#like...dude's a high-functioning sociopath

I hate Keanu Reeves.

(Tirade under the cut)

Just a little info: people with the ENTP personality type are extremely charismatic. They are often the center of attention with their quick wit and on point humour. You can see this with Gojo's antics and in your face behavior. However, ENTPs lack emotional sensitivity and are not afraid of expressing their disdain for topics such as tradition, which they discard quickly and easily, or any loose ideas they decide to debate on, which can leave people feeling offended or offput. They are Thinkers, with an underdeveloped feeling function (they are enTp not enFp) and are more likely to use logical reasoning when facing circumstances rather than their intuition or senses.

When it comes to friendships, ENTPs often enjoy people who can match their quick-witted nature. They need someone who can hold their ground during arguments and debates against him for mental stimulation. This makes ENTPs effective communicators, but many would find them to be extremely annoying or tiring to be around, especially because they are often unself-aware of how their words affect others. It's their natural tendency to argue and rebel against set ideas, whether it be for attention or to cure their own boredom that they express such so openly. They are confident even while speaking of their natural inclination to discard existing systems in society, leaving many infatuated with an ENTP's way with words. ENTP's just can't stand willful ignorance and tradition. However, many see this as pretentious of them. However, ENTPs don't argue for pleasure- it's simply the truth and they only ever debate ideas based on facts. Many people misunderstand this as egotism. We can see this when Gojo is constantly verbalizing his distate for the higher ups- he may act high and mighty, but his goal is always to prove his point and send a message across, which is that he cannot stand their archaic, inefficient way of handling things and if pushed, he will fight back. It's not him acting superior, he's simply stating fact, even if it offends the other person. As an ENTP, he simply has an undeveloped feeling function that prevents him from understanding his and others' emotions. Therefore, even if others are annoyed at what he has said, it's fine because it's only the truth, right? That explains why when Gojo had to ask his students if they would continue the exchange event even tho people had died, he was so nonchalant. See how him and ENTPs are so similar?

That said, when it comes to emotions, ENTPs are inclined to suppress their feelings. They're not known for their sensitivity no matter how much they understand the other person's position. When put in an emotional situation, despite being able to argue both sides of a topic, they are remarkably bad at putting themselves in other people's shoes. They also often misjudge others' feelings and push situations way past others' tolerance levels. We can tell Gojo is someone that most people cannot understand and vice versa- he was raised as the strongest, with many fearing his very existence. Therefore, he is even less inclined to be able to understand the emotional needs of other people. That is why he doesn't even realize Utahime hates him. He only thinks her bad attitude towards him is a joke (as said in Gege's fanbook. Shiro on Twitter has the translation). Most ENTPs don't even realize they're annoying to other people. They're just being themselves. Most people just struggle to handle such a person. This doesn't make Gojo an emotionless person- rather, he has feelings, but his natural tendency to suppress them in order to find a logical solution rather than put himself in another's shoes- something he's inherently bad at- infringes in his ability to understand other people.

Therefore, Gojo Satoru is not some emotionless psychopath or sociopath who's manipulative and narcissistic. He simply falls under a commonly misunderstood personality type called the ENTP, an mbti personality type. ENTPs only make up 3% of the population, making them one of the rarer personalities, which is why so many people can easily create misconceptions on his character. His enthusiasm and confidence in expressing his beliefs and attitude even if it annoys people is something many people can't stand, yes. He has a hard time understanding other people's emotions because he's more rational than intuitive, sure. But that doesn't make him a bad person. He's just one of a small group people on the planet who are dominated by logical thinking and debate, along with personalities like the INTP (Albert Enstein, for example) and the INTJ (Isaac Newton).

Gojo Satoru is a regular human being just like the rest of us, and he's not some philanderer who manipulates women and would cheat on them. ENTPs definitely struggle with commitment, but that's only because most people can't keep up with their constant need for intellectual stimulation rather than emotional. While they may find people who are incredibly emotionally sensitive to be intriguing at first, those relationships usually end with the ENTP realizing they would rather have an intellectual equal, like the INTP. They want to feel understood. However, the INTP's personality type only makes up for 3-5% of the population, which makes them, like the ENTP, misunderstood and commonly left feeling alone in the world. Similarly, Geto, the person who got the closest to Gojo, has the INTJ personality type, a thinking type that gets along most with the ENTP and only makes up 2% of the population, even less than the ENTP or INTP's rarity. Just from that, the person that would match Gojo's personality type is rare even statistically. Even so, Gojo himself doesn't even have time for sleeping around. The man hardly even sleeps much himself, he's so busy.

Source: a bunch of ENTP articles, threads, experiences, and other people's experiences.

Just wanted to clear that up, got tired of this Gojo slander lol 😖 Thanks for reading! Would love to hear any thoughts on this 💙 - 🤔 anon

OH MY GOLLY MOLLY 🤔 anon you are out educating the people YES YES I ABSOLUTELY AGREE wow reading this was such a learning experience yeet the people who think gojo is a psychopath. Gojo is just a really complex character and its understandable that some people don't understand trust me even I have my moments when writing when I struggle to keep him in character. I want to explore more sides to him yes the happy bubbly gojo but also the more emotionally oppressed gojo and other sides to him. I definitely agree he drives on logical thinking the dude literally wanted to have a debate on the separation of the state for fun. I am absolutely loving this and yes I am so tired of the gojo slander people don't judge a book by its cover 😤 that goes for other characters as well ☝️ really sorry for the late reply I LOVE YOU 🤔 ANON thank you so much for taking the time to explain 💙💙💙 virtual hugs 💗

Ahhhh...poor son of a bitch.

Okay, I saw this last weekend on your recommendation and... dang, one couple in particular would be hard to type. I mean, most of what they show and tell the audience is a total lie. I’m also not sure I could type them ‘officially’ without giving away a huge plot twist by being specific. I will think about typing them, and if I can come up with enough evidence to sell it, I will. But I will say this.

SPOILERS below the cut.

The murderer is an STP and a 3. He fakes being something else, but it’s all a con. He’s quite logical and detached, he solves problems on the fly, he likes to be physical in how he kills people and is opportunistic in the things he does, even a bit reckless. His girlfriend gets on him for not being ‘careful’ enough. She is far more risk-adverse. He models himself into whatever he has to be, to sell his con and get away with it. He takes on and off his real skin, like a deeply unhealthy sociopathic 3 who is just living for the high of getting away with it.

She is a bit trickier, because to be honest, she could be SFP or SFJ. She’s a feeler for sure, because she’s always begging him for attention, affirmation, and to be told he loves her. I get the feeling the sick story she told about her ‘first time’ and the corpse hanging from the tree was with this dude, and she has been with him ever since, in a twisted relationship. But she’s able to lie her ass off and get out of trouble by implicating him and seeing him die (both because she’s another sociopath and because she’s detached enough to know when to cut loose), which suggests her thinking function isn’t inferior. She seems adaptable and hands-on more than nostalgic, which could suggest ESFP if she’s a 6w7 to account for her cautiousness. And I think she is a 6w7. There’s a palpable current of fear that runs beneath all her exchanges. She is more cautious and suspicious (though how much of it is an act, I don’t know), and doesn’t like deviating from their plan (if you want to re-interpret her earlier dialogue of picking up hitchhikers -- the audience thinks they just don’t do it, but what she means is, “Why are we picking up our next victims instead of stalking them as usual?”). She seems to cling to him for a “high” (7 wing).

The other couple, I think, are both ESTPs. They are outdoorsy, opportunistic, and able to survive with sheer jungle skills. Quick to react, improvise, and act. The girl finds cutting open a goat “interesting” rather than having any moral reservations about hunting illegally. Her boyfriend is a boastful 3. She doesn’t have a clear Enneagram type, unless it’s 7. She seems a bit adventurous, earthy, and defensive of her territory. Then again, she’s been chasing him to settle down for years instead of enjoying their “whatever this is” relationship, which isn’t very commitment-shy 7. I’ll watch it again sometime. With a certain knowledge how it turns out, I’d probably be more able to pay attention to types.

As a cannabis user for the past 2 decades, the last 2 years have been revolutionary. I got high for the first time with my friend Bill back in 1992. I got drunk for the first time with my friend John around the same time. I got violently ill with alcohol but I had a blast with cannabis. I knew almost right away that cannabis was going to be my intoxicant of choice. This left me with a major stigma, of course. I had to spend the next 24 years not sure how people would react to my choice of getting intoxicated to relax at night. I got a lot of shit from a whole lot of people. People who said I “did drugs”. Effectively putting me on the same level as a heroin or Crystal meth abuser. In college, being a cannabis user meant that I sometimes ended up meeting actual junkies. I had absolutely nothing in common with these people other than we enjoyed a schedule 1 drug. Mine was less dangerous than alcohol while theirs was the worst of the worst. Yet, we ended up in the same circle due to me not being able to purchase it any other way. I hated that. I resented that. 

Things like making friends always had the possibility of being judged, scoffed at and looked at with total scorn. At West Chester and Ferrum, I used to attend parties full of drunken idiots, but often got dirty looks from people for being the one smoking a bowl instead of drinking. I was generally banned from smoking in someone’s house, which I totally get. It is illegal and they don’t want to get in trouble. Ferrum also had a “zero tolerance drug policy”. Which meant you would get in just as much trouble for a joint than you would for heroin.  At least on paper. Drinking, of course, was totally normal and could take place right in the open. 

On many occasions, I have been made to feel shame by someone who loves to drink by the implication that their way of getting intoxicated was better than mine, theirs was fun and harmless, where as mine was evil and dangerous. a few examples come to mind. One was my best friend’s brother in law’s ex wife.  She was a major drinker and all her stories on Facebook revolved around her getting totally trashed at pubs every night  or being so hung over the following day she could barely function. One time I suggested switching to cannabis and she got ridiculously offended with a “I don’t do that shit.  I might like to drink, but I don’t touch drugs!!” This is a typical response (not to mention ironic as she is now a crystal meth addict). Another time I was at a pub with 2 friends of Bill’s near his old apartment. Bill had left to do something so I was hanging out with these other 2.  One of them was a single woman named Erin. She was really attractive and I was really doing my best to work up the nerve to try to engage her in conversation. The problem was she and the guy were both big drinkers and all of their stories were about drinking. Literally. I was waiting for the subject to change to a topic I could add something too.  But it never presented itself. So, even though I knew it could backfire, I brought up stories of mine about cannabis. I stopped telling stories revolving around it’s use alone ages ago, but I wanted to fit in, and get her attention. They both seemed less than impressed but didn’t say anything. The following day I was talking to Bill on the phone and he told me his buddy said I was “totally sweating Erin” which was true. But, she was really turned off by my use of cannabis and how I “kept bringing it up”. Meanwhile I was all “Say whaaaa?!” When I say all of their stories that night were about drinking, I mean there was literally not a single story they told that wasn’t about drinking, yet I was the weirdo druggie who wouldn’t stop telling boring stories about getting the reefer madness. 

In my experience, it was usually women who judged me the most about it. Or at least their judgement is the one I heard about the most (maybe because I didn’t give a fuck what the dudes thought, as I wasn’t trying to date them). Even Tammy said back in the early 2000s that it was something that was fine to “experiment” with when you’re a teen, but once you “grow up” you give it up. I asked her what was that based on, she just shrugged and said it’s just how she feels.  Fair enough, but it still struck me as illogical as the thing you do as a “grown up” is far more dangerous, and tends to make you act way more childish when intoxicated.  But, again, there was no arguing with “marra-jah-wanna is an illegal drug and alcohol is a time honored way to socialize”.  The worst of those arguments for me was with my buddy Anthony’s wife Colleen. She has open contempt for cannabis users and had no problem getting in my face about it at every opportunity (in addition to getting in my face about Israel and how Jews are criminals, then flipping out if you respond by bringing up Northern Ireland. But that’s a rant for another day). Her contempt reached a whole new level at a Halloween party at my house back in 2004. I was talking to someone else about growing my own cannabis. She started to get in my face about being a “drug user” and how it’s destroying society. I asked her how was I hurting anyone by smoking it on my back porch at night after work? She started to say that it hurts children because when I buy it from the dealer, I’ll smoke up with him right in front of his children (which I sure as fuck have never done), that it changes people’s personality for the worse (but alcohol did not, according to her) it destroys families and in order to get my drugs, it has to be smuggled by evil drug cartels who murder innocent people “because of people like YOU”. When I tried to say that’s why cannabis should be legal, taking the power out of the hands of the evil cartels, she laughed and said “that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”. She has a brother who is a criminal. Among many other things he did illegally, he sold weed.  His adolescent daughters ended up in foster care with her and Anthony due to him being in prison at the time. To me, this was the worst of anecdotal evidence. She seemed to think all cannabis users are guilty this happened. Not that her brother was a total sociopath. That was 15 years ago and she is one of those people that I’m willing to bet you would still double down on this sentiment, as she pretty much will never admit to being wrong. Even once various states began to legalize it’s use and almost everything I said would happen happened (drug cartels losing huge amounts of money, tax revenue going to help social programs, victimless crimes not wasting the police’s time, and no, it’s not going to result in everyone getting stoned 24/7, for a few examples) it all didn’t matter. She sure as hell doesn’t have to listen to anything a stupid druggie says. As we’re all a bunch of doped up liars who only care about our own pleasure. All that being said, there have been plenty of men who have judged me harshly too.  I always suspected my old buddy Mike and I drifted apart due to his attitude about cannabis (among other things). Although it’s kind of funny that his wife enjoys it, gave it up after college because it’s illegal. Then he was shocked when she said she would resume using it when it’s fully legal. 

This is all not to mention the shit my mother used to give me about it. She was the only one who was worse than Colleen...at least towards me. 

Other examples:

My ex-GF Nina one time was openly showing contempt when I made some remark about still smoking in my 50s.  She said “wait, you are planning to still be smoking weed in your 50s?!” I was all “Yea.  Why not? Why does that matter?!” She responded with something to the extent of “You never plan to grow up?!” This was at the end of our relationship and she started off the relationship with not caring about cannabis use but by the end she was always giving me shit about it. To a point where I was uncomfortable even bringing it up, because it would result in a long boring holier than thou rant about how bad it is, grow ups don’t use it, etc. I was not upset when we broke up.

My Ex-GF Lisa wasn’t too bad about it in that she didn’t bring it up very often. I just promised I would never be high when we were together, a promise I always kept. Her late father had spent time in prison on Moonshining charges and she admitted that there wasn’t that much of a difference.  But alas, it’s a “drug” and alcohol is legal. Therefore one is immoral and one is just fine. Very cut and dry.

When my soon to be ex-wife was having an affair with he who shall not be named, he used my cannabis usage as another way to show my inferiority to him.  He was a dysfunctional alcoholic, but what I did was only for hippie idiots so therefore it was only logical to have open contempt for me.

My late mother used to referred to my father’s cannabis use as our family’s “dirty little secret”. Very effectively attaching shame and guilt to it’s use...which was totally her intention. She also always referred to it as “dope” and “drugs”. She would always accuse me of being high even when I wasn’t. She would go out of her way to try to catch me (if I was coming home late, she would wait up, even if my friends were with me, so she could tell me my “eyes look funny” or “I’m acting funny”. I’ll leave it at that, as I have a lot of issues with my late mother and the way she treated me like a criminal for cannabis use.

One of the good things about Netlix (particularly compared to traditional TV channels) is that its ability to deliver a wide variety of content simultaneously allows it to experiment with things that might not have wider appeal. This is particularly important where genre fiction is concerned, because you can’t rely on formula to develop something genuinely good in that area. Who’d have thought that a ‘cursed object’ story set exclusively in the art world where everyone talks like they’re delivering a devastating Gustav Klimt review would turn out to be one of the best horror movies of recent years? And yet Velvet Buzzsaw blew me away and gave me a reason not to give up on western culture completely. Likewise, who expected a revenge saga about classical music with (at most) one or two truly graphic scenes to be the most gut-wrenching and powerful psychological thrillers of recent years? Yet The Perfection was one of the only truly transcendent films I’ve ever had the privilege of watching. The same goes for series- it’s hard to imagine that an overwhelming blend of surreal and dystopian imagery, hard-to-grasp technological concepts, semi-obscure literary references, needlessly brutal violence, gleeful depravity, whip-smart humour and a borderline-sociopath with a Hello Kitty rucksack would ever be aired on a proper channel. Altered Carbon, however, turned out to be one of the best sci-fi series of the last decade, missing the top spot only thanks to the existence of Rick and Morty.

The reason I’ve started with all this gushing praise, however, is merely to provide context and a necessary counterbalance to the excoriating review that follows. For you see, an ability to deliver niche or experimental content can lead to abject failures as well as shining successes. For every underrated gem, there must be a meticulously-polished turd waiting to ambush the unsuspecting connoisseur. Ladies and gentlemen, Another Life is that turd.

On paper, Another Life sounds like good, solid sci-fi. A starship captain has to travel across the universe to ascertain whether an alien race that recently dropped probes on Earth is hostile or just curious. Along the way, her journey will be complicated by a crew who’s used to working under a different captain with a radically different style of leadership and all the usual, real-life-plausible dangers of travel through uncharted space (along with a few blatantly made-up ones). It’s not a terrible idea, but every bad creative decision that could be made is made and so the whole things collapses like a poorly-made soufle before the end of episode one.

For a start, let’s talk about the show’s aesthetics and visual decisions. the CG budget clearly wasn’t huge (which is fine), but the show tries to realise as many of its effects as possible using CG anyway, which stretches that minimal budget far too thin and draws attention to how artificial and contrived everything looks. For example, the decision to make the alien probes on Earth giant shimmering walls of crystal that can only be realised through CG is particularly baffling, given that they could just have been big fuck-off metal things that could have been physically built as a set. Meanwhile, the show‘s overall look is... well, bland. If you’ve seen literally any space sci-fi before, you’ve seen the individual elements of the tech in Another Life. I think it’s aiming for Archetypal, but it just looks lazy. It doesn’t help that they liberally borrow terminology from other sci-fi. I know that ‘Impulse Engine’ is technically (probably) the correct name for a slower-than-light engine that works in a particular way, but calling your space engines that just invites comparisons to Star Trek, which won’t be favourable. Back to the point, though: in addition to cribbing heavily from superior shows, Another Life also makes everything look far too smooth and clean. A spaceship is a working vehicle filled with people doing dangerous, difficult, often dirty jobs. Its interior shouldn’t look like an iPhone fucked a trendy west-end bar. Seriously, the ‘future’ set in fucking Crystal Maze looks more convincing.

The problem of everything seeming too smooth and clean extends beyond the visuals and into the casting. Practically everyone in the core cast is in their early twenties. They’re not bad actors, necessarily, but they clearly need older, more experienced hands around them to guide their performances and the absence of these more seasoned actors is felt acutely. There’s a reason why mature sci-fi shows usually cast across a broad age range- you’re asking your cast to deal with conceptual and scientific abstractions that can be challenging for people who don’t have a few performances under their belt. It also feels wildly implausible that a dangerous space-mission would feature a bunch of hormonal twenty-somethings who’s personal drama might get in the way of them making clever decisions. The main lass (whose name I’ve already forgotten), is played by a noticeably older woman. Indeed, that age difference is a big part of her character: can she win the trust and respect of the young hotheads? Unfortunately, one older actress does not a seasoned cast make. Besides, the character she’s playing just isn’t worth rooting for. It’s not that she’s a terrible person- she’s coldly aloof, but so was Picard and everyone loves that dude. It’s just that she has no depth. She has a family back on Earth, and we’re told that she’s missing them and trying to ensure the mission’s success so she can see them again, but the supposed internal conflict has no effect on her behaviour. She just goes about robotically calculating and minimising risk, even though doing so ensures that she’s going to be in space, away from her loved ones, for much, much longer. Within the narrative of the show, she’s making the correct, mature decisions, but shouldn’t they be causing her some introspective strife? No? Yes? Does this fucking show care one way or the other?

Of course, janky characters and budget set designs are kind of par for the cause with sci-fi of a certain type. Sometimes it can be endearing (the fact that the sets literally wobbled sometimes in early Doctor Who was part of its charm, for example). A much bigger problem is Another Life’s total lack of narrative logic. The main character (no I still can’t remember her name, nor be bothered to check) managed to get ten people killed the last time she was in charge of a starship. Surely that’s the point at which you politely ask someone to retire? Even if there were mitigating circumstances (which there probably were because showing fallibility in its lead is not something this show feels comfortable with), why on Earth would anyone put her in charge of a crew of emotional 20-somethings she’s never met before while their previous, trusted captain is still on the fucking ship and clearly feeling mutinous? That’s just bad management on behalf of planet Earth’s top brass. I can only hope that someone in HR got the sack for that one. Or, better yet, that a giant hammer will spontaneously fall out of the sky and hit this show’s script-writer so hard in the head that he loses control of his motor functions and bowels and is forced to retire to a convalescent home for the incontinent.

The captain’s own decision making processes are just as baffling as her bosses. There’s a bit where the crew figures out that they can get back on course and cut down on journey time by slingshotting around a slightly temperamental star using the same shielding they use when traveling at FTL (yeah- FTL space travel is a common thing in this universe, yet humans have somehow never met another alien race before- make of that what you will). They already tried to slingshot round the star once and were forced to abort and break orbit because of the strain on the ship. The plan has an 89% chance of success. The 11% chance of failure doesn’t equate to instant death or anything- logically, it just means the shield would fail and they’d have to break orbit again (because that’s what happened before: remember that we’ve already established that slingshotting around the star doesn’t do anything worse than rattle the ship and give everyone plenty of time to back off). For some reason, Captain Caution decides that the high chance of success, negligible risk of serious repercussions and massive potential benefits just aren’t good enough and vetoes the plan, thereby adding months to the voyage. Isn’t establishing whether the new, technologically superior alien neighbours are friendly or not something of a time-critical op, by the way? Naturally, the crew mutiny (under the leadership of the previous captain), try their plan and it fails miserable.

And there’s the final nail in the coffin for Another Life. It doesn’t play by its own rules. Its established that the FTL shields can’t use much power, because they’re on all the fucking time during FTL. It’s established that nothing particularly terrible happens when you try to slingshot round a star and have to abort. It’s established that combining those two facts to get a speed boost has an 89% chance of success. And yet, when the crew try it without the Captain’s express permission, bits of the ship start to explode, everything goes to shit and the vessel ends up in a decaying orbit around the sun, somehow drained of power. The show’s in such a hurry to show that it’s main character is right and correct and noble in everything she does that it forgets rules it laid down literally five minutes earlier.

Attention: This post is dealing with #REAL OUT-OF-TUMBLR LIFE. If you are uncomfortable with vivid description of boring reality, better stop reading now.

Step 0. You meet a person. Maybe it was at work/school/party or it is just a friend of a friend of a friend. The thing is, you know very little of this person.

‘Linda from marketing that wears violet blouses all the time’ will do.

’Tim from your calc class that gets drunk every Friday and has the most ridiculous hairstyle ever invented’ will also do.

You get the idea.

And everything goes fine, until one day something like this pops up in the conversation:

‘My boss is like a dementor. Real creepy dude.’

‘My kid is too small to pick up their own costume on Halloween, so I have to do this on my own. I was thinking about Lord of the Rings themed outfits? What do you say?’

’I’ve seen my sister’s kids this weekend. These little monsters are worse than an army of tiny Hulks, believe me!’

‘You’re a bloody psychopath!’ ’I am a high-functioning sociopath, do your research/I am not crazy, my mother had me tested’

‘What have you been up to this weekend.’ ‘Not much. Binge-watched Game of Thrones. *adds quietly* Again.’

‘I named my son Luke just so I could go around telling him in a deep voice ‘I am your father, Luke.’

‘I just found out that Mary speaks elfish. Weird, right?’ (Me *sweating profusely* ‘yeah, right. Weeeird.’)

Those references may give you hope, but please don’t repeat my mistakes and immediately start asking the person about their favorite NSFW M-preg omegaverse. It turns out, these are not generally-acceptable topics (who knew, right?). You have to be a little more creative.

Step 1. Take a deep breath while a person (preferably) is not looking. You will need your oxygen. As casually as you can, ask someone ‘Are you a fan of ___(the thing)_____?’

If the answer is ‘not really’, leave them be.

If the answer is ‘Yeah, I’m a huge fan’, suppress your screams and proceed to the next step.

Step 2. Don’t get too excited. Sometimes people have… let’s just call it ‘different gradations’ of what ‘huge fan’ means. Remember: if you don’t want to seem like a freak you are (’cos let’s admit it with no further ado - you are one), you have to be careful.

Test the person with ‘Really? What’s your favorite character/scene/moment/episode/season?’

If they are into Harry Potter, but have no idea who Dobby or Sirius Black is, chances are these are not your people and there is no need to traumatize them with the latest Hentai Au (is this even a thing? well it is now) you’ve read. Just sayin’.

Step 3. If they passed Step 2, there are still different stages of fandom they could be in. Attention and possible spoiler alert: there are adequate people in fandoms! Yeah, I know, doesn’t seem right, but I swear they exist. For example, people who read 2-3 fanfics a year about their canonical pairing and family-friendly adventures of hobbits in Middle-earth. These are innocent people, don’t ruin their lives. If you have reached the bottom of the fandom life - don’t drug them with you. Just watch them swimming happily at the surface with no real knowledge of what is waiting for them in the darkness beneath. Pray they will never know.

Step 4. Ask leading questions.

‘Do you read fanfiction?’ is a good start.

If they cautiously answer ‘yeah?’, proceed to the next step.

If they say ‘I am also writing it’, that’s a full-on green light, proceed to Step 6.

If they answer with ‘not really’ or ‘I don’t know what that is’, come back to the safety of canon discussion. After all, you two can still share a common interest, even if you are crying yourself to sleep at 3 AM because you’ve finished reading an amazing AU and now you have no idea what to do with your life a little bit more invested in the topic.

Step 5. Ask about what kind of fanfiction they read. Reminder: it is possible that they are into gen with G-rated light topics, be careful.

Step 5 is the hardest one. You have to hint that you like reading stuff that not everyone finds acceptable, but at the same time make it seem like you are a competent member of society not an obsessed young adult who spends their time talking to even more obsessed individuals online.

Example:

Friend: ’Supernatural is awesome, it has so many good characters!’

Me: ‘Oh yeah! What about Dean Winchester?’

Friend: ‘He is my absolute favorite, I love how he cares about his brother, those moments are the best.’

Me: ‘That’s nice. What kind of person you think Dean should be dating?’

Friend and I share an intense eye-contact. The world around falls silent. There is tumbleweed rolling at the background.

Friend: ‘Well, it should be someone he could be taking care of—’

Me: ‘Right. Someone clueless enough—’

Friend: ‘—but who would always drop everything when Winchesters need help—’

Me: ‘—someone Dean could accept in his family and protect—’

Friend: ‘— someone who would in return love Dean and his brother enough to risk their life for them—’

Me: ‘—multiple times—’

Friend: ‘—someone in a trench coat?’

Me: ‘oh my go yes.’

And this, kids, is the story of how I met my future co-author in crime.

Step 6. Congratulations, you’ve reached the bottom. Once you’ve established that you are both possess at least some degree of trashiness, there is no coming back. This is the moment you should be asking their tumbler username, talking about RP experience, AU recs, etc, etc.

Step 7. Kinky stuff.

I personally know people who are pretty deep into fandoms and slash/femslash pairings, but still don’t read anything R-rated. This is the matter of personal taste in fanfiction, and after Step 6 you should just ask straight ahead. Even is the person is not into smut, they are most probably very okay with you asking about it.

Remember: stay safe folks and do not traumatize someone who has not done it by themselves yet.