I’ve noticed there being an issue in Vampire fiction discourse lately, tied to the summer Anime Call of The Night but also older stuff like Twilight, of these Teenage vampires being called “Pedophiles” for being in relationships with people the same age as them simply because they’ve technically been around for decades or centuries longer.
Most Proshippers defend this with the usual “it’s not real” argument which I do support. But this problem runs deeper because it’s really not even accurate to what the scientific reality of such creatures hypothetically actually existing would be.
Everyone gets that if you are turned into a Vampire at a very young age you stop aging, physically, and will thus never truly grow up, physically. The problem is these people are assuming these Vampires would still age and mature mentally and psychologically. But that isn’t how it works, if physical aging freezes that also freezes the brain which isn’t actually fully developed till about 25.
There is more to adulthood and maturity than how long you’ve existed. The hypothetical scenario of someone who’s been 16 for 600 years would only be different mentally from other 16 year olds in having a larger pool of memories to remember. Experience in and of itself does not equal maturity, maturing lies in how your brain processes that experience and a brain frozen at a teenage state of development cannot process that experience properly.
One YT video I watched on Twilight said that what makes someone an adult is their “position of power” or something and so the reason Edward hasn’t become an adult is because he’s still living as a dependent basically. That’s a bad argument, there are normal people still living with their parents in their 40s and they shouldn't be dating teenagers. In my argument it wouldn't matter if a Teenage vampire was living on their own, a Hundred years on the streets for them would create less maturity then one year on the streets for a normal teenager because their Brain at least developed some during that year, the vampire’s did not. And plenty of people have held power as teenager, Alexander The Great conquered a city and rebuilt it in his name serving as Regent at 16, are we going to treat such a person as less of a minor then a regular 16 year old? I don't think we should.
But it's not just the Brain, part of the reason Teenagers can't be trusted to make rational decisions related to Sex is that their Hormones are in a more chaotic state then they will be when they're an adult.
Now Vampires are Supernatural creatures so if a writer wants to ignore that Science and write their physically Teenage Vampire as mentally an adult that’s fine. This is directed at Smug Tumblr and Twitter Antis who think they’re on some moral high ground by insisting on treating fictional Teenage Vampires as Adults even when the writers are clearly not writing them that way. Because most Teenage Vampires in fiction are clearly written to be Teen characters in Teen dramas.
It’s Vampires who were turned even younger who are sometimes written as “body of a child and the mind of an adult” (Speaking of that tagline the Detective Conan franchise often stresses the use of the word “shunkun” over “deaged” when defining Conan and Haibara’s condition). Like for example that one antagonist on the Blade TV series (only version of Blade I’ve actually seen believe it or not).
This difference in approach is only a problem when both clearly seem to exist in the same universe, which off the top of my head I can’t confirm ever has been the case. If it were though an in-universe explanation could still be contrived.
Thing is, it is especially the Antis in the Anime Community who I know are being hypocrites about this. Any excuse to accuse an Anime or its fans of encouraging problematic behavior they’ll latch onto even when one runs contrary to the logic they used against a different show or character previously.
As in they'll call a Vampire who's been 16 for a 100 years a statutory rapist for being in a relationship with a 17 year old human, but put the same vampire in a relationship with a 35 year old human and then they'll repeat all the facts I talked about to explain why the adult looking character is in fact more mature.
Update: I wrote this in part framed as discourse around Call of The Night even though I hadn't seen any of it yet. Turns out the main Vampire of that show was turned in her 20s, but maybe still under 25, so that part framing wound up being awkward. But it's still not just about that, it's also about things like Twilight discourse.
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