the blog of a disabled mother who likes to game, and "get in the pit"
And now more news agencies are reporting on the actual cause of his death, which makes it worse.
…you know, adding personal details in there that don’t need to be in these news articles, but whatever.
It’s been… I don’t even know how many weeks at this point since I quit the Discord “reunion” servers that I was invited to, the ones with people that I had grown up with, and I continue to be happy that no attempts have been made to invite me back to already existing servers or new ones (matters might have been helped out by the fact that I deleted people from my friends’ list on Discord, making it more difficult to contact me, having done so for this reason). But I continue not to miss being in any of them, and I can’t realistically see myself wanting to join them again for any reason. This doesn’t seem like something that’s going to change, even though I’ve heard it said in situations like these — and when it comes to fandoms — that you “can’t leave” groups like these. And then, when I don’t want to be a part of these groups any longer, I do, and some people are actually surprised that I’ve done it, committed to it, and doubled down on it. (But why? Seriously?)
And like I’ve said, I’ve done it with fandoms as well, although for slightly different reasons (although my willingness to commit not to participate in fandom activities as they are more or less known to be is the same, and is something that I am continuing to be willing to commit to). I dislike the whole “you can never leave fandom once you join it” phrase that is almost a catchphrase at this point, seeing it more like a jeer than anything else, and I really dislike the expectation that you have to agree with “your people” on all issues 100% of the time or you are Not Doing It Good Enough and Should Be Blocked — for instance, I’m still not watching The Winchesters (the prequel to Supernatural), simply because it doesn’t address anything that I’m particularly interested in watching a television show about. I’m not jeering at or making fun of the people who are interested in watching it, though. It’s just… not my thing, although if I wind up tuning in at a later date I wind up tuning in at a later date. I’ve also fallen out of the habit of reading fanfiction at this point, simply because my time has become occupied by other things and the only times I’ve actually taken the time to think about it have been times when I’ve noticed that I just haven’t read it in a really long time. Truth be told, when I had to reload our gaming PC I didn’t even log back into Archive Of Our Own, and it’s been almost a year since I have. It’s not out of malice or anything, either. I just want to spend my time doing other things and there is only so much time in a day, and I burn out if I have to talk about things for hours, days, weeks, or months on end. I need to be able to walk away from them under even the best of circumstances.
The only reason that I saw it cross my Twitter timeline was because followers of mine and friends of mine (“moots”) were discussing it or interacting with it to the point that these posts were being elevated and suggested to me… regret number one, I suppose. That was my primary interaction and involvement with it, aside from mentioning that what I did see coming across my timeline made me extremely uncomfortable, continued to make me extremely uncomfortable, and justified why my interaction in fandom-related activities is as close to none as “little to none” can possibly get. I’m well within my rights to find these sort of conversations disconcerting and uncomfortable and want nothing to do with them, which is what I continue to do not participating in fandom experiences — it’s been a boon of mental health for me to have made the decision not to do so (and for my closest friends, such as Andy, was actually something they’d seen coming for months… the less neurotypical in question the friend was, the more they just intuitively understood it).
At this rate, I just hope that fandom as a collective whole continues to leave me alone. I’m not going to watch The Winchesters when it premieres because there’s nothing about it that interests me. If other people want to watch it I’m not going to make them feel bad over it, just as I wouldn’t want to feel bad with my… casual watching of most things (ask me how far I am in The Boys one of these days, I swear), but it’s just not something that I’m interested in. I’m not fascinated by John and Mary’s love story. I know enough about it.
There are shows that I want to watch, like Lucifer and The Boys — to name just two of them — that… for the life of me, I can’t commit to actually watching even though I could make the time for them after the boys have gone to bed and fallen asleep for the night. This seems to be why it was so easy for me to fall out of fandom in 2012, although that was more a matter of me pretending to like things that I did not actually like at all, whereas the decision to fall out of fandom this time was brought about because of the drama, negativity and toxicity that fandom circles have in them and the fact that I did not want to continue pretending to like something more than I actually liked that thing. At some point I suppose I’ll get around to it and watch the shows that I want to watch (oh, and The Walking Dead and everything that’s related to that), but it will be on my terms and on my own time. If I want to take a break I am absolutely taking that break.
Another amusing tidbit to note is that it actually took me several years to finish Supernatural, which I did on Netflix. I would drop it for six months here, a whole year here… it would just get to the point where I didn’t want to continue watching it, where I wanted a break from watching this television show, so I just took one. I didn’t get into the fandom for it until 2020 (which to this day I regret doing), but it had taken me at least several years to watch and finish the show, and by the time the finale had aired I was still catching up on episodes on Netflix. You know, I can kind of see why the few people I know in person who know that I like Supernatural have a hard time wrapping their heads around me liking it. That actually kind of amuses me.
I watched The Winchesters trailer and was amused by portions of it, to include Carlos hitting the demon with the van in the manner that they did (“love tapped”, “double tapped”, “[…] the Scooby van”), and found that I liked their character a lot, but don’t feel like that — or even seeing Dean Winchester again, which was refreshing — was enough to get me to want to watch. I have friends who are interested in it, who are excited for it, who want to watch it, and I’m happy for them. But I intend on remaining extricated from what I like to call “active fandom” due to comments like this, something that I encountered because I’d seen people copy and paste it into their own Tweets responding to it, something that just floored me for a few minutes:
you can do whatever you want with ugly long haired dean but he will always be hanging off a rebar in akron ohio in the end
Things like these are literally why I had no fun in fandom when I considered myself an “active member” of it. I casually participated in GISH one year, and even that was too much for me — I felt like the expectations were more than I was able to meet, and I’m certain that I fell short in the eyes of my fellow group members. Although I love the idea of it, GISH was astronomically bad for my anxiety, and I know for a fact that I won’t be participating in it again. I frequently felt like I had to (and was) over-extend myself when there were days, and even weeks, when I wanted to walk away from the thing that people wanted to have hours-long discussions on — although I respected, and continue to respect, their interest in it, I was bad at feigning that same depth of interest on my own. I haven’t read a single fanfic in more than three months, and I haven’t rewatched a single episode of Supernatural, which used to be the fandom that I was the most invested in. It just hasn’t been something that I’ve gravitated toward or wanted to do. I also watched the trailer for The Winchesters only one single time. “Carry on, my wayward son… there’ll be peace when you are done…”