Back to Fanfiction? Children of an Elder God

Every so often I get to thinking I should be reading more fiction I haven't read before; I can feel bad wondering if I'm just plain "intimidated" by literature, and melancholy that I don't even keep up with recent "genre" works. It took somehow or other overhearing a long-unfinished "fanfiction" series had been completed at last to remind me my reading habits there had fallen off as well from the days when, after much anticipation, I first got online and, in those text-heavy "dialup" days, fanfiction was one thing I sought out. It's easy enough to come up with reasons why: I can wonder if back then stories based on visual works were somehow a "substitute for the real thing" that nowadays I can easily afford, and also if, glutted with DVDs, I prefer not to get engaged with stories to the point of seeking out the developed thoughts of others in part because I suffer from "suspicions" about fandom "losing track of enjoying what they started off interested in." I suppose I could also admit MSTings had something to do with it; thinking back, it seemed easy enough to develop or even share in a superiority complex where we enlightened few saw right through the half-tossed word salad of everyone else. As much as I lament the atomisation of the "MSTing community" (even as I wonder if there are pockets of "snarkiness" hidden within multiple fandoms), I do want to think my perspective's become a little broader and perhaps even a little more self-aware (even if I've also perhaps decided my interest in Mystery Science Theater 3000 isn't a matter of "mocking (just about) everything.") As well, as I alluded to, just the number of extended works their writers seemed to lose interest in before I did might have had something to do with it.
( As for the work I did see finished... )