There is a strange sense of melancholy that comes from seeing a community you love being torn apart by the indifference and/or casual cruelty of people within their glass houses. The only words I can really think to describe it is that sense of cold from being caught in a storm that soaks you through and chills you down to the bone, so much so that even when you do manage to find some place to warm yourself up you still cannot quite shake the lingering chill and it hangs over you. It settles down deep into your bones and, at least for me, makes you feel like a wraith drifting aimlessly in the ruins of what once was.
Please don't get me wrong, I understand the way fandom works. That people cycle in and out and if you're very lucky you get to experience a brief moment wherein people you greatly respect and admire exist in this bubble at the same time as you. If you're even luckier, sometimes you grow close enough to some of them that they follow you still, though the thing that brought you together is gone the connection you made is still real and solid. I have known both, I have known when my hyperfixation have run their course and must be put away like pieces of a wardrobe being changed to suit the seasons.
Even still, the notion that so many of us have been harmed enough to want to leave because where is the fun when we constantly have to defend ourselves from what feels like all sides including from the way the writing treats our favorite characters... hurts. The hollow ache of that shared pain and knowing that you can do nothing to ease the burden when it becomes so great the only option for their happiness someone has is to leave it all behind still stirs the feelings of melancholy that no configuration of words can ever hope to convey.
I say all of this not to bring down the mood, or to guilt anyone into staying in a fandom that is no longer fun. But to express as eloquently as I can, the gratitude I feel for you, my fellow charlastor creators. The art, the stories, the headcanons and silly jokes. The character studies and the dynamic analyses. Thank you for sharing your love, your joy, with all of us, with me. Thank you for allowing me to see you. And thank you that, even if for just a moment, you all saw me too.
I currently have no intention to leave, my blorbos still hold my heart in their clawed little hands. But for those of you who have found it's time to move on, i wanted to thank you for the memories we got to share.
