tbh shoutout to the over 40s on tumblr, sorry the internet acts like yall belong in the retirement home when ur literally just regular adults with hobbies

I was going to leave comments in the tags, but I decided this was important enough to put on main.

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.

Don't fear age. Don't put an age limit on having fun. Give yourself a damn future.

Beverly passed away in 2019, but she was one of many of my favorite, elder cosplayers that frequent DragonCon and remind all of us to keep playing as long as we can.

I can't even think of something to say.

Palestinians' life-line is a tiny rectangle

Palestinians' life-line is a tiny rectangle because the world couldn't give less of a fuck about them.

Let that sink in.

They have to record every single moment of this massacre. Or it didn't happen.

They have to record themselves holding their dead children. Or it didn't happen.

They have to record themselves crying in despair. Or it didn't happen.

They have to record rescuing children from underneath rubble. Or it didn't happen.

They have to record the countless wounded and dead. Or it didn't happen.

They have to record speaking while surrounded by the body bags of people they know while microphones are pushed in their faces. Or it didn't happen.

They have to do this every single second for 19 days. They have had to do this even before the 7th. There is a 2014 video of a man killed by an airstrike on camera.

Their life-line is their fucking phones.

You have all reduced their lives to their fucking phones.

AND DESPITE ALL OF THAT, US-of-fucking-A Biden, and all you other brain-dead fucks still have the gal to question the amount of casualties.

You have reduced them to a rectangle in their hands and that still isn't enough??? You're all sick. SICK.

I have not been following western media at all for the past couple of days but I want to know how they have reported about the freed Israel hostage who said that she was treated well with her needs met and literally even turned back to shake hands and say Shalom to those who were releasing her. Was this shown and hyped up on TV channels and news websites? Was her release video played everywhere?

I only saw a clip of Sky News (Australia I think) where they started showing her speaking to the media and immediately cut it off when she started speaking positively...

Oh and what about another Israeli who was talking about how it was their own military who had actually attacked its own people?

I always ask and look for news and updates directly from Israel like we get it from Gaza. If you search for the Tel Aviv geotag on Instagram, it's mostly people chilling in Israel or some pro-Palestine accounts. Is there a possibility that Israel stops their own people from speaking up?

I know western media loves to cherry pick things to show to curate the image that Israel and the US wants them to curate but surely they cannot omit these things.

Here's a random post I just found, adding it here for now

they couldnt have thought of this BEFORE they dropped 12000 bombs on an entire population and deprived them from water and electricty for 18+ days?

You know, it's very curious how every time Hamas' freedom fighters do something, Israel just bombs Gaza Strip as a response, targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Isn't that curious?

I think it's very curious.

It's almost like they are using Hamas as an excuse, or something.

Israel does not even try to disguise how much they don't care about Palestinians. Israel does not try to hide how it thinks that Palestinians do not deserve human rights and self-determination.

Where was Hamas during the Great March of Return where people were shot by the thousands, losing limbs, being killed for having the nerve to protest, the nerve to want to be free and go back home. (wanting to go back home...now isn't that ironic? In their oh-so-righteous quest for a home, Israel destroys the homes and lives of the Palestinian people.)

Where was Hamas when you detain children and beat them and humiliate them?

Where was Hamas when journalists and medics are killed?

Where is Hamas in the West Bank where illegal settlements and settlers constantly threaten the lives of Palestinians? Constant harassment, constant threats, constant destruction of property.

Where is Hamas in Jerusalem where homes are being demolished? Where people do not have the same rights as those who come from the other side of the world to take their homes as their own.

Hamas is the Boogeyman in your minds, so you can feel at ease terrorising, killing, assaulting, displacing, ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of people.

The word "terrorists" is an excuse to let it all happen.

The word "Hamas" is an excuse to let it all happen.

You are disgraceful.

A vile regime that cries wolf again, and again, and again.

And the world lets them.

Disgraceful. Shameful. Disgusting.

All the atrocities, allowed in the name of profit.

The very notion that Hamas is doing any of this out of their own free will is disingenuous, fueled by racism, and it ignores the 70+ years of continuous violence brought upon the Palestinian people by the illegal occupying force of Israel. It ignores what the Gaza Strip is, it ignores the mental terror Palestinians live through and are born into.

The collective trauma of the Holocaust, the collective trauma of an apartheid state itself, is being used to go through with Genocide of an entire peoples.

I hear people talking about this being a cycle. It is not.

Early on, I too thought it was a cycle, as violence begets violence, but it is not.

Palestinians are resisting their very annihilation.

I will not ask of them to be merciful, even though they are.

I will not ask of them to be gentle, even though they are.

I will not ask them to die slowly and quietly for my peace of mind as Israel chokes them of their lives, chokes them of their lands year after painful year.

I will not condemn their struggle.

Israel was not merciful to them. Israel was not gentle to them.

Israel is a state that exists on the backs of countless Palestinian deaths. That, I condemn.