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When the Old Ones disappeared, Jessalyn was overjoyed.
There were some who expressed disappointment or even distress, but they were all either misled or deluded. After all, there was no acceptable reason for anyone over the age of 20 to participate in fandom. Adults could go out and do other things, they didn’t need this faint lifeline, so clearly their motives could only be nefarious. Far too often had Jessalyn read a lovely story about teenagers holding hands only to find out the author was an ancient 21-year-old hag, clearly deriving some perverted pleasure from shipping underage characters. Now, with the Old Ones gone, that would no longer be an issue.
Of course, there were changes, some of them big. The big archives disappeared practically overnight with nobody to maintain and run them. However, that was a small price to pay for knowing they were finally free and safe from any unsavory influences. Certainly, sites like Facebook were less than ideal for posting fics, but at least you could always be certain the person writing the story was appropriately pure. There were always a few rotten apples even in the younger generations, but very few would dare write anything truly problematic with their face and name attached.
Many stories Jessalyn had adored disappeared too, never resurfacing on other sites even as the metaphorical lifeboats from the wreck of the big fandom sites started making their way ashore. That was an acceptable sacrifice, though. Clearly there must have been some terrible undertones to the stories that she had missed before, if indeed they had been written by the Old Ones. If anything, she was lucky to have dodged that bullet. Clearly said stories had simply been a very sneaky way of grooming.
As time went on, fandom friends started disappearing one by one. Sometimes Jessalyn missed them, but she brushed such feelings off. They were the Old Ones now, and it was about time for them to move on. Fandom wasn’t for them, not anymore. It was for Jessalyn and those like her.
She heard rumors sometimes, wild tales of hidden sites and forbidden stories, all run by those above the age limit. Jessalyn knew for a fact some people were exchanging downloaded copies of lost stories, but she kept clear of all that. Sure, the selection of fics was much more limited now, but that didn’t mean she was going to stoop to something so low. That was how people got dragged to the dark side.
One day Jessalyn sat down at her computer as she always did, heading to her favorite fansite. It was positively tiny compared with the old archives, but that just meant she could consume everything there without worrying about the authors being old perverts trying to reach out to the young people. She couldn’t wait to read chapter #80259 of My Awsom Time with the Latest Boyband. The cliffhanger last time had been positively tantalizing.
Jessalyn hummed to herself as she typed in her password. Just a moment longer and then —
Jessalyn blinked, staring at the screen. An error message? What was this about?
“According to our records, you have aged out of fandom. Time to grow up and enjoy the rest of your life! :)”
For a moment, Jessalyn simply stared at her screen. The smiley face stared back, mocking her. Taunting her.
This was wrong, this was unfair. She wasn’t one of the bad ones, she wasn’t some old hag encroaching on territory belonging to younger people. This was her world, her stories and her sites. She had helped build them, put her very heart and soul into this fandom. It was not right for her to be thrown out like this!
The smiley face kept smiling. And smiling. And smiling.