The Agony Behind the Life of the Fangirl

               The Fangirl, one of nature’s most fascinating creatures. Well, some might say that. I on the other hand find us ordinary. We’re just like regular humans aren’t we? We eat, sleep, breathe; but it’s not the same. Being a true Fangirl doesn’t just mean finding certain contents enjoyable; being a Fangirl means insanity and borderline obsession. It means pain, heartbreak and suffering. But it also means joining a new group of people who share the exact same feelings. So as it’s rather difficult to understand the Fangirl, I’m going to try my absolute best to explain the mindset of such a creature as well as what Fangirl life is like.

            One does not become a Fangirl just on a whim. If you were to ask a Fangirl how she became one she would probably reply with something similar to, “I didn’t choose the Fangirl life, the Fangirl life kidnapped me and is holding me hostage!” One minute you’re happily watching an episode of your new show and the next you’ve watched 2 seasons in a week (or in my case 8 seasons in 3 months) and you’re so deep in the fandom that you’d need a backhoe to dig yourself out. You also slowly begin to accumulate merchandise from your fandom of choice, t-shits, posters etc. And before long you’ll be dressing as the characters, naming your pets after them and contemplating paying homage to your fandom by getting tattoos or redecorating your house.

           Fangirls have even developed their own way of speaking; their own language is you will. One word they use is “ship.” Now when I say ship I don’t mean a boat out on the sea, to a Fangirl, “ship” is a verb. If you ship two people, it means you like the idea of them being in a relationship. Another one is OTP. OTP is short for One True Pairing, which refers to one’s favourite ship. The term most difficult to explain is “canon.” Say you have like a particular pairing, if that pairing actually becomes real, it becomes canon. If a pairing or concept is real but only in your mind, it is called a headcanon. Make sense?

            Along with the many other nuisances, Fangirls also suffer from a condition known among them as “feels.” Symptoms of feels include dramatic sobbing, garbled and often loud speech, the flailing of any or all limbs, typing in all caps or mashing of keyboards, screeching, jerky and unexplained movement and figurative death. If you experience prolonged feels lasting over four hours please consult find the nearest source of wireless internet and access Tumblr as soon as possible. There are many different types of feels. There can be angry or frustrated feels, fluffy feels (experienced when something unbearably cute happens,) and also sad and excited feels. Feels are generally pretty easy to cope with, but if there are no outlets with which to express said feels, it can be very hazardous. As we speak a new K-Pop video has just come out and I’m resisting the urge to squeak like an idiot and fly off into space.

                As well as being somewhat frustrating, being a Fangirl can be rather expensive. You can’t always wait for your birthday to roll around to get merch from your desired fandom. For example, I have 12 K-Pop posters, 4 rings, a necklace and 3 CD’s (my mom has 8), at least 3 shirts from various fandoms, a wig from the Death Note anime and a complete cosplay of a character from my favourite show. I have also purchased things because of fandom influence, to name a few I now own blue contacts, fake glasses, BB Creams and combat boots.

                   Being a Fangirl of K-Pop, like myself, is especially taxing; and not just on your wallet. Purchasing K-Pop merch is fairly annoying, not only because it’s expensive but because you have to order all of it online from stores in Korea and China and they take an unfortunately long time to arrive. But the purchasing of merchandise isn’t the worst part. The worst part, for me at least, is that the K-Pop industry seems to have forgotten the existence of Canada completely and that their idea of a “world tour” is going to the Philippines, Japan and Malaysia. And to add to that, whenever a new video comes out you have to wait ages for a subbed version to come out so you can actually understand what they’re saying, and even then the translations are usually loose and confusing.

                  But all in all, if I were to choose whether I was a fan of something or not, I would choose the latter. Ours may be a heartbreaking now, but being a Fangirl, or Fanboy for that matter, is amazing. If I wasn’t a Fangirl I wouldn’t know how to dance, I wouldn’t have my own stories online and I wouldn’t have so many friends. So despite all the sobbing, flailing and second hand embarrassment, being a fanatic awesome. You should try it some time. ;)

Hey there~ I hope you enjoyed this~ It's actually a fair bit shorter than I thought it was. How'd I do?