"Y'All Jus' Jellus!" The Scary World of Fandom

[Auroranorth]

YOU CAN'T NOT TAKE ELIJAH AWAY FROM ME!

Lady, I don't want him and by using a double negative, you're forcing him into my arms! Learn English! (And logic. Getting a grip might be nice, too.)

I really like James Marsters, but many of his fans (and many Buffy fans in general) scare the bejeezus out of me. I agree with the comment about scary fans of TV characters not being able to differentiate between reality and fantasy. Maybe it has something to do with the whole "inviting the characters into your living room" thing.

When grown women at cons are screaming "Rape me, James!" all I can say is: tranquilizer gun.

I believe it's more of a cultural lack of caring that makes neurotic people like these scary fans become so obsessive. They either come from poor homes with limited human interaction or they believe they do in order to 'fit in' and 'belong' to a group just for that interaction. I don't blame religion for this at all: sure in the past it may have been the focus for these crazy people who take it too far to compensate for something, but then again that's the fault of the person obsessing. With them, anything can be an obsession.

In short, I think it's just some people need to take stock of reality instead of shutting themselves off from it.

Yes. PLEASE. They should all be assigned Mercedes Lackey's essay on this. From the essay:

I had myself talked into that one for a while, but at one critical point I had what the Twelve Step groups call "a moment of clarity," when someone else who had bought into the delusion began coming up with things I knew just weren't true and I realized that the world is what it is, and it doesn't take an evil force to make it that way--- and that I was doing a better job of keeping myself unemployed than any Evil Occult Force could. That's when I forced myself to admit that I had the best chance of making my life better if I just got a good suit from Goodwill instead of wearing costumes, pounded the pavement looking for work instead of waiting for a Dream Job to be given to me, and put more and smarter effort into realistic goals, like learning computer programming instead of spending all my time staring at a candle and trying to contact my Personal Psychic Trainer.

The Last Straw

[angel17987]

MostlyHarmless said:

I often lurk/post on the IMDB boards (different username) and there are some scary people there, plus most threads end up being US vs UK screaming matches.

Big. Fat.Word .
I just recently started going through some of the IMDB posts and I am scared. Some of the people are sane, but a lot of others seem to be just nuts. I fully expect to see one of those posters on the news with a headline about how they tried to assasinate a celebrity or blow their office building up. Also, I've never seen a group of people so obsessed with homosexuality before. I really wonder what some of their lives are like.

[Smilla]

When grown women at cons are screaming "Rape me, James!" all I can say is: tranquilizer gun.

And then long-term therapy. Holy shit.

[eveschmeve]

I'm scared to even mention them... as their wrath is great and I don't want to arouse their anger.

I have one word for you- Claymates. I know they caused huuuuge problems at TWOP and his thread had to be shut down numerous times.

Now I'm off to change my email address- they may find me!

[WestEndGirl]

Along the lines of the Claymates...how about the "Saula" fans? (That's Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul.) I read about this over on the other thread and just typing "Saula" makes me laugh. Someone had linked to a Saula fan page and this person was obsessing over everything Simon and Paula said on the show, and how they said it, and what they were wearing, etc. But the best part was that this person somehow associated some pop song with the Saula love and heard it in the mall with her mother while looking at an American Idol magazine (or some other tenuous connection) and became hysterical and her mother had to take her home.

[polygal]

Oh, the Claymates. It's a sad day when I end up one of the sanest members of a fan group. Besides the ones on TWoP, there are the ones who truly believe that he's the wholesomest, bestest singer EVAH! and get their panties in a wad when anyone says anything negative about him in any context. Plus, they fucking send Jimmy Kimmel flowers and shit when he has Clay on. They could at least send pizza and beer, which I'm sure Jimmy would like more.

[bbug]

This thread is, indeed, very very scary. I had never heard of Mercedes Lackey before reading that essay. That and the David Duchovny stuff especially are beyond awful, just shudderific.

I have written some fanfic, including some U2 fanfic, but none of it has been serious. I mean, in one that I wrote to cheer up a friend, Bono re-made the song from one of the Smurfs Christmas specials for some random cause. In another their manager broke down and cried that no one loved him and the band was always screwing up, so the drummer made him some tea and chatted with him to calm him down. So snarky fanfic about real people is possible, and while I realize that any real-person fanfic seems squicky to some people, it can be sort of like envisioning a sketch you'd like to see on MadTV or SNL and trying to get that down.

The other thing with U2 fanfic is that some of it is based on characters from tours, like ZooTV with the MacPhisto thing, so some band fanfic can be about characters and not the actual band members in like, their real lives. I know it still sounds kind of skeezy, but I was a member on a message board centered on ZooTV-based fanfic (the board's not around anymore) a couple years ago, and it was mostly just students and recent college grads procrastinating and working on their fiction writing skills. There were also threads about "The Simpsons" and other bands and stuff; it's not like we were obsessed or a cult or anything. So while I get that real-person-y fanfic can be quite scary, I don't think it all is, necessarily. Does that make sense?

[Auroranorth]

bbug, your example may be near the line, but probably still acceptable to most. It's the sex with real person fic that's really creepy. LOTR seems to draw a lot of these loonies. While I may mentally write JAG fic wherein I (Mary Sue) get the Gunny*, I am not doing this with Randy Vasquez. Those people are way over the line.

*ETA that I don't inflict it on others.

[january]

while I realize that any real-person fanfic seems squicky to some people, it can be sort of like envisioning a sketch you'd like to see on MadTV or SNL and trying to get that down.

I know what you mean -- I once wrote a fic for a friend's birthday in which all her favorite celebrities, including Ewan McGregor and Jude Law, threw her a birthday party. Light and fun, nothing serious, made her giggle. And that's the closest to RP fic I've ever gotten. Some of the stuff I've seen online (most notably the LOTR RPS) is just so weird and wrong.

I had never heard of "Saula" before, so I went looking for it (clearly there's something wrong with me) and...Wow.

[queequeg]

WTF? Saula 'moments':

**Simon and Paula were sitting close together
***Simon was staring off in Nigel’s direction
****His hand was close to hers
**They were close together
*****He glanced at her and smiled
****He scooted closer to her

Yeah, the internet scares me sometimes.