Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Are You Out or In?

This is based on a question which Yvonne posted to the fanfic email list a few years ago. Someone mentioned being a closet FoLC on IRC and I thought it would make a good poll.

So... how closeted are you?


Wendy

I voted for coming 'out of the closet' bit by bit.

I have a few Superman trivia in my study and a few 'Lois and Clark' paperbacks and comic books floating around, so friends and family know. But I don't talk about it, only if they ask. Problem is, no one I know watches the show.

Maybe some day I'll be brave enough to introduce my closest friends to fanfic and let them read some of mine. I've been part of this Fandom for so long now I don't feel too awkward about it anymore.

Ursie

I'm kind of inbetween a couple of the options.

I have no problem telling people that I 'play' on the Lois and Clark websites, or that I write Lois and Clark fan fiction, it's just that most of them either don't really understand, or could care less, or both.

A few people have written down the archive address, but I'm sure they haven't bothered to go there and read anything of mine.

A friend of mine who is a professional comic book writer occasionally will ask me if I've written anything lately, and we will discuss what I've recently written, but I'm sure he's never sampled the online stuff.

Tank (who doesn't care if those who aren't really into Lois and Clark ever read his stuff because they won't 'get' the stories anyway)

I am kind of in between on both. My parents used to know i was a folc and that i wrote fanfic. Now they think I have long since stopped. The number of lies I had to tell them to go to the beach this summer with my folc friends was absolutely insane.

Since I don't have a spouse or even a boyfriend, they don't know, but the one person that knows about it all is my best friend and roommate rachel. This was not on purpose/ She caught me plotting stories in class once and begged to read it until she found teh stories on my computer and read them. Then once I was IMing Annie and she IMed me and i ended up typing my response to Annie into Rachel's IM window -- and it was feedback to a story part she had imed me. Let me tell you, that was embarrassing. So rachel knows, and she makes fun of me a lot, but she hasn't told anyone else in a few years. She did use it as my "sister question" for the pledges in our sorority, but that's a whole other story. I seriously got her back with the question I asked about her.

This long story, written so to aviod studying for my final tomorrow, does have a point. I am mostly closeted, just about completely, but one person knows and teases me relentlessly.

Sorry for the typos and lack of capitolization. Typing 1-handed stinks

I'm totally in the closet. :p I bet one of my friends has seen me surfing sites like this, but other than that...my family thinks everyone who does chat rooms and message boards are all internet stalkers waiting to kidnap us all. So believe me, they aren't finding out anytime soon. They've almost caught me a few times reading fanfic and posting and such online...I think my mom thought I was looking at porno or something for a while back when I lived at home on a regular basis...I would always exit out of my browser whenever I heard her coming in my direction. It sort of amused me. So yeah, that's my paranoid family in a nutshell...ps, they're still waiting for people to scale the balcony to break into the dorms at school and steal my guitar. (And yes it's possible, I regularly lock myself out and have to do it. ) :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

JD

I'm totally in - both as a folc in general and as a writer. Even my roommate has no clue. When Kathy came to stay with us this summer, I told him she was an old family friend.

All of my friends know that I write, because I also write original fiction, so if I talk about writing, they just assume it's one of those projects. I did show one of my stories to my best friend once. I did it only because she was stuck on a writing project of her own and the story I sent her dealt with exactly the problem she was struggling with. I agonized for days about whether to show it to her, and nearly hyperventilated after I hit send. I didn't tell her anything about folcdom though. I just told her it was writing exerisize. She really liked the story and it helped her, but she thought the fact that I was writing about Superman was pretty weird, and we basically never mentioned it again.

I'm not entirely certain why I'm so tight-lipped about it. I just don't want to have to explain myself, I guess. It's something that I enjoy, and I don't want to be made to feel guilty about it. Also I like having someting that is just mine. Because almost all of my close friends also worked at the newspaper with me when I worked there, I was with them basically 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. Folcdom was a great escape.
Since I no longer work at the paper, I don't have that issue anymore, but the feeling of escape is still nice.

I keep telling myself I'm going to tell more people, but somehow it never seems to come up. <G>

Annie

Oh, I'm hanging out all over I've mentioned FoLCdom and fanfic to all sorts of people... bosses, church friends, my son's school psychologist... (and the psychologist still thinks I'm a good mom! :p ) The level of detail varies, depending on the conversation. I'm most guarded around my husband's family, but they still know some things. But I'm pretty pleased with myself to have friends and readers all around the world, so it tends to come up.

PJ

Out and proud! I don't think it is possible to know me and not know I'm a FoLC. It's not quite as obvious now as when the show was airing, but definitely people know. I'll see someone I hang out with occasionally and they'll mention superheroes and I'll say, "Well, Lois & Clark..." And I'll hear, "Oh, that's right, you're a big Lois & Clark fan." And the inevitable (c'mon, say it with me. We've all heard it...) "Didn't that end years ago?" :rolleyes: And I think to myself, your point is? <g>

As for the second question, that was little more difficult to answer. I don't hide the fact that I write fanfic, but not everyone who knows me knows. Most do though. My family and friends tend to read my stories.

The most interesting thing though is trying to explain the social aspect of it. I'll mention a folc and someone will ask who? And then I try to explain, and they look at me like I'm weird. I try to explain that there are many more people like me, but... /me shrugs Like Anna and I explaining to people how we met. <g> "Through the internet?" "Because of Lois & Clark?"

Your point is? <g> Okay, I'm a little silly today.

Jana (who is now officially a 2nd year nursing student)

Because of my nut computer I can't vote but I'll express what happens here with me <g> I'm kind in between too. I mean my family knows that I love Lois and Clark and they have been putting up with my obsession for years. They don't really understand why I have to watch LnC a lot of times or why I have every episode on tape (or the fact that I made lots of copies and when the tapes get old I just record all the episodes again since the show is still airing in Brazil...talk about obsession ) or why I have lots of LnC pictures in my bedroom or things like that in my computer and they complain about that sometimes but I don't care anymore <g> Some friends know but they don't care about that. I try not to talk about LnC with people just if someone asks me something related to it (it's funny when people ask me about Smallville and I start to say why I hate it and ask if they ever watch Lois and Clark ) but most of the times I don't talk about it because people don't get it. They can be mean saying it is a childish show or it's a stupid thing.

It was weird when I found out LnC fanfic. My parents already thought I was crazy because I watch the episodes all the time but they think it is worse with fanfic. They don't understand. When I started writing my mom said I should write a real book so I could make some money. I told her that I write for fun and I love writing about Lois and Clark.

It was funny when I met Adam...everyone keeps asking me how I met him and it is weird to say I met him because of IRC They normally don't understand how deep is that but well they don't know all the story behind it since I can't tell them about LnC

Okay, so some people know but others don't.

Raquel (who just showed to everyone here how crazy she is )

...That's me to a Tee! My parents have no clue. They knew I was a FoLC when the show was ON, they knew I wrote fanfic when the show was ON, but if I was to tell them I STILL do, they'd prob tell me to "get over it, the show's not on anymore!"

So... As a result, the only way to read the works of Wanda Detroit is online. Yes, I do occasionally advertise my fanfic on LiveJournal. So I'm an Outed Online FoLC and pretty much semi-Closeted elsewhere.
But I love the mbs because at least here I can be open with people who STILL love L&C as much as I do!!!!
-Wanda

I don't deny it if people ask me, and if it comes up in a conversation (though it hardly ever does) I join in, but I don't just come up to people and say, "Oh, you know what happened to Lois and Clark in this story I read yesterday? Wait till I tell you all about it!" (well, I used do that to my best friend, but she would get annoyed and shut me up so I stopped)

It's just that no one I know watches or even knows the show. My generation (excluding rarities like me and Anna) doesn't know L&C because it started when I was 5 and ended when I was 9. I watched it from age 6 or 7, but hardly anyone else did- even though there were reruns, but come on, no one watches TV at 8 AM, school or summertime. Even I never woke up that early in the summer- I always set up my VCR to record for me.

I do tell people I write, and when they ask me what, I do say fanfic.

Let's just say that: If we ever got an assignment in school, to write a paper or a speech or something on the topic of our choice, I would probably choose Superman. Actually, my friend told me about this guy she saw that made a poster about Supes for school, but I never saw it .

Julie

Oh my gosh, this is the best poll ever. I'm loving reading everyone's responses!

Just like Pam, I'm hanging out all over the place. Everyone knows that I'm obsessed with Superman, and almost everyone knows that I write fanfic. Most of my friends and family (good-naturedly) torture me about it, but my dad actually thinks it's great because it's gotten me really into computers. I used to be afraid to even unhook or hook up my computer, and now I'm constantly upgrading it and installing new hardware and software. The other day my dad started to explain something computer-ish to me, and I was like, "Dad, I know how to do that." He laughed.

Side note: I've recently become obsessed with One Tree Hill. Anyone who's not watching it should give it a try for a couple of eps. The other day I was talking about it to my mom and she said, "Is this going to become like your Lois and Clark thing?" It is. It's that good.

Anyway, I'm absolutely fascinated that anyone could possibly keep it a secret. For me, it just seems to come up all the time. People ask me what I do in my spare time, or where I want to go to law school (in NC, with Annie!), or where I got that cool CD I'm listening to (from Sas for my b-day!). Or sometimes it'll be in a conversation that's totally unrelated, but something reminds me of something someone here said ("oh, my friend *insert FoLC's name here* said that the other day..."). For the most part that last convo doesn't end in a FoLC-admission, but try saying that to someone when the FoLC's name is Labby. People go "What??" and I have to go, "Well, her screenname is LabRat, but a lot of us just call her Rat or Labby." Just picture the look on someone's face when you tell them that.

EDIT AGAIN: I just thought of another good non-FoLC-not-getting-it story. I was explaining to my roommate about how there are some people in the fandom who don't get along with each other all that well, and she got this thoughtful look on her face and said, "So, it's kinda like real life then?" Appearently up to that point she thought we all behaved sort of robotically without getting to know each other or bonding or having arguments or anything of the sort. :rolleyes:

I know I already responded, but I saw that Anna (my long lost twin, but I was also long lost, so...) posted, so I just had to comment. <g>

Of course, my mom thought the same thing about Anna. So I guess both are moms were pretty happy when we came out of are first meeting unaxed. <g> As Anna nnd I both patiently tried to explain to our moms, "Anybody who knows that much about Lois & Clark doesn't have time to be a serial killer!"

Jana

EDIT: Anna added the robot thing while I was making my post, and I just had to add that I've kind of seen that in people too. They assume we post stories and never just enjoy conversing back and forth. Like that's weird or something!

Hello, long lost Twinnie!! (For the record, *Jana* was the one who was lost. I've been right here. )

Yup, I told my mom, "Anyone who writes waffy fanfics about a show that was cancelled that many years ago is not an axe murderer." And then I had to explain the word 'waffy'.

~Anna

EDIT: Now Jana edited while I was posting... gee, we're not alike or anything.

LOL at Jana and Anna!

I didn't start writing for close to two years after that, and then I didn't tell him at first. I think it was about three or four months after my first story was finished that I finally mentioned it - and he's been supportive ever since, though I do occasionally get grumbles about me needing to try to write for publication and actually earn some money from it. (Hah! As if! :rolleyes: ).

Anyway, until maybe four or so years ago that was it: only he knew. But since then I have mentioned, oh so casually, to one or two close friends that I have friends I met 'on the Internet'. And how did I meet them? Oh, we were all fans of the same TV series, and we're mostly writers, and we just get on well...

And most recently, when Kaethel came to stay with me last, she actually met one of the few RL friends of mine who knows that I write.

So... tiptoeing very gingerly out of the closet, I suppose, with no real intention of ever emerging fully. Apart from anything else, I couldn't imagine how my colleagues at work (university lecturers/professors) would react - let alone the students! :rolleyes:

More stories, please!!


Wendy

I'm kind of between options too. I've never been in the closet - I always jabbered on about going to Trek cons when I was younger to anyone who would listen. <G> Frankly that was less bravery than it was it never occurred to me to keep quiet. Probably should have done as I'm certain I was thought of as a little out there in left field as a result. But that was their problem, not mine. I always thought spending the weekend in a smoky disco getting drunk and falling flat on your face was a pretty weird way to spend your downtime. So we kind of evened out there. <g> Mostly we just accepted each other's weirdness.

And when I was working I'd spend a lot of time proofing the previous night's draft of a story and writing during my breaks, so no one could really miss my obssessions there.

Everyone I know knows my interests - but I generally don't talk much about it and didn't even when I was working. Just simply because I don't think anyone is much interested and I wouldn't want to bore them. <g>

I was very surprised a few years back when my brother mentioned he'd read some of my stories. Apparently he'd found Menolly's website which hosts some of them. But then he'd found some old poems of mine from way back when I left home to get married and he took over my bedroom and he read and enjoyed those too, so I wasn't too panicked by that. <g>

LabRat

In that case, Wendy, I hope you're writing under a pen name Otherwise, one curious Google search will out you!

I kind of get a kick out of telling people I met my friends on the Internet <g> Now, it helps a *lot* that several of those friends are within driving distance, but it's fun to see people's faces. One of the best times was when I was in labor Kelley couldn't face the delivery room, so Chris agreed to be my labor coach. The nurse was making conversation: "oh, you're friends, that's nice, how did you meet?" We sort of looked at each other, then one of us said, "We met on the Internet" ) turned out to have been closed, but we worked around that

My parents know about IRC, and the writing (my mom's read one or two of my stories, which is more than I can say for my husband), and the Kerths... "Hey, Mom, I'm glad you're visiting for the weekend and all, and it's great that my brother & his wife are here, too, but, um, I have to go online now to run this awards ceremony... could you watch the baby for me for the next four-five hours? Thanks!" <g> Although for a while I think she thought of you all as sort of a complicated computer game I was playing...

Oh, and then there was the time at a Tupperware party, with church friends... the consultant asked us all to introduce ourselves, including one thing that made us unusual. Naturally, I said that I'd written stories that were read all around the world, and that one had even been translated into French

PJ
who is actually more shy than all this makes her sound

edit: have to agree with LabRat -- I've been thought weird by many many people since grade school, so this wasn't that big of an adjustment for me.

I’m still pretty much in the closet. Only a few people know about my online activities. I’ve told my brother, although I doubt he still remembers everything I told him. <g> My best friend knows, and maybe one day she’ll even read what I write. I know she’d love to, but I’m still not sure I should let her read it. Then some other friend know I’m Folc as well, but most people don’t know I’m writing fanfic. It just never came up in conversations.

My parents do not know much about it. For quite some time I thought they wouldn’t understand it at all and would think everyone was a murderer or something like that. Gradually, I’m telling them about it. Right now, they know I read the stories and already think I’m crazy (well, nothing new about that! ). They also know I chat a lot and have friends all over the world. They just don’t know about the LnC connection with that yet. They really don’t understand my obsession with it. But they approve of me having friends abroad I haven’t even met. And that’s a good thing, since it’s hard to hide if you get gifts from them.

But that’s only very recent. Half a year ago, I met up with some folcs and I had to lie to leave the house. It got rather interesting since one of them stayed a few days at our house too. Now that worked out fine and since then I’ve told my parents more, since they must have been wondering what the heck I always did up my room.

Another fun moment was during the Alt Kerths. I got pretty stressed that last week trying to organize the whole thing. Especially since I also had exams that week. Needless to say, my exams didn’t go well. But explaining why it went so bad while I had spend so many hours ‘studying’ at my room was difficult. Luckily, I still passed all my classes, so it wasn’t a problem in the end. Except for the morning after the AK’s… or Kerts even. I was ready to go back to bed about two hours after I got up. <g> And really, that’s not me! It wasn’t like I could say ‘sorry Mom, but I had some online award ceremony last night and I only went to bed around 4am.’

Lately I do tell people more and more. And most of my friends are okay with it. Can’t say I’m any weirder than them, since they love other shows as much I do with LnC. But it certainly makes life a lot easier if I don’t have to be careful with what I’m saying.

Saskia

I'm more in the closet than out - the only person who really knows about my LnC obsession is my husband, who, oddly enough, is probably the one person in the world who finds it really weird! He can't understand obsessions of any kind - especially one based on a television show that ended so many years ago. Since I tend to go into anything that so holds my interest at about 110%, I often feel guilty, like a drug addict sneaking a fix in a dark alley, hoping I won't get caught, because I spend all my spare time writing and reading and chatting.

I've not really told anyone that I write fanfic and have only shown my mom a couple of my stories. Mostly, I keep this "hobby" to myself because I'm afraid people won't take me seriously. Since fanfic brings little to the writer other than personal satisfaction (i.e., no cash or mainstream accolades), I think people tend to see it as very frivolous, and I hate the feeling of having to defend myself for indulging in an activity that I really enjoy. Somehow, saying that you stayed up until 2 am to write a fanfic sounds a lot crazier than staying up until 2 am to finish your great American novel <g>.

As a matter of fact, recently, I asked my brother for some legal advice for Rage, and I told him it was for a story exercise for my writing class rather than for a fanfic. Of course, when he wanted to read the finished story, I had to confess!

Also, like others have mentioned, the whole notion of meeting people and making friends through the internet holds a certain unreal quality. Kind of like - "don't you have any real, breathing, living friends that you need to find them on-line?" Ever since I stopped working and am home alone with two small kids, it seems even more isolating, I think, to admit to such an addiction because the image of the lonely stay-at-home mother is perpetuated.

What I didn't know until I discovered this fandom is that such internet relationships have a whole other benefit because you get to meet people who you would never get to know due to geography. And also, these friendships offer as much and sometimes more than ones with real, living 3D people standing in front of you. There is a certain level of unconditional acceptance and shared passion that really creates a strong bond.

I don't know if I would ever come completely out of the closet unless it was to other fans. I can't imagine stating to all of the other moms at the next Daisy troop meeting or playdate that I have to rush home to check the boards for feedback on my latest post <G>. I'm just too afraid that they would all look at me like I'd sprouted a third eye in the middle of my forehead.

But if anyone in my "real life" wanted to discover my secret, they can use my real name on Google to see if it would pop up a story or two!

Lynn

Oh the joys of dodging the "how do you know each other" question.... As someone who is totally closeted, it's something I have a lot practice in. Sarah was the first folc I met and we were both wary of telling people how we met. So we told people that we met through a mutual friend at a party right before I moved to NC, so that was why most of our friendship was developed online. This lie actually worked really well - my friends all still believe this - but I don't think her parents bought it for long. After awhile, they would make comments like, "Well, when you guys met online..." We'd just look at each other trying to figure out if it was a trap.

My friends know or at least know a lot about Sarah, Tracey, Pam and Kathy, so when all else fails, and someone asks who I know a folc, I just say, "Oh, they're a friend of ...."

The best though was this summer when Sarah, Tracey, Kaylle, LauraU, Bethy, Jill and I all went to the beach together. We were sitting around one day when these two guys approached and talked to us for awhile. They seemed really nice and we had a great time talking to them for awhile, until the dreaded "so, how do y'all know each other?". After a long, uncomfortable silence, Tracey says, "Well, we all went to college." True - note the artful dodging of the lie. She didn't claim we went there together. <G> "Oh great," the guy replied. "Where did y'all go." Yet another long pause. Then, "Well...we all transfered a lot." The guy looked at us like we were absolutely nuts and let it drop. They probably still talk about those weird girls they met at the beach and wonder how we really met. <G>

As for the googling thing, that's exactly why I don't use my full name for fanfic. I don't want someone stumbling across it. I'm not secretive at all about my identity - tons of folcs know my full name, address, phone number, etc - but I don't want my full name on stories. Same for email. For a long time I had my primary email as the address on my stories both on the boards and on the archives, but then I realized that it's just as easy to google someone's email address as their name (in fact, it's a trick I use a lot) so I created a secondary yahoo account. I figure that's enough steps that no one is going to find it by accident. If anyone looks hard enough to find it, they deserve to know. <G>

Annie