A change of priorities - and life in general - has made me realize that, while I love to write and can do it reasonably well, I'm happiest being a reader and, at most, an editor. This means that my work-in-progress, Six Degrees, will most likely never be finished, or, if it is completed, it'll be as an original story, not a Sailor Moon fanfic. Many of you know that I used to be quite active in the Sailor Moon fandom, even going so far as to try to improve it, per se, by changing the way readers reviewed stories with a group on Aria's Ink called WISE. My intentions were well-meaning but I quickly realized that I bit off more than I could chew so I decided to take a break from the site and the group to get out of that fanfic funk I was in. What did I learn from my self-imposed "break" with the fandom?

1) Badfic, and having to read through them in the submission queue at Aria's Ink, was the main cause of my burn-out with the fandom. Just scanning the titles and summaries made me so depressed and annoyed that I just couldn't take it anymore and quit. The site, the fandom, writing, everything.

2) I hate the Sailor Moon fandom now, and can't even read anything longer than one-shots. While I will always love Sailor Moon for nostalgia's sake, and Aria's Ink for the friends I made there, the immaturity I encountered in that fandom vastly outweighed all the good I saw in it. I've moved on to other fandoms, and, while I realize that badfic is everywhere, it doesn't seem to be as prevalent as it is in the SM fandom. Maybe it's just because I was most active in that fandom and was thus more exposed to the ugly side of fanfic writing, but I just can't get over this bias now.

And 3) I am enjoying my lurker status in the new fandoms that I'm involved in. I find that there's less drama, headaches and time wasted if I just distance myself from everything but the story, save for leaving the occasional review at the end for stories that have struck a chord in me. As a former admin of Aria's Ink, I dealt with everything from disgruntled authors who couldn't grasp the importance of using proper grammar and yet expected me to approve their stories; to Princess Destiny trying to rig her reviews on her (hundreds of) mailing lists for her insipid story, Spin the Bottle; to forum fights, piss-poor attempts at poetry made by emo teenagers who couldn't seem to understand that "free flow poetry" isn't a license to write whatever crap comes into their heads, etc, etc. You name it, I've seen it or was involved with it. And now I'm done with it.

One of the things I do regret about my decision to sever all ties with the Sailor Moon fandom is that I no longer am able to access Aria's Ink as a member; however, I feel that one can't go from an admin to a regular member on the same site without feeling tempted to jump back into the saddle and herd the badfics out of the submission queue like stray cattle. My decision to quit AI wasn't even made by me--I was inactive for so long that the site automatically deleted my account, which is a shame because I would've liked to have made at least a farewell post in the forums to thank Aria, Ladysolo and all the friends (and some frienemies) I made on that site for everything that they've taught me about writing and anime, manga and fanfiction.,

As some of you may have noticed, the C2 community I managed is now no more as of tonight. I didn't think it was right to have a C2 community that was extolling the virtues of WISE (Writing to Improve Standards of Excellence) when I had just abandoned the cause on Aria's Ink without so much as a word of warning to anybody. And besides, I was getting a little tired of the emails from writers asking me to add their stories to the C2. I apologize to the C2 staff for letting it dangle for so long, but I just couldn't be bothered to take care of it until now. Thanks for all the hard work you gals put into it in its early stages.

(goes back to lurking...)