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.
you deserve love. your crush does not owe you a date.
you deserve success. your coworkers do not owe you extra hours.
you deserve emotional support. your friends do not owe you free therapy.
what ‘you deserve this’ means is that it’s ok to want it and hope for it and try to achieve it, not that you have the authority to demand that a person provide it. it’s good to ask for it, but you have to be willing to take no for an answer.
Willy Wonka sent out his chocolate bars worldwide, and 5 white kids (4 with first-world problems) still won.
To be fair, his goal was apparently to send a stern warning about the evils of entitlement by murdering them in ironic ways.
Also, the rich, spoiled, first world white kids aren’t presented in the story as having gotten the tickets by chance, the story is very clear that they and their families used their privilege and power to game the system – taking what was initially presented as a random selection and cheating by leveraging their disproportionate resources – wasting mountains of chocolate in pursuit of gold…
Also, after the NAACP was like, “Those black pygmy African Oompa Loompas? That’s racist,” he was like, “Oh shit, fam, my bad; I didn’t see it like that, but if y’all say it’s racist I’m gonna take your word and fix that shit,” and made the Oompa Loompas little white dudes for the next edition.
You’re a powerful dragon that lived next to a small kingdom. For centuries you ignored humanity and lived alone in a cave, and the humans also avoided you. As the kingdom fell to invaders, a dying soldier approaches you with the infant princess, begging you to take care of her.
She is devoid of any scales or fur, this tiny ball of squalling royalty.
The knight that holds her is bleeding out more sluggishly than before, running out of life and time as he begs me to take care of her.
“No revenge.” I murmur to him; that is not my way.
“No.” He agrees softly, kneeling before my bulk and drip-dripping his life onto my floor.
“No revenge. Just want her to live.”
He topples over suddenly, and I let him fall. The ball of swaddling is what I catch in my claws. A paltry offering of gold falls from the blankets, body-warm and forgotten as I lift this princess to observe her more closely.
I see aquamarine glittering in her face, eyes lit up with tears in the rose gold hue of her cheeks. She is snotty and soiled, bloodied and unhappy. And she is mine.
“You will need milk.” I sigh, walking best I can on three legs to the back of the cave to settle her in a cradle of smooth gems. Oddly befitting her status, though it means nothing anymore. I breathe hotly over her, the screaming quieting in the face of warm air and the white noise I make.
“Sleep, princess.” I murmur soothingly. “I will return with food.”
————
“Get down from there.”
I do not need to raise my voice, she knows well enough who I am speaking to and what I speak about. She jumps from the tree branch she had been climbing and lands on my head.
“I want to fly like you do.”
Oh, she is stubborn, with hair like fire and those aquamarine eyes. She pulls at my scales and bares her blunt little teeth in a copy of my own snarl.
“I could gobble you up.” I warn, unable to hide the smile in my voice. It is good she is stubborn; any dragon should be just a little head-strong.
“I would break your teeth with my skull!” She cackles back, scrabbling down to my back to nuzzle the soft leather of my wings.
“When will my wings grow?”
Always so full of questions.
“Maybe never. There are land dragons, sea dragons, dragons of the sky…perhaps you will lose your arms and legs and become a wyrm.”
She laughs her harsh cackle, biting at me playfully.
I love her so.
I cannot even bring myself to tell her she is not a dragon.
