I recently found a book by the
title of Fangirl at my local book
store, and I finished it earlier this week. I haven’t come across a really good
book in a while that captured my attention right off the bat, but this one did,
because it perfectly explains how important “fandoms” can be to the people who
are in them.
A big
stereotype that I’ve heard a lot lately is that a fandom is supposed to be for
children that have nothing better to do than fantasize about fictional worlds
because they don’t do anything with their lives.
Why is
it portrayed as such a bad thing to be passionate about something? Who gives a
crap about what it is, as long as it makes you happy, seriously.
You
want to spend your days reading fanfiction (FYI, that’s not necessarily a bad
thing either. Sometimes you don’t want that fictional world to end, so you
create your own stories to continue the adventures. There is literally nothing
wrong with that. If you don’t agree, it doesn’t mean you have to hate on
something that other people enjoy doing. It can be a creative outlet for people
who love to write but can’t create their own story), then read some fanfiction.
You want to curl up in bed and marathon all six—well, very nearly six—Peter Jackson’s
Middle Earth films, go ahead.
Loving
something, even if it’s fictional, is the best thing in the world. You connect
with the worlds that you watch and/or read about, and that’s the whole point of them existing.
Authors and producers make these things for you to enjoy, and some people may
like them more than others. Obsessions happen when you connect with something
on an extremely personal level, and you’re supposed to. Authors write
characters to be personable, so that you can see yourself or someone you love
in those characters. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Shipping”
characters bring fans together, and you connect over seeing—or imagining—two characters
in love (p.s. that’s the whole point of a love triangle).
For
example, Supernatural’s
200th episode (titled, fittingly enough, Fan Fiction) was all
about the fans, and what they wanted to see. The show addressed the fandom’s
favorite ships, as well as a great line about Dean supporting fans that are
into writing their own versions of his life because it might be important to
them.
Fangirl
by Rainbow Rowell has a great message in its pages as well. “I don’t want to
write my own fiction,” Cath Avery says in the novel. “I don’t want to write my
own characters or my own worlds—I don’t care about them. I care about Simon
Snow [her obsession]. And I know he’s not mine, but that doesn’t matter to me.
I’d rather pour myself into a world I love and understand than try and make
something up out of nothing.”
I’m
just fed up with labelling people as nerds or geeks when they happen to like
something that isn’t Starbucks or football.
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