I love seeing grown humans setting about little creative tasks out of boredom and then looking quietly pleased with themselves, like maybe a middle-aged woman on her train home from work manages to make a tower out of empty coffee creamers and gazes at it proudly for a few seconds.
I love seeing other people make the overblown OOPS I FORGOT SOMETHING performance for no-one that most of us do when we have to turn around in the middle of the pavement.
I love seeing stony-faced people in queues unable to contain a smile when a baby looking over its mother’s shoulder in front of them locks eyes and does that astonished stare.
– when someone is standing in line and they don’t quite dance to the music playing, but you can SEE their head bop and them mouthing the words
– when someone thinks no one’s paying attention and they sing-talk themselves thru a task
– when they laugh or try to hide a laugh when looking at their phone
Kids. Teenagers. As someone staring 40 in the face lemme tell you a thing.
You are going to be horrified and embarrassed at some point by the shit you are doing now.
And you are going to wish with all your might you’d done more of it.
You’re gonna wish you had more selfies, more photos, more videos being dumb with your friends. You’re going to wish you’d had your hair even higher or your shoes even sparklier.
Go. Document the shit out of your ridiculous life. Fuck trends but if you wanna be trendy, go all in. Fuck in-groups and subcultures but if one sings to you, do it all. Be exactly as cool or punk rock or goth or fandom or country or hardcore or hip hop or whatever, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Just don’t hurt people. That’s the only thing you’ll ever genuinely live to regret.
I think I have talked about this before, but because life doesn’t end at twenty or thirty or forty or fifty and thinking that folks are going to fall out of social media or that there won’t always be someone your age and my age and twice both of our ages interested in [insert anything, ever] is a very limiting worldview.
Somewhere there is a sixty-five year old who unironically loves Taylor Swift’s music and a fifty-two year old writing Superwholock fanfic and a ninty year old who absolutely lives for the next episode of Archer and a seventy-one year old that can kick anyone’s ass in k-pop trivia. There will always be these folks, and all the Internet has done is give fans of all ages a chance to interact in a way that they never had before.
Before BBSes and the Internet and Usenet and the World Wide Web and fanrings and forums and social media, those people would just love it in their own way, in the privacy of their own homes. But now anyone can make an Ao3 account or a basic fansite or tumbl about whatever they want, and sometimes you’re gonna learn those people are old but they still get it, and sometimes you’re going to find out those folks are still kids, twelve or fourteen at the oldest, and marvel at their maturity and skill and attention to detail.
And that is rad as hell, that is fucking incredible, that is… whatever the kids are saying these days, hah.
As a sidenote, once, about a decade ago, I decided to email one of my favourite authors before she bit it … she was pushing 90 at the time. ( … she’s still alive now).
Anyways, we got to having a long discussion, because I shared my deadname with her late husband, and I actually had quite a long conversation with her.
The part of the conversation I’d like to share with you about this now pushing 100-tear-old author isn’t that she developed a liking for her breakfast eggs from her honeymoon in Vienna, or that her Husband would sometimes steal her drafts to read them as soon as he could, or that she superglued a potted plant to her bookshelf to watch her orange cat try to knock it over and fail.
Nono, I mention this to bring up what she would do as a writing exercise whenever she didn’t feel like writing her serious work.
In short, erotic darkwing duck slashfic. You can find it online.
This is the greatest addition this post has gotten so far.
I LOVE THIS FUCKING POST.
I love all the posts written by older fans, with their insight, and their generous attitude towards young fans, and young fanfic writers, and young fanartists.
Older fans who patiently explain to whomever questioned the validity of older fans participation…
that it’s older fans running the AO3 servers and the entire OTW organization;
Older fans most often writing the actually well written fanfic;
Older fans planning, organizing and executing massive cons;
Older fans who write out fandom history dating back to pre-internet so that history can be known and preserved and enjoyed;
Older fan lawyers enforcing Fair Use lawspro bono to keep fans from being sued for creating fic or art or any other media;
Older fans behaving well with life-lived-and-learned healthy boundaries;
or conversely dealing out smack-downs to those not behaving well be they older trolls or naively inexperienced younguns;
Older fans letting fans of all ages remember that zany enthusiasm is not the province only of the young – it is the province of humanity.
And we’re right there loving being human with you.
I’m sharing this on both my blogs, ‘cause this is amazing.
I have recently, after a long bout of writer’s block triggered by a long, dark downward spiral in my mental health, started writing again. So far I’ve written roughly 30k of fic in a fandom I’ve read a lot, but never written in before. It’s on a secret AO3 account no one knows and can’t link back to me.
And you know what? It’s helping me dig myself out of that bleak, dark place that has literally forced me to restart my life. Again. I just turned 45 and I’m back at square one, not even for the first time, and it’s just as scary as ever. So kids, stop asking why older people are still in fandom. Sometimes fandom, silly as it is, can save your fucking life.
Nearly every year, for the past thirty years, Frances Goldin has gone to New York City Pride holding a sign that reads, “I adore my lesbian daughters. Keep them safe.” (x)
“Since the beginning of the parade, I’ve been going and waving my sign,” Goldin said. “It sort of hit a nerve with people, particularly those whose parents rejected them. The response to the sign is always so great — it urges me to keep going.”
“Everybody would come running up to her and cry, kiss her, and say, ‘Would you call my mother?’ or ‘Would you be my mother?’” her daughter, Sally, explained.
“She’d take down names and addresses and write letters to these kids’ mothers!”
When asked about all the young LGBT parade-goers who have begged her to speak to their own mothers, Goldin replied, “I think I changed a few people’s minds and I’m glad about that. Everyone should support their gay and lesbian children, they’re missing a lot in life if they don’t.”
fivepercent 