You can teach kids on the playground about what is off-limits, the parameters of civility, but you can't write their lines for them; there has to be something unthinking, investing, PLAYful about it. They have to indulge the secondary reality for long enough to get the satisfaction from it.
Oh hmm, I really like your take on this! Because you are so right about the underlying aspect of play, and that's where I think the upsprig of social consciouness in fandom goes wrong, because it starts to dictate which characters we should love and like and also at times shames people for not following that pattern, but the fact is liking someone to the degree that we in fandom tend to cannot be predicted or planned or changed. And when you're so busy trying to see things the "right" way it can definitely strip some of the enjoyment out of it. Ultimately I'm still glad it happened because think it's important that fandom became more aware of these things: fandom can be a pretty good example of the troubling way a lot of women look at/think of other women, but. Definitely a double-edged sword.

Hahah! Baseball/sports in general are what I was thinking of specifically when I mentioned male trivial things, but I didn't want to say it because I feel like because I'm not particularly interested in it it would come off as a slight to those who are: but no, I like that it's trivial, I think it's pretty healthy to like some trivial things as long as you can balance your life out with non-triviality. What bothers me is the perception of male-coded trivial things as less "silly" than female-coded ones. That is the perfect description of Liz Lemon though, love it.