The Fangirl Essay

It starts with a normal girl. One day she will be watching her favorite TV show, or her favorite anime, or her favorite video game, and suddenly think to herself: My gosh… (insert name here) is cute… And before she knows it, she is looking up pictures of him, and reading fanfiction about him. Then she finds herself thinking about him all day, and doodling his face on everything, and dreaming about him. Finally she herself is drawing fan art and writing fanfiction about the man falling in love with her. And that is the birth of a fangirl. But… what exactly is a fangirl? Well, there are many definitions. My trusted source (AKA Urban Dictionary) says the following: “A rabid breed of human female who is obsessed with either a fictional character or an actor. Similar to the breed of fanboy. Fangirls congregate at anime conventions and livejournal. Have been known to glomp, grope, and tackle when encountering said obsessions”. Some think they are the scariest things ever, and they are usually the butt of jokes in most fandoms. They are portrayed in fanfiction, comics, and shows as insane (and sometimes evil) females that will tear people apart with their bare hands just to hug the character they adore so much. But this is a very VERY wrong sterotype. A real, true fangirl is different, very different*. Now, it is true that some Fangirls are in fact quite insane. Some do nothing but sit and daydream, or attack the object of their adoration (or at least plushies of him), and they fight with other Fangirls over who gets to claim: “Miroku is my boyfriend!!!” or perhaps “PEETA LOVES ME, NOT YOU!!!!!” And some, known as the ‘Shipping Fangirls’ get into heated debates among themselves all the time. And all these debates are about things like whether Aang or Zuko should marry Katara, or if Kagome is meant to be with InuYasha, and not him with Kikyo. And then if you consider the sub-category of Shipping Fangirls, the “Yaoi/Yuri Fangirls” (something I would rather not