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.

On a completely unrelated note, does anybody have any thoughts on the 'quotes' style that Fireflyfans.net uses? As in, top right of all pages, a wee quote from Uncle Joss/Uncle Tim (etc) about the show.

I'm thinking about doing something similar for The Inside (dort org), but if people don't like the concept I may just drop it. I'm trying to keep the site as accessible as possible, but also make it slightly interesting.

The light blue quotes against a dark blue background on FFF.net make them easy to ignore. And when was the last time there was a new one?

Rotating favorite quotes from the episodes might eventually be a good page header feature. I suggest quotes from execs., cast, and crew would be better in their own "article" section.

There's a lot of strange people out there in the land of fandom. Some are dead on, others are just plain odd and scary (and horrendous spellers to boot). I spent a bit of time trying to analyse them but gave up.

Yeah. Or FFANG.

What's that?

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..

t cough Clerks t cough

FFANG:

Fans For A Naked Gunn

Aha. Thanks, Nilly.