Oldbies and trying to keep up

[Anne]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "abigailnus" 
<abigailnus at y...> wrote:
> 
> Well, I don't think I've ever read all the messages.  Even when I 
was just starting out, I 
> picked topics that appealed to me, although I did read every 
message on the topic.  Of 
> course, back then, all discussions were new to me, so quite often I 
would read nearly all 
> the messages.  Even then, however, I'd have dead periods when 
nothing caught my 
> fancy.  These days I'm much the same, but there is a group of 
posters whose posts get 
> read no matter what the subject.
> 

You were wise to take this tack, Abigail. I joined HPFGU about 6 
months ago (right after finishing GOF for the first time) and back 
then was trying to read every message. I managed to keep up for about 
3-4 months, I guess, but in early April my computer died and it was 
about a week before we got a new one up and running. And of course I 
missed about 600 messages during that week - and that's when I 
basically gave up attempting to follow "The Big List" (which, I 
noted, gained over 2000 members in the 4 months I was semi-active on 
it). Anyway, every time I dipped my foot into the pool, it seemed 
like I was being hit by the same little ripples as before (the same 
topics over and over again, but mostly by new people who'd just 
joined the group). I do find the HP-verse endlessly fascinating, but 
I guess I needed to think about other things during the final 
excruciating wait for OOP to be published (yes, I did finally order 
my copy). So I started reading a lot of fan fiction. Mostly I'm 
focusing on a few of the BNFs (AngieJ, Lissanne, Lori, now working on 
Barb's HP and the Psychic Serpent, which is lots of fun). There are 
over 70 THOUSAND fan fics on www.fanfiction.net alone, not to mention 
the strictly HP fic sites like FictionAlley. There's a lot of really 
good writing out there; there's also a lot of dreck (poor plots, bad 
grammar and punctuation, MarySues, etc.) so you kind of have to pick 
your way across the literary chasm, like jumping from one ice floe to 
another.

Anyway thanks for reminding me about the folks whose posts I pretty 
much *always* read when I was really keeping up  with the list. I'll 
have to go dig through the archives to find their stuff (GulPlum, 
Steve bboy_mn and even some of the TBAY and SHIPping debates).

Anne U
(who really hopes OOTP lives up to our expectations...)