Re: Night in the Woods, Part Four

[rynling]

I was actually just thinking about how there’s a tendency in American culture to mock and stigmatize people who drop out of college, either temporarily or permanently, as well as people who take more than four years to finish an undergraduate degree. My thoughts were essentially that this tendency makes no sense. It makes even less sense when it’s espoused by university administration, which institutionalizes this sort of discrimination in a way that’s illogical and completely unnecessary.

Along the same lines, a major component of The Bad Tumblr Discourse of 2018 was mocking and stigmatizing “adults” in fandom, with an “adult” being someone over the age of 21. This was partially a result of some sort of ridiculous ship war in the Voltron fandom, but I think it's also connected to the broader idea that everyone should be at a certain predetermined place at a certain point in their lives. According to this argument, you shouldn’t be messing around on Tumblr if you’re over 21; you should be paying taxes and raising children, or whatever it is that “adults” do.

This insistence on following a set path in order to ensure maximum productivity strikes me as a uniquely American mindset, and I wish we had a more widespread cultural understanding that it’s totally normal for the lives of different people to develop in different directions and at different paces.

If nothing else, in its sympathetic portrayal of Mae, Night in the Woods is an important step in a saner and healthier direction.

Uhhhh yeah so that’s my soapbox speech for today, thanks for reading. Idk, this game gives me feelings.

Comments

[lassarina]

I know we've talked about this before, but man, when I was a teeny tiny college fandom nerd, it was grandmas on the internet (literal grandmas) who taught me a shitton about being a good community member and fandom and just life. I'm still friends with some of them. (And I also wonder where these teens think the money to support their media comes from....it's us fandom olds, did you know.)

....sandboxing here too, but yeah. The exceptionalism of America is so bad.

[runicmagitek]

I've absolutely been loving your posts surrounding Night in the Woods, so thank you for sharing your soapboxes! ♥

Yes to literally everything you've said here, too. I remember getting so many long stares and "oh..."s from people when I mentioned I was taking five years to graduate from family members (dad's side mostly, go figure) to hair dressers to doctors to professors to other students. It's gross. I've thought about going back for a master's multiple times lately and aside from the fact it's stupid expensive, even an online class would take me probably another five years to complete. Not to mention I'd just kiss all my free time that makes me sane goodbye. Such a lovely conundrum we've made with education in this country :\

I will never get the whole "adults don't belong in fandom" thing. Who runs the cons? Who sets up the booths in artist alleys? Who put together platforms like DW and AO3? It definitely isn't the 16 year old complaining about adults, that's for sure.

Also, I never understand the taxes comment in regards to "go do adult things." I had to start filing taxes when I first got a job, which was 14, and my mom walked everything through with me instead of just doing it herself. And I worked through high school and college and guess what, kept doing taxes. Taxes aren't just an "adult" thing; it's a "you made money at some point" thing (that's a super general way to put it, but hopefully that makes sense). So whenever I see kids being all "lol you're an adult shouldn't you be doing taxes or something???" I can't help but see further lines separating those who were privileged enough to not work while at school from those who had to hold a job the second they were legally able to.