When You Were Young In Fandom Did Adults Try To Stop You And Tell You To "grow Up"?

When you were young in fandom did adults try to stop you and tell you to "grow up"?

Hmm... Not in that way, as far as I remember? I never got the "you'll grow out of it" nonsense from my parents, who always encouraged me to enjoy books, film, and TV, as long as I used my brain and thought about what I was consuming. We didn't use the TV for vegging out, and books were precious even though they were much more affordable relative to the average income back then. I was expected to progress towards adulting and not let hobbies get in the way of study then work, but as long as I did that, and was willing to at least try other activities for size, I was left to do my thing.

Spending money on fandom was more of an issue - for a while they imposed a ban on family gifting me books about Star Trek for birthdays or whatever, considering it a waste of our very tight funds - but once I had my own income, and proved I could meet my obligations, my parents were generally on the disinterested-to-vaguely-supportive scale.

At my first convention in the 1980's, both mum and I befriended a fan over twice my age, and we all stayed in touch, visiting and writing. I think mum meeting a functioning adult with the exact same interests as mine made a big difference to her comfort level - she could see that what I was doing wasn't so different to her own hobbies, and that I coped infinitely better in adult company than I did with my peers. My dad never really knew about most of what I got up to, other than that I used any tech he helped me access to write stories on, and occasionally shot off across the country to do something vaguely involving actors or a TV show!

I was into my 20s before I really shared my fandom life with my mum, all the same. I hosted quite a few fannish friends who were travelling from overseas, and I ran fanclubs and print zines and interviewed cast/crew all over the country like it was a second job, travelled to conventions and meets rather than taking 'proper' holidays, and my family began to grasp that fandom was my way of engaging with the world on my own terms rather than hiding from it. I was in my 30s before I realised that I'm a textbook introvert (and happy that way), probably have autism, and that I got pretty bloody lucky in finding a strong coping mechanism and harmless means of self-expression as young as I did. And I was always pretty good at choosing my role models:

Photos from The Stuff of Legend Live final dress rehearsal from Steven Ricks on Instagram.

The angel was too shocked to speak!

About This Event

You know when you leave a really long comment on a fic? Something that makes you go 'oh man if only I could bring this energy to my regular deadlines', but you just gotta tell someone how awesome their work is? What if we had a whole day celebrating that?

What is this event? Comment Day is a celebration of leaving comments on beloved fic, both to tell the author what their work means to you, and to appreciate reflecting on the parts of a work you enjoy! We all pick a fic (or maybe several fics, if you wanna go hard) that is our favourite, and work on a really detailed, fun, personalized comment, and on Comment Day we all go out and leave someone a comment that will make their day.

This blog will have tips and tricks about crafting a good comment, polls and graphics collecting stats for the event and a general celebration about how fun leaving comments can be. You don't normally get to tell the creator how awesome their work is with things like books or movies, we get to do that with fic, and isn't that fantastic?

Date: 15 September, 2024, whatever time zone that takes place in for you.

Tips on Commenting:

How to Embed an Image in an Ao3 Comment

Commenting on Fanfic Themes

Some Resources to help with Commenting

Comment Day Stats

Form

Form Responses

Ao3 Collection (so you can bookmark fics you commented on to a big collaborative collection).

Here

An Anon keeps asking me for some money for period products and other life essentials but doesn't identify themselves or send a link. I'm worried about you, Anon!

I need your Amazon wishlist link, or a Paypal address, or physical address to ship goods or a cheque to. There's an e-mail address on my AO3 profile, which is linked from the pinned post at the top of my Tumblr, if you want to take it private.

So relevant in 2024. So, so relevant.

PAY ATTENTION, DEAN!