Hello to anyone reading this. I suppose you must want to know something about me and I have no idea what so I'm just going to ramble nostalgically for a bit. Hope that's OK.

My first fanfiction was a sixth (before there actually were six) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 'novel' that I wrote jointly with my best friend when we were thirteen, passing it back and forwards between us in Maths lessons. Needless to say it was very long, disjointed and ultimately unfinished. I didn't get the Internet at home until a couple of years later (showing my age now), when the first signs of online fandom were starting to emerge. In fact, the first chatroom I used to frequent was called 'Buffy's Room' but I didn't actually know who Buffy was at the time as BTVS hadn't yet been broadcast in the UK!

My first big fanfic obsession was The X-Files, which I think was one of the first to get a big online presence generally. I used to read a lot but only ever wrote one fic (again with my best friend, again unfinished and pretty awful: sample dialogue, Skinner to Scully: "This isn't any of my business but I'm going to tell you anyway. Your last boyfriend tried to cook you.").

Since then I've been pretty one-tracky in my tastes. I tend to become obsessed with a particular fandom and read almost nothing but that for years at a time. After X-Files I went through a Roswell phase, then it was Harry Potter and now it's Dollhouse. I don't write a massive amount myself mainly because when I do it takes over my life for weeks (I am incapable of writing anything short) and it is only recently that I have plucked up courage to start putting any of the stuff I write online.

Funnily enough, the things I get obsessed with in terms of fanfic are not necessarily my absolute favourite things in an objective sense. There are plenty of other programmes, books and films that I adore that I don't really have much of an inclination to read or write fanfic about (I wonder why?). For example, probably my favourite TV show of all time in a nostalgic way is Red Dwarf (episodes of which I used to make 'sweded' remakes of when I was a teenager) and I think the new Battlestar Galactica is about the most intelligent thing to have been on TV ever, so much so that I wrote my MA dissertation on it!

Maybe I'll just finish with a little run-down of my favourite stuff, as that seems to be the done thing, and if anyone wants to chat about any of it, I'd be more than happy as I chronically lack fannish friends IRL!

Films: A Matter of Life and Death, Afterlife (Kore-Eda Hirokazu), Lone Star, The Last Days of Chez Nous, My Own Private Idaho, The Wisdom of Crocodiles, Sunset Boulevard, Ghost World, Fight Club, Withnail and I, Dogfight, Lost Highway, Spellbound (Hitchcock) and in a nostalgic way The Wizard of Oz and The Last Unicorn.

TV: Firefly, Buffy, Dollhouse, Battlestar Galactica (2003)/Caprica, Spaced, Red Dwarf, Roswell, Life on Mars (UK), The X-Files, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Flight of the Conchords, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Books: The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin, The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks, The Wings of the Dove by Henry James, East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, anything by Katherine Mansfield and Alice Munro, The Crow Road by Iain Banks, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Beloved by Toni Morrison, all the His Dark Materials books, Harry Potter (weirdly, my favourite is Order of the Phoenix), The Last Tycoon and Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Hitchhiker's Guide series, especially The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Sherlock Holmes (favourite story: The Valley of Fear) and for nostalgia's sake again, The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. (Strange mixture of sf/fantasy and very much not, I know!)

PS. I also like to draw - here are some illustrations I did for a couple of my stories.

Illustration for Claire Two Point O: http:///albums/s240/divine_comedienne/img009.jpg

Illustration for Safe: http:///albums/s240/divine_comedienne/safebigcopy.jpg

And here's another random Dollhouse pic: Topher and DeWitt in 'Echoes' - you know the scene... http:///albums/s240/divine_comedienne/echoesmaster.jpg