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I’m trying to figure out what the difference is between my generation of fandom and this one. I started out in fandom an online gaming when I was 12 years old. I knew I was in the space of not only older teens, but adults. Some of them were married, and that was so crazy to me. A real married adult was playing in the same sandbox as me! Wow! So that meant I could still love all this stuff when I grew up too. That gave me a lot of hope especially because, well, even in 5th grade I was made fun of for playing dinosaurs on the playground. The other girls told me I would need to “grow up” when I started middleschool. Grow up and start doing my eyebrows and wearing makeup. Okay, Chelsey lol, we are 10, calm down. Let me live.
But, 12 year old me staying up late online to comb through fic and art still knew that I was a kid in an adult space with adult content not meant for my eyes. I knew I was lying about my age when I read lemons, I knew I was lying about my age to get onto sites that had slash art. I knew I was looking at things that were not meant for me. I didn’t have the means to blacklist things I didn’t like, and that sort of concept never occurred to me because well, back then you sorta had to look through fandom content you didn’t like in order to find the ones that made you jump for joy. Like walking through a convention hall and passing all the booths of things you don’t care about because you’re trying to find the one you want. There wasn’t a super convenient tagging system.
I think being in fandom at that age is what actually helped me to explore things I would not have had exposure to otherwise. Dark places, scary places, and even happy places I had never experienced, but could now experience them with my favorite characters. I could learn and heal through them, or take my anger out through them.
There were ship wars, but for the most part people just sort of laughed at them for being so immature and self-centered that they couldn’t handle the fact that content of ships they didn’t ship existed. It was like, okay, then scroll past this fic. Go away.
And the only people who were saying “think of the children!” about the content were hugely homophobic religious moms.
So… what happened?
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