because the things that hung on, the characteristics and circumstances that managed to stick even when i sort of shook off fandom like water off a dog, those must be the important things. at least to me. those are what i should be writing about, because they resonated that much with me.

Yes yes yes! When I wrote my last Buffyverse fic I was not in the fandom that much, but I still mostly remember all the little details and facial expressions and whatnot. But I haven't written it in a YEAR so when I went to write it this time I was like dude, I don't even remember what happened in the ep I'm trying to write about. But then slowly as I wrote things that were important to what I was writing came back to me, which is a way better way to work than the other way around. (The other way around being, you have all these elements from the shows and you're trying to stuff them all into one thing. As opposed to starting with the one thing, and then as you write, grabbing the elements you need).

And it's absolutely true--we should be writing what's important to us, not the Every Little Detail stuff.