The Duality of Fandom and Creativity

Cheers for Sparking Zero's DLC! Jeers to the TikTok ban. In today's episode, I talk about navigating the tumultuous waters of fandoms can sometimes turn our greatest loves into burdens. Some highlights:

• Discussing the interplay between joy and burn-out in hyperfixations 
• Reflecting on the bittersweet experience of the Hazbin Hotel fandom  
• Exploring possessiveness over fictional characters and stories 
• Questioning how to reconnect with loved passions after disillusionment

Transcript

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Fandom Obsession and Ruining Enjoyment

Speaker 1 0:21

Hello and welcome to another episode of A Spectrum of Hyperfixations . I am your host , miss T . Today I honestly don't even know what the T stands for . It is a brain scatter day where I just I feel restless . I feel like I can't focus , and this is coming off of the high that I had yesterday from the webinar . It went really really great . I'm so thankful for the people who came live . It went really well for my first webinar . There were some technical bits and issues , things to learn from , but otherwise super proud of myself . I was so nervous leading up to it and then afterwards still riding that adrenaline rush . So today I'm kind of feeling the crash from something very exciting and now so don't even know what the T stands for today , getting right into the cheers and jeers . For today , getting right into the cheers and jeers Cheers is the new Dragon Ball Sparking Zero superhero DLC that just came out .

Speaker 1 1:33

I personally don't play the game . I'm not a big fan of 3D fighters but oh my gosh , does the DLC look good and get me tempted to buy this game . Dlc look good and get me tempted to buy this game . I freaking love Super Hero , the Super Hero movie , and oh my gosh , the Gammas look good , my boys , beast , gohan , they all look so good . Right now I even have on my TV a video of Dada Doya playing Orange , piccolo and gosh . It just looks so good . But for as good as it looks , it's also very chaotic and hard to follow all the action and things happening . At least for me , for a 3D fighter , it's just very hard to follow and I think that's what's going to keep me from buying the game myself , because I wouldn't know where to follow . And I think that's what's going to keep me from buying the game myself is because I wouldn't know where to look . I wouldn't know how to adjust camera things like that . But boy does it look good . And , um , I'm excited to see more videos come out of the superhero cast and just yeah . So that is , that is the cheers for the moment .

Speaker 1 2:46

The jeers is I had jeers and and I mean it was the TikTok ban when I was first going to record this , but TikTok's back up . So I don't know , I guess it still kind of feels like jeers because I don't know . I guess it still kind of feels like jurors , because I don't particularly want government involvement on the app and the media to kind of skew it the way that it does and every other source of media . I don't want it to become like Facebook , where it is just so full of ads and that is everything that you see . Um , so , yeah , I guess just the the future of Tik TOK is kind of the jeers right now .

Speaker 1 3:35

Um , not really sure what else , but , um , I guess jeers is kind of leading in today's episode content , because I wasn't sure what I was going to talk about today . But it is the one year anniversary or just about I think it's passed since has Been Hotel landed on Amazon Prime and I love that show . It is one of my absolute hyper fixations . You can see me posting content or talking about it on like TikTok and things like that . I write fanfic for it . I became obsessed .

Speaker 1 4:22

But here's the jeers part of it . I think I've ruined it for myself , and I say that because the other day , as I was driving home on my iPod , a song from the show came on and I almost skipped it . That's unheard of . I would play that soundtrack on repeat for like months after the show came out and I love the songs on there , and so to think that I was like about to turn the track was like whoa , not only that , I was listening to it and I'm thinking not only that , I was listening to it and I'm thinking , yeah , okay , it was like the magic had disappeared . And as I got to thinking about it , I'm thinking , okay , first off , some of the fans have definitely ruined it for me Seeing their discourse about this and that , whatever you go into fandoms nowadays and it is so toxic , it is not anything like what I remember the quote-unquote good old days to be when they were on live journal and , um , yeah , the live journal days of a fandom .

Speaker 1 5:36

There's just and I hate to say it , but I think the younger audience has really ruined things for everybody involved . Yeah , just , very , very toxic . And in turn , I'm very protective of the characters and the way that I see them and interpret them to be . I recognize now that this is common in autistic individuals or even neurodivergent people in general because I've had a couple of my ADHD friends say the same that they can get possessive of their characters as well . And so combine that in plus uh-oh , phil's sneeze coming on , excuse me , we're still recording , we're still at . So combine all that . But I realized I have become so attached to the story I'm currently creating and writing and how the characters are in that and what they're doing , that it's hard to go back to canon . It's like I've created my own canon and now it's hard to separate from that .

Speaker 1 6:59

I would love to know if anybody else out there has experienced this , where they kind of ruined something they love for themselves , where you can't enjoy it . It's very hard to enjoy it . I haven't watched the show since , I think , march or April of last year , because now it feels like it has to be this whole production , this whole very special occasion where I'm like , okay , I'm going to watch this and I need to set aside a certain time , like it's gotta be a whole whole thing . I can't just sit down and watch an episode and I definitely can't sit down and watch an episode in the middle of the season , like it has to be start to finish . Yeah , it's like why am I like this ? I hate this Because I love it , I love the characters , but what I don't love is the fandom , and I think you could say that for a lot of things , but I just don't know how to explain it in a way that would make sense and sound sane , because right now I feel like I sound insane .

Speaker 1 8:17

Let's be honest , I feel like I sound insane . But yeah , I've just become too attached to these characters and too attached to this world . I ruined it , ruined it for myself , can't enjoy it anymore . I can still look at fan art occasionally , but going back to Facebook , just taking over whatever it is that you Google for or that it sees you liking just one time and then it floods your feed with more of that and I'm like no , I don't . I don't want to constantly see people talking about their headcanon or their interpretation of this scene or this character and I don't want to see pictures of this and that and blah , blah , blah , blah . So now I have to figure out how to curate my Facebook feedback to what it was and not have all the has-been and hell of a boss stuff on there .

Speaker 1 9:17

Because , speaking of hell of a boss , I have only watched season one of it . I haven't started season two yet . I know I'm very behind . I was very against hell of a boss when it first came out . I watched a'm very behind . I was very against Tell of a Boss when it first came out . I watched a couple episodes and I'm just like this is not for me , because I fell in love with the pilot of Has-Been Hotel when it first came out on YouTube . That was what I wanted more of .

Speaker 1 9:42

And then we get this other like spinoff , and it's nothing like the tone that was set in the has-been pilot . It's none of those characters that I really enjoyed and I'm like I don't like this , not understanding like the tone and everything that it was supposed to be going for . And because it wasn't what I went like I wanted more has-been and I wasn't getting it , so didn't like it when it first came out . Then my friend kind of told me to give it another try , that it's found its footing , it's found where it wants to go . And if you can , yeah , separate what you were expecting of this from that like they are two completely separate things you might enjoy it better , and I did . Like those first two episodes were pretty rough . I haven't gone back and watched those , but after that I started really enjoying those .

Speaker 1 10:40

Um that followed and I do want to get back into watching it , but this is probably going to sound so pathetic by how to stop watching , because I was so depressed and feeling so lonely when I like finished season one that it made me sad to watch it because I wanted what Millie and Moxie have as a relationship . They're so adorable , they're so in love . I love both of them . I love them as a couple and they are like hashtag ghouls for a relationship and I couldn't watch anymore because it made me so sad about my real life . But I didn't have a Moxie or a Millie , and yeah , and then I was feeling kind of sad for stolos and um , if you have no idea what has been hotel is or hell of a boss you're , you're gonna struggle with this episode of the podcast . Let me tell you , because I'm naming all these people and you're probably like who the hell is that ? Uh , what is she talking about ? But if you know , you know and um , so season two is definitely something I want to get back into , especially with all of the um , the chatter and stuff that I saw with the . What was that called the mastermind episode , where we got a little sneak peek of um , what lucifer would be doing had he , like , picked up his responsibilities as the king of hell . Um , and just seeing them all come together was pretty cool , just from the pictures I saw . So I think that would be an interesting episode to see . Um , so , yeah , that's on my list to go back to , but , um , yeah , this is kind of a this kind of again an episode all over the place , but that's what we get Random rabbit holes .

Speaker 1 12:34

And yeah , speaking of Hasbin Hotel , I finally got my autographed print from Amir Talai I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing his last name correctly and Jeremy Jordan , the voice actors of alistair and lucifer , respectively . Um , I pre-ordered this , I think , back in august . Amir signed it in september and then took freaking forever to go to new york , wait for jeremy jordan to sign it and then come back to me . But it is finally here and it is up on my wall . I need need to get a picture frame for it . Um is very , very , uh pretty and um , yeah , it was . It was well worth the wait to know that I have something that both of them touched . Huh , fangirl moment for that . So I will wrap up this episode , because I feel like I could just ramble on and on , and I would like to keep it a little bit cohesive , yeah .

Speaker 1 13:39

So , question of the day question that I leave you with is have you ever ruined something for yourself that you loved , and how , if , were you able to get back into it ? How were you able to get back into love with it ? Enjoy it again . I would love to know , do you relate to becoming so possessive of characters or canon material ? This and that it's just very weird , because in the fandoms I've been in it's not always a thing where I feel

Dragon Ball Character Interpretation Differences

Speaker 1 14:20

this possessive of the characters .

Speaker 1 14:20

I don't really remember that being so strong when I was writing for Dragon Ball , because it was mostly my hyper fixation was on Perfect Cell and Gohan , and I think people for the most part were pretty well aligned in what they , how they interpreted both the characters , because Dragon Ball is pretty um , in comparison to a lot of other um media and stuff . The characters are pretty um , straightforward and um , even if you interpret them , it's still , I think , true to who they really are , whereas this one it just people are . People have gone nuts , people have really gone nuts is what it feels like . Um and uh . They're just very rapid . It's a different um age skewed . I think Um , yeah , now I'm just rambling at this point and uh , so I will end it here and uh , I'm considering maybe moving this to a bi-weekly thing , but we'll see I'll feel into it . So thank you again for joining me on this episode . And how did I end it last time ? Oh my gosh , this is horrible . I don't even remember how I ended it . You are loved , you matter . Bye .