Kernel, they asked to be warned in future to try to balance the load a bit. It's a reasonable request, but for a professional film site I think it is a little bit strange.

To be clear, also, I edited my post from Universal to Spec Ops Media, who ran the site for Universal - I believe it was Spec Ops who asked. But let's not even get into the management of that site.. I think that's going to be a chapter of a book I never write.

Not to pile on, but to get back to a point I found interesting -- online personas are personas, but they vary in the ways the individuals own them. I've never even considered putting someone's screen name (I was going to say 'pseud', but that would negate my point) in quotation marks. Meara is Meara, Shrift is Shrift, and Msbelle is Msbelle.

Those are the people I interact with, not the (to me) hypothetical flesh-and-blood individuals on the other side of their monitors. Putting their names in quotes would negate the reality of their personas, and, to me, imply they were lying about who they were.

It's a weird thing, the internet.

Also? I'm not in Firefly fandom. I am fannish, and I loved Firefly, and I've posted about it and read some fic and saw the movie three times. That doesn't make me a member of the fandom, and it sure as hell doesn't make me a Browncoat.

I am or was a member of 3 fandoms, and Joss didn't write any of them.

Where do you draw the fandom line, Suela? Writing fic? Organising stuff?

Consuela - I still define you as part of the fandom as a whole, in my world.

I'm not using quote marks to suggest somebody is lying about who they are, it's just my way of communicating that's what they call themselves online. I do it all the time in formal things, and it often sterms from the fact I write a lot of emails in an official way with online names in quotes ('"LardArse" wrote they know ...'). I'm sure LardArse is a real person, but in a viewed capacity I don't want to drop LardArse in the middle of a sentence in an email read by marketing people, for example.

That said, in this case I was completely wrong at any rate as Nilly is Nillys' name, and I didn't know that.

Mind you, I've picked up many bad habits from media things anyway - I've started to refer to film names in ALL CAPS now, and I even called Nathan "the talent" the other week. It wouldn't be so bad if I actually worked in the industry or had any professional interest in it, but I don't, so I need to get out of these sanity breaking habits and return to normality (which is apparently saying lol a lot, and doing lots of emotions and such).

Where do you draw the fandom line, Suela? Writing fic? Organising stuff?

Hmmm. Not sure. I think joining mailing lists and writing fic. Writing up formal episode comments, not just chatting about the show. Getting involved for the content, not just for social reasons.

I didn't feel like I was in Stargate fandom until long after I'd started writing fic for it. And despite being a Buffista for far longer than I was an X-Phile, I still don't feel like a member of the Buffy fandom. I even love the show, and I'm a fan of the show, and I'm a Buffista, but I'm not in the Buffy fandom.

I'm not sure where that line is.

I think for me being in the fandom of a show, as opposed to being a fan, is when I've gotten involved with the other people watching the show, apart from my interest in the show itself. For instance, for me, writing and sharing fanfic is being a fan, and arguing very seriously with people about whether it's canon and whether my characterization is wrong is being in the fandom. When I was hanging out on the OB and started wrestling with some folks over differences in opinion about Inara's characterization, I realized I was getting more into the fandom than I was comfortable with. It stops being fun when it becomes Very Serious and Important.

Wow. Have I been a part of a kerfluffle?

If so, it's kind of tiny. Maybe just a fuffle?

A kerf?

It stops being fun when it becomes Very Serious and Important.

And for some of us, that's where the fun starts.

Seriously, I'm intrigued by your implication that being in (a) fandom is something negative, as opposed to being a fan of the thing -- and also by suela's very high bar for self-inclusion; not in any "I'm right and you suck" way in either case, but because the whole definition of fandom is so different from mine. I use the word almost exclusively in the broad and multifandom sense -- fandom at large, as a culture, a group, a set of activities, maybe even an identity. I've gone long stretches in the last few years when I haven't had an active text that I'm even bothering to follow, let alone that I've written or argued about, but I've never been out of fandom; that's more a way of seeing the world than anything else.

Which isn't to say that there aren't fandoms for particular texts; I'm not at all into some of them, bitter about others, newly in love with one or two, and I can certainly use and recognize the term as an identifier: but I'm not in HP fandom is the same as I'm not that into HP. And it's never my first definition of the word "fandom".

eta: I vote "fuff"