold hands with them...
I think being too strict with these things is gonna produce a worse results in real life, it is like banning alcohol, because it is bad, what you will get is people making it illegally at a much worse quality to satisfy themselves, here I'm not saying drinking is good, that why there should be an age minimum for drinking! but I'm saying that if you are too strict it is gonna backfire...
well that said, I believe that if the character acts like a mature 22 yo(huh? wait, what?) woman it will be safe, also you don't really need to specify that she looks like a 15 yo just to be safe!


but I see you have already changed the character so it should be fine now anyways! good luck with the project!