Are your obsessions often bi products of an older obsession?

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I have recently noticed that most of my obsessions are basicaly just bi products of older obsessions. For instance my longest running special intrests, meerkats, (I am PunkyKat. I had to create a new account because I lost the password for the account my email address is on and have NO way to access my old email. If a mod wants to change my email to my gmail account, I will use my old account but for now I can only make a new account) is basicaly just a bi product of my Lion King speical intrest. I became facinated with Timon. I used to think it was because my older brother, whom I hero worshiped at the time liked him. I have pretended to be obessed with certian things such as the Goosebumps books series because my mum always told me that if I was intrested in the things other people were intrested in, they would be intrested in the things I was intrested in. I found out the hard way that wasn't the least bit true. I truely, truely loved Timon...to the point where I hero worshiped him. My Goosebumps obsession was fake, whereas my Timon obsession was real. My mum says I liked Timon so much because he was loud and quirky...just like me at the time and I had finnaly found someone I could relate with. When the Timon and Pumbaa cartoon came out, I REALLY related to Timon. The cartoon consisted of imature, pratfall humor, which I never found funny to begin with. Timon was being thrown into walls, squished, hit with baseball bats, and basicaly the brunt of everyone else's brutality. I seriously suspect the reason we have so many people who think it's okay to abuse animals today is because of cartoons like this. A lot of people hate Timon now because of his cocky attitude in the cartoon and being a Timon fan will not make you popular in the Lion King fan community. I always thought Timon was so nasty in the cartoon as a result of being picked on all the time. When I was coming home from school with bruises from the other kids, I was starting to become quite nasty as well. Whereas I eventauly retaliated and physicaly lashed out at my buliies to the point of being considered a bully myself, Timon just got nastier. I secretly wanted to see him just loose it and go postal on his bullies. I didn't know very much about meerkats back then, but I figured they didn't take lightly when they were torumented. Anyway, I think my mom is right about me liking Timon so much because I could relate to him. When I got older, I began to write Lion King fan fics and wrote myself into them as an unbeatable heroine. Timon hero worshiped me because I protected him. Sure, I would probably come across as a "Mary Sue", but writing these fan fics was very theraputic for me. I was always intrested in meerkats when I learned they were a real species of animal but for a while, I was more intrested in Timon. I am always told that I am living in a fantasy world, but when I was a kid, it was painfully true. I had to have my special Timon and Pumbaa plushies written into my IEP because I could not function without them. My evil school bus driver tried to make me give them up forever and even stopped the school bus for over an hour in his vain attempt. He tried one last time to make me surrender when he stopped the bus in front of my house. As an adult, I would have told him to procreate with himself and possibly kicked him in the boys but I just screamed "NO!" at him. He got in HUGE trouble for that stunt when my mom called the school and told them what happened and how tramatized I was. It was like I was in fear for my childrens lives. My parents were always worried I would be carrying them around with me until I was fifteen and personaly I don't see what's so wrong with that because I've never really outgrown the need for a transitional object...or creature. But anyway, that stunt of my stupid school bus driver stoped me from taking them everywhere with me. As I said, I couldn't really cope without them. My behavior problems at school got worse but no one was really able to see the connection. Everyone hated that driver and was trying for years to get him fired but he did seem to have a penchant for picking on the kids that had problems and couldn't really defend themselves. I was paranoid he was going to break into our house and steal my plushies. I wonder if I also thought he would try and break into my mind because I somehow was able to convince myself that I had "outgrown" my plushies and Lion King. I think I had even convinced myself that it was "bad" to still like them. I was temporarly obsessed with Pepe Le Pew and skunks but I have to wonder if it is because Timon and Pepe Le Pew kinda share facial features. I was still made fun of for liking Pepe Le Pew and skunks but it was okay to like them because they weren't Lion King related. It's really hard for me to remember because I've tried so hard to block out that part of my life. I didn't really get into Lion King again until after I was being homeschooled and was finnaly learning to be myself again. I was channel surfing and came across a Timon and Pumbaa eppisode. I watched it and remembered how much fun I had when I was obsessed with Lion King and Timon. I was still ashamed to admit it and was still convinced I hated it but that didn't last very long. My mom basicaly told me that people who were going to be mean about it could go jump in a lake. I talked and talked about meerkats, Timon and Lion King non stop. My mom says she always heard me talk about about my special intrests, but not as much as I did meerkats. I wonder if I was just making up for lost time. My mom tried and tried to make me "widen my horizons" and would tell me she needed to hear about something other than meerkats for so many minnutes. It made me feel as if she didn't love me. About the same time, Montgomery Gentry had just released a song called "She couldn't change me". The verse: "She said I guess when you love someone you just gotta let it be" really stuck with me and I wished my mom could be like that...I prayed and prayed for my mum to accept me as O was and eventualy she did. By then my mum realised that trying to change me was a futile attempt. Anyway, it's been like ten years and meerkats are still my main special intrest and my mom has finnaly let me be myself. There was a neighbor boy who was always mean about my meerkat and Lion King obsession and he sometimes made me cry. I eventualy stoped hanging out with those people but my brother was still mean about it. I've practicaly disowned that brother if he really does want to sustain a relationship with me, he better start apologizing and being sincere. It wouldn't bother me if he never did and I seriously looking into disowning him legally. I like meerkats more than I ever liked Timon and I don't think I will ever know why but I don't really care either but if someone asks me why I like them so much, I tell them, "Because that's how I roll!" if someone is mean about it, I usualy give them the social finger and sever all ties with them. I will never let anyone take my special intrest/obsession/passion from me ever again.

My pet bearded dragon, Pippin is the result of my lizard special intrest...which was the result of my special intrest with the movie Titan A.E.. Aparently the character that spawned my intrest in lizards is supposed to be a bat. I don't know, once I was finnaly able to convince my parents to let me have a bearded dragon, I kinda lost intrest in Titan A.E.. I speficaly wanted a bearded dragon because every search for "friendly" lizards resulted in them and I knew my mom's first protest about me having a pet lizard would be that they were not friendly. My mom picks Pippin up all the time and is always telling people how sweet she is.

My newest special intrest is the Sonic the hedgehog fandom, speficaly Tails the fox. I've already started to develop an intrest in kitsunes but so far I don't have an obsession with Japanese folklore and I don't think I will. I was intrested in hedgehogs for like a week. I have no idea what started my Sonic/Tails obsession. I thought the games were too hard. I think it was a combonation of You Tube Poops and a real hedgehog hissing at me at the vet's. I have no idea. Anyway, are your special intrests just "by products" of your older special intrests?

My special interest in The Kinks is a by product of a special interest in Swinging London and Carnaby Street that I had between 1995 and 2006.

My obsessions with Alice in Wonderland (2010), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Edward Scissorhands and Sweeney Todd are a by-product of my childhood obsessions with The Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice. They were all worked on by the same director and/or producer: Tim Burton. I was into Beetlejuice and Nightmare Before Christmas as a child, but early on in my obsessions, they stopped airing the Beetlejuice cartoon and my dad taped over my VHS recording of Nightmare Before Christmas with a televangelism broadcast because he had a mental breakdown (wound up in a psychiatric ward) and one of the symptoms (among others) was that he thought everything, and I mean everything, including and especially that movie, was "evil".

I started watching watching anime and became obsessed with it throughout all of my teenage years. But about a year and a half ago, I got really burned-out on anime and decided to get back into Tim Burton movies. I'm glad I did, because I fell in love with the four movies I mentioned earlier. That interest itself spun off into obsessions with Johnny Depp (who played the male lead in all four movies), Helena Bonham Carter (who played major female characters in Sweeney Todd and Alice in Wonderland and had a very minor role in the Chocolate Factory movie), and Crispin Glover (who played a supporting role in Alice in Wonderland).

Also, my obsession with the British sci-fi show Red Dwarf was influenced by my obsession with another British sci-fi show, Doctor Who. I was (and still am) very much in love with Doctor Who and wanted to find another sci-fi show similar to it. I tried lots of different shows from the US and UK but none of them really caught my interest. Then one day I tried Red Dwarf on a whim and became addicted to it.

I remember my mom thinking Nightmare Before Christmas was evil. We are Christians, but were never hardcore fundemendist Christians. I wonder if my mom really thought it was evil or if that was just an excuse so she didn't have to watch it. My mom never really seemed concerned with protecting me from TNBC and when I confessed to her I watched it when it aired on TV she just asked me what it was like with curisioty. I told her I didn't like it. It just confused me as a kid and even if I actualy did like it, I probably would have just told her that I didn't just to humor her. I loved James and the Giant Peach (supposedly done by the same team that did TNBC) and I understood the story but perhaps it was because it was a story I could relate with... a defensless child trying to escape bad care givers and doing the seemingly impossible. I watched TNBC as a teenager and liked it...well at least the animation and the music. I could espicaly relate to the song "Jack's Obsession". My dad has always said the word skelenton, as skellington so I couldn't help giggling every time I heard Jack's last name. One of my brother's names is Jack so that was amusing as well. My dad's name is Jack too but he's just "Dad" to me. I don't know why, but when I discover something I like becomes insanley popular, no matter how much I force myself to like that someting, I just can't anymore. I stopped liking TNBC when I discoverd how popular it is. I fear my new Sonic obsession will not last that long. I hope maybe it will because Sonic fans seem to consist of nerds and furries and basicaly people who aren't very popular...but all the fans of TNBC appear to be goths who usualy aren't very popular either. But then I went into my obsession, aware of how popular Sonic is so hopefully it will last. The obession I will never give up is meerkats.

The Lion King was a special interest of mine long ago too. From that I got into hyenas, lions and all sorts of wildlife.

I've had so many special interests born out of others it's hard to think of an example.

I'll work backwards. My main special interest is science fiction, that came from my interest in physics, which came out of an interest in Albert Einstein, which came out of an interest in autism.
But now that I think of it for many years my interests have been leading up to my interest in science fiction. As a kid I was more into fantasy like The Neverending Story but I did watch such sci-fi as Stargate (film), The X-Files, SeaQuest and even some after school shows were sci-fi. And there was LOST as well. Recently I got into the Stargate series and from that watch Eureka, Primeval and now I'm into Star Trek and Sanctuary.

Meerkat, seriously, paragraphs. Or at the very least a tl;dr.

In answer to your question, yes. I don't see how it could be any other way, really. As you learn about radio waves you get drawn into math or physics. Learn about all the types of orchids there are and you get drawn into genetics, biology, etc.

What's a tl;dr? Why are you correcting me on almost all of my threads? Are you stalking me?

tl;dr = too long; didn't read

It's really hard to read long blocks of text without any paragraph breaks. I can't read much of your post at all because once I get more than three lines in it all turns into a big soup of random letters.

Anyway: Most of my interests are byproducts of older interests. I used to have this thing about tabletop (paper maps and cardboard counters) wargames that over time evolved into an interest in video games. It was interesting to me when I came to this forum that I read that "videogames" can't be a real autistic interest. But the interest my interest in video games came from was definitely rich with Aspies (although most of them men).

My obsessions are definitely byproducts of other stuff. I love film and books. If I really get into a film I have been known to not only become a fan of the people involved in it but the bands that sang songs on the soundtrack, writers whose work was quoted in the film, clothing by designers that the characters wore, etc.

My family and I are Christians too. My dad didn't always think TNBC was evil - in fact, he has really come to appreciate Tim Burton's work in the years since he got better. My mom and sisters tell me stories about how during the 90s, he dressed up as Edward Scissorhands for Halloween several times. Ironically, even though my dad used to consider TNBC to be evil, it is now his top favorite Tim Burton movie, and we watch it together sometimes.

I remember when I first discovered that TNBC was popular. My reaction was pleasant surprise, particularly because some of my other beloved childhood obsessions (such as the movie Balto and the anime series Hamtaro) have faded into obscurity as the years have gone by. But I am happy that Tim Burton movies have remained popular over the years. I don't even mind that they are associated with goths, because I have kind of a goth personality even though I typically like wearing brightly-colored clothes.