How spoiled rotten am I that I’m pouting over the fact that, as of this month, the ATPo home page is finally averaging less than 100 hits a day? People drift away, that’s a fact of life. But I think the “drift quotient” is a function of how much you invested in a fandom to begin with (directly correlated with your passion for said fandom), and I invested a LOT in BtVS/Angel. It’s my only “true” fandom, technically speaking, because I never spent much time actively talking to people about other shows I’ve watched/liked.
I should really get over it (the pouting). After all, the returns on my investment were awesome. I still have my core ATPo friends, and they are interesting and wonderful enough to be entertaining in and of themselves. I still have my DVDs, should I choose to pull them down from the shelf. I still have AtS Season 6 (which we need to finish!!), The Destroyer, and the readers thereof. Having people read my work, whether it’s fiction or philosophical analysis, is Gold, people, Gold.
It’s just…that was my 15 minutes of fame, seeing my website on television, getting fan mail. Hard to adjust, especially if you’re like me, and you don’t shift loyalties/fall in love easily.
ETA: It’s official. I’m just a spoiled wanker. The minute after I made my pouting public, I got this in my inbox
Oh. Wow.
Your site is absolutely amazing.
I’m currently playing in a Slayerverse RPG and was looking up resources and your website is the most detailed and comprehensive that I’ve ever found.
Thank you so much!
Maggie
Author Nancy E. Shaffer 
well after reading that Joss is starting a season 8 of BTVS in comic book form.. there could still be life in the forums starting in MARCH.
I’m not much of a comic book reader, but damned if I wont be at my local comic shop when these comics hit.
Yeah, and I meant to do issue reviews of Fray on ATPo and never did. One key to keeping your hit count up is to have new material, and I haven’t updated ATPo proper in over a year.
There is a debate around whether comic books are canon, whether Joss writes them or not. I’ve moved into that school of thought where there is no new canon because “Not Fade Away”‘s open ending implied that fans should finish the Buffyverse saga for themselves through fan fic.
I agree. Although I’ll still be hanging around the comic shop waiting for UPS to arrive each Wednesday when Joss releases those.
*Ack*, I’m no better at keeping up with comics than I am with new tv shows. I’ll probably wait for the graphic novel collection to be published!
Well, I was never terribly active on ATPo, so perhaps my perspective is a little different. However, it seems to me that rather than a drop in fandom interest, the declining hits may just mean that people are taking their fannish conversations elsewhere–like LJ. I know that I am much less likely to frequent message boards than I was a few years ago, not so much because of content, but because I’ve come to prefer different forms.
Sometimes, the medium is the message. ;>
These are the hits for the website proper, not the discussion board.
Ah, gotcha. Then I defer back to your comment about new content. ;>
That’s an interesting phenomenon in itself I’ve noticed. Invariably, when I refer to “ATPo”, I mean my original website sans discussion board and sans Existential Scoobies additions. The rest of my buds, when they say “ATPo” are referring exclusively to the discussion board, or the board community of posters.
That is true, I do think of ATPo as the discussion board first, and all the rest of it second. I consumed all the essays and other goodies on the site when I first discovered you all, and although I go back from time to time to look at different things, I mostly check out the board.
I think, as Plin says, a lot of us have moved here where the discussion and fannish activity continues. I would love to see new stuff on the site, but since the shows are done, it’s pretty limited.
You totally deserve at least 30 minutes of fame for all the fabulous work you did on ATPo, and I hope that new people like your emailer keep on finding it!
Thanks, Jane!
Well, the “ATPo” part is spelled out right at the top of the discussion board, so it’s understandable that those of us who participated heavily in the board think of it that way.
I’m glad people are still discovering the main site! But I still miss the board’s more active days. I’ve been thinking lately that it’d be nice to have discussions of the newer shows that large numbers of ATPosters are interested in, e.g., Heroes, in a more central location–they seem kind of scattered & harder to follow in LJ.