keire-ke:

amuseoffyre:

rocket-pool:

snowyowlee:

athenadark:

fiction-is-not-reality2:

hellolovelyscientist:

earlgreytea68:

purplesherlock:

vulgarweed:

fiction-is-not-reality2:

Anon, from the bottom of my heart: breathe. It kind of breaks my soul reading you torture yourself like this, for something that makes absolutely no sense. 

Disgusting for being in fandom? Too old for M rated fics? You think you should leave? 

Whoever put these thoughts in your head, please, stop listening to them, because they don’t have the slightest idea of what they’re talking about, and I don’t know why you’re giving it any credit when to even remotely entertain the idea that you cannot participate in fandom past the age of 20 you need to ignore the entire history of Fandom. Like, completely erase it all even while you live in it.  

Who do you think pays for Ao3 domain and server? Who’s the majority that has the economical independence to support it every year? Who organizes conventions? Hosts panels? Who writes the vast majority of explicit fics? Who writes the canon every fandom is built upon? 

I’ll save you the trouble of guessing the answer: it’s not minors. 

I’ve received enough messages about people complaining about ageism in fandom, but it’s the first time I’ve read about someone who’s really buying into this absurd idea that is so entirely drenched in misogyny. Don’t let it get to you, please. Who have you interacted with till now? I cannot count the sheer amount of incredible fandom peeps over the age of 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 I have met without even looking for them, because they’re everywhere. They’re the backbone and legs and arms and head of Fandom as a whole, I don’t know how you could have missed them. 

And you know the greatest thing about being an adult? 
That so long as you’re not breaking any law, you can do whatever you want and no one can say nor do anything about it. And if they don’t like it, they can die mad about it.
I think you might be forgetting this little detail.   

Honestly, as an ‘older woman’, I’m perfectly fine and content here and I’m not going anywhere for as long as I’ll find fandom fun. You have all the freedom and the means to stay as well, provided that you stop sabotaging yourself like this. 

OMG this is so fucking sad. Too old for adult rated fic at TWENTY-SIX? Two old how? To write fic? To have sexual story ideas and share them? Most cis women don’t come close to reaching their sexual peak (highest period of interest in it and enjoyment of it) until their 30s.

And if minors (which some people seem to define as up to 21 for some reason) shouldn’t enjoy explicit fanfic, and if women over 26 shouldn’t enjoy it either, then that leaves, what, a 5-year-window? Give it some rational thought, and you can see how completely absurd and ridiculous that is.

Anyway, I’m 49, I didn’t start writing fanfic until I was 30 (I wrote other things before that and still do in addition to it) and I’m not going anywhere as long as I’m still having fun with it, which I am. And I can say from experience, the best thing about getting older is that as time goes by, you care less and less about what judgy mcjudgyface twits think about you and your harmless pleasures. You’re born with all the fucks to give about that you will ever have, and by my age, you have virtually none left. I wish you many decades to come (heh) of enjoying fandom and fanfic, and life gets so much better after fuck-o-pause.

@vulgarweed I whole heartedly agree with you about life getting better after the fuck o pause…..

I found fandom at 21, wrote my first fic at 26, and am 38 now. 

My personal experience of fandom has been that there are tons and tons and tons of non-teenagers in it. All of my closest friends came out of fandom and they’re all around my age. The perception that fandom is entirely kids is so perplexing to me, since it’s so the opposite of my experience. Do I know fans younger than me? Of course. Do I *expect* everyone to be younger than me? Not at all. 

And I guess if kids think I’m too old for fandom, well, they don’t know yet how fast you get to be the old ones lol

I found fandom at 53, wrote my first fic at 55, and am 67 now. Not that I didn’t have things I loved, but no-one else I knew thought Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin were boyfriends, or thought Spock and Kirk were in love, or any of the other possibilities of my childhood and young adulthood, so I just put it all aside until the internet brought me all of you. For which I will be eternally grateful.

The notes on this post make me incredibly happy.

I’m a second generation fangirl, and will be forty this jan, my mother is thirty years older and whilst she only reads het she LOVES fanfic, she was first in line to see Bumblebee and Fantastic Beasts two, she went just yesterday to see aquaman with two little girls and told them everything you need to know about dc when they asked, and was more excited about the movie than they were. She named me for Apollo in Battlestar Galactica, you don’t grow out of fandom, you just get more grey hairs

you don’t grow out of fandom, you just get more grey hairs

This!

I started reading fanfiction when I was 35. Wrote my first fanfic when I was 38. I am almost 49 now, and yes, fandom has given me some more grey hairs :-) But I don’t see any growing out of fandom in the forseeable future!

Cosigning my support. I came to fandom a bit younger, but didn’t get truly involved with fandom until like 25. My friends and mentors there have been some of the best people I’ve ever met, and most were 30 or much older at the time. They helped me grow my writing, kept me sane during hard times, and most of my invitees to my wedding were from this wonderful group of people.

Anon, I don’t know your life circumstances. I don’t know why you think something like fandom is supposed to be taboo for you.

What I can say is that it took me a long time to understand that you need to embrace joy in your life. If it isn’t ethically wrong (legal or otherwise) embrace what offers you joy, because life is too short to spend it making yourself miserable.

Fandom doesn’t come with an age-limit, especially not for women, and yet the misogyny and ageism in many fandoms will make you think otherwise. Fandom was cultivated by women. It was nourished and nurtured and the flames were fanned by women, many of whom were not wee young uns. Back in the day, women were responsible for the zines and the analogue mailing lists . As time went on and the internet showed up, the scale expanded to multi-national epic fandoms and even bigger conventions.

I have been doing fandom stuff since I first got free internet access in 1999 and I’m brushing 40 now. You will have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands before I will give it up.

Don’t give up on something that makes you happy, anon!