on wondering how i got stuck in a single fandom
so I started watching teen wolf a long time ago (and when i say a long time it sounds extremely dramatic but when i actually count the time it was really a long time considering tv show years). I was young and foolish and full of hope, and i was coming from the supernatural fandom, a place i thought i'd never leave because it is, to this day, one of the best fandoms i have ever been in. that said, i didn't have a very pleasant high school life and i developed a weakness for all high school/college au related, and the characters from teen wolf are perfect for this, because not only are they actually in high school, something that the show, oddly enough, doesn't make much use of, but the characters are fucking fabulous to work with in this setting. and so i entered the teen wolf fandom thinking it was going to be the same as any other fandom i had been in.
i was wrong.
i was so wrong i sit and contemplate my life choices sometimes.
something happened in the teen wolf fandom that had never happened to me before in any fandom i had been, and i had been in a few fandoms, if not plenty, for me to think i knew what kind of person i was when it came to fandoms; i was in three big ones: naruto, tokio hotel, and supernatural; and in several small ones. and though i always had an otp that i was attached to more than to any other pairing, i was never particualrly reluctant to ship something else. i am a fanwarrior, and i do not fear the darkest ships.
teen wolf, though. teen wolf was a slap on the face against everything i thought i knew about myself.
i started shipping sterek and i couldn't help it. i have been reading sterek non stop ever since, and i have not shipped anything else as truly and seriously as i ship these two fuckers. i refuse to ship them with anyone else in a serious fashion. i actively avoid looking for and reading if i ever do find them by accident, any fanfiction that ships any of them with someone else. reading sterek has been so wonderful and fulfilling and just so incredible that i didn't stop to think that i was getting a bit stuck. that i stopped looking for any other fanfics, that i stopped looking for any other fandoms or pairings, and that i have read the same fics over and over due lack of new ones when the fandom started dying because the production of the show is full of dickheads that did not know how to manage the fact that the pairing became more popular than the show itself and decided to kill it instead by draging even the actors out of the show without even killing the characters. it got out of hand. not only for them but for us, the fans, the people who gave the show meaning and popularity. i have read the same fics so many time that i have memorized some of them by plot rather than by name, and i have saved so many that i could open my own fucking library on the fandom. i have been in this fandom long enough to read the popular fanfics and then see them dissapear from ao3 before my eyes. i have seen people come and leave. and i have stayed. i am still here.
it is not that sterek has stopped making me happy, because it hasn't. i read it still, and i could keep on reading it for years, and i will continue to save as many fics as i can, and it will be my comfort zone and happy place, and that itch under my skin that i don't know what to do with on bad days other than spend hours and hours reading fanfics. the problems is that i think i'm reaching the point where i'm reading it not because i'm particularly excited about it, but because i'm used to reading it; i just want to read more, not because i want to enjoy it, but because i just feel like i have to read it. i love sterek too much.
this fandom has taught me a lot, but it has also made me realise that maybe i need to move on. that i left behind my spirit of adventure when it was about shipping and became monogamous and romantic in my fandom and fanfic life, and that i may be mixing my fiction with my reality. and though the last one was something i have been aware of for the longest time and always try to put it aside, jumping from one pairing to another with no problem helped me place my expectations for relationships in a healthy, natural, normal place. people are not characters. my otp is not the relationship i want to personally have. it is not how the world works, no matter how much i don't like it.
is it bad, then, i asked myself, that i became monogamous about my otps. i don't think it is. it doesn't have to be. i have always had one true pairings, the only difference now is that i really just don't want to ship them with anyone else; i'm not as interested about reading outside otp adventures for some reason.
i think, overall, the question has always been, can i leave this fandom? is it really necessary to leave this fandom to enter a new one?
the answer would be "no" more or less for both, but the reality also shows that even if you don't want to leave a fandom, you always eventually put it behind. it never goes away, you just put it behind.
so a toast, to all the fandoms that made it into my life, to sterek for gripping at me like both out lives depended on it, because it did for a long time, and to all the fandoms to come, that i hope are plenty and just as wonderful.
i was wrong.
i was so wrong i sit and contemplate my life choices sometimes.
something happened in the teen wolf fandom that had never happened to me before in any fandom i had been, and i had been in a few fandoms, if not plenty, for me to think i knew what kind of person i was when it came to fandoms; i was in three big ones: naruto, tokio hotel, and supernatural; and in several small ones. and though i always had an otp that i was attached to more than to any other pairing, i was never particualrly reluctant to ship something else. i am a fanwarrior, and i do not fear the darkest ships.
teen wolf, though. teen wolf was a slap on the face against everything i thought i knew about myself.
i started shipping sterek and i couldn't help it. i have been reading sterek non stop ever since, and i have not shipped anything else as truly and seriously as i ship these two fuckers. i refuse to ship them with anyone else in a serious fashion. i actively avoid looking for and reading if i ever do find them by accident, any fanfiction that ships any of them with someone else. reading sterek has been so wonderful and fulfilling and just so incredible that i didn't stop to think that i was getting a bit stuck. that i stopped looking for any other fanfics, that i stopped looking for any other fandoms or pairings, and that i have read the same fics over and over due lack of new ones when the fandom started dying because the production of the show is full of dickheads that did not know how to manage the fact that the pairing became more popular than the show itself and decided to kill it instead by draging even the actors out of the show without even killing the characters. it got out of hand. not only for them but for us, the fans, the people who gave the show meaning and popularity. i have read the same fics so many time that i have memorized some of them by plot rather than by name, and i have saved so many that i could open my own fucking library on the fandom. i have been in this fandom long enough to read the popular fanfics and then see them dissapear from ao3 before my eyes. i have seen people come and leave. and i have stayed. i am still here.
it is not that sterek has stopped making me happy, because it hasn't. i read it still, and i could keep on reading it for years, and i will continue to save as many fics as i can, and it will be my comfort zone and happy place, and that itch under my skin that i don't know what to do with on bad days other than spend hours and hours reading fanfics. the problems is that i think i'm reaching the point where i'm reading it not because i'm particularly excited about it, but because i'm used to reading it; i just want to read more, not because i want to enjoy it, but because i just feel like i have to read it. i love sterek too much.
this fandom has taught me a lot, but it has also made me realise that maybe i need to move on. that i left behind my spirit of adventure when it was about shipping and became monogamous and romantic in my fandom and fanfic life, and that i may be mixing my fiction with my reality. and though the last one was something i have been aware of for the longest time and always try to put it aside, jumping from one pairing to another with no problem helped me place my expectations for relationships in a healthy, natural, normal place. people are not characters. my otp is not the relationship i want to personally have. it is not how the world works, no matter how much i don't like it.
is it bad, then, i asked myself, that i became monogamous about my otps. i don't think it is. it doesn't have to be. i have always had one true pairings, the only difference now is that i really just don't want to ship them with anyone else; i'm not as interested about reading outside otp adventures for some reason.
i think, overall, the question has always been, can i leave this fandom? is it really necessary to leave this fandom to enter a new one?
the answer would be "no" more or less for both, but the reality also shows that even if you don't want to leave a fandom, you always eventually put it behind. it never goes away, you just put it behind.
so a toast, to all the fandoms that made it into my life, to sterek for gripping at me like both out lives depended on it, because it did for a long time, and to all the fandoms to come, that i hope are plenty and just as wonderful.