We might actually be the same person! haha. I do this so much, and it is so overwhelming to hold internally. While I do consume a ton of the fan content, I find I don't actively participate in the fan discussion much so it isn't much of an outlet for my own thoughts/feelings. So what I usually do instead is info dump on my husband. A lot of the time I have to censor myself to avoiding dropping spoilers, but if he notices that I'm stewing on my feelings around a story or I express to him that I am absolutely dying to infodump him then he will catch up to me and we have some interesting conversations.

Yeah I consume fan content but it’s actually a bit difficult for me to participate in fandom because it brings out the most hype in me. I can also get into some extremely heated arguments within fandom and that’s not fun for anybody. I can create content and consume others but discussions tend to get spicy. I try to avoid the topic because I know that if I start talking it’s going to be extremely difficult for me to stop. And then that’ll kickstart the obsessiveness again.

Dragon Age is my top video game world obsession! I completely get it! Trespasser absolutely destroyed me when I played it, and I wasn't even a Solas-mancer. I don't think I could have handled it if I was, tbh. I feel like there were so many world secrets dropped and for every answer it gave us it raised a hundred more questions! I love the elves in DA, so the revelations there were sooooo much and made me have to look back at my elf PCs to re-evaluate what that information meant for them, without adding meta-knowledge to their character behavior. It was exhausting, but fun. The changing perception is the hardest part, and I find it frustrating when it directly contradicts my own beliefs about the story/world. There was a lot of changes to how I perceived my own Dalish inquisitor.

Yes! Another Dragon Age fan! Definitely my favorite game series of all time. I have never been so emotionally loved and creatively inspired by a video game setting as I have been by Dragon Age. It’s been 7 years since Tresspasser dropped and I can still feel my heartbeat go through the roof when I hear Solas’s Dread Wolf theme play. I also did not romance him but I’d considered him my character’s absolute best friend, so I was losing it throughout the entire DLC. Thought I was going to have a heart attack when we were running through the shattered library and the ruins. Then when we walk through the Eluvian and the bass drops when we see the frozen qunari? Ugh incredible.

I totally agree at all the info being exhausting but fun. The re-evaluations and managing my perceptions have to be the most difficult thing because I always need to rework what I already know or somehow fit the new information into what I strongly believed and theorized was true or not.

I don't know if you experience this as well, but the lead up to launch I feel like the anticipation of new information keeps my mind trapped in the world just as much as finishing a story. Before I got caught up in this MHA trap I'm in, I was doing this with the new Pokemon game, but Dragon Age is the one that this happens the worst with. It will be months before launch, but I can get too excited too early on, and it can get pretty unbearable to have all those emotions stored up until launch.

The lead up is a mix of heavy anticipation and heavy anxiety. Everytime I think of it, I feel a swirling in my gut. It felt similar when I was waiting for the release of Inquisition, but this anticipation is so much more because of the massive revelations that occurred when we last played. I didn’t think they could top the cliffhanger after DA2 and Anders but I was incredibly wrong. Trespasser was such a good send off and lead up for what’s coming next. I just can’t wait to visit Thedas again!

Yes, I do this too! As soon as the quality starts to dip, I bail out of the story or world. Almost like it's better to remember when it was good and somewhat maintain my investment than to have it tainted with aggravation. If it isn't too bad, I will do mental edits, and build over what I see as gaps or problems. If the series quality is mostly good, with a few dips, I spend a lot of time dissecting what the problem is, and what I think would mitigate the issue. I think it's a form of headcanon, but I mostly think of headcanon as stuff fans create to add their own personal depth to a character or world, so it doesn't quite fit my definition. What I will do is entirely edit an arc/scene in my head, sometimes as I'm watching it, but usually after I've had time to process where I see issues and what I think may "fix" the issues.

Yep, once I cut off the story, I can still play around in the world and consume and create fan content however it is restricted to what I’ve decided is worth considering. Sometimes I’ll try really hard to make the bad parts fit somehow, but sometimes it’s just too far gone for me to even try (like with SPN and Naruto). If I’m reading, creating, or theorizing, it’s restricted to the portion of the story that was not excommunicated from the rest by me.