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.

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.

Yeah.

Damn good thing they don't tell stories about lazy, mildly depressive goth geeks with little-to-no ambition beyond making enough to support a wicked comics habit... I'd be in trouble.

But, seriously, that pretty much sums up the craxxy, from mild to extreme. I've seen some nasty flameouts in fandom as a result.

As my most serious case of over-identification was with Jeff from Coupling, I haven't had the misfortune to hit that particular spot of pain. Maybe part of that is that when I identify with a character, I tend to identify with the least sympathetic of the character's flaws, so I expect bad things to come of it.

Do you know where this was said?

You'll have to download the third Firefly thread, and go there to post #2398. It goes on a bit from there, including Tim calling my response to him "Gorgeously put", not that I'm showing off or anything. Nope, not at all.

I think I get mad at them because I'm more like them than I'd care to admit.

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

Isn't that part of the difference? Not staying in one and the same "place", taking a step back, realizing what made you do what you did (just like Kristen mentioned upthread), not getting swallowed in that thing, in the emotions rising from it, in feeding them until a person says things they never would have said under "regular" circumstances (like the "not stand next to windows" things, with all the online-group-dynamics enhancement of response mentioned)?

I have no idea. I just find this discussion very interesting to read. Thanks, y'all.

I get extremely annoyed with some fans. And the reason I get annoyed, I think, is that I can’t entirely rationalise why they do what they do.

It’s easy to dismiss them as crazy or obsessive. But, hey: I’ve spent 3 months now promoting Serenity in the UK, organising test screenings, and generally using a great deal of personal time and money.

Two issues have caught my attention recently – one is the threatening of theatre managers for tickets to see Serenity. That annoyed me. Patience is a virtue. The other I won’t go into for spoiler reasons, but needless to see it will create an almighty kick off soon.

Fandom, on the whole, is quite healthy. Some people, however, do appear to attach themselves to characters more than story. Also, a small number of people are simply nuts. Nuts mixed with emotionally over attached people can be a dangerous situation, and every so often you see a forum which breeds the two together.

I’ve no regrets from running fandom sites all these years and promoting other peoples work at my own expense. If the work deserves being seen, or I think the writer/director/producer/star deserves kudos, I’ll put some of my effort in as a thanks for the end product. I’ll even occasionally fanwank over things online (I could do with rewording that). But that’s as far as I will take it.

I think part of the problem for some people, if they realise it or not, is that they aren’t the producers. They aren’t in control. They sit and watch this universe every week, like comfort food, and it feels nice to them. Then something happens which they don’t like, and it suddenly hits home to them: gee, I’m not making this thing. And they throw their toys out of the cot.

So you get people who have formed a whole online identity based on being angry about a fictional miscarriage of justice.

Like, say, Doyle-murdering.

Oh. Wait.