right. five.

I remember five, but I want to reframe it.

5.) I have very little about my real life I'd be uncomfortable sharing with my flist under lock, and not that much that I don't have public. I honestly am that boring. But while I can work one way, bring my flist into my real life, I don't like doing it the other way around.

I think this reticence hit me as something I was doing consistently and by choice when the open source boob thing hit and I was with some people, still going over a post I'd read in my head, and someone asked me--you know, I don't even know, what was going on, blah blah blah. But I didn't even think to answer it with what had happened. I don't even know if I actually told something that could pass for being true.

I have absolutely no idea why that divide occurred; I didn't even know I was doing it.

My three oldest and closest friends don't have half the context for anything I do or say that a casual surfer into this lj would, and that's weird. There's also this really uncomfortable suspicion that I may actually act completely differently with them than I do with say, anyone I've met online as far as self-editing goes, because I lose a lot of normal interact filters with people who know I'm curious about how certain sexual positions work and inappropriate lube choices. I'm not even talking about performance art LJ--I mean, I wonder if I dragged any of them to a con with me, if we'd even be able to talk.

You know, this is really my own fault. I need more coffee. Existential identity crises do not occur when something with the word "mocha" in the name is being sipped.

I'm half wanting to ask if anyone else thinks about this, but I'm kind of worried about a resounding silence. That does, in fact, mean I would like validation, please. Thank you kindly.

Comments

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

Yes. This has been true for me for awhile. I have friends in RL that are into fandom, but they are few and far between.

I have a blog for one of my classes I've set up recently. I did not even imagine MENTIONING my fannish activity or this account, and in fact set it up on a different service so that it will not even accidentally intersect.

Mind you, adjectivegirl (high school friend) did say, when I mentioned it, that she didn't find anything "interesting about Supernatural except for the 'cest", but that's because she's awesome like that.

So, there's one or two people who know me in RL who are sympathetic, but not many. And in a way, that's appropriate. This is my... personal life. I mean. I was thinking about discussing it with a faculty member who's very into fannish stuff, and even then... I mean, I could talk about being into SPN, but not fanfiction, or fanfiction, but not slash, or slash, but god, not my username because someone who's my professor, reading the same pron as me and me knowing about it? GAH NO BRAINBLEACH PLEASE! Granted, I've had one or two really, really cool Profs I'd have been ok with it, but they were exceptions that prove the rule.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*nods* That makes so much sense.

I wonder if start value is the answer? IF you meet tehm online, ti's easier to translate into RL, but not the other way around. Which makes sense, actually.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. We've all lived in RL (um. Hopefully.), only some of us have been in fandom.

Heh. I was at a party on Sunday, and I was all like "oh hey, this chick I know online who... well, never mind, but I was talking to this chick online, and I found out about this cool gay sex position...". You know which one. The gay sex they were intrigued by. The slash... well. That would have required a lot of explaining.

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

You aren't the only one who has a whole 'nother life online. I mean I have friends in "RL" who I do not mention stuff to. Things that I will talk to my online friends with without a blush or a whimper.

Which is basically why I have more friends online than I do on RL. Hmmm... And why some of my online friends are now RL friends. And I will still talk to those folks the same.

Cool.

And I agree. Mocha makes things better. Or at least clearer.

~L

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yes. From online to IRL is so much easier than the reverse.

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

So, so very true.

[omglawdork.livejournal.com]

Dude. I am much the same, though my information membrane, as it were, is more impermeable both ways. I don't talk about work, I don't talk about really personal family stuff, etc., on the LJ. In turn, I have literally five friends/family members who know I've been to a con, and only my husband, very best friend in the world, and my also-fannish gym buddy know I write or even read fic. There is absolutely no crossover. I live in fear of crossover. I have three good friends - one who I knew from school, and we dragged each other into fandom by accident, and two others I met via fandom/LJ - that know everything about both, and I can talk to them about things I can't talk to *anyone* else about, except my husband (and I try to spare him, usually). Most of the reason those girls and I even started talking is because we're all lawyers/law students - we had a common RL thread.

Short rundown - this post pretty much describes my life. I do think I'm different with non-fannish people. I have no idea if I would get along IRL with fannish people - I suspect I might not, at least with some (just like in real life you don't get along with everyone). I have absolutely lied about why I'm upset when it's about fannish stuff, and absolutely will again. I am completely fine with that. We are all different in different situations and with different people; the fact that it's online doesn't, I think, make it weirder or any less human. I'd act differently around my sorority alumni group than I would around my church choir, which is different than I would act with my law school friends. People have lots of different personae - we all just happen to have online ones, too.

edited for, I hope, greater coherence
So yeah, validated. Me too.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Actually, true, I think--family, grandparents, coworkers, etc. That part I was totally with, but the friends thing did throw me since they aren't situational friends--hmm. Okay, I have no other word I can use there, but if I find one, I will, because that one isn't right.

I think what is really bothering me is that they *should* be at least exposed to overlap between the two, and it's not that I don't even mention it--I'm at least on some level consciously suppressing things, like freaking sudoku. Sudoku. It's like, something I do IRL ends up here if it's interesting, but I could literally write the great American novel and publish and not think to tell anyone that doesn't read my lj.

Oh my God, my LJ is Vegas. Or something.

Okay, I'm not sure that would happen, but it's a weird feeling to realize the amount of self-editing that goes through from what I talk about to what parts of my personality aren't--er, apparent.

[omglawdork.livejournal.com]

That part I was totally with, but the friends thing did throw me since they aren't situational friends--hmm. Okay, I have no other word I can use there, but if I find one, I will, because that one isn't right.

Ha, now I'm the one who's confused. Which part about friends threw you? I may not have explained myself adequately.

Also, my LJ, so long as it's behind f-lock (because my dad totally reads it)? Absolutely Vegas. Mostly, though, because it's behind f-lock.

I do understand what you're saying about not telling RL friends about important stuff you do talk about online, especially writing. It's an odd feeling. I don't have a great verbal filter, so if I feel "safe" with someone, I will end up verbally vomiting at them about my shows at some point, but never about the writing. Ever. It is strange, because it's a huge part of your creative life that's just not there for a lot of your friends. I'd love to cross-contaminate, but so many people who aren't in fandom or don't have our peculiarly obsessive personalities just won't ever get it. Husband doesn't - he puts up with it because he loves me. My dad and sister do have that personality type, and probably would "get it," and I might even consider telling them about my fic if I ever wrote any gen. You know? I told my BFF all about it when I realized one day he was narrating a Firefly fic to me over the phone, not even realizing what he was doing. If I know they can hang, I'll talk about it - it's just that I feel like so few can. Plus, I got teased a lot as a kid for being super nerdy, and I honestly think that affects how much of that I let out in "public." LJ is my safe space; my no-judgment space, and I want to protect it.

That ended up being way longer than anticipated. Sorry. :-P

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, my LJ is Vegas. Or something.

I'm quoting this somewhere. *grin*

[twistedchick]

I am a lot more shy or at least reserved in person than I am online; I was the woman (with red hair, blue outfit) who came in and sat down while you were discussing online matters with synecdochic on Friday evening during Contxt, but I never managed to summon the nerve to interrupt you long enough to introduce myself.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*winces hugely* God, I'm sorry. I can *really* overfocus sometimes and okay, I'm fairly reticent meeting someone new that I don't talk online with a lot. I'm sorry!

*facepalm* Ack. This is so embarrassing. I'm so sorry. If it's any consolation, twice so far in my RL con expereinces, I have wandered away from a conversation with someone because I had no idea they were talking to me directly and not like, the group. Both, luckily, thought it was deeply funny. In retrospect, it is deeply funny. But still. Embarrassing.

[twistedchick]

Don't be embarrassed. That was "interrupt you [plural]", and I wouldn't have hung out so long if I hadn't been enjoying listening in. As it was, I would've stayed longer and gone outside to hang out with the smokers, but I was the transportation for a number of people who needed to leave, so I had to go drive to Rockville.

Though I would like to get together over coffee sometime and just shoot the breeze.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

Hey! I really like your icon - did you paint it?

[twistedchick]

Yes, it's one of my paintings. Sumi-e ink drawing with watercolor.

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Nobody in my RL knows I'm a fanficcer or slasher. I can talk about lube choices and "those two guys are totally doing it" with many RL friends/family, and a few of them know I write as a hobby. But there's so much context that goes into fanfic. Mpreg, AMTDI, tentacle!fic ... I can shorthand all this with LJ friends and they know exactly where I'm coming from. I'd want to tell a RL friend to lurk on LJ for a few months before even getting into it, you know?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

God, imagine that experiment. Vocabulary *alone* would be a few weeks. Not to mention livejournal versus mailing lists versus messageboards versus blogosphere and fandom-wank is at least a sixteen week class....

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Slash 101, a 3-unit course. Hee! I went to the Stargate slashers panel at Dragon*Con, and in two hours, the active slash readers/writers covered some good basic ground, and those who weren't already in the subculture still didn't get it.

[deird1]

Jumping in late to the middle of this discussion...

...because I did get into fandom by accident, a little over a year ago. Because I heard about Fanlib and wanted to read more snarkiness about it.

I was actually onto metafandom for a few months before I started reading fic. Or even realising that fic might be worth reading.


For what it's worth? Metafandom posts (especially if you read the archives) and fanficrants are about the best introduction to fandom that I can think of. My knowledge of all the weird bits of vocab and all the history (Fanlib, strikethrough, MsScribe...) went through the roof in a very short amount of time.
And within a few weeks I was using "mpreg" and "Mary Sue" in RL conversation, and forgetting that I'd need to explain...

[leupagus.livejournal.com]

"Thank you kindly"? You're turning into Benton! Which is actually pretty cool - I have it on good authority that, personality-wise, I'm Buck Frobisher. Which is, you know, interesting. And horrifying.

Resounding "yes" here - I've met a few online people, and am more than willing to meet more, but I don't think any of my actual friends know about my fandom activities. My father is vaguely aware that I'm online participating in a "short-story exchange group," but that's it. I think he's proud that I'm working on my writing, and doesn't really want to know the details. If only he knew.

It's very much a -- I don't know, shame based? For me? I don't think any of my real-life friends would actually care, but there's something very, very nausea-making about even admitting that I write fanfic. It's kind of like writing in general, that old saying about how it's nothing to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterward.

I'd like to clarify that I don't think it *is* shameful - in fact, one of the hilarious things for me is that, after more than a year of reading almost only SGA fic (not even books), I'm now reading published stories and I'm a wee bit underwhelmed by their quality. I'm like, "Well, The Road was OK, but it wasn't nearly as good as And All the World Beneath or Sestinas" (and btw, there really needs to be more SGA-apocalypse fic). That, more than anything, has been a really great benefit of getting into this fandom so completely.

[jade-dragoness.livejournal.com]

*poking in my nose* That whole thing about being underwhelmed by the quality of published works after reading fanfic? YES!

In middle school and high school I could easily read 50-100 books a year. Now? I'm lucky if I read 5 news ones, I'm not counting the ones I love and reread. I just get so frustrated with what looks, to me, to be big flaws whether in character development or plot development. *cuddles fandom close*

I've thought about it a bit, actually.

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about this sort of thing, actually, when I was talking with my husband about that "How well do you know your spouse" meme that went around last week.

Everyone with more than a casual relationship with me knows that I have an online journal. The difference is at which URL. 8-)

All the engineers at work have MySpace pages and a friend posted her wedding photos under private lock there, so I joined. Everyone who has that link assumes that's what I'm talking about and I've no reason to correct them. My Myspace has the goofy game applications and photos of us and is a little more...well...a little more mother-in-law and high school reunion appropriate. My "writing" there is stuff like the essays, not fiction. My boss can read my MySpace. I'm good with that, mostly because there is almost nothing there.

But that may be a key as to why I'm comfortable with the separation. I've always been closeted, to one level or another, because of my religion, and while yes, there has normally been someone at each workplace who knows that I return the "Merry Christmas" wishes with a patient "Happy Holidays" of my own, it's not the kind of thing that I have any intention of forcing HR's hand about.

I'm happy staying under the radar, thanks. So keeping my Jenna_Thorn face separate from my J_T face is second nature at this point. Jenna_Thorn is able to be a bit more honest about certain things, a bit more frivolous, quite a bit more fun.

There is some overlap, but really, not a lot.

[cat-77.livejournal.com]

I've known threnodyjones for nearly longer than I've known the internet, at least non-school usage. She's the one who put a name to the fic I had been writing (the ever-present "fan fic") and introduced me to all sort of sites and such. I have a couple really good friends who know me both here and in RL, but we met through RL fandom-type things in the first place, so I don't know if that changes things or not. There are things that I say/write/post here that I could never get away with in the "real" world and things I really don't think others would necessarily understand. It's like you can be freer, or more yourself, here than you can get away with in the outside world. Maybe it's the sense of being anonymous or maybe it's finding people with similar interests that you can't find anywhere else or maybe it's just knowing that, no matter how weird your own interests are, there is someone else out there that's even stranger and you know this because you found their site.

[niqaeli]

I do not have this problem nearly as much as most people, as most of my friends are from/went through ASU's science fiction and fantasy social club, THEM. They come/came pretty fannishly inclined in the first place and I take a cruel and evil glee in breaking the baby froshies' brains with, I don't know, not just slash but things like penile inversion. ...I'm making them better! Honest! After they can sit through a conversation with me, and not blink, they can sit through nearly anything. *grin*

But that said, I really, really do not want to bring some folks into my online world. My mother, for one, who continues to be savvier than she has any right to be and yet totally ignorant of the actual culture. She asked me if there was Narnia slash once because it would amuse her to have Lewis rolling in his grave over that. I went "...probably?" and wanted to cry in a corner for like an hour. I continue to assume she meant, like, Peter/Caspian because I DO NOT WANT TO THINK SHE MEANT THE 'CEST. WHICH IS POPULAR. ...WHICH I'VE WRITTEN. WHICH I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT WITH MY MOM, OKAY.

But not just that. Like, work? I do not admit to much of anything at work, actually. I'm not sure they've noticed I'm not straight, actually; it's not that I hide it because I said screw it to the closet years ago, it's just that it comes up surprisingly rarely and in professional contexts I pretty much don't talk about my sexuality at all. Because hi that would be inappropriate, IN A PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT. And similarly, it would be pretty inappropriate to start talking slash. It's hard enough to even just be a fan of a dramatic show at my work; they look at you a smidge funny. Oh, reality TV? Sure. Any and all reality TV is perfectly normal to watch regularly.

And -- yeah. I get that divide. It doesn't come up as *much* for me, but it comes up. I would fucking freak out if I learned that anyone at my work had found my LJ. My facebook, fine, whatever. I have that set up for networking and do not use it fannishly at all. My LJ? Oh, god, THIS IS WRONG. Even if *they* didn't freak out.

ETA: Also, huh. It's interesting to consider. While I do live with people who are just used to my fannish crap, including slash etc., and me being a lunatic writer, the woman I consider my braintwin I met online first and then found out she was local to me and eventually this lead to braintwinnage.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't want the people I work with to know, but everybody else in my life does, to some degree or other. I mean, my parents get the blow-by-blow of whatever wank is occurring, or what my latest story is about (up to and including the sekrit incest baby and the Regency Winsister AU), and my dad only got cable internet (finally) because it made remix easier.

My siblings know but don't want to hear about it, though I could happily burble at them for hours, and it's the same for most of my friends who aren't involved in online media fandom. Most of them are fannish in some context or other (sports, mostly), so they get it, even if they don't really get it.

I mean, sometimes I do feel like laughing when a subject comes up that has fannish applications, but I had my dad announce to the assembled family that I write gay porn on the internet, so *shrug* I wouldn't really care if they read my LJ. None of them have any interest in it, though, funnily enough.

[alethialia.livejournal.com]

while I can work one way, bring my flist into my real life, I don't like doing it the other way around.

Totally. I'm always impressed when people can bring their rl into their fannish life. I'm all over taking fannish friends and making them rl friends. The reverse makes me want to run screaming into the night. I'm talking separation of church and state (if that were actually enforced), Berlin Wall kinda distinctions. My rl people don't know about my journal and hopefully never will.

There's also this really uncomfortable suspicion that I may actually act completely differently with them than I do with say, anyone I've met online

I do. Absolutely. Fandom is another culture entirely. If you want to bring your rl people into it - or even just introduce them - they're gonna have to go through a whole cultural literacy program. I mean, the jargon alone is intimidating. (And what's amusing is that we don't even realize how much jargon there really is, how many everyday things to us are purely fannish and would leave the uninitiated blinking in confusion).

As an aside, back in film school my Intro to TV prof did a section on slash as part of her 'fannish culture' segment of the class. The class had probably 300 people in it and I just laughed and LAUGHED at their reaction. It was complete blank-out. The prof actually did a really good job at defining slash and simplifying it for the everyday media consumer...and the reaction was still all twitters and confused expressions and 'wtf?'

It's a culture. It's like Americans getting dropped into England. Sure, we all speak the same language, but that doesn't mean we'll understand half the nuances of daily interaction.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

There's a lot here that resonates for me. I first came into fandom via an RL friend -- sanj, who I've known for years, ever since college -- and for a long time, fandom was a thing that was part of our lives but not part of the lives of our other friends in our general tribal circle. This is a tribe of geeks, to be sure; many are gamers; many are fans of the various SF sorts of shows that often get fannishly adopted. But in my head, "fandom" was a different space on the Venn diagram of my life.

And then lj messed up all my neat boundaries. *g* My RL friends started getting on lj, and at first I had these weird sort of panic attacks every time one of them friended me. Like: were they going to see me differently, be uncomfortable around me, knowing that I write gay porn in my spare time? Over time I mellowed out about this, both because it became clear that some of my RL friends just weren't going to click on those cut-tags...while others were going to start reading, commenting, and diving into yuletide with glee and great abandon. :-)

I do still perceive some cultural differences in how my geek friends, and my fannish friends, use lj. (We're better at it. *g*) [ETA: "We" here meaning "fandom."] But on the whole, there's been a blurring of boundaries there thanks to lj, and that's turned out to be awesome.

(I also have a Professional Online Life which is entirely separate from all of this fannish stuff. I don't use the same email address, hell, I don't use the same browser for that part of my life! But that's a different issue for me altogether, having to do with separating my Work Life from Where I Go For Fun [tm].)

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

I think about LJ meta all the time, especially lately because I've made a lot of friends through LJ, some of whom are not particularly fannish people. I have multiple groups of readers, and I generally don't use filters. Any anonymity I may once have had, has generally degraded as I get to know more and more LJ people--the two worlds are intersecting more and more. The only exceptions are work people and family, but I suspect that may degrade over time as well.

[out-there.livejournal.com]

There's also this really uncomfortable suspicion that I may actually act completely differently with them than I do with say, anyone I've met online as far as self-editing goes, because I lose a lot of normal interact filters with people who know I'm curious about how certain sexual positions work and inappropriate lube choices.

I share that fear, absolutely. I'm at the stage where almost all of my friends (apart from one met at work, and she's as much of a dork as me, so there's not a lot of filtering going on there) are fannish people i've met via LJ and types that, y'know, get the occasional urge to start thinking about gay porn positions and if John would conceivably be that flexible.

And i get not wanting Real Life to be invited into online life because... well, the fannish types you meet online? They know about these tendencies before you meet them and don't disagree with the whole porn thing (in fact, they'll encourage you. very vocally.). Real life people... might accept it, or might think you're a freak.

[joannindiw.livejournal.com]

*doesn't read other comments*

I do the same thing. There is some filter both ways, though, so perhaps not as extreme...?

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, this is a huge issue.

I put a huge amount of effort into keeping my online life separate from my professional life, because, well, I'm a big ol' pervert and it's not appropriate for people I know professionally to run into that stuff about me. But on the other hand...I am a big ol' pervert. All my friends know that. That is fine as far as it goes but what happens when the lines between work and friends start to blur? I know this is one reason I've had trouble connecting with my classmates in grad school. I'm keeping half my life and more than half of my personality tightly under wraps.

I think it's actually causing problems for me in school because almost all the writing I've done for the past five years has been here. Now I am supposed to be writing academic papers, and I have a writing voice, but it's this one and it's not appropriate, and in trying to censor it I think I choke my writing off. Everyone at school thinks I'm a shitty writer - well, at school I am a shitty writer. It's kind of funny, really.

Vito Excalibur has a separate life from [name redacted] now, in a weird way. Different friends, different passions, different skills, different hobbies, different concerns, different talents. I always think of that bit in Brothers in Arms where Miles thinks that he'll need to worry when a brain scan taken while wearing his Dendarii uniform gives a different result from one taken while dressed as a Barrayaran. How long till then? :/

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's because with the people you meet online, you know them only as text and shared personal interests first. There's a lot more comfort sharing deeply personal things faster when it's such a faceless medium.

I worry a lot more about embarrassing myself when I meet people in person. It also usually means they live nearby, and if I embarrass myself or find out that I clash badly with them, I can't as easily avoid them. It's easier to separate yourself from a potentially awkward situation online; it's also easier to explain and work it out, since all you have is text to do it in. You're neither helped nor hindered by stuttering and blushing or horrified expressions. It's words.

Did that make sense at all?

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm in a similar boat. There is some overlap in my rl and lj friendships, but there are a number of people who are in one camp or the other. When I watch the new fall line-up I'll be discussing the slashability of the characters with one group, and the dialog/characterization/plotlines with the other.

The overlap group is wonderful.

[fox1013.livejournal.com]

I had almost no overlap til I went to college, and all of my friends had LJs and had LiveJournals, the whole bit. Now I think one person on my flist is from my school, and a few flisters are in the area, but by and large not so much intersection.

It's very bizarre to me that the people I interact with most of the time in my daily life DON'T have that point of reference for me.

[solar-cat.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it, I do this too. Due to my college wardrobe (fannish t-shirts, ahoy!) I managed to find a bunch of RL friends who were already fannish in some way ( \0/ ), but I do avoid talking about fannish things with anyone I've met in other contexts. And really, I don't even know where I would start. I've definitely pimped books and shows to people regardless of their fan/non-fan status, but I don't pimp the fandom at the non-fannish folks. Hm. Interesting topic to think about!

And on a related note, my Facebook page is such a completely different place from my LJ that if I didn't know me, I don't think I'd believe both are mine. *now feels very odd about this* :\

[fyrdrakken]

Yes. There's not much in my offline life that I wouldn't feel I could bring up on my LJ or with LJ friends (though I sometimes choose not to do so), but in terms of real world interaction there's a context missing with most of them that closes off entire areas of my life as conversational topics. My mother's a fan geek, but she doesn't know fandom, online or otherwise.

[fyrdrakken]

Also, huh. I just had a thought pertaining to areas of interaction, in that a number of members of my knitting group are not merely geeky but online geeky -- a weekend or two back some people were raving about Dr. Horrible for those who hadn't seen it, and I've got a couple of them on my LJ friends list -- but I don't recall fanfic or slash ever coming up as a topic. (Though porn has, on multiple occasions.) So in terms of Venn diagrams of areas of my life that are shared, the knitting circle is a bit closer to full overlap with the fannish circle even though it's mostly RL interaction, but I still find myself occasionally struggling with the amount of unshared context if the conversation turns to a franchise that's a currently active fandom of mine.

[elandrialore.livejournal.com]

I totally get where you're coming from, but I'm so completely the opposite, it's not even funny. In my first experience with fandom, I basically dragged my then roommate with me - I think it was a security thing, like, "I'm doing this, and so you are too," - and have continued to do that with her since. Though a lot less recently.

She was the one who actually 'outed' me to my mother by sending her one of my fanfics - Methos/Duncan, totally NC-17 - to which my mother basically responded, "Fabulous, and by the way, I've forwarded it to a whole bunch of my friends." Ummm, okay then.

After that, telling the rest of my family was pretty easy, sister, brother, dad. They've all read - or at least had the opportunity to read - my fanfics, as they've had access to any and all websites, including my lj, and I've also dragged friends from work into fandom, or at least the discussion of fandom. They all knew I went to cons, and one of my old bosses swears that he wrote a letter to Michael Rosenbaum on my behalf.

I mean, I don't tell everyone, obviously, but my mom even used it as an ice-breaker once when introducing me to one of her friends once. It's just, you know, one of my hobbies.

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

In my case, my three oldest and closest friends are people I met in fandom. Several other of my friends I also met in fandom. Non-fannish friends--like my friends at work, all know about fandom being in my life, because I've never been shy about it--over the years I've talked about cons and zines, played filk music in my office, worn fannish t-shirts on Casual Day, etc. I've shown zines and artwork to them. I've introduced a coworker to 'net fiction for her favorite show. I've even purchased zines for my boss. One of my work friends started writing her own fan fiction--although I don't think she wanted to call it that, because she still had the fan stereotype in her head and didn't want to be thought of that way.

And my family always has known about my fanac, as well. I guess reticence is just something I never learned. :-)

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

Jumping in late to say I understand that disconnect with bringing fandom into RL with folks who aren't already fannish. Some RL people who know me pretty well know about my involvement in slash fandom. One of them from work is a fan but isn't fannish (and doesn't know about the slash) and another friend is fannish but only on the edges of fandom. All but the latter are a little amused and bemused but don't get it. Just explaining the basics is awkward and so hard! And I live in terror that anyone at work would ever find out (my other social networking identities are very separate); they already think it's a little funny that I'm way into sci fi shows (except a couple of people who I suspect are closest fans--it's academia, c'mon! I wish we could have a secret decoder ring). And forget about my family! They figure something's going on because I'm online all night while visiting at home and quickly minimizing windows but I think they think it's just porn (which it is but they don't know what kind :) Crossing the streams is bad! I do wish I could blend a bit more sometimes but I don't want to lose my safe, private/public space either.