the whole nature of intense fandom is a new thing for me -- didn't think it would happen at my age

I feel exactly the same way...although if any of my friends dares to give me lip about Buffy, I can always point to the far crappier things that they invariably like.

but there's part of me that has trouble accepting that I have an obsession with a TV show and that I'm exploring that obsession by reading things that other similarly interested fans have done to tease out the edges of it

Oh, I think a lot of people go through the 'but, isn't it kinda, y'know, strange?' and the 'Oh, God. I'm just like a Trekkie. I should be greeting people with the Vulcan hand-thing and learning Klingon' phases. Or that might just have been me--but either way, there's definitely a cultural predjudice about being fannish about something which doesn't involve the movement of a roundish object about a big field, and it can be intimidating. For my first year of Buffy obsession I had very clear rules about what I wouldn't do and reading fanfic was most definitely on the forbidden list, because I could recite quotes from almost every episode (even though I hadn't seen three-quarters of them) off the top of my head, but reading fanfic?--well, that would make me weird. I don't really remember what made me give up on that idiotic notion, but I suspect it was the combination of some very good authors writing some very beautiful porn.

First they came for the ficcers, and I did not speak up because I was not a ficcer...

Hee.

Hey. Suddenly I don't feel so weird any more...

Oh my God, it's a support group. And I swore I'd NEVER join one of those.

So sayeth the Fay:

Person A: I...I kinda like to wear rubber gloves on my head and pretend to be a chicken. Sometimes. Er. For a laugh, you know?

Person B: I do that every weekend.

Person C: I'm wearing a rubber glove on my head right now and it's fucking great! Those non-rubber- glove-wearers (henceforth to be called NRGW) don't know what they're missing!

Person A: Yeah!

Person B: Let's set up our own forum at World Crossing.

Ha, the "World Crossing" reference dates it somewhat (in more than one way). Still, one of the classics.

The only fic I wrote was just an idea I got into my head and kept going and going. I was fairly obsessed with making it fit into canon.

For my first year of Buffy obsession I had very clear rules about what I wouldn't do and reading fanfic was most definitely on the forbidden list, because I could recite quotes from almost every episode (even though I hadn't seen three-quarters of them) off the top of my head, but reading fanfic?--well, that would make me weird.

I dimly recall those times...

Then it became "well, I'd never *WRITE* it" and then I just Gave. Up.

Then it became "well, I'd never *WRITE* it"

Heh. This is where I'm at--I got strongly attacked by a plot-bunny after Lilah's untimely death where her ghost ends up back at her hicks-ville home-town thinking that's she's still alive, believing that she said goodbye to Wes in the sewers and got the hell out of dodge rather than staying, because she can't accept that she actually hung around and got herself killed for Wesley. I wrote half a page and then resisted because a) my Lilah would've been too derivative of JennyO's and b) the hardest part about writing for me is conceiving character and plot, and writing fanfic still seems like I'm wasting creative juices practicing the wrong things. It's probably a good thing I don't have an LJ, even though I read other peoples' like crazy, because If I ever get one, I imagine that b) would go much the same way as my 'fanfic is for other people' manifesto.