Gotta love content on tumblr that assumes that you must be in love with that character you reblog so much of, that the thing that would be most uplifting to you, that would make you the happiest to you would be to say how much this character would love you and be soft to you if he were here in person.
Like. Ha. No. No, you entirely misunderstand my relationship with characters. If Edward Elric showed up in my life tomorrow he would probably yell and scream and cuss at me like any other authority figure in his life, and I would be desperately trying not to laugh with “OMG, you are so freaking 16, come back to me when you’re 30, shrimp.” Which would make him hate me more. Yeah, he would hate me. I’m fine with that.
Fandom is just... different when you're an adult. Hell, it's different now when I'm thirty as compared to when I was in my twenties. I don't look up to these characters like that anymore. I like stories because they show me what it means to be human, what it means to go through hard times, what growing up means and what things are important to carry over from my teenage years and what's important to let go of.
I remember I once looked up to characters in fandoms I loved as... Almost as these sort of perfect role models. Everything I wanted to be and also utterly impossible at the same time. I could never be that strong, could never be that cool, could never be any of that, could never even be worthy of being in the same room as someone like that. But now that I've had several years of really hard times and adulthood under my belt, I don't see that anymore. They're just people. People who have been through hell and back again and really just need some therapy and love. You know, people like me. Not someone for a pedestal or an obsessive crush, just someone to remind me that you have to keep choosing to be a good person, that it's never easy, that you will always be growing up and putting the work in.
This is, of course, not to say anything against you who still need to use fandom in that way! That's absolutely fine! Being a little awed at how someone manages their life is honestly so, so normal. I think you kind of have to do that to some extent as part of growing up, because it's part of how you sort of figure out the kind of person you want to grow into becoming. I just really wish we wouldn't think that was the only way to experience fandom.
