Here. This post is the raison d’être of my
blog. This post is the one in which many of you will share a sense of
camaraderie with me. This post will show you that YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE.
And that it’s okay to be obsessed. You
know, as long as it’s not drugs, or sex, or underground cults.
(Note:
Does anyone know the gender neutral term for FANGIRL? And please don’t tell me
it’s FAN – as far as I am concerned, that word is an umbrella term, not a
synonym. And I beg your pardon while I treat this post from the view point of
fangirls specifically – it’s a shame I don’t know more fanboys personally.)
1. Risk of Degradation of 20/20
Vision
Due to –
(a) All that
late-night reading under your blanket with a torch, because you don’t want your
parents to catch you up past your bedtime and risk unleashing their wrath in
the corporeal form of THAT’S IT NO MORE BOOKS
(b) TV show
marathons as a reward for academic excellence (which is code for surviving
through exams avoiding all your guilty pleasures)
(c) Excessive social
networking – especially when the other fangirl you’re with over the miracle
called the Internet, is in another time-zone, depriving you of sleep
2. Catching Up On Deprived Sleep
During The Daytime Especially During Class HoursAnd Zombie-Walking Through The
Rest
Due to the above
mentioned.
3. Lack of Non-Fictional
Romantic Life
Reading too many
books starring heroes of the fantastically perfect variety, or watching too
many TV shows with the same category of protagonists can affect the average
reader to such a degree of romantic sterilization of the mundane sort by
raising par of male excellence. (Or if you swing the other way, then female excellence.)
4. Managing All Your Social
Network Accounts
I swear. This is a talent that is gifted to a
fangirl, upon her baptism into this community. How else do you explain the
superhuman memory and multitasking capabilities involved in remembering all
your ten thousand usernames and passwords, who you last chatted or tweeted
with, and maintaining an unbroken comment thread to avoid any non-civil
interactions?
For those of you out there, whose financial
aspects are still governed by a superior authority of the parental sort, then
you have limitations (like me) on how much merchandise you can own. You resort
to pinning wishlists and loaded virtual carts on your Pinterest boards and
bookmarks bar, and just staring at what could have been on your laptop screen. When
that happens, you turn to –
6. Your DIY Skills and Photoshop
Expertise
However deplorable they may be, we have that
shoddy wad of bookmarks made by hands smelling of Fevicol, t-shirts we spent
that last batch of fabric paint on, and folders (both digitally and otherwise)
filled with our own edits and sketches.
7. The Need to Celebrate
Holidays Unknown to Mere Mortals/Mundanes/Muggles
We have reminders on our mobile phones and of
course, in case they fail, we also have the ever-reliable power of the online
fangirl-hood to remind us when to eat only blue food or randomly scream DEATH
TO DEATHEATERS or whatever.
8. Research and Intellectual
Debates
We are never happy knowing what we already know.
We thirst to read up on all the different versions of backstories of the
various characters, the author’s perspective on how (s)he chose all the proper
nouns in the book, and then unwittingly become party to raging wars on whether
or not a particular character is a hero or a villain or other civil debates. If you’re talking about a
TV show, then it goes without saying that unless and until we’ve dug up
bloopers and the actors’ Wikipedia pages, we’re never going to attain closure.
9. Shipping Through Choppy Seas
This is mostly self-explanatory. The FEELS
fuelling our primal fangirl instincts to keep calm and continue shipping canon
and headcanon ships in the face of tempests exacts a heavy toll on our head in
the form of acute headaches that only tear-stained pillows can cure. Speaking
of which –
10. Tears Both Shed And Unshed
I have always maintained that a significant
percentage of the average global tear-level has been contributed by the tear
ducts of fangirls. To cry, clutching the damned book in your arms or after
watching that tragic final episode of a Korean drama series, is an occupational
hazard.
11. HANGOVERS, MAN. Hangovers.
It’s not enough that we’ve been cursed to
harbouring eternal feels for a series (book or TV), but we’ve also been damned
with being left to our own devices to deal with that inexplicable limbo stage
of our life that follows after the final episode or chapter. We then face the
big question – WHAT DO WE DO NOW?
We feel as if we’re trapped in a tunnel, the
vision of closure mocking at us in the far-off distance. Comfort Food, Comfort
Reading selected passages, and Comfort Replaying selected scenes becomes the
norm for some days.
And I will thank Ron Weasley to define what
being a fangirl truly means (courtesy of Tumblr) –
