Fandom Rant: Reality vs Fiction

     Rant time! If y'all will indulge me, I would like to rant a bit in-between the cosplay posts. Today's, rant is on an issue that has been in fandoms for probably as long as fandoms have existed: fiction vs reality. Specifically, fans that cannot separate the two. Most of the time these fans are younger, usually kids or teens but there are definitely older fans with this mind set. 

    In my early con days (Cira 2006-2010) I met a few of these fans. I clearly remember sharing an elevator with a group of people & one of the women refused to carry her anime figure in a bag because "He wouldn't be able to breath". The others in the elevator shared concerned glances. I More recently I had a women around my age look disgusted at me & say "He didn't consent" referring to a risque keychain of Aizawa Shouta (a 31 year old character) I have in my Aizawa ita bag. I just laughed awkwardly & walked away because what does one say to that? Going farther back to my high school years, I had a classmate that treated her 'husbando' as a real person. And I don't mean in the playfully, pretend way, she very much so acted as if he was a real, physical, living person. After meeting her mother, I started to slowly realize what was going on. Her mom was verbally & emotional abuse to her right in front of her classmates, imagine how bad it was behind closed doors. As a teenager I had no idea what to do in that situation, especially considering my own situation. I realized that she used fiction & her husbando as a form of escapism. 

    I, myself have done the same since I was about 5 years old. Fiction that I enjoyed & my own daydreams would mix so I could escape reality (I've seen it called maladaptive daydreaming) Even well into adulthood I still do this. I hyperfixate & obsess over my favorite character & series to the point of making what is basically "shrines" of their merch & art. The aforementioned Aizawa ita bag for example. But in all my obsessing, no matter how much I wish it was true, I've never truly thought these characters & worlds were real. Did I pretend & discuss them as if they were real? yes, but I never thought it. I suspect that due to my neuro-divergency & lack of support my brain used my escapism to prevent mental breakdowns. It sorta worked, it wasn't until I was 9 years old that I had my first mental breakdown, or at least the first one I can remember. Of course at the time I had no idea what it was & thought everything was just bad for no reason. I remember recovering from it by putting my homework aside & pacing as I daydreamed about a videogame world & turned on every light in our house, for some reason. My parents were not home at the time & I don't blame them for being blind to my struggles. This was the early 90's in the Southern US & we were poor, knowledge about neuro-divergency was very limited. 

Yes! I do have a lot of stuff to unpack that I cannot afford because American mental healthcare is a war crime.

    But I digress, what makes some people that use fiction for escapism dive into something like a psychosis, while others stay more firmly in reality? I often wonder how close I've came to the line. I do not have the degrees to answer this which is why I'm always gentle with people that are clearly going through this type of thing. I may suggest therapy to there family or friends but I try not to overstep. The worst type of "help" I have seen are people that just tear them down. "its not real", "You need to grow up", etc. doesn't help, it just makes the person shutdown or worse. If you come across a person that clearly thinks a fictional work is real life, I suggest contacting a therapist for help. 

    Now there are the ones that are harder to be gentle with: People that get violent over fiction. I'm sure if you have been in a fandom for any amount of time you have seen the crazy way some "fans" act on the internet. Death threats are thrown out like candy at a parade for the stupidest reasons: ships, cosplays, fanart, liking or disliking a certain character, disliking or liking a certain series, etc. *Just to clarify, death threats within fandom spaces are never valid. I'm just listing the most common reasons I've seen them made. If someone within a fandom space does something actually illegal report them to the proper authorities* I remember a tweet from a teenage girl trying to justify her death threat towards a mangaka by saying she "Identified with [toxic character] & the mangaka giving the character some development to make them have a better personality invalidated her". 

    Some of this behavior makes it way offline into the real world. I've seen first hand, a cosplayer attacked for cosplaying a character the attacker didn't like. The attacker threw an open bottle of soda at the cosplayer. Not only did the bottle hit the cosplayer but the dark colored soda stained the white satin of the cosplay, which if you know about satin, you know that is a near impossible stain to remove. The attacker got banned & charged with assault & the cosplayer was fine physically but still. I've heard of cases of voice actors being attacked and/or stalked just because the characters they voiced were hated that much. Its sad that this has to be stated but voice actors & cosplayers are not the actual characters! 

    I think some people get violently aggressive when their favorite fiction gets attacked, changed, or even just criticized because to them its no longer just a coping mechanism its part of their core identity. Of course this is what I think the reasoning is behind their actions, not excuses for their actions. (People often confuse the explaining of bad behavior as excusing said bad behavior.)

    I'm not sure if these folks are just that wrapped up in their fandoms or if they are also experiencing that psychosis like escapism I was talking about earlier. Either way, Its of my personal opinion that people that act violently like this should be in intense therapy & have a limit on their consumption of fictional media & interaction with fandoms. 

 End Rant

See y'all next time & have a Happy New Year!