What happened with cousinjean? I’m familiar with the author, but none of the drama. But also I recognize you’re not required to play fandom historian just because you were there, and recounting stuff like this takes time that you don’t owe anyone, so please feel free to ignore this.
There’s a pretty good rundown of the whole thing at Fanlore, I think. But to make a long story short, she had been drifting out of fandom for a while, and had left several WIPs, including the MASSIVELY popular “Dancing Lessons” series, unfinished. She had said and done some things which had alienated a lot of her old co-writers from the Television Without Pity boards (exactly what, I don’t know; I’m just going by mysterious comments made by said friends.) And she hadn’t gone out of her way to make new friends; she had a stated policy of not LJ-friending or responding to the comments of anyone she didn’t feel was worthy of her attention. So she had a circle of fervent fans and admirers, for certain, but a lot of other people had started to lose patience with her long before the Post Of Doom. She was living rent-free with her parents, working what appeared to be a very undemanding part time job, and totally focused on planning a Dream Wedding with her boyfriend, who, judging from her posts, miiiiight not have been as into the Dream Wedding concept as she was. She also wanted to work on an original novel, and she complained a great deal about not having time to write.
Eventually, she made a Livejournal post in which she made a proposal: all the fans of her fanfic, who would presumably buy her original fiction if it were published, should, right now, send her the price of a hardcover novel (about 20$ at that time.) She would use this money to take a year off and write said novel, and have her Dream Wedding, and maybe (nudge-nudge wink-wink) finish “Dancing Lessons” if she had some spare time. On the Paypal account she set up for this, she put “For Fanfic.” (She never really explained whether the people who sent her $20 would get a free copy of her hypothetical novel for their pains, or if they were just supposed to bask in the knowledge that they had contributed to its existence.)
Fandom EXPLODED. Firstly, in those days, before Patreon, before Kickstarter or Indiegogo, before the OTW, when many studios and authors were virulently anti-fanfic, when Fox had been sending cease-and-desist orders to fans who ran popular BtVS websites within the last three years, you did NOT ask for money to write fic. Even obliquely. Doing so risked bringing the wrath of lawyers down on all fandom. It was a stunningly ill-advised thing to do.
Secondly, “Dancing Lessons” was a collaborative project, with at least a dozen other co-writers, and Cousin Jean had not consulted any of them about her plan. She acted as though it was her personal project, with which she could do as she pleased. This created a lot of bad feeling among people who might otherwise have defended her.
Thirdly, the thing that got many people really angry was her attitude. She gave people the impression that she thought that she was so special and brilliant that the world owed her a year off with pay, for a book she might or might not ever finish, and if finished, might or might not ever get published. Other fan-trying-to-go-pro writers had full time jobs and children, and yet they somehow carved out time to write. Many of them deeply resented Cousin Jean’s apparent sense of entitlement.
Cousin Jean herself compounded the problem by refusing to understand why anyone was angry. The reaction did get way out of hand. Her journal was overrun by hundreds of angry, insulting comments. Eventually, she posted a series of non-apology apologies, and then deleted her journal and left fandom. Last I heard, she was writing self-published romance novels or something. (I don’t know if the Dream Wedding ever came off or not.) To the best of my knowledge, she never did get why people were pissed at her.
I wasn’t in Buffy fandom and I came across this post by searching for something else entirely but….fucking yikes! Even to this day, the idea of asking people to pay for my fanfic writing is something I’ve yet to fully embrace for all those reasons.
The Fandom Lore page is here for anyone that wants to read more, but bloody hell, she founds completely full of herself.