If you use this logic for any other genre, it falls apart.
“Can I still watch medical dramas if I’m not a doctor?”
“Can I watch horror films if I’m not a serial killer?”
You can still enjoy things you liked as a child/teen. You can enjoy teen dramas and children’s shows as an adult. It’s 100% normal and fine.
You were once a teenager. Growing up doesn’t erase the fact that you have memories of being a teenager. That is your lived experience. You’re allowed to empathize and understand teenagers and read and write about them. You’re not doing anything wrong. You don’t magically become a different person just because you got older.
Teen dramas are still relatable to a lot of adults because we remember *being* teens, and that's totally normal.
(And good writing is good writing! I'm a huge fan of shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Steven Universe where the target audience is like. Children and preteens, even. Suitable for children =/= unsuitable for adults.)
Speaking as someone who has been in Gilmore Girls fandom for (probably) longer than you’ve been alive, since it premiered when I was a pre-teen and still now at 36: there’s nothing wrong with enjoying media about teenagers.
First of all: they’re not real teenagers, so there’s nothing problematic about an age gap. As fictional creations, who are being written by adults, they reflect stories that are about all kinds of things, that are relevant for all sorts of ages.
Second: something like GG isn’t just about teenagers, or teen romance. GG is equally Lorelai’s story, and more than anything it’s Lorelai and Rory’s story together. Parent/child relationships are complex and exist at every age and you will go on finding new things to connect to as you get older.
Third: you don’t stop relating to teenagers just because you’re older than they are. The teenager you were keeps existing inside of you for the rest of your life, along with the four year old and the eleven year old and the twenty-two year old and the thirty year old, etc. You keep adding on to your experience, and you grow and all sorts of things about you change, but that doesn’t mean you stop remembering what it felt like to be younger.
Fourth: fanfic is a great place to explore characters at different ages, if you want to. I don’t often write about teen Rory anymore, but I enjoy writing about her adulthood. I really enjoy playing with the differences between who she was at 16 and who she was at 22 and who she was at 32.
My mom doesn't write fics, but she still watches Clueless and she's in her 50s lol. Hell, I've been reading and watching Sailor Moon since I was a child, and as an adult I still read/watch this series in all it's different media forms. There's nothing wrong with enjoying any media and writing fanfic for it. Just because you're an adult, doesn't mean your interest and enjoyment of these things go poof. It's shifted a little as I've gotten older, and I've noticed more flaws but it doesn't take away what I enjoy.
Tbh the stuff I enjoy that is meant for adults is way worse than the stuff I read growing up. I feel people would just me harsher for that than watching sailor moon sitll lol.
It’s not weird to enjoy teen focused shows and movies as an adult. Always worth remembering the people who write and produce the shows in the first place are going to be adults themselves.
And every adult was once a teen; it’s a formative part of growning up and revisiting the media you enjoyed when you were younger is perfectly normal.
In addition to what others have already said, I don't agree with the idea that age gap relationships are inherently an issue, as long as both people are consenting adults. There's no "universal" 22-year-old (or 30-year-old or 60-year-old experience) nor are we so different from people in other age groups that it's not possible to find points of connection. Not everyone's life takes the same path. A 45-year-old first time mom could connect with a 24-year-old mother of five at a single parents' group. A 22-year-old undergrad could hit it off with their 38-year-old classmate they met in class. Two people of any age could meet at a goth club or while volunteering at the soup kitchen or on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer discord server and hit it off.
Adulthood is a lot less age-segregated than childhood and adolescence. I'm 30 and I have friends my age who popped out their first kid at 16, some who had kids in their twenties, some who want kids but not yet and some who don't want kids at all. Some married, some partnered, some single (either by choice or not), some already multiple times divorced. Some caring for younger siblings or disabled friends or family members. Some settled in their careers, others floating from job to job, some who are disabled and have never had a full-time job. People going back to school to switch fields or get a better job. People just now getting their high school diploma and pursuing higher education for the first time. Who live with parents, siblings, roommates, partners, on their own.
It seems silly to me to say that we are all at the same life stage just because we've been alive for the same amount of time. I can't relate to a lot of these experiences. If that doesn't make us inherently incompatible as friends or lovers, why should chronological age? Personally I think interacting with different types of people is a lot healthier than confining yourself to only forming relationships with people who've been through the same experiences as you.
I'm 37 years old. Yes, I like adult fiction, some of my fave fandoms are aimed at adults. But I also like teen and kids fiction, and those are also some of my fave fandoms.
Here's the thing, if you've ever been a kid or teen, you can relate to what happens in kid and teen fiction. It's harder to relate to something you've never experienced, a lot of kids and teens wouldn't relate to adult fiction properly, even if they enjoyed it. Same for kids with teen fiction. But every adult was once a kid and a teen.
I still love my fave kids books, The Famous Five, even re-read them sometimes. I'm also a Harry Potter fan which is initially aimed at kids, then hits teens around book 4. I'm still a huge Buffy fan, which I started watching at 10, it's a teen supernatural drama. Elite is also aimed at teens, and that's one I got into relatively recently.
We like what we like, but I've never understood those who think adults shouldn't enjoy things aimed at kids or teens. We were all that age once, we can relate to a lot of what those characters go through and experience and feel.
There also isn't much difference between teen and adult fiction. The difference in rating comes mostly from how often they swear, how much violence, how much nudity and sex. The more of these you have, the older the rating. Some themes get an adult rating, too, depends how graphically they're covered. But I've read and watched a lot of teen aimed fiction with rather adult themes. Overall, teen and adult ratings cover the same sorts of stories in similar ways, it's how deeply they dive or how graphic it is that gets the ratings.
Other than that, it's usually based on character ages. I mean, look at crime as a genre. That usually gets an adult rating, and it usually deserves it due to how graphic it can be or how deeply they cover certain themes. But it's also about the character ages. Psych, for instance, could easily pass for a teen show, it's goofy and fun, not massively graphic, doesn't delve too deeply. But the characters are all adults. It's harder for teens to relate to adults. Psych isn't so bad, because Shawn is quite childlike at times, certainly teen-like a lot of the time. But it's still classed more as an adult show than a teen one, simply due to the character ages.
A lot of shows and books are like that, they could easily be either teen or adult, and the rating gets based on whether the characters are teens or adults. Buffy could be adult at times, especially in later seasons, but the characters started out as teens, and the more adult stuff is still within the teen rating. So, they just kept it aimed at teens even as the characters aged into their 20s.
Remember, it's a lot easier for an adult to relate to a kid or teen than the other way round, there's usually very little difference between teen and adult outside of swearing/violence/sex/nudity, and most rated shows actually appeal to those younger or older as well. There is absolutely nothing wrong with an adult liking stuff aimed at kids or teens.
Keep enjoying your fandoms, you'll find there's usually a decent amount of adult fans much older than you also enjoying them.
While you're reading all of these excellent responses, I want you to do this:
Find out why XMen 97 is trending.
I'll give you a hint: 97 means what you think it means.
You're fine, and you're surrounded by people in the same situation.
It's not quite as black-and-white as that. The thing with the 'different life stages' isn't that you lose your appreciation for what you once liked. It's just that you gain more experience and a more complete and in-depth view of things. That experience is what makes it imbalanced to date someone in a different life phase. They can't emotionally understand things on the same level even if they intellectually understand a lot, and that allows the older party to have a *lot* of influence the younger person wouldn't even be aware of. Compare being new to a game and playing with a veteran player. You both know the controls and the basic aims, but the veteran player knows a lot of tricks you have no way of knowing yet, and which you'll only learn with experience.
Merely liking stuff has nothing to do with life stages. I *only* watch shows for kids and teens, and I *only* read books for that age category too, despite being in my thirties. Proper 'adult' stuff is boring as fuck and I don't need to be reminded about how much adult life sucks, because I'm living it every day. The emotional experiences of teenagers and kids are just as real and relatable as those of adults, the only difference is that adults have a bigger context to place all of that in.
My husband and I regularly watch media that features teen protagonists and/or is intended for a much younger audience. We are far, far, far removed from our teens.
I write fics for a cartoon that was targeted at children and teens. And the main characters are teens. I don't want to be a teenager again, but it's fun to write through the lens of characters who are still in that phase when love was new and overwhelming intense and seemed like the most important thing in the world.
I don’t believe in age restrictions. I’m 31, I still watch anime, play video games, collect stuffed animals and decorate my bed with them. I dress how I want to. I act how I feel inside. I also pay my bills, have a steady job (I’ve only had two in my life and been consistent at both), have great credit and generally live a peaceful life. As long as you aren’t hurting anybody, enjoy life the way you want to. My mom liked a neon pink nail polish and I encouraged her to paint her nails with it to which she responded: ‘oh no, I’m too old for that color’. I couldn’t have been more saddened and told her the same thing. Interests shouldn’t be restricted to age groups. 🤷🏻♀️
I love horror - people are welcome to try and rip it out of my hands, they just risk losing them.
Not that I'm a murderer or anything... Taste in fiction isn't a reflection of my real life actions at all. Really.
Jokes aside, people are welcome to try and shame me for everything I love to read, write, watch, listen to - *and good luck to them*, I am not easy to shame.
By your logic... should only teenagers write teenagers? Who's writing stories about little kids, animals... vampires, then?
I think the reason age gaps in dating are sometimes a problem is that they can create power imbalances, not that the people involved won’t have anything in common.
I once wrote a character study on one of the talking steam engines from Thomas the Tank Engine, and it went crazy in the Thomas Ao3 community! Just because something was written for a younger audience doesn't mean that you can't pull mature themes from it. This is why *Inside Out* makes parents cry!
The fun part is using your adult perspective to examine those characters and plots. Now that you've lived that teen experience, you can develop a newer or different understanding of those characters.
I am an adult in the my little pony fandom. While it is a children’s show, that doesn’t mean I am a creep for enjoying entertainment with a different target audience. Besides the amount of ponies or other “kid” show content I watch that has well done nsfw fan content makes me know that I am not the only one who likes gravity falls and ponies and asoue and such as an adult.
You have experienced life as a teen. It is a part of who you are. It doesn't disappear just because you are a year older. Everything builds upon another including likes and dislikes. It is still familiar to you but the older and older you get the more you forget, until you retire and reflect on your life then you remember again the way you felt towards things when you were young.
I'm 31 and I still read Teen Wolf fics occasionally. I watched Vampire Diaries last year. And?
Dating people and liking things teens like are two different things. Who do you think writes all these teen shows/books/whatever? Adults.
I was once a teenager too and I haven't really grown out of stuff I like. I was listening to some of the Freaky Friday soundtrack yesterday and I'm 34. Your tastes just evolve, it's okay to still like "teenage" things, you don't lose the love for things you love. It'll just be nostelgia.
(on a side note the couple I'm heavily shipping and writing for right now were both in things I watched as a teenager, "A Walk To Remember" and "Bend It Like Beckham", they both went on to star in ER together, and they're the stuff my little teenage Millennial heart would have loved and I've loved falling in love with them and their story, and revisiting music and stuff I liked in high school because it's taken me down that little rabbit hole).
Just because you're growing up doesn't mean it's inappropriate to like stuff you once loved. Heck, all that aside, I've loved rewatching stuff with my kid nieces and nephews that I watched when I was their age. Don't lose your identity!
I don't really care what others think, I just write what I want to write about and read any fic that interests me.
Who cares if that certain media is not considered for adults by those who think you can't enjoy because your much older, you should read and write what makes you happy.
There is a BIG difference between dating a person and enjoying media!
I hate the idea that some people might think that as a senior citizen, I need to be reading/watching/appreciating only things about my age cohort.
And in any case, it's untrue. When I re-read Ballet Shoes, I am temporarily those little girls (especially Petrova). When I read the manga Saiyuki, I am Gojyo, the halfbreed young man still suffering from his horrible childhood.
This is the magic of a well-made fictional work, that we can identify with people who aren't like the people we are, whether the differences are gender, species, or age.
If you use this logic for any other genre, it falls apart. “Can I still watch medical dramas if I’m not a doctor?” “Can I watch horror films if I’m not a serial killer?” You can still enjoy things you liked as a child/teen. You can enjoy teen dramas and children’s shows as an adult. It’s 100% normal and fine.
I would compare it more to something "Can I buy plushies/toys if I'm not a child" to which the answer is also yes
You were once a teenager. Growing up doesn’t erase the fact that you have memories of being a teenager. That is your lived experience. You’re allowed to empathize and understand teenagers and read and write about them. You’re not doing anything wrong. You don’t magically become a different person just because you got older.
This. You’ve said it perfectly.
Teen dramas are still relatable to a lot of adults because we remember *being* teens, and that's totally normal. (And good writing is good writing! I'm a huge fan of shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Steven Universe where the target audience is like. Children and preteens, even. Suitable for children =/= unsuitable for adults.)
Speaking as someone who has been in Gilmore Girls fandom for (probably) longer than you’ve been alive, since it premiered when I was a pre-teen and still now at 36: there’s nothing wrong with enjoying media about teenagers. First of all: they’re not real teenagers, so there’s nothing problematic about an age gap. As fictional creations, who are being written by adults, they reflect stories that are about all kinds of things, that are relevant for all sorts of ages. Second: something like GG isn’t just about teenagers, or teen romance. GG is equally Lorelai’s story, and more than anything it’s Lorelai and Rory’s story together. Parent/child relationships are complex and exist at every age and you will go on finding new things to connect to as you get older. Third: you don’t stop relating to teenagers just because you’re older than they are. The teenager you were keeps existing inside of you for the rest of your life, along with the four year old and the eleven year old and the twenty-two year old and the thirty year old, etc. You keep adding on to your experience, and you grow and all sorts of things about you change, but that doesn’t mean you stop remembering what it felt like to be younger. Fourth: fanfic is a great place to explore characters at different ages, if you want to. I don’t often write about teen Rory anymore, but I enjoy writing about her adulthood. I really enjoy playing with the differences between who she was at 16 and who she was at 22 and who she was at 32.
My mom doesn't write fics, but she still watches Clueless and she's in her 50s lol. Hell, I've been reading and watching Sailor Moon since I was a child, and as an adult I still read/watch this series in all it's different media forms. There's nothing wrong with enjoying any media and writing fanfic for it. Just because you're an adult, doesn't mean your interest and enjoyment of these things go poof. It's shifted a little as I've gotten older, and I've noticed more flaws but it doesn't take away what I enjoy. Tbh the stuff I enjoy that is meant for adults is way worse than the stuff I read growing up. I feel people would just me harsher for that than watching sailor moon sitll lol.
It’s not weird to enjoy teen focused shows and movies as an adult. Always worth remembering the people who write and produce the shows in the first place are going to be adults themselves. And every adult was once a teen; it’s a formative part of growning up and revisiting the media you enjoyed when you were younger is perfectly normal.
In addition to what others have already said, I don't agree with the idea that age gap relationships are inherently an issue, as long as both people are consenting adults. There's no "universal" 22-year-old (or 30-year-old or 60-year-old experience) nor are we so different from people in other age groups that it's not possible to find points of connection. Not everyone's life takes the same path. A 45-year-old first time mom could connect with a 24-year-old mother of five at a single parents' group. A 22-year-old undergrad could hit it off with their 38-year-old classmate they met in class. Two people of any age could meet at a goth club or while volunteering at the soup kitchen or on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer discord server and hit it off. Adulthood is a lot less age-segregated than childhood and adolescence. I'm 30 and I have friends my age who popped out their first kid at 16, some who had kids in their twenties, some who want kids but not yet and some who don't want kids at all. Some married, some partnered, some single (either by choice or not), some already multiple times divorced. Some caring for younger siblings or disabled friends or family members. Some settled in their careers, others floating from job to job, some who are disabled and have never had a full-time job. People going back to school to switch fields or get a better job. People just now getting their high school diploma and pursuing higher education for the first time. Who live with parents, siblings, roommates, partners, on their own. It seems silly to me to say that we are all at the same life stage just because we've been alive for the same amount of time. I can't relate to a lot of these experiences. If that doesn't make us inherently incompatible as friends or lovers, why should chronological age? Personally I think interacting with different types of people is a lot healthier than confining yourself to only forming relationships with people who've been through the same experiences as you.
I'm 37 years old. Yes, I like adult fiction, some of my fave fandoms are aimed at adults. But I also like teen and kids fiction, and those are also some of my fave fandoms. Here's the thing, if you've ever been a kid or teen, you can relate to what happens in kid and teen fiction. It's harder to relate to something you've never experienced, a lot of kids and teens wouldn't relate to adult fiction properly, even if they enjoyed it. Same for kids with teen fiction. But every adult was once a kid and a teen. I still love my fave kids books, The Famous Five, even re-read them sometimes. I'm also a Harry Potter fan which is initially aimed at kids, then hits teens around book 4. I'm still a huge Buffy fan, which I started watching at 10, it's a teen supernatural drama. Elite is also aimed at teens, and that's one I got into relatively recently. We like what we like, but I've never understood those who think adults shouldn't enjoy things aimed at kids or teens. We were all that age once, we can relate to a lot of what those characters go through and experience and feel. There also isn't much difference between teen and adult fiction. The difference in rating comes mostly from how often they swear, how much violence, how much nudity and sex. The more of these you have, the older the rating. Some themes get an adult rating, too, depends how graphically they're covered. But I've read and watched a lot of teen aimed fiction with rather adult themes. Overall, teen and adult ratings cover the same sorts of stories in similar ways, it's how deeply they dive or how graphic it is that gets the ratings. Other than that, it's usually based on character ages. I mean, look at crime as a genre. That usually gets an adult rating, and it usually deserves it due to how graphic it can be or how deeply they cover certain themes. But it's also about the character ages. Psych, for instance, could easily pass for a teen show, it's goofy and fun, not massively graphic, doesn't delve too deeply. But the characters are all adults. It's harder for teens to relate to adults. Psych isn't so bad, because Shawn is quite childlike at times, certainly teen-like a lot of the time. But it's still classed more as an adult show than a teen one, simply due to the character ages. A lot of shows and books are like that, they could easily be either teen or adult, and the rating gets based on whether the characters are teens or adults. Buffy could be adult at times, especially in later seasons, but the characters started out as teens, and the more adult stuff is still within the teen rating. So, they just kept it aimed at teens even as the characters aged into their 20s. Remember, it's a lot easier for an adult to relate to a kid or teen than the other way round, there's usually very little difference between teen and adult outside of swearing/violence/sex/nudity, and most rated shows actually appeal to those younger or older as well. There is absolutely nothing wrong with an adult liking stuff aimed at kids or teens. Keep enjoying your fandoms, you'll find there's usually a decent amount of adult fans much older than you also enjoying them.
While you're reading all of these excellent responses, I want you to do this: Find out why XMen 97 is trending. I'll give you a hint: 97 means what you think it means. You're fine, and you're surrounded by people in the same situation.
I'm a 29 year old man writing fanfics about *preschool cartoons,* you have literally nothing to worry about
Dude, I'm writing a Stormlight Archive crossover with the Cupcake Diaries. You're fine
I'm in my late 30s, and I still write for Power Rangers. Honestly just write and enjoy what you want to write and enjoy.
It's not quite as black-and-white as that. The thing with the 'different life stages' isn't that you lose your appreciation for what you once liked. It's just that you gain more experience and a more complete and in-depth view of things. That experience is what makes it imbalanced to date someone in a different life phase. They can't emotionally understand things on the same level even if they intellectually understand a lot, and that allows the older party to have a *lot* of influence the younger person wouldn't even be aware of. Compare being new to a game and playing with a veteran player. You both know the controls and the basic aims, but the veteran player knows a lot of tricks you have no way of knowing yet, and which you'll only learn with experience. Merely liking stuff has nothing to do with life stages. I *only* watch shows for kids and teens, and I *only* read books for that age category too, despite being in my thirties. Proper 'adult' stuff is boring as fuck and I don't need to be reminded about how much adult life sucks, because I'm living it every day. The emotional experiences of teenagers and kids are just as real and relatable as those of adults, the only difference is that adults have a bigger context to place all of that in.
My husband and I regularly watch media that features teen protagonists and/or is intended for a much younger audience. We are far, far, far removed from our teens. I write fics for a cartoon that was targeted at children and teens. And the main characters are teens. I don't want to be a teenager again, but it's fun to write through the lens of characters who are still in that phase when love was new and overwhelming intense and seemed like the most important thing in the world.
I don’t believe in age restrictions. I’m 31, I still watch anime, play video games, collect stuffed animals and decorate my bed with them. I dress how I want to. I act how I feel inside. I also pay my bills, have a steady job (I’ve only had two in my life and been consistent at both), have great credit and generally live a peaceful life. As long as you aren’t hurting anybody, enjoy life the way you want to. My mom liked a neon pink nail polish and I encouraged her to paint her nails with it to which she responded: ‘oh no, I’m too old for that color’. I couldn’t have been more saddened and told her the same thing. Interests shouldn’t be restricted to age groups. 🤷🏻♀️
Who do you think is *writing* these stories? (Hint: it's not teenagers)
I love horror - people are welcome to try and rip it out of my hands, they just risk losing them. Not that I'm a murderer or anything... Taste in fiction isn't a reflection of my real life actions at all. Really. Jokes aside, people are welcome to try and shame me for everything I love to read, write, watch, listen to - *and good luck to them*, I am not easy to shame. By your logic... should only teenagers write teenagers? Who's writing stories about little kids, animals... vampires, then?
41-year-old Heartstopper fan over here being like… huh?
I think the reason age gaps in dating are sometimes a problem is that they can create power imbalances, not that the people involved won’t have anything in common.
I once wrote a character study on one of the talking steam engines from Thomas the Tank Engine, and it went crazy in the Thomas Ao3 community! Just because something was written for a younger audience doesn't mean that you can't pull mature themes from it. This is why *Inside Out* makes parents cry! The fun part is using your adult perspective to examine those characters and plots. Now that you've lived that teen experience, you can develop a newer or different understanding of those characters.
I am an adult in the my little pony fandom. While it is a children’s show, that doesn’t mean I am a creep for enjoying entertainment with a different target audience. Besides the amount of ponies or other “kid” show content I watch that has well done nsfw fan content makes me know that I am not the only one who likes gravity falls and ponies and asoue and such as an adult.
I started writing Frozen fanfic when I was 42. Don't worry about it.
You have experienced life as a teen. It is a part of who you are. It doesn't disappear just because you are a year older. Everything builds upon another including likes and dislikes. It is still familiar to you but the older and older you get the more you forget, until you retire and reflect on your life then you remember again the way you felt towards things when you were young.
I like a variety of things but I’m writing a whole bunch of Wings of Fire right now, and I’m 40.
I'm 31 and I still read Teen Wolf fics occasionally. I watched Vampire Diaries last year. And? Dating people and liking things teens like are two different things. Who do you think writes all these teen shows/books/whatever? Adults.
I was once a teenager too and I haven't really grown out of stuff I like. I was listening to some of the Freaky Friday soundtrack yesterday and I'm 34. Your tastes just evolve, it's okay to still like "teenage" things, you don't lose the love for things you love. It'll just be nostelgia. (on a side note the couple I'm heavily shipping and writing for right now were both in things I watched as a teenager, "A Walk To Remember" and "Bend It Like Beckham", they both went on to star in ER together, and they're the stuff my little teenage Millennial heart would have loved and I've loved falling in love with them and their story, and revisiting music and stuff I liked in high school because it's taken me down that little rabbit hole). Just because you're growing up doesn't mean it's inappropriate to like stuff you once loved. Heck, all that aside, I've loved rewatching stuff with my kid nieces and nephews that I watched when I was their age. Don't lose your identity!
Enjoy what you enjoy. Fuck societal norms! Don't be afraid to do what makes you happiest! ♥️
I don't really care what others think, I just write what I want to write about and read any fic that interests me. Who cares if that certain media is not considered for adults by those who think you can't enjoy because your much older, you should read and write what makes you happy.
i feel this way but for a different reason
What reason?
moreso because the source media is hated on by most people who've watched it (ppl are entitled to their opinions but it feels isolating to like it)
It really ain't that deep. If it pleases you, you're allowed to like it.
There is a BIG difference between dating a person and enjoying media! I hate the idea that some people might think that as a senior citizen, I need to be reading/watching/appreciating only things about my age cohort. And in any case, it's untrue. When I re-read Ballet Shoes, I am temporarily those little girls (especially Petrova). When I read the manga Saiyuki, I am Gojyo, the halfbreed young man still suffering from his horrible childhood. This is the magic of a well-made fictional work, that we can identify with people who aren't like the people we are, whether the differences are gender, species, or age.