But, yeah, now, it's hard to look back at it and think all of it was time well-spent.

I feel that way about nearly every fandom-related endeavor I've worked on. It always seems like a good idea at the time. It almost always ends up feeling like a mistake.

That's not where I ended up with it in my head, but it's how I felt for a long time. Foolish.

That's still how I feel. That it was all this giant avoidance tactic I used so I didn't have to deal with scary things in my life. It took me far too long to catch on and face up to it for me to feel anything other than foolish.

That I don't understand, and I don't really want to make fun of it. It seems too sad.

I think, maybe, a serious chapter on some of the extremes of fandom, in the same tone as your last few posts on it here, would work really well in the book. I mean, even Sedaris has serious amid the rest.

And it's a weird sort of area, people with that sort of investment. Weird, sad, and human.

For the slightly less crazy POV, at some point, I came to some grudging understanding of some of the unsouled Spike redemptionists who were *furious* about the souling when I realized through comments that a fair number of them had grown up in strict (usually Southern) religious communities, and became invested in the idea that you don't have to follow the understood paradigm of Good vs. Evil (righteous vs. sinful) to become a good person. The story they thought they were seeing was the story of themselves, and when turned out to not be that story at all, they got mental whiplash.

a fair number of them had grown up in strict (usually Southern) religious communities, and became invested in the idea that you don't have to follow the understood paradigm of Good vs. Evil (righteous vs. sinful) to become a good person. The story they thought they were seeing was the story of themselves, and when turned out to not be that story at all, they got mental whiplash.

Wow, that's really interesting. I have issues with the concept that you Must Be Religious to be a good person, and this sounds like it ties right into that.

The story they thought they were seeing was the story of themselves

Isn't this a lot of the craxxy? That terrible ripping noise when it's not only not you, it's not a happy ending for you. It stops being your story, part of you, and is held up in the light as fiction, and your ties to it mock you.

2 promos during AOTC tonight. The second was pretty long and charactercentric set to "Break on Through" by the Doors.

That's the new one that's been showing up since last week.

I don't have any regrets about Firefly, now. I learned a lot from that campaign, really.

I mean, we had hundreds of strangers trust us enough to send us thousands of dollars and do what we needed them to do. I felt like General Fandom for a little while.

I also learned that just about anyone can do that same thing, and how dangerous that is. I don't think I was foolish anymore. I think the Save Angel campaign was pretty foolish. And cruel. And I can't figure out for the life of me why it went on so long.

There is a darker side of fandom, and I'm writing about the Penlind thing, the woman who claimed to have dying children. I was going to write about fanfuckers, and then thought I'd probably get sued.

I think it's worse to trade on a tenuous connection to Uncle Jossy in order to get a starry-eyed fan to suck you off. I'm not saying Ms. Starry Eyes is completely innocent, it's a groupie-factor, and I'm grossed out by anyone sucking off a PA to get tidbits of info about an actor or producer. I mean, ew. At least demand 50 bucks along with the info.

I've found that it's putting me in a yucky, angry place. But it's honest.

Gus, thank you for your devotion and if you have been spoiled for Serenity please go hurt the people at serenitymovie.com.

If you haven't been spoiled, avoid said site at all costs.

Allyson, the yucky and the angry makes good reading. I'm just saying.

I have not been spoiled.

I have been too busy going over Allysons's last post with my parser.