Say, is there a reason *all* the comments on The MAD Doctrine were posted...

at lifein1973 rather than on my LJ - even the feedback from people who don't usually visit that community? I got like a million comments there - and exactly zero here. Note: I'm not begging for more comments; got enough positive feedback to last me the next five years. (Feel free to add to the heap, though, if you want to! :D) But it's a bit odd that none of it was posted on my LJ, so I'm just wondering if my story actually appeared on my LJ when I posted it. There was some weird hiccup during the posting process, initially, although afterwards it looked fine to me.

So... you guys who commented at lifein1973 but got there via my LJ - was the fic actually visible on my LJ/on your friends pages?

(Heh. If there *is* some kind of crossposting bug, of course, this post also may not turn up. Hmm.)

ETA: @ knowledgeable DW users: are there known crossposting bugs? There's been at least one previous case where I'm not sure if something I posted on DW actually turned up on LJ properly.

Okay, seems it was just because...

I went "wheeeee" about the comments at lifein1973 here repeatedly that people went there to comment instead of here. No glitch then, it appears - just a case of herd instinct. :D

I really want to get back into reading fic.

In all my fandoms, really.

I haven't read any Farscape stuff since around 2002, I think, perhaps even earlier - I've read barely any of the big name writers' stuff in that fandom, because I started to drop out of reading when they were getting into it (so maybe I actually stopped in 2001, I dunno).

My last Highlander reading phase was around 2005.

Life on Mars I mostly stopped reading in 2007 - partly for the obvious reason of my souring on the fandom in a big way.

The "no reading" policy has done wonders for my writing (by removing the main source of writer's angst - comparing myself to others), but dammit, I miss it. Finding good fic is still one of the biggest thrills I know.

Last time around, I actually didn't stop reading Highlander for neurotic reasons - that was just Farscape and Life on Mars. For Highlander, I just exhausted what fic that fit my personal reading preferences was easily available at that point. I did neurotically stop reading Highlander around 2000, though. But my second reading stint in that fandom wasn't marred by obsessive self-comparison.

I feel less neurotic about my writing now, actually - in all of these fandoms. I've written at least one, sometimes even two good fics in each of them, and for some reason that makes me dial down the constant comparing somewhat. It's like, after writing something good, I can tell myself "I'm good in this fandom in this particular way; others are good in other ways, and it's okay that I can't be good in *their* ways."

Still, I feel a peculiar sort of trepidation at the thought of jumping back into the reading end of the pool. I think partly it's just backlog angst, quite similar actually to my more general LJ backlog angst. It's another example of something I used to love unconditionally becoming tangled up with feelings of guilt to such a degree as to (almost?) make me shy away from the activity for good.

"Why am I so good at guilt" is a question I need to tackle, methinks.