Fandom School (3rd period): Reaction GIFs

Hello and welcome back to Fandom School! The subject is feels and the topic is reaction GIFs, specifically GIFs about feels. As every fangirl (fanboy, fanperson) knows, feels are part of the package when you join a fandom. And since you're going to have feels, you might as well find GIFs to represent those feels, right?

There are a few main types of feels that one encounters within a fandom:

Sad/Nervous

Causes: character is in danger, character death, something goes wrong

Happy

Causes: you like a character/episode/plot point, things go right

Fangirling

Causes: your OTP is together, you meet your favorite actor, your favorite character comes on screen, you find a really good book/movie/tv show/fanwork, people like your fanworks

Tyler Oakley

Tyler Oakley is fabulous, so he gets his own section of reaction gifs

Fandom School (3rd period): Creating Fan Works To Deal With Feels

And now it's time for your favorite part of this blog (or so the statistics suggest), Fandom School! Today's topic is feels. To catch up on the subject, read my earlier posts, I Can't Even: The Heart of a Fangirl and How To Deal With Feels. In the second post, one of the strategies I suggested was creating something to deal with the feels, and I'd like to expand on that here.

There are many types of fan works fanwarriors may create, including fanfiction (click here to learn about different types of fanfiction and here to read my fanfiction), fanart, and fan music (click here to see my original fandom songs and fandom parodies of existing songs). One of the many reasons people create fan works is to deal with feels.

How can this help? Well, if a person is feeling sad about something that happened in their fandom (by "fandom", I mean the book/movie/TV show, not the people who like it), they may create a fanwork to unleash all that grief. Doing something with your feelings makes it much easier to deal with. A few examples of fan works I have made to deal with feels are a parody of "I Dreamed A Dream" (to deal with my sadness about Rose's separation from the Doctor), a parody of "Let It Go" (to deal with my feels about the Tenth Doctor's regeneration), and Lake of Lament (a poetry fic to deal with my feels about all the people Merlin has lost).

Also, a person may create a fan work to deviate from canon and change the outcome to what he/she wants it to be. There's a reason lots of people write Fix-It fics. In this way, the creator can pretend that the bad stuff never happened, or that it's better somehow, and this alleviates the feels.

When you create a fan work to deal with feels, it's much the same as any other fan work, except that you pour your heart and soul and the deepest depths of your anguish into it. You give it your all, hoping that it will make you feel better, and often it does.

Your fan work may give other people feels, but that's a risk you have to take. And by sharing your feels through fan work, you connect with others who understand your pain and appreciate the homage.

Fandom School (3rd period): How To Deal With Feels

Settle down, students- it's time for Fandom School. This week's topic: feels. A while ago, I wrote a post about what feels are and what causes them (note: while feels could be positive (I think?), in this post I'm focusing on negative feels, as those are the ones you have to deal with). Now, I'm going to go into detail about what to do to deal with all the feels that are an inevitable part of a fandom.

1. Remember that feels are inevitable. When you join a fandom, there will be things that make you cry. Some fandoms are particularly sad, while others will only have a few things that make you cry. All the same, you will have feels, so you need to be ready to deal with them.
2. Find people who share your feels. You need to find people who are in your fandom (click here to see my blog post about how to find other fans) who will be upset about the same things as you. This sets up the opportunity for number 3.
3. Commiserate. Don't be afraid to share those feels with others. As John Green said in "The Fault In Our Stars" (a great book that I wrote about yesterday), "Pain demands to be felt". (If you feel the need to break your friend's basketball trophies in order to feel that pain, be sure to ask permission first.)
4. Write (or draw, sing, etc.) about what's giving you feels. The Fault In Our Stars, the book I just mentioned, was written in a furious period of grief after Esther Grace Earl, a teenage girl who was friends with John Green, died of thyroid cancer. I'm not saying you should expect to write a bestseller because of feels (nor am I comparing feels from a fandom to somebody dying in real life), but sharing your thoughts can help you deal with the pain, and sometimes others might appreciate those thoughts.
5. Find something to cheer you up. For example, ice cream. Since I don't have a lot of real life friends in my fandoms, I have had many a virtual ice cream party (through comments on Google+ posts) to deal with feels. Whether your time together trying to deal with feels is online or in real life (except that online stuff is real life, so I need a better expression...), don't forget the shock blankets.
6. Find something to take your mind off the feels. For example, another fandom. Of course, that could lead to more feels... and depending on how obsessed you are, you might not be able to take your mind off the feels no matter what you do. That being said, spending all your time on something that makes you cry is not a good idea, so it's good to spend some time doing other things, even if you can't keep your mind off of the fandom(s) you're in.
7. Realize that it will never be "okay". Whatever fandom you're in, something sad will happen. If the writer(s) in charge of your fandom(s) are being honest, they will show that bad stuff happens. You're going to suffer, but you're going to like it.

Fandom School (3rd period)- I Can't Even: The Heart of a Fangirl

It's time for another class at Fandom School. Today, we are learning about the heart of a fangirl (or fanboy, or simply a fan). As anyone who has ever joined a fandom will know, being that devoted to any show/book/movie can cause serious emotional trauma. We get excited when things go well, happy when we see more of our favorite characters/actors, and when characters die... well... let's just say we're not too happy. In any case, when these things happen, we often say things like "I can't even!" or "Too many feels!"

What are feels?

Apparently we fangirls and fanboys are too impatient to say/write a full word, so when we talk about feelings or emotions, we say "feels". Typically, these relate specifically to fandoms. For example, "That trock (Time Lord rock) song brought back the feels. Why must you do this to me?"

What causes feels?

Basically, anything the least bit emotional. A new character? Feels. A character/actor leaves? More feels. A character dies? Even more feels. Your favorite character dies? The feels are off the chart!
Fan works, such as songs, fan art, fanfiction, etc. can also cause feels if they are made well.

How do you deal with feels?

From what I've heard, Game of Thrones fans would be the best people to answer this question, as lots of people die in that show. But more on how to deal with feels next class. That's all for now. Next week's topic will be either "Fanfiction" or "How To Survive Hiatus". Comment and let me know which one you want next (I'll post both of them, it's just a question of which comes first). Thank you all. Bye!