Dr. Merlin has been in a strange place lately, fandom-wise. Doctor Who is done and won't be back but for specials until 2010. Sarah Jane is filming. Battlestar is months away. Eureka is darling but never quite hit that "It must be mine NOW" level of adoration. Dr. Merlin is in the mood to write He-Man porn and longass Thundercats epics.

It's fandom breakup time.

The last fandom Dr. Merlin was in hard and furiously was Justice League (with an option on Unlimited). She loved it desperately and weirdly, discussed it at great length, wrote long, angsty fanfictions alone and with lovely cowriters, tended her plot bunnies carefully, spun off mad theories and cried when it was cancelled. She argued tiny character details on bulletin boards, ran 'ship communities, and even moderated one of the JL fanfic archives for a while. It was fandom, and it was intense, and it was glorious.

It's been off the air since 2006. The comic book tie-in was occasionally brilliant but mostly not. The writers went on to other projects. The other fans moved on to different fandoms. New fanfics were and are posted daily at FF.net, but not from the people who made the fandom what it was, at least for me. And that's okay. The fandom and I have been drifting apart for a while now. I've been seeing other fandoms, and the JLU fandom is doing fine without me. It's a good breakup.

Not all fandom breakups are good. Sometimes the show does a flip, which leads to a lot of flailing and flouncing. Sometimes the fandom itself turns toxic; Dr. Merlin has a friend who was chased out of a fandom for pointing out that the slash pairing du jour may have been cute but was not in fact canon. Even when the show doesn't jump that dreaded finned fish, a bad ending can lead to a quick departure from an otherwise beloved fandom.

Dr. Merlin's fandoms tend to vanish via entropy. After a while, it takes too much energy to create the amount of enthusiasm needed to spend so much damned time on what is in fact a hobby. In the throes of OTP passion, twelve hours per day cranking out metatextual essays and tightly-plotted drabble chains can seem like no time at all. Five years in, finding a new plot to write about the same set of characters, or cutting clips from a limited canon to make a fanvid not incorporating the same ten scenes yet again, or getting into the same argument about what that one line in episode twelve meant, well, it can seem a lot more hassle than it used to, especially when juggling other things.

There comes a day when getting the floor well and truly swept and mopped is more satisfying than writing another fanfic. This is not a happy day, but it is a clean one.

Fandoms end. I know, I know. Try telling that to the Trek fans still running the conventions every year and cranking out the fandom newsletters. Tell it to the Star Wars fans who've been to the premiere of every movie since "Empire" and who still think Lucas is a god. Not every fan breaks up with their fandom. Some make it a lifestyle, and raise their kids as Trekkers too, and then it's practically a religion. Just two months ago, Dr. Merlin got to spend time with the same people who've been running and attending conventions for another old fandom of hers for over ten years. This being an early fandom of hers, it was passing strange to see people who were still playing the same video clips and attending the same panels and going by the same character-related handles as back then.

Why does it happen? Again, Dr. Merlin's fandom breakups tend to be a matter of time. It's easy to reach a "Yer All Bastards" moment from time to time, even while coming back for more. (Even while saying, "I cannot believe I am still doing this" while you are coming back for more, and also cursing the ancestry of the person who talked you into it.) YAB moments are part flail, part flounce, and rarely permanent, at least in Dr. Merlin's experience.

Permanent is when the characters stop talking to you. Permanent is when you don't hear the stories in your head anymore. When the songs stop needing to be written. When the same phrases keep repeating, leading to not so much as a drabble post. Permanent is when you can flip by and not care, when you get a twinge that no longer hurts or entices when you see That Scene. You might still marathon for newbies. You might chat with a fandom friend about how what Susie Fangirl said about Character Y was just so wrong. But the fire's not there anymore, and you'd rather watch Dexter.

Sometimes you go back. In the omnipresent "Fandom Like Past Relationships" meme, there's often a steady to go back to. Dr. Merlin has a friend who goes back to Scarecrow and Mrs. King every few years to touch base and reclaim the squee. Others have been rediscovering their Doctor Who love from years ago. Dr. Merlin, of course, goes back to the 'toons that shaped her childhood, for better or worse. (Oh for the days when furry underwear was considered appropriate apparel for musclebound male 'toons.) Revisiting an old fandom is like meeting up with an old friend; the same "OMG, you were so cool!" emotion is tempered with the additional "Wow, and I remember now why I wasn't upset when we parted ways!" feeling. But you can meet for drinks and, as the meme goes, maybe a quick romp in the sack from time to time.

Goodbyes are hard because grief is hard, and often by the time you say your farethewell to your fandom, you've already been grieving the friendships you don't have so closely anymore. You mourn the days of easy camaraderie and shared glee as much as you mourn the fates (whatever they are) of the characters after you let go. It's about the people, the living, breathing ones on the other side of the monitor, and the ones who only really lived inside the created space you shared with those friends. It's okay to feel sad about losing either.

The good news is that you will love again. You won't feel exactly the same about the next fandom you love, but you'll love it just as hard for different reasons and in different ways, and it will be precious to you too. You will make new fannish friends, and if you are very lucky, you will carry some with you as you go so that, while it feels like loss at first, you only gain more of the ones who matter. (Even when you forget to email them and tell them so.)

You, young fanthing, will find another fandom. And so will I. And we will clink our glasses at our memories of these old ones, and we will laugh about the flamewars (eventually) and we'll reminisce about what happened to Susie when she backstabbed a BNF in her next fandom and made it to Fandom Wank like we always knew she could, and we'll shake our heads about the entitled asshole kids writing in that fandom these days, and we'll exchange plotbunnies we got from bad country songs but swear mutual pacts that we'll never write them, and we'll rewatch the good fanvids from back in the day, and we'll try to remember the words to that one filk that was so funny, and we'll wish we were there again and the people that we used to be before things got so complicated while hoping we can keep the lessons we learned afterwards anyway.

And when we get the urge to write that Voltron saga, the one that was a crossover with the G1 Transformers, The Go-Bots, and Scooby-Doo, we'll know it's time to move on.