Frequently Asked Questions

Why "InterNutter" as an online alias?

Well, someone recommended that any Real World reputation of mine would be shredded to hell and gone if I actually used my real name to write fanfic with, so I had to come up with a nifty alias that wasn't already taken by someone niftier than I. Or someone who was bigger that I was and more prone to take physical action... but I digress :)

At the time, my fascination was taken with all things Farscape, and I chanced upon a chat interview with the character of Pilot. There, the coolest alien on the block did what all Farscape aliens do best - completely frell with Earth [or "Erp"] terminology. The word that our dear Pilot fluffed was "Internet", turning it into "Internut", a small, yet profound difference.

I figured that since I was online so often, and producing such vast volumes of craziness, that I would best be called the "InterNutter" :)

But you still have fanfic under your real name(s). Why?

Are you sure that's my real name(s)?

Is that your real name(s)?

Er.... yes.

Ok, so I ask again. Why do you still have fanfic under your real name(s)?

I'm lazy. Deal.

How can you produce so much fanfic?

Once upon a time, I wrote several fanfics at once, most of them in alternate realities. This served me well until I realised that I was producing far too many fanfics that wound up in the middle of nowhere and with no known solution. This kinda ticked me off.

I have henceforth resolved to write a maximum of one fanfic at a time - at the computer, anyway. Stuph written in longhand doesn't count ;)
    My other secret, of course, is that I've been writing fanfic for about a decade, now :) I'm *bound* to have a few hundred titles under my belt.

Okay, so what drugs are you on, and where can I get some?

Wise-arse. I don't take anything to alter my consciousness. Honest. The closest I ever came was when I mixed Codral and Sinex and temporarily lost track of gravity for a while. I'm allergic to alcohol [no, really. I'm a few steps removed from complete anaphylactic shock] and cigarette smoke, and my family has this history of Weird Reactions to things, so I steer clear of anything remotely drug-esque.

My 'drug' of choice, therefore, is my imagination. There's a limitless supply, it's free, and the places it can take me are boundless and vast. I can also 'come down' whenever I choose and there's no such thing as a 'bad trip' [well, okay, maybe once, but that's the result of lingering psychological scars and none of your damn business] :)

What is it with the potty mouth?

I'm Australian. Australians tend to cuss a blue streak and not think twice about the excess verbiage. We can drop the 'F' word in casual conversation with Nuns and only realise two sentences on :) We can use the phrase 'you F-ing crazy b*stard' on our best mates, and mean it in the friendliest of ways.

It's part of my cultural heritage, and I'm bloody proud of it.

Nevertheless, I shall attempt to rein it in, on behalf of young minds and psychotic parents everywhere.

Are you a girl InterNutter or a boy InterNutter?

>:) My Inner Stirrer prompts me to answer: "Ain't tellin'." but I know that certain people, after seeing my real name on my DS9 fics, will still be clueless. Or others, who don't *want* to read my DS9 fics [heathens!] or refuse to do the research and would rather come here.

My darling dearest insists that only blokes will ask this question on the basis that they might score. I figure no-one could possibly be that desperate ;)

I'm a girl InterNutter, and my real name is Catherine Allan. This is possibly the only site where I will not be misspelled :) Misspelling of names is a bug-bear of mine, since I've been misspelled practically from birth.

Do you have your own language in Australia or what?

'What' :)

The short answer is that I'm creating my own dialect.

The long answer is that I have a bizarre sense of humour, a love of old English and a penchant for bringing dead words/phraseology back to life, and a bad habit of making up words. Australians tend to speak more English than American-English [though that's changing, what with the influx of American *everything* into our shores] with twists and subtleties that we invented ourselves. I'm one of the few grackles trying to keep Australian-English alive whilst also inventing my own variant on the theme.

By the time I'm Fifty, I aught to be completely incomprehensible to the average passer-by :)

So, do we get a phrase book?

I'm thinking about it.

I've noticed that you have more than just fanfic here. How do you *do* all this stuff?

I got bored a lot.

Note the past-tense. Now that I'm also a Mum [that's 'Mom' for all the Americans in the audience] the sheer volume of stuph I produce should go downhill for a few years. Maybe.

OTOH, since sleep deprivation seems to trigger my various muses, maybe it's going to go *up*. I'll have to wait and see.

Hey! They never said *that* in the series. What gives?

As an Australian, I'm a little behind the times when it comes to getting shows in the first place, so the stuph I *do* come up with can lag behind current series 'cannon' [i.e. What's Been Seen And Heard] with spots of 'cannon' information that I get from spoilers I glean off the 'net. I also tend to fill in the blanks about my favourite characters.

I do this *so* often that I have my own term for it. "Fanfic Continuity".

This means that, from one fanfic to the next, I have similar things being mentioned/explained/taken for granted :) This often leads people to suspect I know more about the series than the series PTB [Powers That Be. aka the guys in charge] are letting on. This is not true. I just make stuph up and stick to it until a better, or 'cannon' substitute ruins things for me.

OMG! You're a *Mom*?

Relax. It's very recent.

And yes, my son does have his own URL. We're techno-geeks. Go figure.

You can see my baby boy at this page.

Do you do art for people? Can you do something for me?

My art-muse is extremely limited to doodles and, since my scanner died, I haven't been able to put anything new up online. More's the pity. Anyway, it's not as if I'm creating vast piles of stuph. I just doodle as the mood takes me.

So, in brief: No, and no. Sorry.

However, you can "borrow" anything that takes your fancy. Just give credit, please.

I don't have a web page, so can I put my stuff up on your site?

While I welcome all contributions [ hey, it means I can put off doing more stuph for a while :) ] I'm also noted for my extreme lack of emphasis on updating sites. Just ask my net.buddies about it ;) I can leave sites alone for *years*...

And this was *before* I became a Mum.

Like I said, I'm lazy. I will *try* to update this site more often than annually, but no promises, okay? In an effort to compromise, I'll endeavour to make this site interesting enough to hang around in for a good long while.

I have this idea for a fanfic...

Yeahgoodonyerbuddy.

Kidding. I have more than enough ideas for fanfic. Some of which may actually take.

While I may not write fanfic on spec for other people, I do heartily encourage them to write for themselves. Misery loves company, after all ;)

If you're scared to write, just remember that we all had to start somewhere. Check out my appalling First-Ever-Fanfic, _The Collection_ and see what I mean. It sucks worse than a dead vacuum cleaner, yet I remained unperturbed enough to actually write more.

You're crazy.

Yeah, but that's not a question.

Okay... Do you know you're crazy?

Yes. And surprisingly, the Government still lets me walk the streets. Amazing, isn't it?

How old *are* you, anyway?

I was born on the 4th of October, 1972. Do the math. Now that you know, I expect presents.

Where are you in the world?

Directly above the centre of the Earth ;)

Kidding. I'm currently living in a place called Burpengary. Yes, Australia does have name places like that. Anyway, it's about an hour's drive northish of Brisbane, Queensland.

"Front, left. Back, right" I don't get it...

Sigh.

It's a man-joke of sorts. You see, in the comics, Kurt occasionally turns up without the tail and some kind of everyday pants on. Ergo, the tail must be stuffed down a trouser leg, right? And most men also prefer to stuff *other* snakelike objects of theirs in the general direction of one trouser leg, okay?

Kurt's just explaining which bits go where.

What *is* the "thing with the teeth"?

Remember _Strategy X_, when Mystique lunged at Todd as a big, toothy monster? Well, it's like that, only worse.

What's the "noodle incident" all about?

I borrowed this one shamelessly from _Calvin and Hobbes_, and it never will be fully explained. Suffice to say it involves wet noodles put to a use to which they were never originally intended.

I have a question that isn't in your FAQ...

Email me at cat@internutter.org to ask any old thing. Preferably about my site or its contents ;) If I think your question is interesting enough, the FAQ will grow from it and my hopefully-nifty reply.

Remember, anything you say to a writer can and will be used against you in a later work :) ;)