Fangirling, while not a technical term, is the word used to describe that period of time where you are so head over heels in love with a new TV show or series that all you can do is make high pitched squealing noises for the majority of a day. Whenever you think about it, you become happier and you have to contain yourself the best that you can. It's kind of like obsessing over something that you really like. The word fangirling or the term being a fangirl is most commonly used in reference to nerd culture, but to be honest, anyone can be a fangirl. My new recent obsession that I have been thinking about nonstop is Fire Emblem. My friend let me play it one night and I have been hooked ever since. However there is more than one stage of fangirling, so here are just a couple of those stages.
1. Finding Out About the Object of Fangirling
2. Binge Watching or Playing
It's the stage where it feels as if you can't stop watching and taking in every heartbreaking, thrilling, joyous moment of the thing that you got into. You just have to know more about the thing and after this, you tend to fall into the next stage.
3. The "Squealing" Stage
This is the stage where every time you think of said thing you become goofy, happy, and well, a little bit squealy. This stage can last a bit longer than others and sometimes it never goes away. I have been in some fandoms for a long time and I can't help but squeal in excitement every now and again. This is also where you just have to show your friends everything you find.
4. Looking Up Every Little Bit of Information you can
This can be anything from looking up character names to ships, realationships, to when the next season is coming out. However, while wandering the open web like this, you could run into a few spoilers along the way.
5. Shipping
This term is used when one thinks that a certain pair would look good together in a relationship so therefore the person ship's them. These pairings can be cannon, the term used for actually in the said work, or they could be far from it. Just don't start shipping wars, please.
6. Wanting to Cosplay Everything
So this only happens to some of us and it definitely does to me, but when you are a cosplayer and get into a new series or game the initial reaction is that you want to cosplay every character that you see. Sometimes you end up cosplaying the character right away other times you have to wait for a later convention.
7. Still Being A Fan after a Long Time
Though we may mature and grow, or we think at least, we will still always that giddy little fan that we were when we first started. No one really forgets the first thing that they were truly head over heels in love with and we never really out grow fangirling.
