Hee. My first effort (still unfinished) was Dru/Giles, set around Forgiving.

Ah, my poor WIP pile. Obviously, the hardest thing about writing for me is not getting distracted by shiny plot bunnies.

(Hey! It's almost foaling season in the SH!)

(Someone wipe my mind NOW please?)

Strangely, the idea of writing fanfiction attracts me more than reading it. Are there any well-known fic authors who notoriously don't read any fanfiction other than their own? (I know that idea kind of goes against the grain of fanfiction, being a "community" thing and all.)

Are there any well-known fic authors who notoriously don't read any fanfiction other than their own?

I've never heard of-- but if you want to try and start a trend, Angus, you're welcome...

That's cool, Emlah...what are you studying btw?

From way back but... Arts, currently doing 4th year Honours English.

I guess I brought it up because the whole nature of intense fandom is a new thing for me -- didn't think it would happen at my age. I aint exactly a teenager anymore ... 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.

I used to feel embarrassed about my obsessions (some major, some fleeting). I made up excuses for fannish behaviour. Like, when I was obsessed with The X-Files (before the craptacularity of later seasons killed the love) I used to say I was taping it in case one of my friends missed the episode.

It's not surprising, considering the way fans have traditionally been ridiculed and pathologised, especially fans of pop culture. I'm channeling one of my lecturers here but: fans have often been presented as an 'other' that offsets the respectability and sanity of 'normal' people. 'Normal' people can maintain distance between themselves and the objects of their pleasure, while fans cannot blah blah blah. To some extent that attitude is changing but yeah, as Leigh said: cultural predjudice, man.

By the time I got into Buffy I was all: Screw it. I'm an obsessed fan and proud of it. Anyone who feels the need to ridicule that is saying more about themselves than they are about me.

I read some fan fiction. I mostly like character studies - short, virtually plotless pieces that just capture the characters beautifully. A moment between Willow and Xander while they're researching, Buffy daydreaming in class - whatever. If I was going to analyse that preference I'd say it's because one of the things I value most about Buffy is consistent, 3-dimensional characterisation. Character studies help to make the characters seem 'real' to me, like there's something in the character to grasp onto, explore.

Are there any well-known fic authors who notoriously don't read any fanfiction other than their own?

I know some people of whom this might be said, but they're the scary, megalomaniacal (and, perhaps consequently, tend also the be the not very good) kind of fanfic writer. I for one am picky, but I'm picky because I have to winnow the good from the wheatfields full of bad.

(Sometimes I find fanfic terribly depressing, because so much of it is so bad. And bad in ways so indicative of thoughtlessness or spoon-fed cultural propaganda, that I just despair for the majority of people on this earth. Then I read the newspaper, and remember I didn't need fanfic to get me despairing.)

On the Connor front, I tend to think he did what he did the same way victims of human sacrifice sometimes go smiling under the knife: at last, at last, what I do matters! I am a key data point in a complex system of signification! It all depends on me! That's some heady power, even if it doesn't tend to be a long-term investment.

Ha! Beautifully put, Nutty. I might steal "I am a key data point in a complex system of signification" for my own personal use, if you don't mind.

Go for it, Angus. I actually started out with it as key log is a logjam, but I realized that I was being obscure and should stick entirely to human-sacrifice metaphors made out of logic and computer-systems terminology.

Curse you, Paddle-to-the-Sea!

Well, I read a lot less than most other fic writers, partially for lack of time, partially because I read enough crap for work and school - so unless something gets a lot of recommendations, or the writer is asking for some criticism, I tend to avoid it. It takes like, twenty good fic's to get the taste of bad fic out. The benefit is getting to feel superior to someone within the fandom - sort of like being in rehab and thinking, "Well, at least I've never sold my children for crack."

BWAH! And, wrod.

Strangely, the idea of writing fanfiction attracts me more than reading it. Are there any well-known fic authors who notoriously don't read any fanfiction other than their own? (I know that idea kind of goes against the grain of fanfiction, being a "community" thing and all.)

Well, there's arguably two poles or paradigms within the fanfic community - those whose interest is primarily in community and those whose interest is primarily in writing. Most people fall somewhere in the middle. I do read, but not all that much these days. I'm way more engaged in the writing - I mean, I read things haphazardly, but I'm flittering about from fandom to fandom quite cheerfully and reading things on the basis of recs or of them being by people I rate. For example, my Big F*ckoff Epic is a piece of Harry Potter futurefic - and I've really read very little HP fanfic, and have limited interest in the fandom. I'm not all that emotionally engaged with canon - not the way I am with Firefly or BtVS or AtS. But it provided a good jumping-off point for a story, and now I'm 50,000 words into it, with another 20,000 or so still to be written. But I don't much follow the fandom, outwith the inimitable AJ Hall and my darling Fearless Diva.

Kassto, I understand your qualms, but it's worth keeping in mind that an awful lot of the dissing that fans (particularly genre fans) get is purely to do with snobbery. It's socially acceptable to be able to quote Shakespeare's plays and to know them inside out. It's socially acceptable to be able to reel off statistics pertaining to any variety of ballgame. It's not so sociably acceptable to be equally passionate about speculative fiction or pop culture. But this is just nonsense, it really is; people get passionate about all kinds of stuff, and if you love it, if it moves you, if it speaks to you - then that's cool. I couldn't give a damn about any flavour of ballgame, but narrative is my crack cocaine and I love juxtapositions of sublime and ridiculous. I love language, and action, and bravado. I love storytelling, and I love swashbuckling - give me The Iliad or Eastenders over Wimbledon any day of the week. Buffy has depths and shallows and both are lovely. It's not flawless, certainly, but it's fresh and witty and wonderfully endearing, and it's a show that is conscious of its own cliches and stereotypes and continues to play games with them. There's nothing embarassing about falling in love with this show - it may feel embarassing, but that's about other people's misconceptions and their prejudices, rather than about the show's worth. A lot of people are, regrettably, pretty dumb. This means they miss out on lots of good stuff because they're worrying about what is or isn't cool. Bugger that for a game of soldiers. So long as you aren't hurting anyone else, then damn well follow your bliss, however far from the mainstream it may take you.

But, hey - I've embraced my inner anorak. In fact, I'm wearing it on my head right now, and it's fucking great. ;o)