Saturday, 14 April 2018

How Fandoms have helped me during recovery

For someone who spends most of her time at home I pride myself on not over watching television, as I think most people if they found themselves in my situation would watch alot more films and T.V. I’m also sure that some people without chronic illness or any illness watch more stuff than me on a daily basis, I hate resting in my opinion its the devil in disguise telling me I cant do anything useful or anything at all when I so desperately want to do something but T.V,films & fandoms have helped me immensely with distraction & weirdly make me feel useful, films & books have the power to take you somewhere else, the power to make you believe in the in the unbelievable. For someone who lives a lot of her life in pain being taken to another world even only for half a hour is even more powerful to be able to escape reality for a bit. Audiobooks gave me back my imagination because I’ve been able to play stories out in my head even when I cant read so it gets my brain working even on days when I cant do much.



Being able to make friends with people all over the world who like the same T.V shows and films as me has also been a great distraction having people to get excited about is always fun even being in small ransoms and doing it alone is also great fun.  Being housebound means you don’t get a lot, you have little fun see the same people day in day out to be able to have excitement over something even something small like a TV show getting picked up or getting another season or films getting released  becomes a massive deal. My faverouite thing to do right now is to try to watch films before there sequels come out, read or listen to books before watching their films. Its given me a massive reading/listening list but that excites me more than anything.





 I got to the point of not being able to write but I found I could make art.

I started with actual posters then moved on to try to create my own posters which gave me a lot of joy as well as also giving me something to do, its also something I would like to take further if I ever get the chance. I’ve also done quite a lot of lyric video editing again not only giving me something to do but I really enjoy doing it. I’m also hoping to take that further,Iv’e done all this alone and off my own back experimenting with different things to see  what works. I know what works now but its very simple so I would like to make it more complicated and make them more  interesting as some of them are quite boring to watch so with my next ones I plan to do more experimenting and see if I can better myself in any way.

it’s not just the films & T.V its the people in them or who work on them, I have tons of idols all for different reasons, the  internet gives you power to watch interviews & find out things that you wouldn’t have been able to do years ago.



Watching Celebrities live videos or youtube videos allows you to get to know them & it also gives you the power to be able to have your art noticed by the people playing your favourite characters 



I did Dressember in December, one of my posts was a picture of me playing tennis the caption being “ dressember day 11 this is probably 1 of the best dressember photos I have, I suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome  which leaves me wheelchair bound most of the time so being able to play bat & ball was a really big deal for me” I didn’t want to make it to long because I felt like I didn’t really need to and no one really wants to read a massive assay on my life whilst scrolling through IG.



My post was then commented on by 1 of the organisers and re posted on the Dressember  their caption on the repost was “Out inspiration today comes from @blue.ayed.swan_ for how she is using the dressember style challenge to prove to herself that you can do anything in a dress” this will always stick out to me because I was really scared of posting about my illness on my fan account I’m not sure why probably mostly because its a fan account but this made me feel so much better about myself just the fact that people who didn’t even know me seemed to partly understand me & how hard I was trying.



Part of my story was also posted on the Swan princess website in on of there blogs talking about all the art and lyric videos I was making, this gave me a lot of confidence that I didn’t have before ,encouraged me to keep going and gave me a sense of pride that I really didn’t have before. I struggle with confidence a great deal but this really did boost me up



When anyone comments on any of my edits it gives me such a boost, just to feel people are enjoying them means the world especially when they have taken a really long time to make.



I’m completely obsessed with fairytales/fantasy stories which hasn’t helped a great deal in one way but in another its been such a blessing. I began to watch Once upon a time about a year and a half ago, its made me laugh & cry so much but given me so much hope for my own life. Especially the character of Emma, Emma lives half her life alone with hardly anyone around her Henry finds her then brings her to Storybrooke where she finds her family but also realizes she’s a hero which is something she struggles to except. At the start of the show Emma has no confidence at all but she starts to believe in herself  by the end of series 6 she’s married pregnant and she knows who she is and has finally stopped being scared of it. Another once character who is one of my favourite’s is Regina/the evil queen . Regina finds a way to except and make up for her past mistakes



I mostly watch Children’s T.V including Hetty Feather, The worst Witch, the dumping ground and various others when they happen to be on being ill has made me more emotional as a person I also now get stressed a lot more easily so the only half dramatic shows I can watch are ones made for children as I can cope with the drama elements and they don’t effect me to much if at all. I also love watching anything with Dominic Littlewood that man has been through this journey with me yet we haven’t ever met his shows have kept me sane and weirdly given me a education even if its not the curriculum. Its still been learning. At Christmas I watched a lot of cooking shows or factory shows showing you how things are made which I also really loved. I also watched every series of Miranda which I really enjoyed.





Lately I’ve been trying to watch all the old classic Disney films, I watched a documentary on Walt Disney and it was interesting hearing about all the old stuff that I don’t really remember because I watched them so young, this makes resting (the thing I hate most) interesting. Most of them are so clever to their time  especially Mary Poppins with the animation within the real images, it wasn’t the greatest animation but for that time it was pretty amazing.

I spend hours listening to T.V and film sountracks,they make me so happy and just music in general I tend to listen to the same things over and over but I really love 5SOS and they make me laugh so much which makes me forget everything that’s going on.

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