But that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead.
Engaging in displacement activity while struggling with chapter 20, I unwisely did my first Google ego scan in years. I came across someone rudely remarking that I have "a record of behaving very badly in fannish spaces". (Please don't Google for the phrase - they're entitled to their opinion.)
I got bit cross about this until I realised that I haven't done much of anything in any fannish space for about five and a half years, when I was hypomanic and, erm, less than diplomatic on a 2008 Chicago TARDIS panel about fan fiction. I've been apologising for that one ever since! :)
It's so obvious in retrospect that I was having an episode that day. All through the last half of the naughties, the Bipolar II was getting worse and worse, fuelled by the antidepressants, and I had no idea what was going on - even that something was going on. My clashes online were no longer the light-hearted Usenet barnies of the nineties, but were increasingly driven by irritability and anxiety. I was no longer shielded by significance or popularity - rather the opposite, in fact. (Can you imagine anything more likely to annoy fanficcers than an uppity tie-in novelist?) No wonder that, when the bullying started in 2007, I had that little breakdown, and had to fight my way back. Slowly. Wordily. With lots of postings like this one.
It's been two years now since the diagnosis, fandom. And I ain't missing you at all.
I got bit cross about this until I realised that I haven't done much of anything in any fannish space for about five and a half years, when I was hypomanic and, erm, less than diplomatic on a 2008 Chicago TARDIS panel about fan fiction. I've been apologising for that one ever since! :)
It's so obvious in retrospect that I was having an episode that day. All through the last half of the naughties, the Bipolar II was getting worse and worse, fuelled by the antidepressants, and I had no idea what was going on - even that something was going on. My clashes online were no longer the light-hearted Usenet barnies of the nineties, but were increasingly driven by irritability and anxiety. I was no longer shielded by significance or popularity - rather the opposite, in fact. (Can you imagine anything more likely to annoy fanficcers than an uppity tie-in novelist?) No wonder that, when the bullying started in 2007, I had that little breakdown, and had to fight my way back. Slowly. Wordily. With lots of postings like this one.
It's been two years now since the diagnosis, fandom. And I ain't missing you at all.