(Note: This essay contains spoilers up through the end of Torchwood S2, the first ep of S4 Doctor Who, the first ep of S4 Battlestar Galactica, and Issue 12 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Eighth Season. All other spoilers will be from dead series. You have been warned.)

Okay, one of the hardest things to come to grips with in fandom is that your series will eventually break your heart. No, really. That one too. Something that the writers think is a great idea (or don't think was important in the first place) will drive you bugfuck insane. A casting decision will be made. A disturbing subtext will emerge. Someone will wear the wrong outfit. And you, dear fan, will see the flip, you will flail, and you very well may flounce off in righteous outrage.

Yes, even you.

Let us examine this in further detail.

The flip is simple enough to define: canon does something egregiously stupid, and what you had assumed to be solid ground is flipped out from underneath you. Actor departures (or arrivals) on a series tend to bring on the strongest reactions. When David Duchovny left The X-Files, many fans pronounced it the end of their series. When Gillian Anderson dialed down her own involvement, more fans stopped watching. (Dr. Merlin personally refuses to acknowledge any canon after the first half-hour of the "Jump the Shark" episode.)

For Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, the flips came in many forms, be it the departure of Angel and the move to college, Buffy's death and resurrection, or Tara's death and Spike's re-ensoulment. In Angel fandom, there are still fans who do not speak of the final season. The Firefly 'verse appears to have escaped the flip only because it lived so briefly.

Current fandoms are experiencing flips right now, and this is why we are discussing it. Battlestar Galactica recently revealed that four recurring human characters are actually Cylons, including a forty-year veteran of the wars (which predates the human form Cylons as far as we knew). Doctor Who has just undergone its second Companion changeover since the series came back in 2005, and fans have already spent over a year talking about why things just aren't the same without Rose. More than one of my friends has told me that David Tennant's Tenth Doctor, while nice on his own, is simply not ever going to replace Christopher Eccleston's Nine in their hearts. Torchwood just lost two cast members, and many of my friends have gone into active mourning.

The flips happen fast. Sometimes we get warnings. Sometimes they come with gunshots. (Tangent: Never let Dr. Merlin watch your show. Never ever ever let Dr. Merlin watch your show and grow attached to a female character. That character will die, get transferred to Starfleet Medical, or otherwise leave the show within three episodes. Once it happened inside the course of a single episode. *shakes fist at Nash Bridges* Never forget!)

Flips lead to flailing. Something is new, something has changed, and fandom steps up to the plate to kvetch about it. New writer on your favorite comic? "Untalented hack! Bring back the last guy!" Someone you like is leaving, to be replaced with another actor? "Worst casting decision ever. The second actor is so completely untalented! Bring back the first one!"

Flailing doesn't always mean demanding to the high heavens that the change should be undone. Flailing can also be positive. Issue 12 of the recent Buffy comic showed Buffy in the (brief) afterglow of a sexual fling with another Slayer. While there were fans who objected on the grounds that it was done to be titillating, the rest of fandom seems to have embraced the new dimension of Buffy's character. "OMG!" becomes "OMG YAY!" Then flail becomes squee, and all is right with the world.

Alas, when flail does not become squee, it often turns into indignant anger: "How dare they make this change! What kind of people write this crap? Just because some jerk wants to do some fanservice to the loud idiots over there, my show has to suffer. It's the worst thing ever!" It is, in fact, the worst thing ever, at least at that very moment. This is also the part of the conversation where someone who disagrees will, as inevitably as the swallows return to Capistrano, remark that the fan in question should concern him/herself with more important issues like the war, poverty, or Darfur. (For more strawmen and general asshattery, please see "How to Be a Fandom Jerk in Just a Few Easy Steps".) There is much screaming, and gnashing of teeth, and often mutual exclamations that the other needs to get a life, many times accompanied by far too much information about one's own private life.

Then comes the flounce. Dr. Merlin likes to refer to the flounce as the "Yer all bastards!" stage of fandom, though other names may apply as needed. The flounce is accompanied with an exaggerated expression of bitter disappointment, a public refusal to discuss the matter further with the other parties, an even more public final note that one is leaving the fandom, and occasionally (though not always) the deletion/renaming of one's Livejournal or blog. Scarlett O'Hara does not sweep off-screen as dramatically as the fan does when s/he is breaking up with a fandom.

The "breaking up" metaphor is often used in regards to one's final flounce, and one's relationship to one's chosen canon is metaphorically compared to a bad relationship. Not for nothing is there a recurrent meme regarding the comparison of old fandoms to old relationships. And this becomes the point on which I believe the truth revolves.

Many of us here in fandom do not like the people in the so-called Real World. They are noisy, obnoxious, and worst of all, they have no appreciation for boyslash. They think the SciFi Channel only runs Star Trek, that all of Star Trek is about "that guy with the ears, you know, Doctor Spock," and that we live in our parents' basements. (Unless they are our parents. Then, unless we were fortunate enough to have been raised by fans, they're not sure what to do with us.) In short, the real world is boring and is populated by people who wouldn't know a vampire if it jumped up in front of them and said "Blah!"

But in the pretty, papery rectangles with the nice cover art, we found people we could relate to, who had cool adventures and didn't have to sit through math class. On the screen, we found friends who were always there, who defended the weak and discovered new things and kicked butt and took names and who never, ever called us names. When we discovered fan culture, be it at a convention, APA or here online, we found other people who understood what it had been like to be ten years old and have a crush on a yellow Volkswagon Autobot. (Shutup.)

We found our people, and they were here all along.

Sure, some of us continue to have relationships in meatspace. We date, we marry, we breed and we even hold down jobs, but the things that are real to us, that become at least as real as those real-world relationships, are the people on the screen and the friends we've made in the fandoms we share.

So yes, when our show, our canon, the foundation of our squee is shaken by some great change, we flail. We stretch out our arms and try to regain balance, try to touch someone else to steady ourselves. "Tosh can't be dead. But, but, I liked her!" This is our reality, changed. This is our world, turned. The feelings, even though they are based on fiction, remain just as real, and we grieve for what we’ve lost. We grieve for the loss of fictional friends, and we grieve for the soon-to-come loss of the community based around our shared love of those beloved characters. And it's okay. It's normal. It's human.

It doesn't mean you're Comic Book Guy and that your only friends are the Super Friends.

Really.

The hallmark of good writing is that the story touches you, moves you, changes you. The proof of a good character is that s/he becomes real to you, even if you know it's just a movie, book or TV show. The Velveteen Rabbit was just a damned stuffed bunny. As long as you know that the fiction is still a fiction, that Jack Harkness is a character and Elijah Wood is an actor (NOT a saint, god, demiurge or vampire) then it's okay.

The flouncing is part and parcel of the relationship shattering. Many, one might even hope most people can walk out of a relationship with dignity intact. Say your goodbyes, gather your things, pretend you'll write or call, maybe even meet for coffee a few times to prove to yourself you can still be friends. But there are always those people who must, upon ending a relationship, also throw the other's possessions into the street and set his/her truck on fire as a parting shot.

Please, don't set the truck on fire.

While it is always tempting to let one's opponent know just how much more mature one is by claiming a superior intellect, a far-too-constrained time and interest to carry on the conversation any longer, and personal knowledge of one's opponent's ancestry, the truth is, no one's impressed. When one is slamming the door on a fandom, the fans who happen to enjoy the changes you're descrying as being anathema to what you loved about the show are not going to be impressed with your bulletpoint list of why the show sucks, at what point the waterskis were strapped on, and your opinion on the personal hygiene of the showrunner. They're either going to argue with you, or laugh at your retreating back. Neither of these is what you want your last impression in a fandom to be. Some of these people will see you again in your next fandom. And the next. Reputations linger. (Trust me.)

This is very much NOT to say that there are not fights worth having. There are going to be occasions when you have to stand up for something, when your canon really has done something unforgivable, when not saying something means (if only to yourself) that you're silently condoning something you loathe. Don't ever be afraid to speak out. Just don't leave in a huff when you find out how many people disagree with you.

When you are tempted to write your very last "Goodbye, cruel fandom!" post and walk away with head held high, weeping silently within for the glories past (when your fandom wasn't overrun by jerkholes and untalented hacks), reconsider. Try GAFIAting (Get Away From It All) for a bit. Clear your head. Take some time to yourself. Go check out a new fandom for a while, or revisit an old one. If after a break you still cannot come to terms with your home fandom, stay gone. Consume a lot of ice cream, if that's your favored self-medication routine. Because it does hurt, and you are grieving, and you're going to need time. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

We are fans. We are dramatic. We deal with things in a big way because they are real to us (for certain definitions of "real") and sometimes that means we appear to overreact to things that don't seem that important to other people. (Of course, if you say, "It's a little white ball you hit with a stick. Who cares who wins?" you get yelled at. Importance is relative.) The trick, like always, is to find that middle ground between uncaring non-believer and drama queen. The "it's just a TV show" crowd automatically loses by placing themselves in the first category, whether they realize it or not. Only you can decide if you're going to occupy the second.