The Official How-To-Write Fan.Boy

by Jamas Enright

HISTORY:

He was originally a university student by the name of Barry Knewbee, but 
was pulled across realities, due the Peril Room fractaling normal reality, 
and arrived on alt.comics.lnh (Actually, only a copy of his conscioucness 
was pulled across. As far as Barry Kneubee could tell, he was 
disorientated for a moment, but soon recovered.)
Arriving in the Peril Room, he showed a lot of knowledge of past 
events, and a fannish tendency towards those he met, and was named 
Fan.Boy due to this.

APPEARANCE:
He stands 5 ft 7, clad in a red spandex outfit, with a belt striped 
yellow on top and white below. On his chest is a large white spot in 
the middle, which has an "F.B" logo in yellow going diagonally from top 
left to bottom right. He also wears a blue cape. He has no mask, but does 
sport large thick-rimmed glasses and thick, short black hair.

POWERS:
His one offensive power is to literally stun people with his ability to 
pronouce punctuation. (Just imagine being able to pronouce every bracket 
of a LISP program.) This stuns everyone who can be stunned (excluding 
robots, deaf people, or emotionless beings) for an amount of time 
proportional to the amount of punctuation pronouced. (ie. more 
punctuation, more time stunned.) However, this also effects the Writer, 
so when ever Fan.Boy stuns, a few lines are given blank to indicate the 
Writer's stunnedness. (The actions of beings not stunned are given 
during this time in brackets.)
Eg.
        Fan.Boy links into rec.humor.oracle and says:
        "} #include 
         } #include 
         } #include 
         } #include "
        (The robot waits for others to respond.)
	(Fan.Boy taps his foot, waiting for the others to recover.)
                                                      


        Everyone else blinks, coming out of their trance.

(Note: Even saying his name "I AM FAN.BOY!" has enough punctuation to 
stun for a second or two.)
Fan.Boy is immune to his own stunning.

His main power is knowing what has been posted on *any* newsgroup, right 
from it's first begining up to the most recent post (although he has to 
concentrate to read the most recent ones.) This can be very useful for 
information, getting some punctionation (as above), or just to see 
what's going on there. This does mean that he does know the entire 
history of the LNH as posted on racc/a.c.lnh (although Beige Noon 
is understanably vauge.) He therefore knows of the Lurking Girl/Lass 
problem, the secrets of the characters (such as the Ultimate Ninja being 
Bandwagon Boy) and the entire posted history of each character. [Well, I 
don't, but *he* does.] Fan.Boy is hesitant about discussing these 
things, however, as he knows of the sensitivity of such topics.
(And the fact that several people would be willing to beat him up for 
discussing anything secret.)

The reason that he is able to know what is on each group is that a copy 
of Fan.Boy (GIF, alt.version or whatever) exists on that group. The LNH 
F.B can access the mind of the other F.Bs. The LNH F.B is the main, 
intelligent F.B, and, without his influence, the F.Bs on the other 
groups act as a normal poster on that group. If they are met, they would 
talk about whatever was going on on that group. (Eg. on 
alt.fan.dan-quayle, he would talk about how much he hates Dan Quayle. :) 
The LNH Fan.Boy is able to transfer his mind into any of these other 
groups, leaving behind an F.B that would just pose and make the odd 
heroic comment. In this way Fan.Boy can travel to other news.groups, and 
to the realities (or PluRealites or Dimensions or whatever) as copies of 
him exist in all those as well.

PERSONALITY:
He never thought he would ever be a net.hero and his naive attitude 
reflects this. He is aware of the various threats of the net.villains, 
but is more likely to talk about them than challenge them.
Whenever he mets another net.hero he is likely to praise them for 
whatever they've done, (this is really handy if authors want to remind 
their readers of what their characters actually have done) and, if 
applicable, ask for a demonstation of their powers (such as getting 
Cheesecake-Eater Lad to make him a cheesecake.)


ADDITION NOTES:
Whenever a Fan.Boy dies (in whatever group) he is restored whenever 
anyone uses the Pril Room (due to affect on reality, and due to the fact 
that it started this whole thing.) However, the LNH Fan.Boy would 
re-appear in the Peril Room, irrespective of where he died (including 
him dying in somewhere other than in alt.comics.lnh.) In the other 
news.groups, the Fan.Boys would appear somewhere neutral in that group. 
This means that Fan.Boy is somewhat like Cannon Fodder, but less used to 
dying.
The Fan.Boys on the other news.groups/realitities can be used without my 
permission unless I have speicifically stated otherwise.


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