Is this normal behavior?
My friends and I got into this book series about 6 months ago. It started off really normal, but as we got through the first three books the obsession progressively got worse. At first we would just scream a little over it, then we began to flail around violently with the screaming fits. Soon we were going to dollar stores trying to find things to represent the characters with (a clover necklace for the Irish guy, a Burger King crown for the kingly one, loads of clips to put in our hair like the main girl does…) We even made our own shirts with one of the jokes from the books and put dumb clipart all over the back along with a quote from the fourth book which at the time hadn’t been released.
When the final book was released- that’s when everything got very bad.
My friends and I read the book really fast when we got it. The night we finished it, we both had cups and were trying to harvest our tears in them to commemorate the day we were done with the series for good. I recall being in the car and reading one of the scenes, when I got really excited and started chewing on the seat. My friends too were having hard times: I quote from memory, “I was crawling on the floor like an animal, drooling.”
After we’d finished the final book, we got together. We decided to gather all the stuff we’d bought, build a car out of a box exactly like the main character’s, and ride in it to the local nature center, where we would dance around a bowl of fake blood and blue flowers.
I cut out hundreds of paper bees and ravens and cars, my friend painted ravens on wood and collected the books from libraries… We made a bowl of fake blood and poured it in a garbage bag to take with us. We grabbed some blue flowers and mint leaves from my friend’s garden. We then attached ravens to sticks and called them our “raven staffs,” we then made a banner with a key word from the last book. We also put on the shirts we made and dressed like the main characters would (Burger King crowns, khakis and boat shoes, weird skirt…) Then we made togas from bedsheets (they had a toga party in the fourth book) and wore those on the way to the nature center (in the box Camaro we’d built.)
We set up in a remote location and waited for a significant time from the books. Then we began the dancing. We wildly ran around in time to the soundtrack the author made and did strange motions around the books and fake blood, enjoying ourselves. This lasted maybe 30-45 minutes, then we sat against a tree and read lines from all the books until we left.
We went back and had a bonfire, burning the paper bees, cars, ravens and pieces of paper with quotes. We collected the ashes and keep it in jars and pouches that remind us of one of the characters.
Later that night we found a flea, and made jokes about us being savages and filthy. Then we really realized how insane we seem. Is this normal in any way?