Re: Is there an OuaT Anonymous?

I’m Keb and I’m 33.

I’ve always loved fairy tales and Disney, so when I heard about Once Upon a Time, I had to watch the first episode air. And it was great and I laughed and was intrigued, so it became the one TV show that I actually watched–but it was no big deal if I missed an episode, because it would be online the next day. Still, it’s the first show I’ve actually paid attention to since there was a Star Trek series on the air, so that was new.

When Skin Deep aired, I started talking about the show to everyone I knew. I knew I’d love the episode as soon as I found out Belle was coming in the promo, and…well…how can you not? (I still think it’s the best episode ever–and one of few that stands all alone very well.)

But I wasn’t obsessed–just a normal fan who could go about my life. By the end of Season One I was predicting that Belle would be important to Season Two, which had me eager to see what would happen, but I wasn’t yet obsessed. I wasn’t seeking out everything I could find about it. Oh no.

That didn’t happen until the Outsider, when I couldn’t get Once out of my head for ten minutes. I started falling asleep with Once in my head, and waking up with Once in my head, and dreaming about Once in between. I’d find myself thinking about it WHILE teaching class. My sister started timing how long it would take for me to bring up Once in conversation. (I actually made it an hour and a half during a dinner out once, but I’m not sure if it counts because I did mention the Disney Version Belle.) And as my obsession consumed me, I started timelining, I found this place and started listening to all the podcasts official and not (and I don’t even like podcasts, because with my hearing loss it’s much easier to read and I always use captioning when I can), I even stumbled into Tumblr. I now have a timeline that’s got just about every event in the series on it (though I am still tweaking it as I rewatch season one), plus ideas for fan videos, a fanfic in progress, and a ton of other stuff in my spreadsheet and about a jillion screencaps and pictures from Once on my computer.

And I still fall asleep thinking Once and wake up thinking Once, running constant theories through my mind.

It is true that the second half of season two coincided with my final semester on my Masters, which may be a strong contributor to my obsession, but it’s bad enough I’m sometimes scared of my own brain. And yet…this show, this fandom…too amazing to let go of now that I’ve found it. I’m gonna scrape through this final semester one way or another, inspired by “When you find something worth fighting for, you never give up.”