children in fandom communities

I'm super invested in fandom online & IRL. I do cons once or twice a year, I participate in creating zines for the stuff I like, and I write fanfic.

I hate the expectation that these spaces MUST be accommodating to kids. I got comments from people asking if they could participate in the last zine I planned, and when I told them only adults could participate, I had angry teenagers swarming my notifications. "Well I wasn't going to write NSFW!" "Well I've done other zines!" "Why does it have to be for just adults?!" It's even worse in irl spaces. I have friends who do fan art, and multiple of these people have had parents be furious and offended when they showed up and there were characters from mature works of fiction or NSFW content in the artist alley (despite the ppl with NSFW booths being separated). If I wanted to talk to a bunch of thirteen year olds about the things I like, I wouldn't have gone through the effort of making all of my sites and accounts super private. I put warnings on everything I post that my content is just for adults, and yet 🫩 kids. everywhere. And somehow I'M the problem when I say that not everything is for them. This is why so many platforms are getting away with the bullshit age verification shit they're pushing. Parents don't want to monitor what their kids are looking at, and they want everyone else to do it for them. My space is not a space for kids! Ugh.