fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4972 ]

[ SECRET POST #4972 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4972 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 39 secrets from Secret Submission Post #712.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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inspired by #1

I grew up in a very conservative enviroment. I learned about sex from fandom. I first learned to accept LGBTQ people and started my own journey to discovering my bisexuality thanks to fics and fandom. And fandom in fics in general just exposed me to a lot as a kid that I wasn't being exposed to at school or at home and opened my mind to other perspectives and things that the bubble I was in wouldn't have prepared me for otherwise.

Congratulations on discovering your bisexuality!

I learned how to behave when you're popular. I was never the cool kid in school or even in my early twenties, and then I moved and entered a new environment and I somehow suddenly found myself kinda popular. I hadn't really changed but in this new environment, people seemed to like me instead of thinking I was a bit strange. Luckily, a few years earlier, I had been a minor BNF in a very small corner of my fandom, and had learned how to be nice about and deal with it. That helped a lot.

Fiction in general but fanfiction particularly let me essentially study friendships and love and work out what kind of friend and lover I wanted to be.

The real downside was discovering that people rarely hold themselves to the kind of standards our fictional heroes do. And trying to maintain those standards for yourself can hurt because you're the only one putting as much effort in. If that makes sense?

Oh yes, that final paragraph makes total sense. I take that kind of stuff very seriously too, and sometimes feel disappointed in watching interactions or experiencing interactions with others.

But I think fandom may give an idealized version of the real world, an idealized version of relationships and everything else. I do think it's great to strive for those kinds of standards, but in the real world, most people won't read your mind, and you have to tell them your needs and wants. I don't think that necessarily makes them... lesser(?) people or anything, but maybe since you were exposed to certain media and they weren't, they might not be as aware of the same things you are.

I totally agree. People are just people. I guess tgat's the next lesson for me, as well as how to be my own advocate because people just don't yhink to ask half the time - unlike in stories.

Having come from a childhood surrounded by a lot of negativity and poisonous attitudes, I'm still grateful to have learnt how to not be that from fiction even if I maybe ended up a little unrealistic about people. (Mostly I changed anyway. It's still a WIP. Ye gawd why does nature try to turn us into our parents.)

Growing up and being raised catholic while being in the closet in the early 2000s - slash/femslash fiction was comforting to me knowing that my thoughts on having crushes on girls wasn't abnormal (even though at the time there were a few lgbt rep in media, it was next to impossible to find and I was pretty sheltered by family/school. Plus when it was even remotely brought up irl people would say that it was a 'lifestyle choice' and not something for kids to know about or just a unimportant teen phase).
Like, I managed to surpass feeling guilt like a lot of my other ex-catholic & queer friends - mostly thanks to finding about slash shipping when I was 13 years old and had fun reading/drawing/writing slash content. It felt freeing to create worlds where being gay was the norm or writing relatable angst or just having a laugh with over the top head canons.

Like it's maybe not the same thing as learning a lesson, but I feel like I was able to learn that there was nothing wrong with me growing up thanks to the online spaces that I had found back then.

Just yesterday I was in a situation where I was unhappy with my friends, and today, after the whole thing had time to marinade in my brain, I was able to put my finger on what exactly had caused my frustration and my friends' complete lack of understanding why I would feel that way. I'm sure I have years of story analysis and character studies as well as plenty of ContraPoints and assorted youtubers to thank for that. I'm very proud that I managed to pinpoint the issue in what I feel is a very concise way.

(If you're interested: the problem was different interpretations of how integration into a group works. Imo, it's the job of the group to help an outsider who wants to join them; the group has to be proactive and do their best to make sure that integration works. And I live by that. I always keep an eye out for people who look like they might feel left out or are new, and I go out of my way to make them feel welcome and included.
I feel like my friends generally place more burden on the outsider who wants to join. They're going to give the newbie any help they ask for, but the newbie has to ask for it, and has to demonstrate his willingness and desire to participate and assimilate. After all, the group was just fine without him, and if the stranger wants to join, it's his job to make it happen, not theirs.
Yesterday, a situation was created where I was the outsider and became frustrated when I felt they were leaving me hanging. When I brought it up, they didn't get why I was unhappy, I should have just put some effort in, after all I'm a grown woman and I could have just dealt with it.
It sounds so simple and clean now, but I took a while to work through my emotions and the event itself until it became clear where the root of the problem was. Still don't know how to deal with this going forth – like, it's nice to understand it like this, what action do I take now? Hoping for more inspiration tomorrow.)

Is that a right or wrong answer thing though? I think that's just personalities at play. I am similar to you in that I try and include people. But i'be actually had people react badly to that a few times, they seemed to prefer having to work to get into the group.

First of all, thank you for reading and trying to help! That's really sweet of you.

If it was just yesterday's specific situation, then no. The problem is that it's part of a larger pattern that's starting to emerge where the group of friends keeps alienating and snubbing people without noticing. Their way of thinking about integration leads to a clique-y environment and complete disregard for those who are not currently in the group. Since there are several "versions" of the group with the same people at the center but different people in the periphery (like me), the keep creating situations similar to the one yesterday where they exclude those like me who generally consider themselves part of or at least close to the group but are not part of this particular version of it in this particular context. I know of at least two other situations where the group's thoughtlessness made someone genuinely angry, but those two people didn't say anything, and I know the group never even noticed it. And yesterday, when I confronted them when I was unhappy, they got defensive and told me it's my own fault. This isn't going to stop, and it's going to lead to more bad vibes in the bigger social environment. I don't want that.

I'm not going to confront them again – yesterday didn't go over too well and while I think that by the end of the night, I had managed to mend the worst of it, I'll tread carefully for a while – but I'll have to figure out just for myself whether I should just ignore that kind of behaviour (which doesn't sit right with me) or if not, what I should do on a smaller scale.

Okay reading more specifics of your situation I can see I was well off.

Tbh that does sound really shitty behaviour on their part nonny. I hope you manage to get through to them.

Thank you. I don't think there's an easy solution here (especially since there are still more factors to the confrontation yesterday I haven't mentioned), but we'll see.

That some people just aren't right in the head, but they're high functioning and the crazy doesn't always come out right away.

Yeah fandom does seem to attract this type. I think that it’s online means it's easier to hide things too. Also people don't learn how to sand down their edges, as it were, in the same way people do interacting in real life.

The lack of social cues as feedback tends to exacerbate the issue, I think. But for some, I don't think they're self-aware enough to realize how awful and entitled they come off. The other problem is that the camaraderie of fandom can be a bit misleading for some people, so they think that because you watch the same show or write fanfic for the same show, you're BFFs and they get way too personal too quickly.

Sometimes that can just be loneliness, nonny. I speak as someone guilty of having done that before.

I think loneliness can be part of it, but I don't think that's the complete explanation. But I'm not just talking about accidentally chattering away at a total stranger because you're enthusiastic about something. I mean overstepping boundaries and expecting to be treated like someone's best friend simply because you're in close fandom proximity and have had two brief conversations.

I don't know that there's anything specific, mostly just that because of it, I ended up being exposed to a lot of different people and ideas and feel like I'm more open-minded than I otherwise would've been (or at least wouldn't have been for many years; I was 13 when I first got into fandom).

Nothing comes to mind. English maybe? Ha to read fics with a dictionary at first.

I also got to know some gay fans which helped me to accept that I'm bi.

Oh yeah, Internet--more exactly online fandom--totally taught me English.

A lot about mental health and mental illnesses. How to do self-care, how to handle emotions both in myself and with others. Looking back, I learned very little about that from my parents, and while I've not been diagnosed, I've started to think I might be on spectrum. Very mild, but I've always had some trouble fitting in with groups, and over my life I've been described as a bit strange by several different friends. Tumblr has helped me a lot with recognizing it and making me feel less like a freak who tries to blend in but keeps slipping up.

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[ SECRET POST #4972 ]

What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?