I have a problem.
I have fandom anxiety.
Accurate representation of me.
I’m an anxious sort of person in general. I worry about things, and since fandom is a pretty big part of my life, worrying sort of naturally extends into my fannish pursuits. And I hate it, oh my gosh.
For me, fandom’s always been my hobby, the thing I do to have fun and escape reality for a while. I like writing fanfiction and looking at fan art and chatting with other fans. So when anxiety starts creeping into that?
It sucks. It sucks hard.
I actually didn’t have too much trouble with this until I got into the Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom a few years ago. I’d been in plenty of fandoms before, drifted in and out of them, but MCU really got its hooks into me, apparently.
As you probably know (unless you currently live on Mars or just don’t care about Marvel movies), Avengers: Age of Ultron is coming out in May. Now, as a bit of background information, I ship Black Widow and Hawkeye pretty hard. And there have been all sorts of rumors flying around that Black Widow and Hulk are going to be paired up in this movie.
I’m not super happy about that, but normally I’d just retreat into my trench of denial and start building my own little happy shipper universe. That’s how I survived many a year shipping Wolverine and Jean Grey in the X-Men comics. Deny deny deny. I reject your reality and substitute my own.
The problem is that a lot of my fellow fans are flipping their shit over the idea that Clintasha might not become canon, and I can’t seem to avoid seeing their posts about it.
Now, I don’t blame them for being upset at all. They want canon Clintasha, and that’s cool. I’d like that, too. But a flood of posts panicking over my favorite ship being sunk starts to chip away at my denial armor, and my denial armor being cracked means I start getting anxious about a movie that at one point I was excited about seeing.
Right now? I’m not even really looking forward to Age of Ultron. I just want it to come out so I can know what happens and get away from all of the hand wringing and panicking that comes from not knowing (even my own, private hang wringing sessions).
So how the hell do you deal with that kind of anxiety seeping into your happy fun time?
I try to be zen about it. Whatever happens in that movie is what’s going to happen. And I’ve had many a year of experience writing fanfic that totally ignores stuff that happens in the actual movie/comic book/tv show. If Clintasha is blown out of the canon waters? I’m going to be very upset, but I’m also going to write fix-it fic and continue my shipping business as usual.
In the meantime? I make judicious use of a blacklist on tumblr and unfollow people who stress me out. It feels a little mean to unfollow someone because of that, but hey. We’ve got to take care of ourselves, and if that means removing posts that make you anxious from your feed, then that’s what you’ve got to do. And remember, before a movie comes out or an episode airs, we only know so much. Those crazy rumors flying around may be just that: rumors. They might be true, or they might be bullshit.
And sometimes, the best thing you can do is take a step back. I’ve been distracting myself online with pretty pictures of spring flowers on Pinterest. [shrug] You gotta do what you gotta do.
I’ll be the first to admit that it feels a little silly to worry so much over something like this. But fandom is pretty much my biggest hobby. And let’s be real, people stress out over sports teams all the time. So… Clintasha is my favorite team, and Age of Ultron is the big game.
When your fandom starts stressing you out, do what you’ve got to do to make yourself feel better. Fandom should be fun.
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