neil-gaiman:

The part of me that wants to answer like a Problem Page Person thinks you should talk to your mother and communicate with her about what you like about books and reading and how they improve our horizons and knowledge of the world and suchlike, and that it should all end in hugging and a promise from her to let you make your own mistakes and read what you need to read.

The part of me that loves books just thinks you need to hide your books better, and wonders whether putting respectable book-covers on them covering up the ones they already have would do the trick.

vulgarweed:

shrineart:

huntypastellance:

the-wenzel:

every time i see a post from a woman in their early twenties shit-talking older women in fandom as ‘predators’ and ‘immature’ i wonder how they’ll feel in a decade when they can no longer exempt themselves from the ‘immaturity’ of daring to have interests that aren’t your husband and kids

#retagging op’s tags:#older women founded fandom and create many of the sites and content you consume you ungrateful assholes#also: every shitstorm i’ve seen about predatory adults features some young ‘fandom mom’ who took advantage of young teens#not the 50 y/o woman who writes fanfic and reblogs de$tiel gifsets#:end#this is the truth#stop taking away interests

All of this, yes, thank you.

All I see in most of those posts is someone who is desperately trying to resist the fact that they themselves are adults now. They’re so insistent on finding some WORSE, other more adulty-adults to point the finger at. 

Honestly, I think most of it comes down to very sheltered young people still just grossed out by the fact that people the same age as their parents and grandparents still have “cringey” hobbies and are still interested in sex. They put this paper-thin social-justice veneer on a childish squick.

just-shower-thoughts:

If you turn 18 this month, your parents brought in the new millennium with a bang.

firelightmystic:

ruffaled:

sabrecmc:

diandrahollman:

appreciation-post:

“Captain Marvel should smile more” “she looks so serious all the time” “she should smile more” “she’ll look better with a smile”

BRIE LARSON SNAPPED

My God, did some clueless asshole actually say that?

This is hilarious

Oh my god I love her 😂😂😂

A+++ Quality Snapback

just-shower-thoughts:

The Reminders app on your phone is basically a real life quest log

telesilla:

So this post, another in a long series of “find a bridge club you embarrassing old ladies” posts, came around. And I adulted hard all day and it just really pissed me off and caught me at a bad time. 

When I was in my 20s and 30s, I was active in the SCA. For those that don’t know it, the Society for Creative Anachronism is a Medieval and Renaissance  reenactment group. They’re super serious about research and authenticity, but there’s a lot of crossover with the organized science fiction and fantasy fandom community and most of them are nerds in other ways as well.

So, I’m 30 and it’s Thanksgiving, of course, because doesn’t stuff like this always happen at Thanksgiving? My 60 year old uncle asked me and my then-husband when we were…”going to grow up, settle down* and stop playing dress up.” And I felt fucking awful, because I’d always thought he was cool when I was a kid, and I loved my aunt, and he was doing this in front of my teenaged cousin and, on top of it all, my parents were at the table too.

And my mom looked over at her big brother and said, “Knock it off. Do you know how cool it is and how much fun it is to dress up and go to one of their events?” Because my 55 year old mom had, in fact, been to one of our events where she cracked up all my geeky friends by quoting Monty Python.  

So yeah, my awesome mom had our back and my uncle shut up and my cousin asked my husband if making real armor and fighting in it was hard. It went as well as these things could have. But I was lucky. Plenty of friends had that conversation with their parents without anyone sticking up for them. 

Time for one more short story. When I was in my 40s, a very very close friend of mine–same age–told me that my writing was really good but I was wasting my time and talent by writing only fanfic. Now her dad was a writer and her step-mom was a writer and I knew she was paying me a big compliment. It still stung. Fanfic was pretty much keeping me sane at the time and I’d told her that more than once, but…I was “wasting my time and talent.”

Look I get being afraid of adulting and I understand that having older people in your fandom space embarrasses you and makes you think about ageing when you’d rather not, but it’s their pastime too and if you try to make it about young people’s fun vs old people’s fun, you’re gonna turn into my uncle. Be my mom instead. Teach your kids that you’re never too old to love something silly just because you love it. Teach your parents the same lesson if you need to. 

Grow up on your own terms, not someone elses.

*we both had low income, low status, office jobs, no kids and didn’t own our own house.  Sound familiar?