Some of you already know this story.

The Internet came to my college in 1992, and by the end of that Fall, most of my friends had discovered email (by 1994, this discovery had led to the academic suspension and expulsion of people I knew). Since ours was a women's college, we quickly discovered that the Boys were Online, and for the percentage of the student body that was into boyparts, that meant online dating. That our brother school was the Naval Academy only fed the craze from both ends of the cable. My group of friends became friends with a group of Midshipmen, mostly plebes, and because we could, we had nicknames: Sir This, Lady That, Maid Whoever. To this day, I make the perhaps invalid assumption that anyone with "Lady" in her username is pretty new online. I didn't have a nickname at first, because my name didn't flow with any of the honorifics, until one day a friend of mine saw an email from me, which within our system came across as "Servername::Username" and as our server was named Merlin, and I'm a Missy everywhere, she picked my handle for me.

My handle is now old enough to drive and will soon be old enough to vote in Chicago. (That's what's known as "a joke," for the fans in the cheap seats.) There is at least one person on my Livejournal Friends list who is younger than my online name, and that number is only going to go up as friends' kids get older.

Hi. I'm Merlin Missy. MM for short. Merlin the Great and Terrible (pronounced "Merwin the Gweat and Tewwible" because I like Stephen King) when I'm feeling particularly wacky, and MtGaT (all capitalization optional and you should know I mock people who insist on lowercase usernames because I'm mean that way) when I need a username that isn't already taken. I have only ever encountered one mtgat who isn't me; this appears to be a 56 y.o. from Japan who's into bondage porn on YouTube. (Wank on, namebuddy. Wank on.) Have I had other pseuds online? Sure. Different writing forms sometimes get different nom de plumes, especially when I'm trying to keep my 'fic sorted. Those don't get personalities, they get bylines on stories. It's enough of a pain to login to say "Thank you!" for story reviews. Maintaining separate lives? Not worth the aggravation.

That's me. Now, I repeat the part about having been online for almost seventeen years. In that time, my handle has been associated with my real name in enough places that it wouldn't take much digging, if any, to find me. Reverse-engineering that would be a bit harder, given my name irl, but certainly not impossible. I've had the option of changing my online identity to make myself less noticeable and I've decided against it because for all the wacky that I've done under this name, it's mine. And there has been wacky. Seventeen years in fandom, I've said my share of boneheaded things, gotten into flamewars over pairings, annoyed people, alienated friends, and argued about the cultural significance of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as a metric of overall social justice in the U.S. As you do. I've also written a lot of fanfic, some good, some very bad, some funny, some porny, most just navel-gazing dressed up in spandex (and occasionally loincloths – you had to be there). I've written essays, at least one of which I still get feedback on about once a week, over a decade after a particular late-night posting session I tend to label in my head as "Merlin is pissed off about something again." Much of this column is me looking back on myself as a younger fan and saying, "You fool! Don't do that!" or, "Wow, that had no right to turn out nearly as well as it did."

I'm here, more or less exactly as I am offline, only louder, a little better at expressing what I want to say (usually – I'm a mess trying to talk to people irl), and much more inclined to feel like I'm part of a community where I belong. I have my name, my reputation (for good or ill) and when I forget the time-honored tradition of walking away from the keyboard for a while to get my thoughts together before replying to someone I disagree with, about a character or a storyline or a political position or basic courtesy online or off, well, I have that too as part of my online history. Dig around enough, and you can probably find a record of every messageboard or mailing list argument I've ever been involved in, and that's a part of me too.

None of that gives you the right to out me. None of that means you get to find the info linking my real name and real life to my fannish stuff and put it somewhere with malicious intent. None of it makes things okay for you to try to hurt me or endanger me or affect my job prospects via employer Google. I'm easy enough to find, and I can live with that, but it's my job to be stupid or sensible about it, not yours.

(cont. on Page 2)

Online, I have friends. I have acquaintances. I have enemies. Some have chosen to link their real names and so on with their fannish or other online activities. Others have kept both lives carefully separate. Everyone has her or his own reasons for doing so. Some are just fond of their fundamental right to privacy. Others are worried for their jobs. Would you feel comfortable knowing your first grader's teacher writes gay porn on the Internet? Can you say the same for your next door neighbors? Personally, I'd probably start asking her – my child's teacher is female – what her fandom is. My neighbors would likely want their child's teacher fired. (These neighbors should not be confused with my fannish!neighbors who have been previously mentioned in this space, who would likely argue that the gay porn was OOC and totally ignored the real OTP of the series. Ah, fandom.) Some have very real fears for their lives: ex-lovers, vindictive or unstable family members, intolerant people in their communities. Remember, we're here to talk about our squee, but a lot of us also spend a lot of time talking about our lives, from real-life biases we've encountered to talking out past traumas to coming to grips with one's own sexuality. Also, this is the Internet. There are nutbars here whose entire joy in life comes from stirring up shit, and they'd love to have your home phone number too.

Pseudonyms give us space, as pseudonyms have always given us space as people. Space to be ourselves without conferring on all our online discourse the same constraints as those in the real world. Space to explore facets of our personalities we wouldn't otherwise be allowed, due to societal pressure. Space to be heard, especially for those who've been told from birth to be deferential and quiet and meek and not to make waves, not to draw notice. Online pseudonyms give us space to draw that notice based solely on the words we share, or don't share, without taking either the authority or perceived lack we might have should we sign our real names. And there are people who do that, who choose to link their real names with their online handles, who choose to put their reputations in one space reliant on that reputation from the other. If you are a published author and you go online as that published author, you will for better or worse bring your reputation with you when you come here, and the stupid things (or lovely things, because there's always a choice) you do here will follow you back home. As I said, there's always a choice, and you make it when you choose to bring your offline influence into an online space. The other option is to split. I had a fannish acquaintance (we never quite made friends, but I always liked her and still do) who was about to be published professionally, so she went through her various fannish haunts and cleaned out the places where her real name came up, and asked people who owned the spaces she didn't to help scrub her name from their pages. (I was one of those. Con report.) Now she maintains her professional identity and her fannish identity, and while a lot of people know the two are the same, only the occasional nitwit tries to make something of it or fix her Google results.

Note: Google gives and it takes away, and if you haven't scrubbed your entries at the Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org) lately, you may want to take a look.

'Cause let's be blunt here. Fanfiction dwells in that very murky grey legal area of "Don't ask permission, and they'll pretend they don't know." We're part marketing machine for our properties, part nightmare for their PR divisions; who hasn't at some point said, "I'm a fan of XYZ, but I'm not in the fandom," with the heavily implication that said fandom is batshit insane. Fandom reputation overlaps with property reputation, and people still think all Star Trek fans are single guys in their forties who live in their parents' basements, dress up like Spock, and don't shower. People still back away slowly when someone mentions being a Beauty and the Beast fan. (True story: when Cygnet and I first started chatting, years ago now, we both knew the other was a BatB fan, and we both had to dance around at first without quite asking: "Are you one of the crazy ones?" Answer: probably not.) All this means that, should your real name and fannish name overlap enough for a Google search, you need to be okay with the idea that the HR person and/or the hiring manager looking you up for a possible job is going to find quasi-legal stories featuring hot human-on-Klingon pR0n (with optional sheep) and every flamewar you ever started because clearly those deranged Luke/Leia 'shippers are exactly like Hitler and let's not start with those obnoxious people who don't see the holy perfection of (and potential in!) Impala/DeLorean crossover carsmut.

You don't want that. We don't want that. This is our playground and our home away from home and our soapbox and our neighborhood bar and our commons. This is the place where we learn to speak out and act out and where we share our weirdest dreams and naughtiest fantasies and fondest hopes and worst fears. It's a stage with a microphone and a private room with invitations and a wall we scrawl on and a well we sit beside to rest at the end of the day. And sometimes we choose to be exactly who we are in the outside world, and sometimes we choose to be a little better, a little closer to perfect, and sometimes too we let out our worse selves (but your vision of my very worst self might be my vision of my greatest being, and the same back).

This is who we are. This is who I am. While some of us might be intimidated by the chance of being revealed, of being laid open to personal danger or professional retribution, by no means will we all be scared that way, by anyone for any reason. And there's a lot of us. So please consider that before you go naming names; the butt you save may be your own.