I only remembered after I got back online that Harry Potter opened this weekend. It's odd how removed I feel from it. I mean, I enjoyed the books well enough, but I was never rabid about them. We didn't even see the last HP movie in the theater. We just waited until we could watch it through Comcast. The closest I ever got to that kind of devotion was Buffy. Merlin's different from that, not because I'm not devoted to it but because a) I've already been through the fandom thing once and I'm not as ignorant of some of the darker sides to it as I was the first time around, and b) I prefer the smaller ships/rarer pairings in this fandom. It's gotten to the point in Merlin fandom where I don't even bother reading summaries on Arthur/Merlin fic when it goes up. The only times I read it at all is if I have to for a challenge, and then, honestly, it really has to do something great to stand out. Which some pieces have, most definitely, but I'd be lying if I said the glut of A/M fic didn't annoy me.
But I do feel left out sometimes when other fandoms are exploding around me. Like this weekend with HP. Or True Blood, which everybody I know seems to be watching. Dr. Who. Torchwood. Game of Thrones. I don't feel like I'm missing anything from the shows, since I've tried them and they're either just all right or not my thing at all, but from the community that surrounds them. The outside looking in.
Ha. Now that I put it like that, it makes total sense. Story of my life, really.