Well, hello there.

[felisblanco]

I should be working on my MA story, which of course means I'm surfing the internet and looking at pretty pics of pretty boys. I'd feel bad except... well, they're just so pretty. And I still have a year left to finish it. So... *shrugs

Comments

[felisblanco]

The good old days. lol

Well, a friend of mr Felis introduced us to Buffy and we got completely hooked. I discovered fanfiction completely by accident (on Hugi) and spent a year reading, first Spuffy and Bangel before discovering the ultimate OTP, Spangel! Then decided to try my own hand at it. I posted to a Yahoo group since I wasn't on LJ then and got mostly good reviews. Met some great people there who lead me to LJ and soon I was staying up all night writing and reading. I honestly posted almost every other day. I felt guilty if I didn't post at least three times a week. My former self would be appalled by my present self. lol
I remember I had about 14 people on my flist and we had so much fun. Man, the porn, it was hardcore. No taboos. Well, not among us, which is why we started a locked community, sickchicks, where anything was allowed. Even RPS! *gasps* Which was like THE biggest taboo back then. Funny how that changed. lol

I was almost exclusively writing Spike/Angel, both regular and AU, with some RPS thrown in every now and then and sometimes other pairings if people asked for it. Love those boys (well, more like men, lol) in every incarnation available. I didn't think I would ever give up on them. And then Angel got cancelled. And then someone asked me to write an SPN drabble which made me start watching Supernatural. And then somehow, without me meaning to at all, Spike and Angel's voices disappeared from my head, making room for Sam and Dean and later Jensen and Jared. Which was actually quite horrible because they had been with me for so long. I tried to wrap up whatever WIPs I had running but I still have two left. And I keep going back to especially one of them and trying to get them back on track but so far it's not working. I'm rewatching Buffy now so maybe, hopefully... I just feel really bad about leaving people hanging.

But I made some wonderful friends in the Buffy/AtS fandom, some of whom made the transit with me to SPN, some who didn't. Too many of them are now gone from LJ or we've somehow lost touched. Which is really sad. I often miss the "good old days" when we were so much fewer but talked a whole lot more. When LJ was really alive and we had comment parties and just so much fun, all the time. And when I wrote just for fun and for a small audience, no pressure or publicity or anything, which somehow made the writing a lot easier. I was posting stories over 80 times per year (including chapters of longer stories). Last year I posted ONE! *sighs*

I know the lack of communications is just as much my fault, I'm rubbish at answering comments. Instead of engaging in conversations I post and then stay quiet and read the comments, if there are any. And I read other people's posts without commenting there. I don't know why it got so hard to be social.

But I wish I knew how to make writing as easy as it used to be.

[sarahblack]

Thanks for writing such a thought out response! I've always been a bit curious about your fandom background and this has really answered some of my questions.

I do hope you manage to finish your WIPs in the Buffy fandom, but mostly because I think you would like the closure. :)

As for the commenting... It's so much easier to just post your own entries and then read everything else. I think a lot of people do that, and it's making us all think that LJ is empty when it totally isn't! It's just a bit quieter. :P

Maybe it has something to do with us all growing up a bit? More maturity = more thinking before commenting. And thinking, as we all know, is hard.

[felisblanco]

Feel free to ask more if you still have questions. :)

I also think it might have something to do with new and less demanding media like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Less demanding as in all you really have to do to be active is like or reblog other people's entries and maybe write short comments every now and then. It's a lot less effort which again comes back to yes, less thinking. And we're dividing our time between all these medias instead of just having LJ and our email before to distract us. So we're spending more and more time online while communicating less and less. :(

[sarahblack]

So we're spending more and more time online while communicating less and less. :(

This.

But also this.

Looks like this has been a trend for a while.