People are finally realizing that I am probably not going to watch The Winchesters — the actors seem nice, don’t get me wrong, but John and Mary’s backstory was never something that I was interested in getting to know more about, and I don’t develop brand loyalty to franchises just to say that I’m “a real fan” of something — and I’ve been making jokes on my Twitter timeline about… not wanting to re-watch Supernatural again, even going so far as not to recommend that others do the same with some of these suggestions being tongue-in-cheek and others being more serious depending on the circumstance. At any rate, one that erred on the side of being more serious (I just like the show less now, what can I say?) got me unfollowed by prominent members of the fandom that I’d been friends with on Twitter, although this does not bother me given that we hold different views on the curation of media and the participation in fandom.

I just feel like people want to curate their media experiences depending on what they expect out of other people, and depending on what other people want or would want from them… not what they themselves want to get out of those media experiences, and that seems like it’s a lot of the problem with media experiences that involve groupthink (such as fandom). One of the multiple reasons that I chose to extricate myself from active fandom participation and have been all the happier for it was the fact that I did not feel like I had to conform my thoughts on the curation of that media, or media in general, based on how other people perceived them, even if I would — worst case — be regarded as “having the wrong idea” for having those thoughts. For people that… don’t participate in fandom, and to me now, this may just sound zany, but it’s the best way that I can put it. Even if you surrounded yourself with people who thought similar things as you did, or thought you did (think shipping), this could still happen. You could only “be a real fan” if you liked certain things a certain way, especially in a lot of more prominent, popular fandoms, and that was something else that I was just… over. It got to the point where I curtailed fandom participation to making it next to none, then made it none, and was happy with that level of involvement. I had other hobbies and interests that I wanted to pursue more that made me much happier that didn’t have these arcane rules.

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…”