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writercon is just days away, i know, but I figured I'd squeeze an intro in here anyway :)
Name: Ali
Penname: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
sweet_ali, but on other sites and boards, I mainly stuck with just "Ali". Hey, at least that lack of creativity means that I won't have to do that awkward "Should i call you by your real name or your screen name?" moment.
Stories: Other than that lone fanfic that has been residing on my desktop for the last, oh, three years or so, unfinished and unloved, I'm not a writer of fanfiction. I'm a beta and I'm a lover of it and have had the pleasure of working with several talented fic writers who make fandom an even shinier place.
Buffy/Spike/Spuffy Involvement: I was a watcher from the beginning of the show, but I didn't discover the online fandom until the summer between S5 and S6. It all began for me on the original TWoP, once known as "Mighty Big Television". I think that's why the boards never bothered me that much. I started with the sharks. Granted, once i found more welcoming and less aggressive grounds, i left, but still. There i discovered
cousinjean and several other intelligent people in the Redemptionist forum. And that's when i first heard about
Dancing Lessons. That was my first fanfic. I remember copying and pasting it all to a document and saving it to a disc and just devouring it any chance i got. It was then followed by
isabellecs'
"100 Years of Solitude" and then her fic rec site
Carnal Sins and at that point, I was gone. Also through Isabelle, i discovered the now defunct Spuffy board,
Crumbling Walls. I didn't even know what the word "shipper" was, but ever since i saw
"Something Blue", my curiosity(and interest) was piqued. You see, I tended to take Buffy's decisions to heart, as she was my main interest on the show and the character I most related to, at first mostly because we were the same age during the run. However, i never went for her boyfriends. I had never been (and still not) a fan of Angel (this was before the Spike love slipped in and way before S/B did as well) and I had always found Riley to be more of a bore and funny looking. So when i related back to Buffy, i couldn't imagine being attracted to the mysterious Vampire who never smiled or joked around, nor the rather solid wood with the floppy hair and the blank slate look about him. And then
"Something Blue" aired and hey, Spike, hm... Of course, yeah, evil, but there was always something else to Spike, how his layers never seemed to end, that made him so appealing. And yet, I never actually thought that the couple would ever come into fruition. It was just something fun for me to think about. And then when i discovered the online fandom, i discovered other people thought about it too and that, wow, it could actually happen! I became a frequent poster over at
Crumbling Walls, meeting some fabulous people who have added so much to my life, and eventually became a moderator over there. And the rest just seemed to all flow into each other. The community on LJ is even more wonderful and I'm so glad it's here for all the newbies that stumble in. We're much more organized than how things were when i first joined :)
Personal: I am a native NYer, finishing up my undergraduate degree in Journalism and Creative Writing. I'm a writer first and foremost and a lover of the arts secondly. This is not my first con, but the first one I've attended where my main goal wasn't to meet the celebrities that were guesting. I think this atmosphere will be very interesting and warm without the craziness that adding James Marsters to the fray tends to invoke.
What I want out of writercon and a get together: Like everyone else, I'm just so excited(and nervous) to meet all of you.
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