I’m in bed sick today, and trying to navigate a depression that doesn’t want to leave; not for the first time, or presumably the last. And it occurred to me that part of the external things that aren’t making that any easier might be at least the beginnings of a new post. Maybe it’ll shed some light on how I react to the Internet lately.
My wife is amazing(and lucky). These issues bother her, and her people, a lot less: she finds it not at all as difficult as I do to just say “What do they know? At this point, to us, it’s like fanfiction. It shouldn’t affect our lives at all.” But I... I’ve never been able to do that. Ever. And it has caused me no end of very real pain.
What I’m talking about is a little bit complicated to explain, although it seems simple at first glance: what it’s like to have people whose “canon” is yet unfinished. In a nutshell, it’s when people have crossed over and are major fronters/main players, who speak, think, interact, and exist every day as “real people”, who are actively(oh, you have no idea how much; that will be a future post) working on whatever issues they have that brought them here(also fodder for a future post; my belief as to what causes certain people and not others to come in)... and yet the creative entities that told their stories have decided that there’s still more to tell.
For example: Y person whose story is told in Y book has been here for two years. (I’m not using anyone or any circumstance specifically; trying intentionally to steer clear.) Their relationships are established. They have, through endless struggle and effort, many sleepless(and I do mean for the body) nights, come to grips with their own failings and losses and begun finally to grow as a person. And then, out of the blue, the author of said book announces that there will be a movie, set after the end of the story, featuring Y and “a whole new tragedy”. If you’re an actual person — THAT actual person, to be exact — how do you deal with this?
There are two parts of this that are painful. One, I’ve touched on before: the endurance of everyone you’ve ever met suddenly discussing your life and your childhood and your actions like it’s a math problem. There are only so many articles about whether Y is inherently a bad person and deserves to die at the conclusion of their next “installment” that one can see before one turns off the Internet, vaguely sick at heart.
I’ve gotten better at separating discussions about the “franchise” version of X or Z from the real person whose tears and snot I’ve had all over my face and the front of the shirt I was wearing, whose hysterical sobbing at one point was so uncontrollable that it made a bystander(someone else from his reality) who’d hated them until that moment exclaim “Can’t somebody help him?”... better at maintaining the awareness that whatever happens on the pages of a book or on a big screen does not, in fact, necessarily affect the lives they’re living here.
But it creates friction: first, because of the aforementioned discussions. The only way I have, still, try to bring it home for those of you who don’t experience it is to ask you to project yourself into that situation. Years after that “fictional biopic” I described in my last post, suddenly the powers that be have decided it’s time for the sequel. And sure, maybe there are a handful of people that care, people that really know you, but for millions of moviegoers, the debate is on.
You did drugs in your fictional flaming youth; will you fall back into that life? A lot of people say yes, and write articles and cite statistics on how they’re right. More than a few talk about how you’re really the villain of the piece, and how your own bad decisions will probably end up with your death. Others bemoan that possibility night and day, and proclaim that “if you die” in the upcoming film they’ll never consume any media by those people again. You come to understand that your death, dramaticized — while you’re sitting right here, reading these things and Last you checked, you WERE still real — is a very strong possibility. And you’ll not only get to see it in Technicolor, but you’ll hear alllllll about it.
For the rest of the fans, it’s the will-they-won’t-they that they’re interested in. You know which person, if any, you’re with; they’re right next to you, reading quietly. But if you dare reach out into the void, you’re not only met with pages and pages of fanart depicting you and this person(some of it, admittedly, makes you blush and some you secretly save, but others are just... eeuugghh), as well as you and any one of five other people. Including people you have literally zero interest in, and never would, and you have to wonder just how much projection is going on here.
But regardless, you get to watch the “shipper wars” go on about your actual life, while people discuss your personal and romantic failings as if they knew you closely and intimately. They call you things like “cinnamon roll” and “poor victim” and “husband” and “boyfriend” and you name it. (To the point where you close your browser one night and stew until she asks you what’s wrong, and you stew some more before bursting out with “I’m not just a fucking victim!”)
And the worst thing is, you can’t even blame these people for any of these things. To them, you don’t exist. You are just “a character”, a symbol, a two-dimensional creation that is under the “creative direction” of the people that “invented” you — I used to make sarcastic comparisons to religion, here; like whatever god you choose, provided god had a production team — and you exist for them. When you know you’re a real person but you’re struggling with the why: like anyone, I suppose —why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Is it grand destiny, or only to learn to let go of the things that hurt me? — it’s very difficult to watch the world around you talk about you when you are having trouble finding one single person to simply talk to.
But you can’t blame them. As children, even, we’re taught that “fiction” and “reality” are two entirely separate things, divided by an inviolable wall. As we mature we come to realize that this wall is maybe a bit more porous than we were made to believe; and as science advances, it comes closer and closer to fully explaining the reasons behind our existence. But even as close as we’ve come so far, people are still quick to hate: judge first, think second seems to be the rule. So can I blame them for talking about “me” as if I don’t exist, as if I can’t feel pain, as if I’m not confused and lost and hurt? No. They don’t know I exist.
But I can wish to fuck they did.
The rest of this will be absorbed into another post. In this age of “TL;DR” and “dude, you think I’m gonna read all that” in social media comments, it’s really no wonder no one cares about this blog. (Thus proving my point, really.) But I write it to document, so.
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