On a Serious Note

I recently received some... let's call it anonymous feedback about Magic Inc. promoting romantic/sexual relationships between adults and children. This doesn't entirely surprise me. I knew there would be some people who would make this assumption. So, let me say this now: I do not support children having romantic (and certainly not sexual) relationships with teenagers/adults. However, a lot of children do experience feelings for someone older in their lives. And a lot of children do, in fact, fantasize about what it would be like for that romance to be real.

Whoever was upset by the books, I truly am sorry, because there are so many people who have been through terrible things. And I all too well understand being triggered by previous trauma. But the Magic Inc. books are not some gross pedo fantasy. They are coming-of-age novels, like many before them. Judy Blume books or Catcher in the Rye, but honestly far less explicit. And they are *my* story. They are the story I was creating when I was a child. A child who was abused by her peers and craved love. They are my memoirs disguised as fantasy.

This incident also got me thinking about how we interpret stories written about young boys versus young girls. So many classic coming-of-age novels or movies feature a boy having sexual thoughts about an adult woman. And that is seen as a natural part of growing up. Of course a boy has those kinds of thoughts and feelings. They have hormones and "needs". But if a girl character feels those things, written by an adult woman looking back on her thoughts and feelings growing up, she is being sexualized. She is being written to tantalize. She is a fetish for adult men. But it is the person reading into this that is doing that to her. Having sexual feelings as a young girl is just as natural as it is for a boy. And stories that are honest about those parts of growing up are just as needed for girls as they are for boys.

So, yes, I understand being triggered. I understand needing to stay away from stories that depict a young girl being in love with an older boy. I have always said that I would rather lose a potential reader than to upset one. Please, take care of yourselves when it comes to avoiding triggers and seek help to process your trauma. Take it from someone who has been in therapy for twenty years. It is so important. It is life-saving. You are worth taking care of.

But this is a thing that happens in real life. Ignoring these issues doesn't make them go away. I have always tried to handle this subject with truth and seriousness. Chaz's character explaining why someone older taking Jane up on her feelings would be wrong is actually something I find valuable. It's what I think a lot of young girls needed to hear. It's certainly something I wish I had heard.