Child, I’ve been spreading porn via social network since before you were born.
WTF?
I always wonder what people who make these comments think middle-aged people do. Like, sit around, doing their taxes and talking about escrow 24/7?
Do they really expect not to have any fun or waste any time after age 30? Or maybe they think that people are just not awesome enough to be able to have a professional job, a family, and still waste time on Tumblr.
Well, I’m here, friends, to tell you that it is possible! You can have it ALL — the career, the family, and the incredible time-suck of fandom!
Oh middle aged WOMEN in particular are just… not allowed to have fun, I think? We’re supposed to be past it, pathetic and devote the remaining dregs of our time, energy & attention to caring for others, and studiously avoiding anything that someone might find worthy of mockery. Then we die (or become invisible). (I mean, maybe we’re allowed to have fun if it’s APPROPRIATE fun. Like, a small sherry after an age-allowed exercise class? A couple of hours of watching BBC2? Not fandom. Never fandom!)
This post has reminded me I still need to do my tax return. But that’ll take an afternoon, not my whole 40s.
If you’re doing life right, you never grow out of loving things passionately and for yourself. It sure shouldn’t be your goal.
Where do they think the archives come from? Where do they think the kmemes come from? The tropes? The memes? The structuring that half the people end up just blindly following in most fics, the meta, tat one great classic fic that’s been passed around in hushed tones of reverence oh and it’s also older than half the fandom? Did you think an infant wrote it on their way out of the womb? I can tell you right now that one of the main runners of A03 is a woman I’ve seen floating about certain fandoms since I was 17. I’m 36 now. (oh and we’re both still writing. And still quite popular) The oldest person I personally know in fandom is 65.
Then there’s the hilarious hypocrisy of “I could never leave fandom” “fandom 4 EVA” “fandom is life” “I will be a little old lady and still shipping [insert pairing here] but when faced with the fact that, you know, this is actually a reality its suddenly EWWW GET THE OLD PEOPLE OUT OF FANDOM UR ALL CREEPY.
Did you think you’d be a precious exception to some half-assed made up arbitrary rule? that you’d stay 14 and stupid forever? Boy are you in for a shock…
Kids are just jealous we adults have the $$$$ for the really fun toys
Well, if the fact that the fic they’re reading and enjoying is written by a 43-year-old woman somehow sours said fic for them… too bad, I don’t care. Truly not giving a fuck is one of the privileges of aging.
Maybe next time they should ask the writer about their age before reading a fic. Their shortened reading list might actually save them a lot of time. Or do they think the 147 works in 23 fandoms an author has listed were written in the short time since tumblr exists? I’ve had this tumblr for four years. Before that I had a Livejournal for nine years, and before that there were Yahoo groups and even earlier mailing lists. A lot of fandom’s big names today have been around since those times and are well into their thirties or older.
If I choose to do something more fun after a ten-hour workday, like browsing tumblr or writing porn, I’m certainly not going to make any excuses for it to children who think having fun in life ends at 30. Ain’t nobody got time for that, because my favorite old person just posted porn that I need to read.
RESPECT YOUR FUCKING FANDOM ELDERS KIDS
Turned 50 this year, chicky-babes, and i am still going strong! In fact, I started to write way explicit slashfic in the last two years so in fact I’m still stretching my grey-feathered wings in this world.
Fuck yeah, go old-lady me!!!!!
LOL. I’ve encountered a little bit of ageism in fandom recently, which amused me, as it always does. Mind you, it was being muttered by people who weren’t happy with me anyway, but there was still the hackneyed ‘you are this old and therefore you should be doing this/shouldn’t be doing that’.
*snorts*
I write. I need a audience. Why the fuck wouldn’t I be using tumblr and twitter?
Older fans didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to join in fandom via tumblr or twitter. We adapted to new platforms, just like our younger counterparts. LJ is a wasteland, Voyboards are dead and buried, messageboards are a thing of the past. It’s not as though we were going to just shrug and say, ‘Alas, I can no longer write porn, as there is nowhere for me to share it except that shiny new thing called tumblr but as I am over a certain age, obviously I will not know how to navigate such a complicated social network.’
When I was in the La Femme Nikita fandom in the late 90′s (me in my late twenties) we had an awesome fellow fan who was a good couple of decades older than the rest of us. She didn’t write fic, but she was a voracious reader who encouraged every single author. I don’t think she missed leaving a comment on anything that was posted, she was that dedicated. Sadly, she passed away a few years ago, aged in her 80′s. Pretty sure that, right up to the end, she was reading the same kind of bad ass NSFW fanfics she’d been reading since the 1970′s. I will always be grateful to her for making me realise that there is no expiration date on being a fangirl. I’m just sorry she missed out on tumblr. She would have really dug all those fancy fandom gifs.
I have found my tribe. 43. Been writing fic off and on since the 90s.
You should look at the age spread at the average SF convention. Everything from bright eyed kids to 90 somethings…
Once upon a time I shot a quick email to one of my favourite authors ever. I’m not the type to reach out and bother people, but she’s closing in on 10 decades (and still publishing), and I realized that I would actually regret it if I never tried.
She answered back, apparently very few people talk to her these days and she appreciated the short fan letter, and so began a short conversation between me and her, in which I learned that my deadname was the same as her late husbands name, that her favourite breakfast is a traditional Italian cafe breakfast (cappucino & cornetto, fruit salad if she’s hungry) because her favourite memories were in Italy with her husband, that she’s very particular about her cappucino, that she disapproves of pasteurized milk in Canada, (she buys raw milk from a farmer and brings it in the coffee shop, and gets a little thrill about how that’s technically illegal in at least 3 different ways), and that whenever she hits a writing block, she writes bad fanfiction. And publishes it. It helps her because she knows the context in which it will be appreciated, and analysed, and it can be as bad as it comes out and she doesn’t have to stop herself from being excited about bad ideas or keep track of every plot thread she’s created. She can just write.
I searched for it, and I’m pretty sure I found some of it.
Point of the story is: One of my writing idols has written & put online, erotic fanfiction about Darkwing Duck, and she must’ve been in her 90′s at the time.
I’ve been involved in fandom online since 1993 when I participated in a Usenet group for fans of Douglas Adams, and exchanged emails with him.
Was there a point I was supposed to stop? Because why? I’ve raised a child to adulthood (who is also active in fandom) I have helped run science fiction conventions (ConFusionMI and Penguicon).
And I’m turning 40 in a little over two weeks.
Not going anywhere.
TBH I didn’t really START getting heavily into fanfiction until I was 30.
I got into fandom last year, at 35. So yeah. Am fabulously happy and look, no homework!! Though I gotta take the kiddo’s
I think the fact that this post has over 10,000 notes speaks for itself
(although I’m sure there’s way more “fandom oldies” on Tumblr than that.
Though, in fact, I almost take offense at the fact that you’re considered that if you’re
over 30.
Tumblr backup 