Hi Steph. Nice to meet you! 

I finally logged back into my account on the main site just to see what my reviews were like back in the day (i.e. 2010... I feel like I'm so much younger than everyone else. I'm 30 currently, for reference) And I just want to give great thanks and immense apologies to all my favorite writers for putting up with my 15 year old brain's idea of a review... there's so much all caps and pestering authors for updates. It's like the writing equivalent of pestering an actor on if their working or what their next gig is... ugh. (I'm glad that AC taught me the importance of engagement. I remember that there was challenges back in the day to review every story you read in a month or something, I think; but, like, you guys could have said something. Lol.) I'm cringing and and laughing and yet, oddly, nostalgic at being able to view the reviews at all... I'm still in shock that so much time has passed.

Hi Lindsey and welcome back.  I'm Steph and been a member on here for years and still pop in often.

That's cool that you write original fiction!  Fanfic is probably great practice for that, but original fiction comes with its own challenges as far as creating purely original characters and developing the relationships between them from scratch.  I haven't branched out into original fiction, but I have written AU, which is a nice in-between.

I feel you on the guilt thing, Mare.  I've mostly gotten over that after years of torturing the Boys in my stories, but sometimes I still write stuff that makes me question why I spend my free time this way and worry about how they would react if they ever read it.  I'm sure that is freeing to move from writing about real people to fictional characters.

I can tell you moving from real person to characters has been a lot of fun. For me, there was always this tiny feeling of guilt when I was writing, especially the kinds of things I was writing where when I went overboard with things, it used to bother me. That's one of the reasons I always refused to kill off any of the boys in any of my stories. But writing for totally made-up characters, there's none of that guilt and an entire world you can explore, and it has expanded my ability to write original characters while also including romantic elements. Things I have shied away from in the past. I highly recommend! And I'm happy to hear I was some of the first stuff you read. That always makes me smile. 

I read just about anything as long as the summary seems engaging enough… but introspective character stuff seems to be what I seek out the most. I feel like that’s why Mare’s works ended up being some of the first fanfics I read. I’ve dabbled in writing fanfiction in the past; but I haven’t really posted anything because it just felt flat when I compared it to my original fiction stuff that I’m working on prepping to try and get published.

But I planning to try writing fanfic again soon because I’m interested in tv/comic book writing as well… I feel like fanfic could be good applied practice for working with already existing characters and narratives.

I definitely don't read as much there as I used to here, but there are still stories updated every day and a couple dozen authors who have been active in the fandom this year.  It has a different feel from AC, but since no one can update anything on AC anymore, AO3 has become the best place to go to find new fics to read.  What kind of stories do you like?  Do you also write?

Good to know! I'll have to remember to take the time to dig around in the BSB section over there more... it'll take some time to get used to though; because, in my mind AC is basically the main place I went to for BSB fics unless I was feeding old school url links into the internet archive.

Hi Lindsey!  Welcome back!  It's nice to see someone else post on here!  I post on AO3 under the same username, RokofAges75, and am still actively writing BSB fic.  A few people from AC are, and there are more that posted their old work there, even though they aren't really writing fic anymore.

Hi Lindsey, welcome back! I'm glad you decided to post. It's been very quiet here but there are still a handful of us that check in from time to time. I come at once a day usually in the mornings my time to see if anyone has posted anything.

I know that Julie and Tracy are still updating regularly on AO3. I also think Steph has her stories on there as well, but I don't know of anyone else that actually still posts BSB fics, but I'm not a fanfic reader, so I wouldn't know for absolute sure. Most of my stuff has transferred over there but for some reason there are weird symbols all throughout some of the chapters. I think it has to do with how old AC is and copying directly from there I think the punctuation codes are different and I'm too lazy to go back and fix it all because it's a lot!

Hi my name's Lindsey (I believe when I first made this account back in the day I used the name Chrissy or something... I was taught to use pseudonyms on the internet at all times girl scout training runs deep; but, you guys have been a constant in my life for so long without even knowing it that I feel like my real name is warranted in return) I'm looking forward to talking to everyone and slowly defeating my social anxieties by actually interacting instead of just being a lurker.

Since, we can't post to the parent site now... are those of you that are still writing posting to A03 (I saw that there was talk of preserving what is on AC there) I've used it for other fandoms but not BSB stuff... I know Mare's stuff is there for the most part. But I haven't really flipped through enough to see who else...