Safety is definitely an in the eye of the reader thing. Thinking back I did most fanfic reading when I was purely a lurker but since joining up it's got harder and harder to block out the fandom from the fic and with Buffy a big part of the problem is I still prefer the source (season seven fan remember) and feel defensive about it. For fic to work I think I would need it to be in a new fandom and I have found some of selenak's recs and writing in Heroes and Astonishing in X-men still works - I can read it without half a mind constantly on the source. It's also a laziness thing - between time being short and failing eyesight I read far less than I did. My primary fandom thing is vidding and if I want to try something new it's more likely to be a movie than a novel.