I miss the shows, too, and writing about them. My big impediment now is lack of time, though, not lack of interest (and I confess I'm really frustrated to be on vacation but not have access to my DVDs, so I can't even take advantage of the down time to write any of the approximately 6,843,147 essays I've got ideas for). I'm feeling really disconnected from those few conversations that do continue on, too, because I am tired of the same old arguments and mostly just keep my mouth shut when people say things I object to. I am hungry for stories, but then a lot of the stories that I do read disappoint or annoy me because I disagree with some of the basic interpretations of character or story or whatever.

Maybe I've just grown crotchety in my old age. Heh.

I know what you mean about the emphasis on producers; it's been that way since I got involved, at least. I personally got the BNF smackdown very early on in my fandom career, more than once, and so I quickly learned to shut up and leave well enough alone. I have my own issues about writing anyway, especially fiction, so I was easily convinced that it was Not My Place to comment on certain things, at least in public.

However, I have been consumed by this one particular idea, and have decided it's useless to fight it. So I am just going to dive in and see what happens, nervous as I am. I'm not sure it will make me a bona fide "producer," since it's kind of an oddball grey-area thing, but at least I'll be playing in fandom instead of just sitting around missing it.