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.
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
ellievsbear
gracieabrams
