It has come to Dr. Merlin's attention that while most of her gentle readers are old hands or at least enthusiastic newcomers to fandom, some of those faces dropping by are in fact even newer than the n00bs to whom this column is dedicated. Thus, we will take a break from our continued work in Fandom 101 and step back for those still needing that extra leg up from Fandom 99.

First, let me say welcome. If you are one of us, and the more you keep reading the more likely it is that you are, you have found your people at last. Sit down, put your feet up, and hang out. We'll be here all night. Your first fandom experience may be bewildering as it is momentous. You may have been wishing for years that you could meet someone who has spent just as much time as you did playing pretend with other people's characters long after you hit high school and you were supposed to have moved onto sports, music and worrying about how you appear to the opposite (or same) sex. Dr. Merlin has been there. Years spent thinking about cartoon characters, when everyone else had moved onto 90210. Semester after semester of school vainly hoping for a friend who wanted to talk Star Trek instead of Friends. Meeting someone new at a party, seeing her nine inch Cpt. Picard dolly and immediately declaring friendship for life. But then there was the Internet, and people who formed entire email communities for the sole purpose of discussing a single character! And fanfic archives! And people who lived together in fannish groups so they could watch TV all the time!

It was beautiful.

You're there now. So I say welcome. Now here are some things you're going to need to know.

Not everyone here is going to agree with you. On anything. You're going to meet Flat Earthers and Moon Landing Deniers. You are certainly going to meet people who think your favorite couple is a blight on the universe and ought to be obliterated on principle. You're going to meet people whose favorite couple makes you want to claw out your eyeballs and bury them at a crossroads at midnight. You're probably going to argue with them and their friends several times before you learn the "My Squee Is Not Your Squee" mantra. This happens.

You're going to meet people who are dumber than you are. You're going to meet people who can't debate their points as well as you can. You're going to meet people who are married and have kids and careers and houses and retirement accounts. You're going to meet high school students. Some of them will be on your side. Some of them will not. The presence or absence of any of them on your side of a debate doesn't mean a thing. Really.

You're going to make friends with people from places you've only seen on a map. You're going to make friends with people who have jobs you never heard of. You're going to make friends who are in high school, and friends who've been working for thirty years, and friends who turn out to be a reasonable drive away from your hometown. You're going to meet more people than you ever thought possible.

You're going to meet people who think the person you support politically is the Anti-Christ, and never mind that you think their candidate is the Devil. And you're going to read their stories anyway, because you just want more. You're going to meet people who write incredible works of prose and poetry. You're going to meet people who post barely literate drivel. And you're going to read whatever you can get your hands on, at least at first, because it's about time that someone saw the potential in a Luke Skywalker / Eric Foreman crossover slash pairing.

You're going to see a lot of slash. You can read it if you want to. If you don't, you can click the Back button.

No one you meet is going to care about your Master's degree in English. Most of the folks here have one, or are working on one. The others are working on Graphic Design, Comp Sci or science degrees. You can try to pull out your degree and/or your GPA to try and bolster your argument of why your interpretation of canon is superior to another's, and you can sit and watch as everyone laughs at you. You might get a little more traction by trying to pull superior geek cred on someone, but you have to be careful on that, even here; it is indeed a sad thing when your fellow fans are tempted to tell you to get a life.

Here, you are not going to be judged by what you brought from outside. (Unless you're a published writer that we've heard of. Then you're going to be mobbed.) In fandom, you're going to be judged on what you bring to the group.

Fan artists draw and paint and Photoshop and tweak until they have brought forth something new. Banner-makers and collagers take photos and images and create the perfect title or background for a page. Iconmakers make funny or poignant or sweet statements on a 100 x 100 canvas.

Vidders find the perfect blend of song and source, cutting clips and timing beats to make something new from two things that never belonged together before. Meta writers peer into the new canon and try to pry out its hidden (and not so hidden) mysteries, even if that attempt is wrapped in a pile of flail. Fanfic writers tell the stories trapped inside their heads as best they can. Readers take in the fanfic, absorb the meta, watch the vids, look at the art, and they comment to let the creator know that what they saw rocked their socks. Reccers do that and then tell the world.

Everyone contributes. Or they don't. Sometimes they don't have time or energy or interest, and no one can fault other fans for a lack of all three. But the trade-off is that no one ever learns your name, or says, "Yeah, I've heard of Jane Fangirl. She writes awesome recs.

And have you seen her manips?" If you want other fans to know who you are, you have to give them something they want, be that pretty pics or well-written 'fic. If you'd like to remain safely anonymous, that's okay too.  Fandom is opt-in and it is always opt-out, too.

You're going to annoy someone at some point. Lots of people are going to annoy you. You're probably going to yell at them from time to time before you realize that someone being wrong on the Internet is not a crime, and usually isn't even worth arguing about. Even when they're obviously wrong. Even when it's something you know you're right about. Even on that subject. When you do decide to argue anyway, keep in mind that things you say on the Internet will be preserved somewhere by someone until the end of time, and the drunken rant about a character you hate, the one you felt so self-righteous about last night, will be the same post people still come across by Googling you five years from now when you have changed fandoms twice and also sobered up.

You are going to take online quizzes and post memes and despair of never quite fitting in even among the weirdos because your answers aren't exactly the same as everyone else's. You are going to learn, eventually, that everyone else is too busy feeling alone and neurotic about their own results to notice that you're not lockstep with the rest. Your results might even encourage someone else to say, "Wait! Mine's actually like that too!" (You may also someday realize that humor pieces based on Dr. Merlin's life are not designed to become memes declaring the ultimate in fannish identity. Thus you should not panic if your fannish experiences are not identical to hers, just as anyone who self-identifies as a redneck does not despair of losing that identity because s/he has not had his/her nipple bitten off by a beaver. Some things are just a matter of degree.) You are going to join groups and feel left out because you're new and everyone else already knows each other. In a couple of weeks or so, you'll be the one who knows everyone when the next n00b arrives.

You are going to be seen as part of a culture. The fandoms you choose to associate yourself with will be seen by other people as a part of your identity. The bad news is that, just because you declare yourself a fan of a particular book series, television show, or movie, (and/or of a relationship or character) random strangers on the Internet will automatically think you are batshit insane just by association. The good news is that every fandom has its own batshit, and if you do your best not to flame or troll, you can get a reputation for being one of the sane ones without much trouble.

You will meet batshit insane people. Some of them will come across as perfectly nice until you bring up the subject that makes them frothy at the mouth. Your choices are to back away slowly, change the subject, or argue with them. Reread what I said about the drunken rant before you go with option C. Do not assume people who belong to a particular fandom or 'ship are batshit insane. Do not assume people who don't like your favorite show or character are batshit insane, or stupid, or unenlightened. Don't assume it about people who 'ship an opposing 'ship to yours. Don't assume it about people who have lower or higher geek cred than you. Don't assume it about people who didn't like your fanfic or artwork or meta.

Sometimes people disagree. And it's okay to disagree. It's not okay to make personal attacks because you disagree with someone's opinions. (Dr. Merlin is willing to concede that cases in which that opinion is, "And they/you should be wiped from the Earth" are grounds for stepping up the dialogue to "You're an idiot" levels. But those should be decided on a case-to-case basis.) Read up on your canon; this is the Internet and it's available everywhere. Learn enough not to annoy the canon Nazis. At the same time, give other fans a break when they haven't memorized the dialogue from the '70s animated spinoff like you did. Remember that everyone's here to have fun and celebrate the things we love.

The most important thing you can give yourself, young fanling, is time. Spend time thinking about what you want to do in fandom, be that reading or writing or making friends or squeeing like a squeeing thing or all of the above. Spend time before you hit "Send" on posts, and consider who will be reading it now, and who will be reading it three years from now. Spend time before you respond to trolls or Big Name Fans or your best fannish friend or even that brand new commenter in your journal, and make sure what you're about to say is what you mean, be that, "Thank you, and here is a compliment in return," or, "I hate you. Die die die." Time is the difference between making a sobbing three a.m. phone call to your ex and having pancakes the next morning with your best friend where the two of you discuss how dumb it would have been to make that call. Sometimes, you're going to call anyway. Do it on a full stomach.

Don't be petrified by a fear of screwing up. Everyone screws up. Do be cautious about hurting other people, especially people whose opinions matter to you. (A friend's button she got at a con: "I'd rather have a bigot think I was a lesbian than a lesbian think I was a bigot.") Understand that you have the right (depending on the laws where you live) to speak your mind. Understand that so do people who don't agree with you. Understand that your webspace is probably owned by someone else, and they get the final say on what is and isn’t posted on their server.

You're in for a lot of fun, and a lot of crazy, and a lot of headdesking, and a lot of mindbending, and a lot of pictures of cats. Again I say welcome. You're ready for Fandom 101.