After fulling immersing yourself in a fandom and completing a series, you find yourself listless and in an existential crisis. We've all been there. One of the ways to cope with the newfound hole in your heart after you've finished a series is by reading fanfiction. It helps you get over the pain of your favorite character dying by pretending it never happened and it helps you find peace when your favorite ship doesn't work out in the series itself by reading a bunch of fanfiction that humors you. Well, after years of scoping out fanfiction after I finish television series after book series after movie franchise, I've noticed I've become pretty addicted, and here are 10 signs you are, too.
1. You start to confuse what happened in the original series and what you read in a fanfiction
Wait, did the original series actually have a backstory for character A? I mean, if it didn't, it should've.
2. As you begin to run out of fanfiction about a specific ship, your standards get lower
Yeah, I'll deal with a fanfiction mixing up your and you're once or twice or thirty times, so long as character A and B end up together in the end.
3. You hardly notice grammatical errors anymore in fanfiction but become a bit of a Grammar Nazi in other parts of your life
It's as though it pervades your unconscious mind, much to the chagrin of your friends and family.
4. You begin shipping pairs you'd never have dreamed of
These two characters really shouldn't work together but this fanfiction is just so good.
5. You've attempted to write your own and cringe at your old stories
What was I thinking... does this even have a plot? Why would I do this?
6. You know all the fanfiction slang and aren't afraid to use it
Ficlet, flame, OTP, AU, one shot, fluff, drabble... the list goes on and on.
7. You've written essay long reviews to a story that made you cry because it was so beautiful
The language, the plotline, the imagery... everything was just too good and you needed to vent your frustration somewhere, right?
8. You've discovered music from reading song fics
The fanfiction needn't have even been that good; you still rock out the music unabashedly.
9. Some of the Alternate Universe fictions change so much about the original story that you feel you're reading a new story altogether
That doesn't mean that the new story isn't fantastic because it still is.
10. You've adamantly argued with your friends about how some of the fics are better than original works themselves
The fanfiction writers can put a new spin on the original story that really gives the work a new, deeper meaning.
