This style of self-aware acquiescence to an irrational passion may always have been part of the screaming fangirl experience.

Though the criticism of fangirls is that they become tragically selfless and one-track-minded, the evidence available everywhere I look is that they become self-aware and creatively free.

Fans are engaged in archival work all the time because they’re always engaged in a conversation of “remember when,” presenting and building on their own oral history.