The stages of entering a relationship a fandom
1. The âpilotâ stage. You watch the first couple of episodes. At this point you have a paper-thin understanding of the characters and donât really care about them. You still love the screenwriters because they are delivering a great plot and chemistry, and you are yet unaware of all the suffering these garbage-heads are gonna freely inflict upon you.
2. You binge a little. Your understanding of the characters is still poor, but you already picked out and fell in love with the two people you are gonna ship and SO WHAT THAT THEY ARE ENEMIES JESUS WHATâS YOUR PROBLEM?!b?
3. The research fase. You have browsed the fanfiction and art on your ship and read what people write about the show on Tumblr. You are convinced youâve never seen acting more brilliant or a story more interesting. This show is one of the best out there for sure.
4. You watch the show with the new appreciation for the characters, you enjoy every second of it. And look at that, those two are being thrown at each other by the writers! The thing practically ships itself!
5. You have entered the crush stage. You will now spend your days (and nights) thinking about the perfect individual of your dreams (or a few individuals), obsessively reading fanfiction and eating away at your own tears.
6. The creative stage. You have read many fanfics and looked at lots of beautiful art and now you decided to express your love for your fandom and try your own hand at it. This was a great idea!
7. This was a terrible idea. Youâre not a writer or an artist.
8. You are in depression. After failed attempts to write a fanfic, you canât stomach the idea of reading something, because it just makes you realize how bad of a writer you are.
9. You have also began watching the later seasons of the show, which are continuously failing to rise up to your expectations.
10. Your ship is not getting enough screen time. You crawl back to the âfluffâ and âmutual piningâ tags on AO3.
11. One of your favorite characters dies/your ship falls apart because one of them is getting married/the show devolves into repetitive tropes and becomes stale - whatever it is, you are bitterly disappointed.
You decide, maybe itâs time to take a break.
12. Itâs the final season and somehow, with the return of the show, a hope in your chest rises once again, that maybe this time theyâre gonna go through with it. Maybe just for once⊠itâs not stupid to hope?
14. Not that you actually expected them to canonize the ship. Youâre not naive. Youâre just absolutely fucking stupi-
15. The show is over. Actors come to the final comic-con, which you arenât able to attend because youâre donât have money or you live
THOUSANDS OF LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM CIVILIZED SOCIETY!!!
16. After weeks of brooding and whining you come to terms with harsh reality. Your ship isnât canon, the characters you thought you knew turned out to be different, and the ending didnât give you the closure you hoped for.
You start thinking, maybe thatâs just life⊠Maybe thereâs something wrong with you. Perhaps youâre laughable in your desires for life to be good to good people, for death to pass you by; maybe youâre dumb for hoping that true love could exist. You know, deep down, that life is short and unfair, and no-one will ever love you like you want to be loved.
With that you arrive to the final stage.
17. Denial. Now that you have cried out all your secret insecurities, you can continue to deny their existence and shelter yourself from concepts of unrequited love and human imperfections under a cozy blanked of fanfiction.
You decide that these characters still exist in your head, and no-one can set the rules there but you. Your life is in your own hands. You are free to search for love and hope for the best, because you believe it will be better one day. Even if life continues to disappoint.
18. To unwind, you sit down with your laptop and browse for new shows. You find a pilot for a series that just came out, and the characters are kinda interesting, so you decide to try again. Maybe this time it will be different.
19. Of course it isnât you absolute fucking moron
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