I'm a 25-year old woman, and I've had an on-and-off affair with fanfiction since I was 13.

Hey ya'll!

I first got into fanfiction via my favorite TV show of all time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Since I've always been a hopeless romantic (and, coincidentally and slightly ironically, an unapologetic cynic), I was then and shall ever be obsessed with the epic love adventure that was Buffy and Angel. Like many Buffy/Angel lovers, when Joss Whedon and the show's writers didn't give me what I wanted to see, I turned to my fellow fans, who were all too happy to oblige, often in vivid, NC17-rated detail! =) Every now and then, I read stories from other shows, but I always came back to the good ole Scooby Gang, keepers of mine heart.

Somewhere around my high school years, the great era of TheWB ended. Anyone who had the privilege of growing up during its heyday knows that the teen dramas on now don't even begin to compare to those shows of yore, the likes of Buffy, Angel, Dawson's gang, the Charmed Ones, the Gilmore gals, the Roswell aliens...I could go on, but I digress. When the network folded, I found myself having to actually get a life of my own and stop living vicariously through fictional white teenagers and 20-somethings on television. I gradually grew away from fanfiction and the shows that brought me to it in the first place, and in the meantime I managed to graduate high school and go off to college. I soon forgot all about the torrid affair that had kept me awake nights staring at a computer screen in sore-eyed reading pleasure...almost.

Fastforward a few years. I am now a college graduate (shout out to Howard University!) and a grad student (slightly less enthusiastic, but still completely sincere shout out to Georgia State University!). I have a one-year old son and a couple of botched love adventures of my own under my belt. About a year ago, my sister bought me the complete BtVS DVD set (cue the violins). You guessed it: I've gotten hooked all over again! Man, is this the best show ever or what??? Anywho, the midnight rendezvous resumed soon after that, only this time, there's a HUGE mega-site that puts tens of thousands of stories centered around my favorite show right at my fingertips...I don't even have to hunt all over the internet! So here I am today, fanfiction's dirty whore once again.

I should add that I've gotten hooked on another fandom recently. I read the Twilight Saga last year, and like so many young women across the world, I'm completely hooked and can't figure out why. (What the hell is the appeal of these books???) I started reading Twilight fanfiction after I finished Breaking Dawn, which is without a doubt the worst fictional ending I've ever read, for reasons many on this site have already pointed out. I won't rehash, but let's just say that I think S. Meyer did her franchise -- and her readers -- a great disservice by having Jacob imprint on Renesmee Cullen instead of cultivating what was sure to be a very entertaining and probably much healthier relationship with Leah Clearwater. So, just as I fell for Buffy/Angel fanfic because Joss wouldn't let them be together, I've fallen for Jacob/Leah fanfiction because Meyer denied me that relationship too.

And so, my affair comes full circle. Let me point out that I have never actually WRITTEN a story myself. Besides the fact that I never have time to write, I'm very self-conscious about my own work when it comes to writing creatively (a 40-page thesis, however, I'm completely comfortable with). When it comes to fanfic, I'm a stickler for canon, and for generally retaining the overall mood and tone of the original work, so if something isn't just right, I tend to scrap it and start over (or never start at all). Also, I'm an English major, soon to be an English professor, and a heavy reader of everything from Greek literature to romance novels. The result is that grammar, mechanics, and all the conventions of "good" writing are important to me. When I compare my writing to some of my favorite authors, both fanfic and mainstream, it just doesn't seem to measure up for me. That being said, I started a B/A fic last year that I would like to develop into a four-story series, but since I constantly revise (and think it pretty much SUCKS), I have yet to post any of it. There is a never-ending stream of ideas in my head though, so maybe one day I shall actually get them out and share them with you good people.

I've probably written way more here than anyone wants to read, so I guess I'll wrap it up.

Oh, one more thing, I'm a little out of the loop with a lot of the fanfic lingo that has sprung up during my hiatus. Terms like "shippers," "lemons," "crackfic," etc. weren't really around when I was thirteen. Just thought that was interesting...

Okay, I'm really done now.

Hotep!