Once upon a time, in fandom
So, fandom?
Not new, kids.
I was born in the -gasp- 70s. When people did things like line up for days to see Star Wars. And before that? Girls chased The Beatles for blocks. Star Trek blew the walls off. Before these here Internets, we had zines, my loves. (And if you don’t know what that is, go ahead and Google, I’m old and patient, I can wait). You think re-blogging on Tumblr is dedication to your ‘ship? Try an Exacto knife and a copy machine.
Nothing has changed. The desire for slash comes from the same place it always has–Cumberbatch and Freeman didn’t invent Johnlock, they existed long before anybody reading this drew breath.
A bit more recently, but when many of the current rulers of the fandom fief were still pre-puberty, a bunch of us cut our fan teeth on the years of URST between Mulder and Scully, or discovered that knife’s edge between lust and hate on Buffy. Do you honestly think you could have Supernatural without those shows? Do you think you’d be able to still be rolling on Harry Potter if the groundwork hadn’t been laid by Tolkien? Hell no.
What I am saying, my young friends, is that next time you decide to mouth off about how fandom should have an expiration date, you may perhaps want to give a though to how you woke up here. Much as it’s easy to believe everything you love was created from nothing, we are all in debt to those who came before us.
And also? We oldsters pay the bills.