Fuck If I Know

Aang: back in my day it was called weed city

Sokka: I’m… pretty sure it wasn’t

Listen, fellas.

The problem isn't fur, the problem is factory farming. That's always the problem. Buying fur and bones and shells from Indigenous folks who know how to get them correctly and respectfully is the best practise.

But you know what kind of winter coat eventually decomposes and doesn't cause pollution and doesn't contain microplastics? FUR. You know what kind of fabric stays warm even when wet? WOOL. You know what kinds of shoes last forever? LEATHER ONES.

Plastic is bad for the environment. Are you going to kill a thousand animals or one? Those are your choices at this point, there is no zero. You have to square with the idea that you cannot get the blood off your hands, and you shouldn't feel you have to. We all depend on one another, and it's possible to want an animal to have the best life it can before you kill it for food and whatever else. Domesticity is a good deal for most animals when it's done properly--they get protection from predators, free food, and medical care that they wouldn't get in the wild, and a longer life and a painless death.

In college, my friend group collectively got into the SCA - Society for Creative Anachronism. They're the people who get really into medieval reenactment, the fighting and crafts and cooking, they have kings and queens and knights and events and a good percentage of them (but not all!) work or have worked at Ren Faires.

I am forever grateful my friends dragged me into that, because it was my first introduction to fandom in older adults. Middle-aged dorks. Elderly nerds. Absolutely as intense and weird and hilarious and fun as any fan in their teens or 20s. I started getting into fandom already knowing there was a road ahead for me as I got older, full of handmade costumes and late night movies and shelves of pewter dragon goblets and mixed-aged road trips to meet ups and conventions.

And it kills me that so many people don't know that sort of community even exists. On both sides, even! I went to Philcon a few years ago, which tends towards older fans, and an older woman I was talking to sadly told me that she thought fandom was dying out, because she never saw younger fans any more.

Over the past decade, there's been a really toxic movement towards keeping different ages strictly separated, both in and outside of fandom. There's this strong implication that if an older person wants to interact with a younger person, there is something inherently predatory about that.

Yeah, that attitude sucks. That drive towards separation and puritanism sucks. Declaring that younger people should have nothing to look forward to and that older people should stay separated and lonely sucks. It sucks and we are all worse for it.