mme_hardy: White rose (Default)
[personal profile] mme_hardy
I turned sixty this year. I won't say I'm the same person as at (say) thirty-five; I'm bitterer, less hopeful, and of course disabled. But the fun-having part of me is pretty much the same. I get seriously involved in fun things, until the fun wears off or I get anxious about not doing them right. (Ask me about knitting.) Sometimes, when I'm lucky, I do them forever.

The strangest thing about being old is the way some younger people react to my very existence in fandom and gaming spaces. Some are creeped out. Some applaud me for my ... daring originality? If you play Don't Starve Together, yesterday I was called "Our very own Wickerbottom!" (Yes, I am a Wickerbottom main. She's a librarian. Duh.)

I've heard the first gen fanzine writers complain about the very same thing. When a hobby has been active for forty-plus years, dating slash to Leslie Fish, then you're going to have people who are fifty-plus (at least) years old doing it. Home videogaming is also forty-plus years old, and the same applies.

Does anybody remember an SF story called something like "Grandma Won't Rock", about somebody assuming their grandmother ought to be doing grandmotherly things? I feel like that.

Date: 2019-08-18 05:13 pm (UTC)
emceeaich: A close-up of a pair of cats-eye glasses (Default)
From: [personal profile] emceeaich
Happy birthday.

I find myself, as a GenX'er, in this odd place between the "traditional fanzine" fans who are my seniors by a decade or so and the millennials (many of whom are nearly 40.)

Aside from APAs, I missed zine fandom (and Riot Grrls, more the shame) and I don't identify with media properties the way millenials do.

I don't recall that story, but I should find it.

Date: 2019-08-18 07:51 pm (UTC)
sabotabby: (doom doom doom)
From: [personal profile] sabotabby
Happy birthday!

The thing that's best about this generation (loosely speaking late-Boomer to Xillennial) is that people aren't getting boring in their old age anymore. I have one friend who's seventy and we have a bunch of interests in common and go to shows and protests together. Also younger people are all about the knitting and embroidery and stuff so you can do all the cool old lady shit when you're 20 as well. One doesn't need to suddenly go from party mode to boring maturity.

Date: 2019-08-18 08:57 pm (UTC)
malkingrey: (Default)
From: [personal profile] malkingrey
It's one of the good things about the internet. You can be a teen or a twentysomething and be heavily into, say, the Andrews Sisters, or a sixty-plus and be equally heavily into Norwegian Death Metal, because it's all out there.

Date: 2019-08-19 01:00 am (UTC)
sovay: (Rotwang)
From: [personal profile] sovay
Happy birthday! Yeah, people don't just . . . go away.

Date: 2019-08-19 02:42 am (UTC)
ironed_orchid: marilyn monroe with birthday cake (marilyn)
From: [personal profile] ironed_orchid
Belated Happy Birthday!

I just did the math and that means you were about the age I am now when I started following you on LJ, and you're just as interesting and kind now as you were then.

As a C64 kid, I certainly played a lot more video games in the 80s than I do now, but I sort of missed out on the online team playing aspects of it.
Edited Date: 2019-08-19 02:43 am (UTC)

Date: 2019-08-19 04:26 pm (UTC)
oracne: turtle (Default)
From: [personal profile] oracne
Happy Birthday!

Date: 2019-08-20 11:31 pm (UTC)
kore: (Default)
From: [personal profile] kore
Aww happy birthday!

LOL, I remember a coworker who was four years younger (and made me feel every bit of it, it was weird) teasing me when I was thirty for being interested in Buffy. "It's a show for teenagers!" At least that kind of thing seems to have died down nowadays.

Date: 2019-08-21 07:28 pm (UTC)
ankaret: Picture of flowers (Flowers)
From: [personal profile] ankaret
Happy birthday, and I hope the thoughtless youngs go and have their 'Ageing and disability happen to people like us? No, surely not!' thoughts elsewhere.

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