poztatt:

fierceawakening:

lydia-gastrell:

natimalang:

muchymozzarella:

I met a fan artist from the Hobbit fandom who’s 40+ years old, who sent me a postcard a couple of years back for Christmas with her art on the card. 

When I was about 14, I once befriended, and lost contact with, a 40 year old woman with a full head of gray, curly hair, who was one of the best known Good Omens fan artists of the community. She had apparently been in and out of asylums for years, and I worried for the longest time. I even sent her an email when I was around 18, asking after her well-being. But then she resurfaced when I was 21, here on tumblr. It was one of the greatest and most memorable fandom experiences I’ve ever had. 

When I was 15 and using slurs I didn’t know were slurs, 30+ year old LGBTQ+ comics fans on scans_daily patiently but firmly corrected me. I felt mortified, but they never attacked me or treated me as anything other than a dumb kid who made a mistake. 

I have a long time friend of close to a decade, who was late twenties when I met her in the comics fandom, and I was a teen.

OLDER FANS ARE CRUCIAL TO THE SURVIVAL OF FANDOMS. Not ONLY because they’re literally the ones keeping fandom afloat (AO3 wasn’t created or maintained by kids, let’s just say), but because older fans generally don’t attack or bully or fuck up a fandom by being aggressive or volatile or overzealous, destroying any enjoyment of a medium. 

Single women, married women, LGBTQ+ fans, all in the range of 30-60 years old. I’ve met all sorts of older fans, from when I was 12 on deviantart to now, in my mid-twenties, and not a single one of them has ever hurt me or treated me like dirt. I’ve always felt safer with older fans than with younger ones, because of the people I’ve seen harass, accuse, doxx, bully, and generally engage in harmful behaviour in this fandom, they’ve largely been in the 13-21 age bracket. 

Obviously most young fans aren’t like that, but the toxicity is palpable regardless.

@younger fans, if somebody older in a fandom acts in a creepy way, then feel free to avoid them, block them, report them.

But this apparent DELUSION that younger fans have that older fans are “creepy” just for existing needs to be eradicated. Just. Stop. You do not deserve the fandoms they built, they maintained, they keep alive in themselves and all the younger fans they took care of, if you cannot RESPECT THEM. 

//Y’all, this is so important. Don’t make us feel like weirdos just for loving this hobby that we’ve had- likely- since before a lot of people on this platform were born. I have a degree in creative writing! I have 11 years (and counting) of college under my belt. I have life advice for you if you want it! I have 15 years of cosplay experience if you need tips. I have money to spend on your art sometimes! Olds are veritable wells of experience and enthusiasm and positivity. Utilize, don’t demonize.

I chalk this up to the gross cult of “maturity” that exists in the Western world, and with extra toxicity in the US. There’s this social pressure to become basically a boring, house obsessed, workaholic nothing once you hit the age of 30 (and much younger for women). No more fandoms, no more comic books, no more entertainment in the form of animation, and on and on.  A lot of us over 30 hide our fandom interests from our RL family. We put up a facade of bloodless, beige adulthood. I see this in my own family every single day.

 I can’t hold a conversation with my own parents because NOTHING interests them. They don’t read, they don’t have any creative hobbies at all. They watch the news, bitch about the spotty patches on their lawn, and tell me the same 15 stories from 20 years ago over and over again. This is the cult of maturity, which is intrinsically linked to the 20th century obsession with youth. It was a sneaky mechanism by which older people were forced out of the spotlight to make room for the young. “You go over there and be boring and die while we have all the fun you were having ten minutes ago, because if you don’t we’ll accuse you of being creepy and trying to interfere in things that are too young for you.” 

Yup. US culture sells you the idea that speculative fiction is for nerdy kids, and that you will grow out of it. Suddenly, business meetings, taxes, and laundry will glow with a grand Responsibility Aura and you will not have time to like things, or miss having said time.

Fandom is what happened when a bunch of nerdy kids grew up and didn’t grow out of it, and realized that taxes and laundry are part of life, but they’re *still* not much fun.

We belong here too.

I’ll go one further and say that it’s not just that there is an age thing, it’s that N. American cultures tend toward categorizing fandoms/interests by demographic.  Only certain types of people are supposed to like certain things.  

I mean one of the easiest is the trope of “only girls like dolls” and the “girls MUST like dolls”.  

We’re now just on to the whole “if you have an interest it must be gendered, aged, orientationed, etc, etc, etc” thing going.

Where was I recently where I was reading, I think it was a CS Lewis, of all things, quote.  But it was a writer about “when I was a child I hid the things that were of childhood, as an adult I now love them openly”.  I’m wiiiildly paraphrasing here but.  Point stands.  

Basically when people now start making fun of or noises about things I like my response is : I went through that crap ages ago. I’m not embarrassed.  I’m disappointed in them for the noises, but I’m sure as hell over defending what I like to someone outside of my own head.