fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2191 ]

[ SECRET POST #2191 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2191 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 048 secrets from Secret Submission Post #313.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - 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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I've just fallen out of love with my fandom - bam, like a lightswitch. A month ago I was excited as fuck/reading fic/Tumbling moronically as you do. The Christmas Special aired and did basically nothing for me. Now I'm scrolling past 95% of the posts on Tumblr, dropped all the fanfics I'd been reading, and stopped daydreaming about my OTP entirely.

I've drifted out of fandoms before, but never this abruptly and without a real grace period. It's not like anything even happened in the CS that bothered me particularly. Anyone else have sudden fandom divorce stories?

Yes, this has happened to me before. I can't remember which show it was, but it scared me a bit when it happened. For a sec there, I thought I was done with all fandoms in general, since I seemed to no longer be interested in fic, fanart, etc. But that was only in this particular fandom.

I take it, it was Doctor Who? Given that you talked about The Christmas Special.

I was really, really, REALLY into Fringe for the first couple of years. Then I saw what the writers were going for, not the weird cases or Walter's past but more of Peter and Olivia's love life and their DESTINIES, and I fell out of love with that show so fast it was almost comical. Popped in to see what they had done with The Observers and realized that I left just in time before the show would have started pissing me off with the bad writing.

Holy crap, are you me? I did the exact same thing with Fringe! One day I just turned it off and never looked at it again. :I

This feels like a Doctor Who comment. And I'm sorry, but no stories to share. I've never truly really fallen out of love with any fandom. I don't have that many in the very first place. I'm not really involved in the comms either, but I tend to think and think about it and look some fanwork up. I just put it in the backburner when I get tired of it. It makes a comeback when it's refreshing enough again. Sometimes years can pass, and when I almost forgot there was this little fandom thing, it explodes back.

Yes. Downton Abbey and Bones. I have no idea what happened with DA, I just suddenly lost all interest in the story lines in the middle of season 2. Bones I quit watching because of Zack going criminal/who-knows-what.

I've been there with Doctor Who over the past year (just ugh to the last two seasons, gdi Moffat). I almost quit entirely with Asylum of the Daleks, and after that I was just angry at any Doctor Who I saw on Tumblr or otherwise.

(However, I'm tentatively interested in the new season after the Christmas special. I have my fingers crossed that Moffat won't wreck it too badly.)

The biggest sudden fandom drop I've ever had though was FF7. I literally dropped an rp I was in and stopped reading a bunch of fics. To be fair to it all though, it was less because of the game/fandom and because my enthusiasm had been killed by a really shitty Cloud rper/friend I fell out with.

I dropped out of active Shadow Unit fandom very abruptly, because I didn't feel comfortable criticizing the writers' storytelling choices to their faces.

I was like this with Merlin. I was really into the fandom for the first series when everyone was into the standard OT4 and then just got sick of it for some reason one day.

I came back for season 4 expecting the fandom to be similar to what it was like back in season 1 (more fool me!) but EVERYTHING had changed.

I definitely fell out of love with SPN, but it wasn't sudden. It was a gradual thing, and although I couldn't possibly imagine giving the show up (because I was seriously obsessed with it for years), I did. The funny thing is I didn't even want to see (pictures or gifs) or hear about SPN for the longest time, but eventually it passed. Recently I started following someone who posts gifs from the earlier seasons (which are my favorite seasons) and now I have the urge to watch those again. (Tumblr is good for something!)

Also, Inception. I was prompting Arthur/Eames left and right, reading as much fic as I could get my grubby hands on and one day just went, "Gah, this is awful. Why do I like this? This is boring." To this day I don't know exactly what it was that made me dislike the pairing (Maybe I just overloaded on them? IDK, that's never happened to me before), but I couldn't stand it after that. Since Arthur/Eames was what the majority of fic was about, I dropped the fandom.

Edited 2013-01-02 01:12 (UTC)

I totally did that with SPN as well. I didn't watch or follow anything from season 6 at all. I got dragged back in by season 7, but didn't get back into the fandom in anyway - which I think is the only reason I was able to remember why I enjoyed SPN so much in the first place. SPN fandom is truly a hellish place...

The show itself was the main reason I stopped watching, but the fandom didn't help. I know it isn't all bad, and that there are decent SPN fans (I've seen them!), but overall the fandom was just too wanky and there was too little new fic that fit my interests to stick around for it. I've seen a couple episodes of season 7, but nothing after that. Eventually I'll catch up but right now I'm in no rush. (And like you, even if I do, I doubt I'll be involved in the fandom again. At most I'd look for fic and stay away from everything else.)

I did the same thing with Arthur/Eames. it probably was overload, at least I think that's what happened to me, because one day I went to read some Arthur/Eames and there was just so much of it and they all sounded the same. I also tried other pairings but either there was hardly anything written about them or Arthur/Eames was inserted in the fic somewhere.

Re: Falling out of love with a fandom

elaminator - 2013-01-03 02:54 (UTC) - Expand

There was a time when the onlt tv shows I watched were House, CSI, and Lost. Then, at the start of whatever season began with House in rehab, I found myself very annoyed that the fall tv season was starting because now there would be new episodes that I would have to take the time to watch. When I realized I felt this way, I stopped watching! (I did keep watching Lost when it came back on later and I popped back into House at the very end, but I've never seen an episode of CSI since.)

I used to be really into Psych for a while, because, y'know, it was funny and lighthearted and the actors had great chemistry and all that good stuff. And then the writers started doing darker storylines, like the Yin/Yang thing, and I think my main problem with it was that the series tone matured and the characters never did. I think it's the same kind of problem that Harry Potter had reconciling the actions in the first book with the tone of the seventh, although in Psych it's all happening at once.

(Disclaimer: I have no idea if this assessment is accurate, as I stopped watching the show a while ago. I was my impression then and it's what made me leave.)

I totally get what you mean with Psych. I still love it to bits and am excited about the next season, but in the last few seasons there have definitely been a few points where it has been incredibly difficult to empathise with Shawn or Gus because their actions have been *so* immature - a fact that is only highlighted by actors' aging, and that every single other character has matured/developed a lot more than either of them. However, the writers have been addressing this - slowly - and it seems like next season is going to be the one where Shawn might actually have to deal with the fact he is an adult and has adult responsibilities.

Also, if it draws you back in, there will be a musical episode. Musical! Episode!
... Ahem. I'm done.

Re: Falling out of love with a fandom

inkmage - 2013-01-02 05:02 (UTC) - Expand

This sort of happened to me with Heroes. I was just a lurker in the fandom, but I was really into it for the first couple seasons, and hung on and kept defending it even when a lot of people were getting sick of the direction it was taking. I loved some of the characters that a lot of people seemed to dislike.

Then, in the middle of the last(?) season, I just stopped. To be fair, I'd been losing interest for a few weeks. But then one night I was busy when the show was on, and I figured I would catch up with it online later. But I never did, and I never watched the rest of the show.

I've stayed involved in pretty much every fandom I've ever been in, often past its "death". I don't really "leave" fandoms, period. Even if I start losing interest in the source material I still check out any new fic or art that's posted. I think this is because most of my fandoms have been very small and close-knit (I hail from the olden days when we had mailing lists and forums, and everyone commented on every fic no matter how bad), and leaving a fandom would feel like letting down the rest of the group.

SPN is the only fandom I've dropped after really spending any time in it. I wasn't terribly active but I was reading fics and collecting fanart for about six months or so? But in all that time I didn't find ANY fic that I liked, and the grossness of the fans started to wear on me. Looking back I think my interest had been steadily decreasing for several weeks, but at the time it felt like one day I loved the show and the next I didn't want anything to do with it.

I think I'm starting to feel this way about my current fandom. I still love the canon, but I'm finding less and less fanfic that I actually want to read, and many of my fellow fans are... offputting, to say the least.

I think a big part of it is favorite characters not being written in ways that I enjoy, and favorite writers leaving the fandom, for various reasons.

Yeah, I'm kind of like this - my participation waxes and wanes (for example, I'm currently not writing anything in Eureka because I was crazy busy when Season 5 came out, and I still haven't managed to watch it yet because this last semester has been hellish), but I never really leave a fandom or fall out of love with it.

How I Met Your Mother. The episode "The Broath". Bam. Super-invested to dead zero in 22 minutes. Nothing specifically horrible or notable happened in the episode, it just somehow tipped the scales into utter indifference.

I was massively obsessed with this one actor for a year. I went through a grace period of maybe a month where I was slightly less interested in him, but then suddenly, BAM. Sudden abrupt falling out of love, to the point where I actually went "ugh" when I saw his face. It was nothing egregious or anything that did it. Just kind of odd. But oh well, I went with it.

Torchwood. Children of Earth. It wasn't Ianto's death (despite the fact that I had been shipping Jack/Ianto since episode one), it was just... watching episode five, watching it get steadily more and more grim and depressing and Jack sacrificing his own grandson and the whole despair of it all and, in the span of six episodes (including the season finale), going from Team Torchwood to The Jack and Gwen Show, and I just... got to the end of episode five of CoE and never watched it again. I haven't even rewatched the earlier seasons, and I loved those!

I did this with House. I obsessively watched every single episode as early as I could find it online, then watched it again once it aired in my timezone.

Then suddenly one week I decided I just didn't feel like watching it. It wasn't because I was irritated at something that had happened in the previous episode or because I didn't like where the plot was going or any of that. I just wasn't interested enough to sit down and watch.

At that time I figured I'd watch in online later on in the week and be raring to go for the next week's new episode. Nope, never actually sat down and watched that episode, and I was once again completely uninterested the following week.

I never watched another episode of that series.

My experience is usually more gradual. I'll be really into a fandom, then I just find myself bored with it or seeing all the annoying flaws it has, then realize I'm only watching/reading because of habit and faithfulness and not interest or passion and leave.

I do find that I tend to circle back around to some fandoms, so may be a chance this is only a temporary leave from that fandom for you? After being completely absent awhile I'll come across an old fandom again, realize why I loved it in the first place and go looking for fic and art. You should step back and give it some time, move into another fandom and immerse yourself for awhile, then see how you feel when you decide to go back and give this one another chance.

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