LMAO oh my! Yeah, I can see why the April Fool's joke might not have worked out.

I have never rewritten a fic, but ever since I have changed my writing fandom, I have used similar ideas. For instance, in one of my fics I dedicated a chapter to the oldest brother taking the youngest brother camping and to teach him how to fly fish and I called the chapter "The Importance of Fly Fishing." In that same fic, which was very much laid out in the same way as "Why I'd Do It All Again" was, there's a chapter where Roman stays up late putting together all of his 2 month old godson's Christmas presents and is so loud that some of his family comes in to help. I think I may have even stolen some of my one liners from "Four Santas too Many"

My most egregious borrowing is from "It Stays With You."  I took the nameless villain in that one, gave him an entire back story and made him the big bad in my story "Catch Me If You Can." I even put Kevin and Howie in that one as detectives.

Kind of what You alluded to in your post, Lindsey, I noticed with the Succession fic fandom at least, they were greatly lacking stories with intricate plots. Medical dramas or action/adventure and suspense. Most of them were primarily shipping the characters making them spies sometimes or assassins but always focusing less on that and more on the relationship and sex between the two. Not that I read any of them, but that's what I gathered from the comments I was getting. "I've never read anything like this before!" Type comments. I wish I had your gift of writing medical dramas, Julie because I think they'd love something like that. I mean I had a sub plot dealing with a medical emergency which culminated into the one I'm writing now about his recovery, but it's not nearly as in depth as your stuff was.

As far as really going ahead and redoing something old, I don't think I could do it. I briefly and I mean very briefly thought about popping back out of obscurity to write a little short BSB story focusing on Nick around the time of his birthday, because I used to write a one shot every year for him, but I just sat here twiddling my thumbs. I had no idea where to even start. He's just so far away from me I couldn't channel him, and he was my best chance to get back into the BSB writing thing. I'm just not there. I haven't even listened to that country song yet. I think I only listened to the other country song they did once. It makes me sad. lol

I'm too new in the Succession fanfic to rewrite something there.

Honestly, switching fandoms sounds like a great opportunity to reuse some old storylines without it seeming stale.  Putting completely different characters in a similar situation would make it feel fresh again.  I don't think there's anything wrong with reusing ideas or characters; I think it's cool that you were able to do that!

AO3 is definitely dominated by shipping.  In some ways, that sucks for those of us who prefer genfic or romance as a subplot rather than the main plot, but it's also good for us because it makes our stories stand out more in a sea of smut LOL.  I'm glad you were able to introduce the Succession fandom to a different type of fic.  Thanks for the compliment, but I'm sure you could write a medical fic if you wanted to.  It just takes research, which I'd be happy to help with if you ever went that route.  I never mind looking up medical stuff; I obviously find it interesting.

Aww, I wish you had written a short story for Nick's birthday.  I enjoyed your annual birthday fics.  Maybe someday you'll find your way back to him and BSB.  It would be cool if you could come up with another Succession/BSB crossover idea to incorporate both.  I've noticed that crossovers tend to do well in the BSB fandom on AO3, probably because their stats are boosted by the other fandom(s), but most of the popular ones involve other real musicians.  People still like pairing the Boys with Eminem for some reason! LOL

Congrats! On the 25 year anniversary of the sanctuary Julie! Your medical fics helped me a lot when my grandmother was going through chemo back in 2017 because I was able to somewhat understand the medical terms and processes that the doctors were throwing around. It's the main reason why I get so mad at the modern viewpoint of fanfiction right now; because all of the unique and detailed fanfiction that has come out from everyone, in the BSB fandom specifically, has truly taught me a lot in ways that I don't really realize until after the fact. There has been so many instances where I'll be like, 'Oh, I have a vague idea of what that is...' and then I'll have to tell my family that I learned it from a BSB fanfic. lol

Thank you!  I'm sorry your grandmother went through that but am glad to hear that my fics helped you make sense of it in some way.  I lost both of my maternal grandparents to cancer in the last decade, and writing helped me through that period in my life, too.  I've also learned a lot from reading and writing fic!

I feel like fanfiction has become more mainstream and accepted in the modern age, at least in part because of the success stories of authors like Stephenie Meyer, E.L. James, and Anna Todd - all fanfic writers whose books were traditionally published, became bestsellers, and later made into movies.  But, maybe because of those well-known examples, people tend to assume fanfic is all just shipping and porn with or without a plot.  They don't realize how much of it is genfic in all different genres.  They also assume that because it's written by amateurs, the quality is automatically lower than traditionally published fiction, but that's not always true.

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?

LMAO oh my! Yeah, I can see why the April Fool's joke might not have worked out.

I have never rewritten a fic, but ever since I have changed my writing fandom, I have used similar ideas. For instance, in one of my fics I dedicated a chapter to the oldest brother taking the youngest brother camping and to teach him how to fly fish and I called the chapter "The Importance of Fly Fishing." In that same fic, which was very much laid out in the same way as "Why I'd Do It All Again" was, there's a chapter where Roman stays up late putting together all of his 2 month old godson's Christmas presents and is so loud that some of his family comes in to help. I think I may have even stolen some of my one liners from "Four Santas too Many"

My most egregious borrowing is from "It Stays With You."  I took the nameless villain in that one, gave him an entire back story and made him the big bad in my story "Catch Me If You Can." I even put Kevin and Howie in that one as detectives.

Kind of what You alluded to in your post, Lindsey, I noticed with the Succession fic fandom at least, they were greatly lacking stories with intricate plots. Medical dramas or action/adventure and suspense. Most of them were primarily shipping the characters making them spies sometimes or assassins but always focusing less on that and more on the relationship and sex between the two. Not that I read any of them, but that's what I gathered from the comments I was getting. "I've never read anything like this before!" Type comments. I wish I had your gift of writing medical dramas, Julie because I think they'd love something like that. I mean I had a sub plot dealing with a medical emergency which culminated into the one I'm writing now about his recovery, but it's not nearly as in depth as your stuff was.

As far as really going ahead and redoing something old, I don't think I could do it. I briefly and I mean very briefly thought about popping back out of obscurity to write a little short BSB story focusing on Nick around the time of his birthday, because I used to write a one shot every year for him, but I just sat here twiddling my thumbs. I had no idea where to even start. He's just so far away from me I couldn't channel him, and he was my best chance to get back into the BSB writing thing. I'm just not there. I haven't even listened to that country song yet. I think I only listened to the other country song they did once. It makes me sad. lol

I'm too new in the Succession fanfic to rewrite something there.

Congrats! On the 25 year anniversary of the sanctuary Julie! Your medical fics helped me a lot when my grandmother was going through chemo back in 2017 because I was able to somewhat understand the medical terms and processes that the doctors were throwing around. It's the main reason why I get so mad at the modern viewpoint of fanfiction right now; because all of the unique and detailed fanfiction that has come out from everyone, in the BSB fandom specifically, has truly taught me a lot in ways that I don't really realize until after the fact. There has been so many instances where I'll be like, 'Oh, I have a vague idea of what that is...' and then I'll have to tell my family that I learned it from a BSB fanfic. lol

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.

Nick sold the Ruskin house in June 2001. Which tracks because the Carter’s bought the Marathon compound in July of 2000. I don’t think Nick currently owns any property in Florida given that Jane still lives in the state.

Surprisingly its doesn’t take much to be allowed to operate an assisted living home in Florida. All you need currently is to be 21 plus, have a HS diploma/GED, pass a level 2 background check and competency exam, and take a 26 hour state mandated course; there’s no telling if it was even simpler or not in 1987 when Jane and Bob officially filed the business.

I plan on going through the Tampa Bay Newspaper archives soon and seeing if anything crops up. The assisted living that is currently operating out of the same space where Garden Villa was has capacity for 15 ( and I don’t really think the building has been upgraded that much) - but I haven’t been able to track down anything about Garden Villa itself outside of barebones tax info of course- I’m hopeful that the newspaper archives will turn something up though.

Great detective work!  You'll have to let us know if you find anything interesting.

Congrats on your site turning 25! That's amazing! You should do something special with the very first story you posted on there. You know, how movies rerelease on their 25th anniversaries. Reboot your very first story lol

Thanks!  That's actually what I was going to do for April Fools Day this year.  I was going to rewrite part of my first fic, "Heartache," set 25 years later.  Brian would be 50 years old and married to Leighanne, but I was going to keep his love interest, Alexa, 18 like she was in the original story to make it creepy and uncomfortable LOL.  I had some jokes planned with her name being Alexa, as in Amazon Alexa.  I made two different attempts at writing it, one that was too serious and not funny enough and one that was darkly comedic but too unhinged even by my warped standards.  In the end, I ran out of time to make either of them work, so I ended up just writing a post about how I was rewriting my "novels" from 25 years ago and then linked them to more recent stories I've written with similar elements.  Here it is if you're interested: https://dreamers-sanctuary.com/2025-04-01/

Has anyone here ever rewritten one of your really old fics?  If so, what was that experience like?  If not, would you ever consider it?  Which one(s)?

I've never fully rewritten an old fic many years later.  I've thought about it with some of the really old stuff I wrote when I was in high school.  I had some decent ideas back then, but I didn't have the writing skills to execute them as well as I could now.  But instead of rewriting them, I've found myself recycling elements of those old storylines to use in new stories, usually with some kind of twist.  For example, my first story "Heartache" was about Brian's heart condition worsening, leading to him needing a heart transplant.  While waiting for a new heart, he meets and falls in love with a nursing assistant named Alexa.  When Alexa's twin sister dies after a car accident, Brian gets her heart.  It was super cheesy and unrealistic LOL.  But I've always found the concept of organ transplantatio n interesting, so I've used that element in several other stories since.  My AU "Secrets of the Heart" starts with Brian needing a heart transplant; he gets one in the first half of the story and spends the second half being haunted by increasingly detailed visions of his donor's violent death, which eventually drive him mad.  In "A Heart That Isn't Mine," I reused the idea of a seemingly dying Backstreet Boy (Nick this time) falling for a nurse in the hospital, except she turns out to be a total psychopath who has been keeping him sick so she can hold him hostage there.  Because I've written those stories, I don't have any real interest in actually rewriting "Heartache" or its sequels.

The only one of my old stories that I could potentially see myself attempting to rewrite someday is "Beside the Ocean" because I really like the premise.  After a suicide attempt, a depressed Nick meets and falls in love with a girl named Olivia, who is secretly dying from brain cancer, and she teaches him to embrace life.  I always loved the dichotomy of these two characters, one who is physically healthy but wants to die and the other who is terminally ill but wants to live.  But as a 16-year-old, I didn't have the life experience, emotional maturity, or writing prowess needed to write them in a complex, nuanced, realistic way.  I could do a better job of it now.  Maybe someday, if and when I feel like writing another tragic Nick romance and have no other ideas.

Congrats on your site turning 25! That's amazing! You should do something special with the very first story you posted on there. You know, how movies rerelease on their 25th anniversaries. Reboot your very first story lol

Yeah, I'm sure Bob and Jane didn't do a great job taking care of seniors considering how they did with their own children.

Nick sold the Ruskin house in June 2001. Which tracks because the Carter’s bought the Marathon compound in July of 2000. I don’t think Nick currently owns any property in Florida given that Jane still lives in the state.

Surprisingly its doesn’t take much to be allowed to operate an assisted living home in Florida. All you need currently is to be 21 plus, have a HS diploma/GED, pass a level 2 background check and competency exam, and take a 26 hour state mandated course; there’s no telling if it was even simpler or not in 1987 when Jane and Bob officially filed the business.

I plan on going through the Tampa Bay Newspaper archives soon and seeing if anything crops up. The assisted living that is currently operating out of the same space where Garden Villa was has capacity for 15 ( and I don’t really think the building has been upgraded that much) - but I haven’t been able to track down anything about Garden Villa itself outside of barebones tax info of course- I’m hopeful that the newspaper archives will turn something up though.

Hi everyone!  I see I have some catching up to do!  I'm so happy it's Friday; it's been a week.  I stupidly stayed up until 1 a.m. Monday night working on a new layout for my site's 25th anniversary on Tuesday and have been trying to play catch-up with sleep ever since.  My nocturnal self is ready for summer!  Hope everyone else is doing okay.  Sorry Kieran did not get the Tony nomination, Mare.  Steph, hope you had fun at your concert the other night!  Lindsey, it's nice to have someone else chime in on these threads!

Regarding Baylee on American Idol:  He made the top 20 but got eliminated when they narrowed it down to the top 14.  In all honesty, he probably should have been cut a week or two earlier than he was.  He doesn't have a bad voice and is a decent songwriter (he did a couple of his original songs early on), but when it got down to the best of the best, his vocal ability was noticeably not as good as the others.  The episode before he was eliminated, he sang one of Brian's solo songs (Gone Without Goodbye), which was really touching but also showed how much he pales in comparison to Brian in his prime.  Their voices are totally different, and Baylee didn't sound anywhere near as good as Brian singing that song.  It wasn't a good fit for his voice at all.  I thought he might make it further in the competition solely based on votes from BSB fans, but it wasn't enough - and I'm not sure how many BSB fans actually watched or voted for him.  I don't think Brian and Leighanne were breathing down anyone's necks, trying to get him further.  They showed up to support him, as most contestants' families did, but they were mostly just shown watching in the audience like everyone else.

It'll be interesting to see if Baylee's exposure from Idol has any effect on his music career.  I wonder if he made any new fans who weren't already familiar with him from his BSB connection.  I was happy to find out that he's enrolled in college and pursuing a degree in sports administration .  Smart of him to have a backup plan in case his entertainment career doesn't work out.  It would be nice to see him move off his parents' property someday and make a life for himself.

As for the Carters:  I watched the documentary and thought it was well done but also heartbreaking.  I was also surprised at how much home movie footage they had!  I wonder who's been holding onto all that - I'm guessing Bob had it all, since Nick and Angel seem to have severed all ties with Jane.  It was interesting to see the stepmom Ginger interviewed and hear her perspective on everything, since we've never really heard from her before.  Like Mare said, I also noticed how often the kids were naked and running wild.  Their household looked very chaotic, much like it was portrayed on the reality show House of Carters.  Everything we've learned about their family dynamic since explains so much of the way the siblings behaved on that show.  It's a miracle that Nick and Angel turned out as well as they did - and we all know Nick went through a lot to get to the good place he's in now.  I'm sure Angel did, too, out of the spotlight.  It is sad that the reason she grew up the most normal is because she was neglected and spent more time with her friends' families.  Likewise, Nick had his BSB family to set a better example than his blood family did.  Thank God for that.  I love that Nick and Angel have gotten close again; it's always nice to see their families together for holidays and her coming to his shows like she did with Stagecoach.  I was actually at his solo show where they filmed the scenes with him and Angel together.  I think that was the only show he sang "Hurts to Love You" on the second leg of the tour, and it was clear that he only did it because Angel was in the audience that night, but we didn't know at the time that they were also filming it for a documentary.  It would have been nice to have heard more from him, but I think it's also nice that he let it be Angel's project.  I really hope he does a documentary of his own after his lawsuits are settled - or at least a nice, long interview.

I've always wondered about the retirement home Jane and Bob ran, too.  Considering that neither of them seemed like great people even back then, I wonder how well the residents were cared for.  It wouldn't surprise me to find that they were stealing from old people as you suggested, Mare.  It definitely seems like an odd choice to go from running a bar in New York to a nursing home in Florida.  The timeline you mentioned, Lindsey, is also interesting.  They really were banking on Nick/BSB to succeed.  The Ruskin house is different from the compound they had in the Keys.  I wonder who owns that now.  As far as I know, Nick no longer has any property in Florida, but I could be wrong.