Book Struggle Sunday: Being alone in a FANDOM

After I told my friend Melissa about my discussion post (The Never Ending Battle of Paperbacks vs Hardcovers), Melissa came with the idea to do another collab. We love working together (Story Sound Saturday), so the idea was to also do a post on Sunday! The longer we were discussion the post, the more ideas that we came up with and the more excited we got! We want to make an interactive post and that you, readers, join is in our ‘discussions/rants’ on the subjects that we post every Sunday from now on. This will be book related (book struggles), but also real life struggles. We come up with a thesis, write our opinion, ask your opinion in the comments and we hope we can all discuss about it.

This way, you get more insights and perhaps we will think more about certain subjects so that you come across new discoveries. In addition, the interactive portion seemed just super fun. Connecting with other readers and talk about books and more .. We are wondering what you’re going to think of it!

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CLICK HERE TO READ MELISSA’S STRUGGLE POST

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This weeks subject:

BEING ALONE IN A FANDOM

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When we’re alone in a fandom
We’ve all been there guys, I know it. You found a great book and started reading it, but the only problem is that it’s a new book or everyone hates it. That feeling.. it makes me wanna cry. Really hard. It’s just like what the picture says.. ‘Well I guess it’s just me and my feelings then’ because we fangirls (and fanboys) have to fangirl about a certain book or certain ship. Sure, we can rant about it with our parents but they don’t understand us! We have to talk about it with people like us, otherwise you’re feelings are still stuck inside you. And it happened to me a lot. DIMILY, Netgalleys and even TV shows..

The downside of Netgalley
I guess this isn’t really Netgalleys fault, but since I read a lot of Netgalley books I’ve been alone in a fandom a lot. That’s mainly due to that Netgalley books are new and aren’t that popular yet, so if I’m the first one to read it there aren’t a lot of people that read it and the book doesn’t have that certain ‘image’ yet. What I mean by that, is that we readers are often very restrained when it comes to new books. We only want to read a book if other readers that we know have also read it. And I pity that! There are a lot of great underdogs books out there and us readers should step out of our comfort zone!

Well Wendy.. if it happened to you, in which fandoms are you alone?
Well let me tell you that! First of was the DIMILY series in the beginning of the year. I discovered this series on Netgalley last summer and I immediately wanted to read it. But there was one pity for me, the books weren’t out yet. So when I found them online in March, I bought the ebooks and started reading it. I WAS HOOKED! The only problem was that literally no one I know had read them and that made me feel so sad.. even when the release date of DIMIMY went from April 28th to July 21th.. (but that’s gonna be a whole other post). I was blessed that around May people finally started to read it and I was happy about that, but it also made me feel sad. Guess you guys have to listen to my fangirling more and start reading the book! 😛

I also read a lot of books that aren’t even that well-known in the Netherlands, like My Kind Of Crazy, Put It Out There, the CreAtive Hearts series.. it just makes we feel so sad! All my feelings are locked up inside of me.. can someone free me and read the book, so I can fangirl about it? PLEASE.

How to deal with it?
I can be very brief about it. I don’t deal with it. I guess I can’t. I crawl up in my bed and cry. Trying to lock up my feelings, paying attention so I don’t spoil anyone. Oh, and hoping someone will read the book VERY SOON so I’m freed from my misery.

But we’re not always alone in a fandom
Because the feeling when we do CAN fangirl.. it’s the best feeling in the world! Personally when I found someone to fangirl about, I can talk hours and hours and hours and hours.. literally. Fangirling and being a fangirl is just the best feeling in the world and the way in which we can express our feelings are special and exceptional.

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So that was my opinion and my point of view.. have YOU ever been alone in a fandom? Because we’re very curious about what fandoms. Also, how do you deal with it? Maybe we can give each other tips and help each other out! We’re also very curious what you think about this post! We’re excited to hear from you.

Love, Wendy and Melissa