"Did you see the season finale? I mean, for real! I never expected that they'd do that one thing, you know the one I mean. And those two, omg, they're canon, I don't care what anyone else says. Except her, you know she's going to handwave it all away and stick her fingers in her ears. Whatev. But the twist at the end? That was priceless. How do you think they're going to fix it next season? And how long do we have to wait? OMG!!!111eleventyone"

Ahem.

You may have spoken some of the above words, if not this season, then certainly in seasons past. Every year, our shows draw to a close for the summer / winter / insert hiatus length here (choose one), and every year, we're stuck for months on end with nothing else to do but speculate and snip and argue and flame and wank and wibble.

Dr. Merlin was attempting to explain hiatus fever to her sadly mundane mother-in-law today. For fans and mundanes alike over a certain age, the question, "Who Shot J.R.?" holds a special resonance. For those of you too young to have any clue, there was an evening weekly soap opera called Dallas which was at its height of popularity in the '80s. One season ended on a cliffhanger where the lead character (a gentleman of rather unsavory disposition) was shot. And that summer, that was the big thing everyone talked about. It was on the news. It was on t-shirts, along with the slightly funnier "I Shot J.R." logo. Years later it was parodied in the "Who Shot Mister Burns?" story on The Simpsons, and for whatever reason, that question made the news rounds, too.

Dr. Merlin told her mother-in-law that hiatus time in fandom is like dealing with "Who Shot J.R.?" ALL THE TIME. While the MIL has adjusted to having family members who intentionally paint themselves blue, slap on fake wings and then go dance all night with like-minded fanthings, she's starting to look longingly at the calendar and ask pointed questions about when the Fall season starts. Explain this to your own relatives, y/n?

Ah, hiatus. There's a cliffhanger, a twisted moment both inevitable and yet out of the blue, a scream, a hopeless moment. There's an ending to the season arc, beautifully built up and still bittersweet in execution wherein we remember once again that having is not so sweet a thing as wanting, and getting everything we thought we wanted can mean losing what we found out we needed most. We speak the name of the showrunner in awe, and we curse it blue, and we expect next season is going to be even better and we're terrified that we just passed the peak and that it's all downhill from here. We speculate, in our meta and our fanfics, and we try to suss out the future from the clues we've been handed, or we break with canon entirely because it's too painful to think about what comes next. We guess, and we hope. Sometimes our theories come out correct, and sometimes we turn out to have been smoking the good crack (no, we are not in fact going to spend the next season with the cast lost in an alternate world without shrimp). Sometimes our fanfiction mirrors the season premiere so closely that our friends tease us about spying on the writing staff, and sometimes we step back six months later and go, "WTF?" Sometimes the new season tortures logic, character, dialogue and the laws of physics so badly that we go back to that jossed 'fic, declare it to be our personal fanon, and weep into our cartoon-patterned pillowcases while we drown our sorrows with Dark Chocolate M&Ms.

Hiatus fever is fun, n/n?

The problem is that, for many of us, the people on the screen are just as real, vibrant and important to us as the other people in the so-called real world. They're our friends, and sometimes we enjoy seeing how they're doing, and sometimes we live vicariously through their adventures, and when they're not around, we miss them. We do. Like when your best friend has taken a vacation to Germany for a month and you go to the phone to call her because you just saw a funny commercial, and you remember as you dial that she's not there. You sit in your favorite seat in front of the TV or the computer at your regular time, often with your favorite snack or beverage, and your friends aren't there. It's rerun week, or summer break, and it hurts just like when your friend's out of town. You know you're going to be happy when she's home and can show you pictures of her trip and tell you stories of the funky couple she shared a boatride with, and how her mom got food poisoning on the third day out, and all the little things you missed while she was gone. You know your show is going to come back after the break, and your favorite character is going to have something interesting to do, and new ground to cover, and kick some righteous ass. But you're sad right now, because you're just that little bit lonely.

We get over the lonely in different ways. We bond with our other friends. We talk about our missing pal, how she would have laughed her butt off at this morning's radio show. We wonder how our televised friends are going to rescue their companion from his seemingly certain doom, and while we're at it, how he'd react if he came back from his exile in a female body. (Lots of weird-but-hot-straight-but-gay sexx0rs, y/y?)

Also, we flame each other. We don't like the coming-back-as-a-girl meta, and we can't stand the lost-forever-in-time-and-space finale, and we're really already quite pissed off at the new-castmember-with-big-breasts-revelation that we found out in spoiler hunts, and of course, there's our fandom enemy to be dealt with because she's stirring things up as usual and needs to be smacked until her brain works, and well, don't people realize you have a life and don't have time for all this stupid stuff all the damn time?

Hiatus fever makes us do the wacky. Otherwise normal, perky, intelligent fanthings will become frothing idiots around mid-August when the set-stalkers aren't posting yet but all the good meta has already been raked over fifteen times. Then you say one little thing, even of the cautiously optimistic, "It might turn out to be pretty good if XYZ does happen," and you will likely get piled on by dozens of fans you've never met shouting that the rumor of XYZ is the worst thing that has ever been proposed for any television series in the history of TV and anyone who disagrees is exactly like Stalin (because no one likes to Godwin a good dogpile before the personal hygiene insults).

Make the opposite comment, that you're a bit worried about XYZ, and you'll get called a hater, a wanker, a complainer, a whiner, and also a one-issue wonder if XYZ happens to overlap with something you've pointed out as a problem before. Heads will be bitten off, feelings will be bruised, cries of "Why can't we all just agree to disagree?" will rage across Metafandom. More M&Ms will be consumed. It's like the phases of the moon and the turn of the seasons. In Chicago, plant your spring garden on Mother's Day. In fandom, get your flame panties ready by Memorial Day.

Is there a cure for hiatus fever? Dr. Merlin has pondered this, and while she does not have a one-shot-cures-all fix, she does have some suggestions. Take them as you will, and if you're already using them to combat your own hiatus blues, good for you!

First, read lots of fanfic. Then read more. Nothing helps relieve the "They're GONE!" itch like diving in a meaty story where the characters are on-voice, the plot is believable (for your own definition of same) and the verb tenses don't make you want to claw out your eyeballs. Take Sturgeon's Law to heart, and know you're eventually going to find that gem among the dross, even at Fanfiction.Net.

When you've read your fill, or even when you're still looking, write your own. No one can tell your story the same way you can. Only you have seen the images in your head of your favorite couple sitting on that blanket at that beach eating those oysters and playing that game of footsie, just before the beach gets obliterated by alien rayguns and your favorite character has to go rescue his/her love from the clutches of the Evil Overlord, only to die just as they are reunited, gasping out those last declarations of true love. (Best story ever, y/n/wtf?)

Rewatch your canon. Don't just fixate on the finale. Intentionally watch the series premiere. Marathon the first season with your friend who hasn't seen it yet. Pick out that gem from this season, watch it for the first time all over again, and then hold a mini ficathon where the challenge is to write a drabble going AU from the last fifteen minutes, just to see what happens. Remind yourself of all the reasons why you fell in love in the first place. Fall in love again, and bring a few new friends this time.

Call a sympathetic friend who doesn't watch your show, and get it all out on the phone. Tell her all your fears. Tell her your wankiest theory. Whine about how much it used to make you squeeful and now it just scares you shitless that next season is going to blow donkey. Listen to her in turn when she does the exact same thing back at you for her own crazy show. Get it out where it won't embarrass you later when people are linking posts to point and mock. We vent because venting is healthy, but venting online can and often will follow you to the END of TIME. Trust me on this.

Go outside. You don’t have to go out into the hot sun, you don't have to take up a sport, you don't even have to mow your lawn. (Maybe you do. Whatever.) But get out, get some fresh air, go to the library or bookstore -- unless your particular fandom is Harry Potter, in which case GO SOMEWHERE ELSE -- and remind yourself that you enjoy things that have nothing to do with your fandom. Play with your pets, spouse and/or kids. Go out to brunch with your pals. Buy or borrow a CD you haven't listened to before and try not to mentally vid every song to your favorite pairing. Distract yourself with things offline and you'll find the days slip by much faster.

Note that this is the part of the essay where normal people would advise you to remember that it's just a TV show. Dr. Merlin would instead like to take this opportunity to thumb her nose at the normal people, because honestly, what do they know? This is important to you, and that's okay. If men can paint their chests the colors of their favorite football team and sit in freezing cold temperatures, if your coworkers can sit at lunch gossiping about Jamie Lynn Spears and the latest incarnation of Survivor, if Dr. Merlin's mother-in-law can watch HGTV and QVC without any kind of irony whatsoever, then you can happily decide that at your favorite couple's wedding, they should wear matching turquoise silk shirts, black jeans, and berets, and write the story where the season finale veered away from the cliffhanger directly to the nearest justice of the peace / chaplain / starship captain for some wedded bliss onna stick. Important to you still means important. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

All summers come to an end. Remember that.

If you turn out to be right in your speculations, don't gloat. No one likes a gloater. A simple, "Yay! I was right! Score!" is sufficient. Kindly do not follow it with any variation on, "Eat it, losers!" It is unbecoming.

If your speculations turn out to be in the "good crack" category, shrug to yourself and be grateful you have a writing staff that can outthink you. If you were wrong and it's because the writers are smoking the bad crack, then remind yourself that you had X number of good years, and that personal canon can end after the pilot (or include everything but, if that's the need). You had a good run, the writers got stupid, move on, start a virtual season to replace The Dumb or start spending more time on another fandom. Don't flounce.  People will mock you, especially Dr. Merlin 'cos she's mean that way.

Despite what I just said about not leaving an electronic paper trail for the wank, record for yourself your own angst of this long, hot, crazy summer. Put down, if only in your diary, how you went wacky after you heard the casting spoiler, and what your biggest fear was between seasons. Put it somewhere to remind yourself. Because come next May, this will all happen all over again. The finale will undercut the season. The cliffhanger will be heart-stopping. The fandom will implode. And you'll have your evidence that you lived through this before, and you'll survive it next time too.

Because next season will be much crackier than this one was, and you'll need to be prepared, y/y?