redshoesnblueskies:

knitmeapony:

regurgitation-imminent:

knitmeapony:

knitmeapony:

Kids.  Teenagers.  As someone staring 40 in the face lemme tell you a thing.

You are going to be horrified and embarrassed at some point by the shit you are doing now.

And you are going to wish with all your might you’d done more of it.  

You’re gonna wish you had more selfies, more photos, more videos being dumb with your friends.  You’re going to wish you’d had your hair even higher or your shoes even sparklier.  

Go.  Document the shit out of your ridiculous life.  Fuck trends but if you wanna be trendy, go all in.  Fuck in-groups and subcultures but if one sings to you, do it all.  Be exactly as cool or punk rock or goth or fandom or country or hardcore or hip hop or whatever, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Just don’t hurt people.  That’s the only thing you’ll ever genuinely live to regret.

@palejoke tagged: #I mean no offense but why a 40 y/o on the hellsite

I think I have talked about this before, but because life doesn’t end at twenty or thirty or forty or fifty and thinking that folks are going to fall out of social media or that there won’t always be someone your age and my age and twice both of our ages interested in [insert anything, ever] is a very limiting worldview.  

Somewhere there is a sixty-five year old who unironically loves Taylor Swift’s music and a fifty-two year old writing Superwholock fanfic and a ninty year old who absolutely lives for the next episode of Archer and a seventy-one year old that can kick anyone’s ass in k-pop trivia.  There will always be these folks, and all the Internet has done is give fans of all ages a chance to interact in a way that they never had before.

Before BBSes and the Internet and Usenet and the World Wide Web and fanrings and forums and social media, those people would just love it in their own way, in the privacy of their own homes.  But now anyone can make an Ao3 account or a basic fansite or tumbl about whatever they want, and sometimes you’re gonna learn those people are old but they still get it, and sometimes you’re going to find out those folks are still kids, twelve or fourteen at the oldest, and marvel at their maturity and skill and attention to detail.  

And that is rad as hell, that is fucking incredible, that is… whatever the kids are saying these days, hah.

As a sidenote, once, about a decade ago, I decided to email one of my favourite authors before she bit it … she was pushing 90 at the time. ( … she’s still alive now).

Anyways, we got to having a long discussion, because I shared my deadname with her late husband, and I actually had quite a long conversation with her.

The part of the conversation I’d like to share with you about this now pushing 100-tear-old author isn’t that she developed a liking for her breakfast eggs from her honeymoon in Vienna, or that her Husband would sometimes steal her drafts to read them as soon as he could, or that she superglued a potted plant to her bookshelf to watch her orange cat try to knock it over and fail.

Nono, I mention this to bring up what she would do as a writing exercise whenever she didn’t feel like writing her serious work.

In short, erotic darkwing duck slashfic. You can find it online.

This is the greatest addition this post has gotten so far.

I LOVE THIS FUCKING POST.

I love all the posts written by older fans, with their insight, and their generous attitude towards young fans, and young fanfic writers, and young fanartists. 

Older fans who patiently explain to whomever questioned the validity of older fans participation…

that it’s older fans running the AO3 servers and the entire OTW organization;

Older fans most often writing the actually well written fanfic; 

Older fans planning, organizing and executing massive cons;

Older fans who write out fandom history dating back to pre-internet so that history can be known and preserved and enjoyed;

Older fan lawyers enforcing Fair Use laws pro bono to keep fans from being sued for creating fic or art or any other media;

Older fans behaving well with life-lived-and-learned healthy boundaries;

or conversely dealing out smack-downs to those not behaving well be they older trolls or naively inexperienced younguns;

Older fans letting fans of all ages remember that zany enthusiasm is not the province only of the young - it is the province of humanity. 

And we’re right there loving being human with you.

Some of us have been in fandom - in online fandom, even - since our twenties or our teens. We made friendships and commitments and communities in so many different ways and we love this place so yeah, we’re sticking around.

(And some of us are cheering for our Quidditch-playing kids, too.)

For you, fandom might be something you pop into and out of when there’s a show you like or a band you follow, or a musical you’ll stan for, or you might be here for the long haul and slip into that fandom is my fandom mindset. 

I was a Star Wars fan and a bibliomaniac and I grew up in the John Hughes movie era and I was on a mailing list for Neil Finn & fam, but I never considered myself part of a fandom until 2000. Then, I was a Harry Potter fandomer, and swore I would never be a fandom participant for any other fandom, but then came the revival of Doctor Who, and Heroes, and Supernatural, and it’s been over a decade since I was monofannish, and all that time I’ve been writing “fandom is my fandom” on my livejournal, then FB, then twitter, now tumblr. 

I’m here for the fandom issues and squee and rants - and not for the fandom wank - and I don’t think anything will ever get me to permanently leave. 

(via redshoesnblueskies)