What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

The problem with being heavy into meta/media criticism/fandom is that you immediately forget what constitutes a normal, casual amount of interest to express in a given thing. Like at least with academia, where Knowing All The Bullshit is your actual profession, you have some kind of sense of the various stages of Bullshit Acquisition, allowing you to gauge where on that spectrum a new acquaintance might fall and react appropriately. Whereas being active in fandom conditions you to this total 0-60 conversational gambit wherein a very mild overture of potential shared interest, such as “Hey, have you seen the new Captain America movie?”, is correctly – and, indeed, commonly – answered with “OH MY FUCKING GOD I KNOW, RIGHT?? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT SHARON KISS BULLSHIT, I HAD TO GO READ AN 80K STUCKY WIP TO CLEANSE MY POOR GAY SOUL.” And that is Right And Proper Etiquette when you’re on tumblr, interacting with a total stranger whose blog you followed because of a mutual interest in Queer Sin ™, but vastly less so when you’re at, say, a house party full of Regular Straights who’ve never once considered that Steve Rogers and James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes might want to bone each other because seriously, what movie did you fucking watch??

I mean. I’m not saying I’ve made this particular error to an embarrassing degree at any point in my adult life, but, y’know. PSA.

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