I would like to know what most people consider to be minimum age for a character in homour/general fanfic to be paired off with someone?

 

That depends on the type of humor you are going for. I would suggest that you use what you know, i.e. your first relationship or your friends first. That way you don't sound like an ass.

 

Any age; especially for humor.

And write in the normal font.

 

For humor, it can be any age. You don't really have to worry about being squicky if it's actually funny...

 

If its old enough to bleed, its old enough to breed.

 

Now, you see? That was squicky, but it wasn't funny. Keep Vash as your touchstone, and you'll never go wrong...

 

If there's grass on the field, play ball.

 

Get it before the fuzz does.

 

It entirely depends.

The content of the humor. For instance...you can't have an 11 year old Ginny joking about sloppy seconds since it is a) beyond her current understanding and b) Slightly incogruous.

There is an age limit, but I prefer to see it as a content limit.

5-13= Bit of potty humor, beginning to bleed into sex-based.
13-18= Sex jokes, gallows humor.

Keep in mind you also have to factor in environmental conditions.

For instance...

You wouldn't expect to see an 11 year old Malfoy making jokes about taking a dump. He's been brought up to be "above" such common humor and sticks to insults.

Also, for a bad attempt at humor, the joke, "If it's old enough to bleed, it's old enough to breed" is a very redneck approach.

Guess that explains why you let your 14 year old children smoke in front of their own children.

Regards
Aerin

 

Get it before puberty does.

 

How the hell is that not funny?

 

Why not just keep it normal? I mean, kids start dating as young as three... My frist boyfriend was in nursery school and I had dozens throughout primary school, usually more than one. But those aren't really relationships... they ARE cute though. It's fun to tease my mates kids about it.

At eleven SOME children are already pretty damn developed. (Think's back with envy) I also recall some were getting pretty phisical. There were rumors of sex, but you never really know what to belive really. The point is that at eleven kids know what sex is... damn I think at eleven we were prank calling sexline and asking dirty questions for a laugh. I think our favourite was, "could you tell me how to give a blowjob? My boyfriend wants me to give him one and I don't know what to do." The directions were funny...

At twelve to thirteen kids were pretty phiscal in the exploreing sense. (now I sound like my mother) Maybe my school was just full of slags... actually that isn't a maybe.... whatever...

I'm guessing it's not that differant in other countries.. I mean, we start high school at eleven so it becomes the point where every child thinks they are grown up. Sex education was the year six -when we were 9-10. But I think that was more talking about the "changes".

What I think is stupid though is how a character gets paired off with another at 13, falls in love, and stays together until they are old and wrinkly. I mean... thats not normal. In my book at least. No matter what the genre of the fic.

If it's an adult- teenager relationship we used to, back when we were 17-18, say that you couldn't have anyone younger, or above eight years older... that has changed to ten years older now that we've aged a bit. So, depending on the age of your character you'd need to think of a suitable age. A 16 year old girl dating a 25 year old man could be conciderd wrong. Well, not wrong, but the man might get some stick. But an 18 year old girl dating a 27 year old man wouldn't be seen as half as bad. It's just commen sense really.

 

If they can communicate: consummate (Refrain from acts which would cause non-trivial injury).

 

Damn you, Vegemeister, always taking the fun out of things ...

 

In a magical story, physical age doesn't count for much, what with all the memories of future/past/parents(read James)/whatever conveniently coming in Harry's mind. And humour... I'll read any ship if it's lulzy enough, as I suspect would anybody else. I really don't care about age as long as the story is realistic enough, for example, an 11-year old is completely incapable of the emotional responses required in a relationship. But I can ignore even that if there is lulz.

... We should discuss an upward age limit instead. One of the reasons I don't search for Dumbledore in FFN is I really don't want to see all those slash stories that I just know are waiting for me. Any graphic romance between people above 50 is gross.

Completely off-topic: I wonder what'd happen if Lily's memories/personality got imprinted into Harry... kinda like a mix between Denarian and Lie I've Lived... there's potential there, real potential methinks.