paperlesslove day 3: the brain trust
(In celebration of 3K followers, I am doing 30 days of positive shoutouts to all the incredible people I’ve met through this fandom. Here’s Day 3!)
Fandom can be exhausting, y’all. Participation in it vacillates between screaming excitement and furious uproar; between ecstatic crying and angry crying. The entire thing leaves you with emotional whiplash.
Which is why you need your constants. You can’t operate alone. You need calm, measured, rational people who will usher you through your freak-outs and talk you off the ledge when Bughead breaks up for the second time. Or when the inevitable “did SH break up because he didn’t like her photo” anons circulate. You need people who talk your language and keep you sane but also know how to fangirl and flail with you.
Enter my brain trust, my B&G girls - @a92vm @amab1060 and @gingerheel. Together, we make either the four Sex and the City girls (although that doesn’t work, because we have three Mirandas and one Samantha), or the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Either way, they are my lifeline, my constants.
I’ve already spazzed out on @a92vm, so today’s about the amazing @amab1060 and @gingerheel.
Let’s start with @amab1060. Let’s start with how you could basically just follow her blog and no-one else and still know everything about SH. Let’s start with how she deals with anons with such patience and kindness but also fierceness. It was amab who taught me the motto that I live by in fandom: be kind, but take no shit. In other words, be nice and respectful, but be intolerant of anyone who impinges on your boundaries. She’s a legend in the fandom, but to me, she’s a smart, valuable and awesome friend.
As for @gingerheel, she was one of the first friends I made in the fandom. We bonded over fact-checking for “Coming Home” (because she’s a damn OG and could probably write a SH history book), shared opinions on our favourite fanfics and flailed over our love for Lainey Gossip and the Fug Girls. She’s sharp as a tack, thoughtful, and an amazing cheerleader. Whenever she tells me that she likes my fics, I take it onboard, because I value and trust her opinion so much.
So that’s my brain trust. I basically don’t go a day without firing up our group chat, because these girls keep me grounded. We don’t just share fandom, we share in each other’s lives. I love and value them so freaking much.
