Day - Youre never weird on the Internet (almost): a memoir

Its hard to keep up with Felicia Day. Shes an actress, a gamer, a screenwriter, a songwriter, a producer, a director, a webmaster, a costumer, and queen of the geek girls. Its hard to imagine where such a prodigy could have come from. Wonder no longer. Felicia tells all... well, most... well, some... in her new book. Reading this is like sitting down and having dinner with her, and hearing the story of her life between the clam chowder and the cheesecake. I cant imagine a more charming or amusing dinner companion. Felicia is a lot of fun, and so is her book.

I came for the delightful snark, I stayed for the disarming frankness and the hard-won insights about the internetFelicia Day uses the internet to distribute entertainment, but she understands that its really there to be the nervous system of the twenty-first century.

Math nerd defies physics! Felicia Day, who is woven from moonbeams, has written a book that seems lighter than air but that ends up punching you firmly in the emotions. Felicia lays out a hilarious tale of how her unique upbringing, eclectic skill set, and killer work ethic led to The Guild , one of the pioneering works of online creativity. In the process, she pulls you inside her delicate skull, so that the final moving chapters arent as much read as they are experienced. An excellent book.

Felicia Day gives us an achingly funny, honest, open look at being situationally famous (I love that phrase), plus the vital art of finding your creative joy, and weathering the storms that follow. Its a wonderful book. Buy it before I grab all the copies.

Contents

Foreword

by Joss Whedon

Theres about twelve guys in very fine suits, scratching their heads. Im in a boardroom at a major Hollywood talent agency, having just presented my internet musical, Dr. Horribles Sing-Along Blog . With me are the other writers: my brother Jed, my sister-in-law Maurissa, my brother Zack, and Felicia Day. Though weve created the piece, we have no clearer idea of what to do with it, how to actually put it on the internet, than these fine-suited minds do. They hem and we haw. Their resident internet expert suggests tentatively that we could maybe put it on YouTubebut only if we cut it up into three-minute bits, because no one watches more than three minutes of anything.

Which is when the redhead pipes up.

Ive asked Felicia to come because I know shes internet savvy; her series, The Guild , was a guidepost for me in mounting Dr. Horrible . Ive sat with her, a couple of times, to learn about how it all works. I know she knows her stuff, but its still a surprise and a delight to hear her take the conversation and just run with it, own it, slam-dunk it, knock it out of the park. She sports-metaphors the shit out of that meeting. Talks rings around all of us, experts included: This site has the bandwidth but not the views; this one requires a fee; yes we could go here and charge up front but wed be compromising the ethos of the endeavor.... Im practically glowing, watching this girl, who looks all of fourteen, school a roomful of Professional Agent-Men and I realize, oh, of course: Im having a Buffy moment. They never saw her coming.

I have personal heroes, and Felicia Day is one of them. Shes kind and loyal and funny and weirdbut that describes a lot of my friends. Shes pretty and I want to touch her hairbut that describes, sadly, almost all of my friends, including the lads. But Felicia has something few of us do. Shes fierce. Shes more than a self-made womanI sometimes think shes not a human woman, that she willed herself into existence, before willing the world to make a place for this new, unfathomable creation. Felicia is stronger than I am, and stranger than I am, and she double-majored in math and violin (which she felt compelled to tell me within five minutes of meeting me). I love her for all these things. I love this book because it relates, hilariously and occasionally harrowingly, how she cameor brought herselfto be this singular (though double-majored) creature.

Its hard being weird. Noits hard living in a culture that makes it hard. This book deals with hardwithout rancor, without the ugly flush of one-upmanship. Felicia created a persona of the bewildered waif who somehow manages to manage (and occasionally triumph). That persona is a gloss on a similar, but more painful, reality. Her odd, compelling journey was more difficult than a lot of us who knew her knew. But thats part of her gift: she makes crippling anxiety look easy.

Another part of her gift is that shes damn funny. Even if shed come from the heart of normcore, her tale would be worth telling and well told. But she was raised in Crazytown, and the more foreign her territory, the more delightfuland somehow more relatableher tale becomes. Reading this book is like spending an afternoon with Felicia, hearing breathless tales (theyre always breathlessFelicia doesnt pause when she talks) of achievement, despair, and dazzling, almost transcendent nerdiness. This is the story of someone who found her place in a corner of the world that literally didnt exist till just before she showed up. Felicias place is always off the edge of the map, where dragons wait, and this story is more than a memoir. Its a quest. If you wanna survive, stay close to the redhead.

She knows her way.

Introduction

I recently experienced the perfect summary of my career at a Build-A-Bear store inside a suburban mall in Lancaster, California.

Okay, sure, a single adult woman in her thirties with no children might not necessarily pick that as the first place to kill an hour of her life. But Id never been inside one before, and Id already spent twenty minutes outside like a creepster, watching actual legitimate customers (mostly toddlers) go inside and, like modern-day demigods, craft the companion of their dreams. At a certain point, after eating two Auntie Annes pretzels, I decided to throw off the societal yoke of judgment.

Get in there, Felicia! Build yourself a stuffed friend. No ones around to witness your weakness!

So I entered, told the saleswoman I was browsing for a nephew, and proceeded to spend forty-five minutes trying to decide what design to get. My mom wasnt there, so I could take as long as I wanted. Unfortunately.

There was a six-legged octopus that almost took my heart, but after much agonizing, I settled on a stuffed Santa Claus. Because it was July, and a stuffed old man doll seemed more ironic. (The hipster attitude helped get me over the shame that I was buying a STUFFED ANIMAL FOR MYSELF .)

I moved on to the accessories aisle to dress my Santa. And proceeded to have a small panic attack. Because my impulse was to dress him in a flouncy pink tutu, but it was a small town and I didnt know if it would offend the saleswoman to make Santa a cross-dresser. But then I thought a liberal stance on the issue might, in a small way, help promote transgender rights in the area... when I turned to see four hip girls standing at the end of the aisle. Staring at me.