Normal

Every now and then I get a moment of internalized fanthingphobia, and start thinking about how truly dorktastic I must surely be because I spend so much time on pop culture pursuits, and those pursuits include making silly fanvids and writing naughty stories.

But then I realize that not only do other people spend huge chunks of their life on stuff like fantasy football, batting averages, gossip about A-listers and fashion, but those things are major industries in and of themselves. And yet they're considered normal and my stuff isn't?

I don't see a difference, y'know?

So maybe most of the TV and movies I watch involve supernatural elements of some sort. And maybe I spend a lot of time looking at pics and video of relatively obscure actors with unusual faces and gorgeous accents. And then write porn about them.

How is that any stranger than a guy who plays armchair quarterback and obsesses over Ichiro? How is that any stranger than the chick who reads In Touch and People in the checkout line and pines away for a pair of Jimmy Choos?

I suppose some of it is that my fan pursuits tend to challenge American Standard gender roles (hi, slash?) and therefore people find that uncomfortable. But really, most of this just comes off as the jocks and princesses looking down their noses at the geeks and queers again. Which is stupid.

Whether fans are pathetic or not depends entirely on individual behavior--not on the thing they're a fan of. Spending your entire day living vicariously through a random stranger, whether that's A-Rod or Tyra Banks or Starbuck isn't healthy. You need to spend time writing your own story instead of just living someone else's.

However, there's also nothing wrong with escapism. The pressures of day-to-day life can be hard even for the strongest of us, and if that means spending a few hours in front of ESPN, Lifetime or Syfy to forget the day then so be it, yeah? After all, if it weren't for fans, none of those people we're fans of would have careers anyway.

Personally speaking, I probably do spend a little more time these days on fannish pursuits than is probably completely healthy but really? I'm just kinda bored right now. We're in a holding pattern with the Big Life Stuff and I'm still winding down from the job and am not yet in the mental space I want to be in to work on my novel, so this is keeping me busy for the short term (and brushing up my writing and photo/video editing skills, too, which is going to help me with future employment.)

And besides: Dude is hot and I have a lot of free time to stare at him right now, so I'm gonna. So there.