Dean deserved better.

those friendships are neither lifelong nor lifesaving, truly, if they hold the participants hostage in a moment in time. if you're not allowed to grow and maintain your friendship, it's not a real friendship.

that means if your friendship dies when you leave the fandom, it's not a real friendship. if your friendship dies if you decide you don't ship that anymore, it's not a real friendship. if your friendship dies when something happens in the fandom and the two of you disagree, it's not a real friendship.

i've been bamboozled by a lot of fake friendships that feel lifelong and lifesaving in the moment that are actually conditionally tied to fandom opinions. it sucks, but all the posts telling you that those feelings are real because they exist hurt me because i believed them.

A fandom is only a fun nurturing and caring place where creation expands beyond the individual and becomes a group activity when you agree with the majority of the group opinions.

If you disagree with the majority of group opinions, you'll have a horrible time where no one listens to you, everyone misrepresents your opinion, and a lot of times people recreate the exact same hurtful dynamics they were victimized with in the general populace with the idea that the people who stick out, who are different, are somehow to harbingers of discord and discontent - rather than those who are actually in power here.

And part of that is because fandom has built itself on the myth that because we're all just people with blogs, none of us have power over others.

Before anyone starts - I am not giving credence to the "Big Blog vs small blog" debate here. A fandom participant's power is not in the bigness of their blog, its in the aggressiveness of their desire for their opinions to be the only opinions. The arguably biggest blog in my main fandom is run by someone who is perhaps too painfully aware that her opinions are singular and the opinions of her anons are also singular to each person who sends that anon. She's also painfully aware that she's a role model to newer people in the fandom, and thus, a lightning rod for everyone in the fandom who believes their opinions are the only ones that should exist - even those who agree with her.

The point I'm trying to make is that power dynamics in interpersonal relationships where you're just two people and no one has stated or given authority over the other still exist.

Fandom is full of people who have felt powerless in this dynamic a lot in their lives, and have found this counter culture for refuge. But unfortunately, that means a lot of people want to recreate it wherein they are the powerful ones, rather than the ones getting stepped on, because that's what they think safety is in their traumatized unhealed brain.

Part of having a healthy time in fandom, and thus enjoying all those beautiful friendships, is paying attention and knowing when someone is attempting to recreate their hurts from mainstream culture in some sort of sick and twisted pseudo revenge fantasy within the fandom counterculture. But in order to do that, you have to admit that this dynamic (a) exists (b) is frequent/common and thus an actual threat.