Books: You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day

Picked this one up prior to traveling to London and it was a nice, quick and easy read for the plane.

I am not, for the record, any particular fan of Ms. Day, though I've seen many of the shows she's been in (I'm a fan of Joss Whedon, so . . .) Why, then, did I decide to read her memoir? Because it sounded interesting. And as I read, I realized we have a lot of personality traits in common.

• Weird upbringing in the American South? Check. (Though mine was distinctly different from hers, I was equally isolated and had difficulty making friends.)
• Crush on Commander Riker? Check. Named my favorite teddy bear William. Though later MacGyver became my man.
• Creating elaborate worlds that combined favorite book and TV/film characters? Check. Mine had Han Solo and Indiana Jones as identical cousins, Patty Duke style, and for some reason they all spent a lot of time on the Enterprise. Also time traveling into the antebellum South, cuz I love me some houses with big columns.
• Astrology? Check. I still read charts for friends.
• UT Austin? Check. In fact, it sounds as if we attended at about the same time.
• Obsessive/addictive nature? Check. For me it was TV shows and movies rather than video games, but yeah. You should see my scrapbooks.
• Having a friendly support group hold you accountable and get you to start writing? Check.
• A people-pleasing, perfectionist nature? Check. I didn't necessarily need kids my age to like me, but boy howdy did I want my teachers to love me. All my self-worth was caught up in that, and I still struggle with it.
• Wanting to erase yourself from the world (digital or otherwise)? Check. I went through that a few years back, deleting accounts left and right, and I'm starting to feel that way again now.

Anyway. It's a great little book that doesn't require Felicia Day fandom to enjoy or relate, though whether you find her life and experiences interesting may be predicated on how much you like . . . geekdom? Day doesn't say anything specific about time on the Buffy set or other such things, instead focusing on her own work with The Guild and Geek and Sundry. We do get a lot about commercials and auditions, though, and acting classes, etc. And a bit about conventions, of course. (I was the guest at conventions when I was at UT, back when fan fiction had to be published in zines rather than just slapped onto the Internet. I was a fanfic author of some renown at the time—well, and my Sherlock fic from a few years back is still considered the gold standard—and those conventions were so fun. Maybe I'll get to do it again some day. Thanks, Felicia, for giving me permission to own that I got my start writing fanfic before moving on to more "serious" work.)

Other topics covered include mental illness and Gamergate. On the whole, it's a somewhat spotty story, but a good one. Worth the little bit of time it takes to read.