7-13-2026
This post is not related to any kind of recent events, and it is much lighter in tone than some of my recent posts. I recently realized that my system would count as an age dreamer, and this post is about what that means and how that came to be.

If you are looking at this site, you probably know what an age regressor is, but if you don't, an age regressor is someone who enjoys childlike/nostalgic things and feels that they take on a more childlike mental state when they do these things. You can also age regress in the sense that you take on a more childlike mental state as a trauma response, or while doing activities that wouldn't necessarily be thought of as childlike, but most people who consider themselves age regressors enjoy children's media, collecting or playing with toys, nostalgic aesthetics, stuff like that.

An age dreamer, on the other hand, is someone who enjoys the same kinds of media, objects, aesthetics, etc. that age regressors do, but they do not actually experience the regression part. That is, they feel like they're mentally an adult the entire time, and they don't take on an altered childlike state when they engage with childlike things.

For us, the seeds of becoming an age dreamer were sewn when, in 2024, we were going through a spiritual journey in which we considered worshipping Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia series, which we loved in our childhood. Aslan is a deity-like character and is a metaphor for the Christian god, and we hadn't touched Narnia for a long time, but our QPP Lorlor, who loves children's media, volunteered to have calls with us where they would read to us from the books. We started with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and are going in the order the books were published. We are currently on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is the third in publication order.

The first-published book in the series is dedicated to the writer's goddaughter, and he says in the dedication about how he started writing the story when she was a young child, and by the time the book is finished, C.S. Lewis (the writer) expects that Lucy (the goddaughter) will be fairly older and won't really be interested in fantasy or fairy tales anymore. However, Lewis says that "Someday, you will be old enough for fairy tales again", and Lorlor and I both found that line incredibly resonant upon the reread.

Then in 2025, I moved to a town that has this one movie theater that only shows older movies, which is fine with us because, prior to that time, we'd been going to an arthouse theater in our old area that mostly played older movies too. However, this theater would sometimes play children's movies, which our old theater normally didn't, and we decided to go to some of the showings because we could.

Later that year, we uncovered a huge number of fictives from our childhood, including ones from children's media like The Lion King, An American Tail, fairy tales, and (of course) The Chronicles of Narnia. They returned with a love for children's media and strong memories of our childhood.

We started engaging with these fictives' sources more because of them, and also to try to investigate how certain children's movies would have been used in our programming. However, the more we watched children's movies, the more we realized we actually still enjoyed them, especially the art in animated movies.

As a result of this, and also because of liking plushes and toys, we consider ourselves an age dreamer. Some members of the system are individually age regressors, but most of us aren't, while enjoying children's media is a systemwide trait now.

One thing that contributes to us being an age dreamer is having a partner who is an age regressor. I'm referring to Troy, our fictional partner. He had an abusive and neglectful childhood in which he did not get to watch or read a lot of children's media. When we found out about this, we started inviting him to see kids' movies with us at the theater (which we already went to together to see other movies), and then we started getting him plushes and eating Lunchables with him.

I don't think I know anyone who considers themselves age regressor caregivers without being a regressor themselves - which is what I'd be at this point, for the most part, at least with regards to Troy - but in my case, there's a genuine enjoyment of the elements of childhood on my part, too. When Troy wants to watch a kids' movie with me, we both want to watch the movie equally as much as each other, we just enjoy it in different ways.

I've added "children's media" as an interest on the interests page of this site, and I'm going to edit our favorite media page on our main site to mention some of our favorites. I think it's a sign of the Unification that this is a system-wide interest and isn't just limited to the headmates who are from our childhood.