‘M’ favourite smell, m’lady? Mmm… there be a few, dependin’ on ‘ow I’s smellin’ ‘em. If’n it be from cookin’… well, I gathers the smell I thinks of as pumpkin ain’, really, but be spices used with it? Tha’d be it f’ cookin’ smells. On a lady, or really mos’ other circumstances, tha’d be raspberry. Out in a field, though… mint.’
“Serious answer…and you owe me a drink for this one.” she took a breath and drained her glass, slamming the empty glass onto the bar top. “The bravest thing I ever done…hmmm…Most would tell a story about some fight. An epic battle for something or other. In all truth…Once I bared my soul to someone. I put myself out there in the arms of someone that could destroy me and guess what. He did. I am not into the huge real life tales of heroism. Anyone can swing a sword. Real strength comes from within…and true bravery is even more rare. Now, where is that drink?”
‘Wha’s y’ poison, then, m’lady? Rum? Brandy? Whiskey? Bourbon?’ She waved to the barkeeper regardless.
What I really hate about younger people in fandom asking older fangirls why they’re “still” in fandom is that it’s the outcome of a misogynistic lack of representation for older women to be seen as people who have fun and fuck off.We never ask dude fans the same question. We have all kinds of cultural narratives of dude’s fucking off, playing videogames well into their 40s. And even when these narratives aren’t 100% sympathetic (ie: the perpetual manchild), there’s always this sort of exasperation around it like, what can you do? Boys will be boys. But when women age into fandom, there’s a whole lotta confusion around her very existence. When a younger fan wants to know why I’m here, in this space, they seem genuinely confused and uncomfortable. Because what are our archetypes for older woman: wife, mother, cougar even. Not womanchild. Not fuckoff. Not fangirl. Men are allowed seemingly childish pursuits but women better get in the kitchen and start scrapbooking.
Agreement in general.
What was it someone called me the other day when I got cranky? “Vulcan Wizard Grandma”? I can work with that. 🙂 But the young woman who got a Spock haircut at age 16 is still in here – and somebody or other may eventually pry my fangirlishness out of my cold dead hands, but no one will do it one second sooner. I decline to be edged out because I theoretically violate somebody’s ill-founded and unsound concept of what a woman my age should act like.
Many people believe geekdom is defined by a love of a thing, but I think — and my experience of geekdom bears on this thinking — that the true sign of a geek is a delight in sharing a thing. It’s the major difference between a geek and a hipster, you know: When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love.” When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.”
And this is why gate-keeping is the absolute opposite of what geekdom is. Real geeks don’t keep anyone out because they are too busy geeking out with the geek they’ve just met.
Adriellyn's Wandering Home 