On fandom and grief and change
Apr. 19th, 2019 01:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zaliachimeraI both love and dread getting into a new fandom. It's a complicated thing for me, and as I've got older I've got more aware of my feelings around things which is great! But also horrible because I start anticipating things more.
I can't promise this is going to be totally coherent but I've been considering it a bunch recently and wanted to get my thoughts down.
I guess in a lot of ways, a new fandom is like having a crush. It's exciting, thrilling even. It makes my heart and my stomach lurch to think about the New Thing. There is so much possibility! So many new things to create! New characters to love and stories to discover! So many new things to learn! There has never been a fandom yet where I haven't come out the other side a better writer.
I really hate having crushes. They are distressing and distracting and play with my emotions which is why I'm sitting here nearly in tears, being very worried about the end of the New Thing even though that's most likely a couple of years away. It eats my thoughts and makes it difficult to focus and I don't really like having feelings a lot of the time.
It's taking up 95% of my creative brainspace and while I can feel all these lovely ideas at the edges of my mind, I kind of need that brainspace for original stuff.
I wonder what it would be like to get into something a normal amount. Like 'hey I like this thing and may indulge in some fanfic' amount, rather than 'I just binged 135 episodes in under a month I guess this thing is my life for the next 3-4 years'.
And there's a kind of grief that comes with it too. It feels like losing part of myself and losing something I love. Because I can still like a thing, and rewatch it, but there's a spark that's gone. It's never going to be that intense again. And I mourn that. I guess it's mourning the person I'm not anymore, the person who latched so strongly onto this thing that isn't My Thing anymore.
And the more conscious I've become of my feelings around fandom, the weirder it's become. I can anticipate when a new fandom is around the corner now. Like... I know I'm hungry for something, but at the same time, lamenting that I'll be moving on even before it's happened. It's weird.
I've been kind of thinking that a fandom comes along when I need it. Or more like... my brain latches onto the creative Thing that it needs at the moment, the thing that's going to fill some hole in me, something I need to learn from it creatively. I don't know if it's true but I like the idea. It makes it feel a little less like abandoning something, and more like achieving something. I learned a thing, and now I can move on to the next thing! I know fandom isn't a thing you can win at but my brain still feels like it should try.
And then there's the real life stuff.
Especially in the first flush of fandom, I get really enthusiastic. And then spend my time around people, all people, even friends, super paranoid that they dislike me for liking the New Thing. I talk too much about it, I love it too fiercely and it's weird.
I cannot count the number of times as a kid when I loved something that I was told I was too into it, and needed to stop and do other things and not be so influenced by it. I've got better at hiding it I think, but it's still hard, and painful to know people's eyes are glazing over when I mention it.
But I've done this before. A lot. Even before I knew what fandom was. Even before I had the internet. And I always get to keep some things. Some knowledge, some ideas, some friends I collected along the way. It's never dying, it's just rearranging myself to fit this New Thing in.
I can't promise this is going to be totally coherent but I've been considering it a bunch recently and wanted to get my thoughts down.
I guess in a lot of ways, a new fandom is like having a crush. It's exciting, thrilling even. It makes my heart and my stomach lurch to think about the New Thing. There is so much possibility! So many new things to create! New characters to love and stories to discover! So many new things to learn! There has never been a fandom yet where I haven't come out the other side a better writer.
I really hate having crushes. They are distressing and distracting and play with my emotions which is why I'm sitting here nearly in tears, being very worried about the end of the New Thing even though that's most likely a couple of years away. It eats my thoughts and makes it difficult to focus and I don't really like having feelings a lot of the time.
It's taking up 95% of my creative brainspace and while I can feel all these lovely ideas at the edges of my mind, I kind of need that brainspace for original stuff.
I wonder what it would be like to get into something a normal amount. Like 'hey I like this thing and may indulge in some fanfic' amount, rather than 'I just binged 135 episodes in under a month I guess this thing is my life for the next 3-4 years'.
And there's a kind of grief that comes with it too. It feels like losing part of myself and losing something I love. Because I can still like a thing, and rewatch it, but there's a spark that's gone. It's never going to be that intense again. And I mourn that. I guess it's mourning the person I'm not anymore, the person who latched so strongly onto this thing that isn't My Thing anymore.
And the more conscious I've become of my feelings around fandom, the weirder it's become. I can anticipate when a new fandom is around the corner now. Like... I know I'm hungry for something, but at the same time, lamenting that I'll be moving on even before it's happened. It's weird.
I've been kind of thinking that a fandom comes along when I need it. Or more like... my brain latches onto the creative Thing that it needs at the moment, the thing that's going to fill some hole in me, something I need to learn from it creatively. I don't know if it's true but I like the idea. It makes it feel a little less like abandoning something, and more like achieving something. I learned a thing, and now I can move on to the next thing! I know fandom isn't a thing you can win at but my brain still feels like it should try.
And then there's the real life stuff.
Especially in the first flush of fandom, I get really enthusiastic. And then spend my time around people, all people, even friends, super paranoid that they dislike me for liking the New Thing. I talk too much about it, I love it too fiercely and it's weird.
I cannot count the number of times as a kid when I loved something that I was told I was too into it, and needed to stop and do other things and not be so influenced by it. I've got better at hiding it I think, but it's still hard, and painful to know people's eyes are glazing over when I mention it.
But I've done this before. A lot. Even before I knew what fandom was. Even before I had the internet. And I always get to keep some things. Some knowledge, some ideas, some friends I collected along the way. It's never dying, it's just rearranging myself to fit this New Thing in.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-19 01:42 am (UTC)That's a perfect description of how I tend to feel. That rush... And yeah, long before the internet, before I knew fandom was a thing.
I mean, I joke about my, uh, twenty-six year crush on Fox McCloud but let's face it, it's thoroughly grounded in a very real 'this can't be what happens to other kids' love of the entire game, world, characters, and definitely Fox.no subject
Date: 2019-04-19 01:57 am (UTC)I hope you are enjoying the ride with your New Thing!
no subject
Date: 2019-04-19 10:57 am (UTC)I do something really similar and it's so painful. I binge watched Critical Role in the first three months or so of last year, and when I skimmed my journal for an end of year meme, it was really uncomfortable to read again how I felt - hyperaware of how it was consuming me, and of the fact that I was shortly going to lose that - and it still impacts my enjoyment of Critical Role even now. :(
[hugs]
no subject
Date: 2019-04-19 01:32 pm (UTC)And I always get to keep some things. Some knowledge, some ideas, some friends I collected along the way. It's never dying, it's just rearranging myself to fit this New Thing in.
~This, so much. ♥ The sentiment behind this is really something I try to grasp too, and I think you described it very eloquently. I hope you will continue to enjoy your New Things as everything continues to adjust around them to fit them in! ♥
no subject
Date: 2019-04-25 02:25 am (UTC)I think you're right though that each Thing is an opportunity for creative growth, sometimes in ways we don't anticipate. For example: I've found that I really enjoy and value the research I do for fandoms into the strange and varied areas that a canon reaches-- this culture or that, this time period, this technology or city or whatever that I have to learn about just to write convincingly. I don't know if my writing has improved from fandom obsession to fandom obsession as a whole, but I have learned a lot-- some things about writing / characterization / craft etc., and a LOT of things about (for example) computer science, the united states marine corps, 12th century germany, firearms, outer space, human anatomy, and ice hockey. That's such a small, tangential thing but like... it's not nothing. It's cool to learn stuff; one of those things I managed to turn into a career (ironically, my job now makes finding time to write difficult....).
I love the saying 'when the student is ready, the master appears'. This has been the case for me in my personal and professional life, but I think in a weird way it applies to fandom as well. We fall in love with the things we are ready to fall in love with. And so what if they are only love affairs? Unlike relationships with real people, to whom we have moral responsibilities and who can be harmed by our fickleness, an idea, or a book, or a film, or a tv show, is completely at our disposal. Nothing dies when we fall out of love with it. We only gain and grow from loving one thing after another.