Random Musings

This is probably my favorite hex because it’s just so darn easy, and usually pretty effective.

The last time I used it was on a woman who was being baligerant to a cashier at the grocery, (the cashier was from India and this woman was telling her very loudly that she should go back to Iraq and stop taking a job from her poor Canadian granddaughter… I guess the granddaughter had applied there and not got the job? I don’t know the deets). I turned to her, clutched my necklace (it’s just an antique looking locket watch, nothing special), pointed to her and said the words just loud enough that she could tell it wasn’t English.

I guess it didn’t hurt that I was also dressed pretty witchy.

She was like, “Did you just curse me?!?” and I just smiled, winked at the cashier and walked out. I waited just outside the Second Cup that was next to the grocery to watch this lady come out… And didn’t she just trip over her own two feet in grand fashion on her way to her car! I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.

When I was about 14, I once befriended, and lost contact with, a 40 year old woman with a full head of gray, curly hair, who was one of the best known Good Omens fan artists of the community. She had apparently been in and out of asylums for years, and I worried for the longest time. I even sent her an email when I was around 18, asking after her well-being. But then she resurfaced when I was 21, here on tumblr. It was one of the greatest and most memorable fandom experiences I’ve ever had. 

When I was 15 and using slurs I didn’t know were slurs, 30+ year old LGBTQ+ comics fans on scans_daily patiently but firmly corrected me. I felt mortified, but they never attacked me or treated me as anything other than a dumb kid who made a mistake. 

I have a long time friend of close to a decade, who was late twenties when I met her in the comics fandom, and I was a teen.

OLDER FANS ARE CRUCIAL TO THE SURVIVAL OF FANDOMS. Not ONLY because they’re literally the ones keeping fandom afloat (AO3 wasn’t created or maintained by kids, let’s just say), but because older fans generally don’t attack or bully or fuck up a fandom by being aggressive or volatile or overzealous, destroying any enjoyment of a medium. 

Single women, married women, LGBTQ+ fans, all in the range of 30-60 years old. I’ve met all sorts of older fans, from when I was 12 on deviantart to now, in my mid-twenties, and not a single one of them has ever hurt me or treated me like dirt. I’ve always felt safer with older fans than with younger ones, because of the people I’ve seen harass, accuse, doxx, bully, and generally engage in harmful behaviour in this fandom, they’ve largely been in the 13-21 age bracket. 

Obviously most young fans aren’t like that, but the toxicity is palpable regardless.

@younger fans, if somebody older in a fandom acts in a creepy way, then feel free to avoid them, block them, report them.

“Almost everything worth believing in cannot be seen. Love, for instance.”