After the sins of the weekend, which included getting drunk on Friday night and having to have a cab called to get me home and then suffering the discomfort of a thankfully mild but persistent hangover on Saturday, I'm feeling somewhat...chastened.

So, I came in today full of virtuous intentions and I'm going to get some real work done this week.

Except for right now, when I'm blogging and stuff, of course.

First things first, of course.

Spike. BtVS. They seem to have started over with the reruns, so I'm going to quit taping the daily repeats for a few weeks. I have S1-S3 on DVD, after all. I did get to watch last week's Tuesday night episode, which was a repeat for those au courant with the current season, but not for me. Now, of course, I know that Spike was apparently rather thoroughly evil at some point in his vampire past. Still doesn't explain why he's so mellow by the time we meet him, but whatever, okay?

During last night's shower (I hope that's not TMI. The fact that I bathe, I mean.) I was contemplating this whole "first evil" thing. While naturally remembering that there are still large gaps in my knowledge of this season's events and that I have only the vaguest memory of the first encounter with The First, I have to say I'm not buying a lot of this.

If this massive evil is so massively evil and powerful, what is it with all the parlor tricks and games it's playing with people? Why not just take out the Slayer's support group? I don't think anyone could deny that Dawn and Xander, at least, would be pretty easy targets, even if you're just a street mugger. For the First Evil, not even Giles or Willow would probably be a challenge, would they?

And why lurk around in the shadows brooding over its agenda for so many years before striking out? What is empowering it at this particular time? Is it one of those cosmic alignment of the stars things, or did it just get bored with its hell dimension? What is its plan, anyhow? To wipe out humanity, or what?

What is its agenda for Spike (well, I know we don't know that yet) and will it turn out that Spike's inexplicable passion for Buffy was, all along, rooted in some maneuver of The First's, being merely a ploy to insure that this tool would be on-hand at the appointed moment? (I don't get the Buffy thing, as I've said before. Willow, aside from the whole lesbian thing, would have made more sense to me. Her character is much more interesting and more layered than Buffy's. Still, I try to remain aware that I have a blind spot.)

Surely there's more to its power over Spike than that easily avoided song "trigger"? Was that a ruse, intended to prevent the gang from finding out what was really planned for Spike?

Is this show falling apart, or is this entire season some complex web of deception that won't be revealed until the last minute? Has it become a mishmash of imbecility (What is it with the fluctuating number of "potentials" running around? Are there only three or four of them, or are there about twenty? Depends on what scene you're watching.) or is there some incredible subtlety at work?

Why is Spike so impossibly sexy when he's, you know, dead and murderous and evil and stuff?

Don't ask me.

Even if Spike shows up on Angel yet year, which I understand is a rumor that's been floated several times, I won't be watching. It's not that the SpikeLove has waned, it's just that I discovered that Angel shows opposite West Wing. It's a pity, but maybe it was just a rumor anyhow.

Enough of that. What else is happening in my life?

Inexplicably long pause ensues.

Doggone it, I'm not just a collection of addled hormones brooding over a dead guy! I'm not!

I've been thinking about sex lately. Not, you know, in terms of sex, so don't get that TMI queasiness and run away. I mean in terms of writing. About the "place," if you will, of sex in fanfiction.

(As always, when I discuss "fanfiction" I'm talking exclusively about slash unless I specifically say otherwise.)

I like stories that don't have graphic sex in them. It's enough to hint at what's going on and then move on with the story. The whole, tab-A-slot-B thing is pretty tedious after the first four or five hundred times you've read it, don't you think?

Really, long before that.

It's not because I've lost interest in men doing men or anything. I think it has more to do with (here we go again) the lack of decent, or even consistent, characterization in fanfiction stories.

I think I could still get very interested (Heh. Heh.) in the idea of Mulder and Skinner doing the deed. I'm reasonably certain that reading about Krycek would still raise my temperature noticeably. Jim and Blair? Fraser and Ray? Still enticing ideas.

In theory.

In reality? Maybe it has something to do with that "wave theory" or something, but on those rare occasions I go out looking for fanfiction, I'm not finding stories with anyone I recognize in them. And while I object to no one's interest in porn-for-the-sake-of-porn, it's really not my cup of tea. Especially when it's all so poorly written.

I like Krycek. (Well, as well as anyone can "like" a dishonest, murdering thug, but it seems, as time goes on, that my capacity for liking that kind of person is greater than I'd anticipated, but that's not really the subject here, is it?) I like his twisted brain and his flexible ethics and his sliding between catastrophes, escaping disaster by the skin of his lying teeth. I like Mulder's perverse, pretzel brain. I like how Mulder's perversity and Krycek's twistedness can mesh like puzzle pieces and I really like the erotic fireworks that can ensue.

I'm phenomenally less interested in reading about some whiney character coincidentally named Mulder having badly written sex with some inexplicably psychotic character coincidentally named Krycek.

Hmmm. I dunno.

Am I less interested in XF fanfiction because of the sucky characterization that dominates the fandom or because the writing is so bad? And ditto for the other fandoms I used to write and read.

Anyhow. That wasn't really today's point. I meant to contemplate the appearance of graphic sex scenes in fanfiction. The bottom line is that I'd happily trade a dozen graphic sex scenes, even three dozen, for one decently characterized story.

And I like a story in my story. I have nothing against a PWP, but I really prefer longer, plot-driven stories, when I can get them. And first times. I'm a sucker for a well-written first-time story.

Mostly I'm just off fandom. It happens to all of us from time to time. I have other things I want to spend my time on, other interests I'm currently re-interested in. Whatever it is that I get from fandom, I'm not interested in at the moment, preferring the payoff from my other hobbies.

Fandom eats your life. Especially if, like myself, you tend to be a bit obsessive under the best of circumstances. (I mean, what is it with the Spike thing, okay? I don't go for blonds, the whole vampire thing is something I outgrew when I was fourteen, he's too in love with women to be slashable, and he became a whiney lapdog instead of an interesting character. Bleah, okay? Make him leave me alone!)

Ahem.

I'm not saying that a brilliant new show couldn't revive my interest in fandom, of course. It happens. But I'm remembering that my last hiatus lasting for about a decade, give or take a year.

On the other hand, and quite inexplicably to me, I'm sort of interested in writing again. My OaT story is actually coming along. Slowly, but it's working. I have vague but potential ideas for that XF story I promised JiM.

Why is lousy fanfiction encouraged in fandom?

(Why did my brain jump from JiM encouraging me to write a story to people who encourage lousy fanfiction? Actually, that's not that much of a mystery.)

Are fans really so desperate for stories, any stories, that they encourage even the worst of writers to keep churning out reams of dreck? Yes, it seems that they are.

I mean, what is it with those 58-part failures of plot and characterization, anyhow? Why is anyone reading that stuff? Why does anyone encourage those authors to keep pumping the handle on the sewage tank?

In a sane world, those authors would be fined a substantial amount for every writing sin they commit, but instead they get lavished with praise and encouraged to turn out ever-increasing amounts of brain-damaging compost.

It's not that, when considered dispassionately, I object to anyone's right to suck. They've all got a right to suck, even those among them who suck beyond rational excuse.

I think I object to a system that discourages honest labeling. (And it occurs to me that I've been here before. Probably several times. How predictable I'm becoming. Maybe next time I'll write about the liberating glory of RPS or the intellectual stimulation of crossing over cartoon/anime characters with live-action characters or something else both improbable and untrue.)

(I should stop dissing RPS. I won't have a friend left pretty soon.)

Anyhow. Honest labeling.

"This sucks, but if you're new to the fandom and completely desperate for something to read, it won't actually make you want to commit hara-kiri when you're done."

"Don't read it. Trust me. No matter how desperate you are for a new story, you're not this desperate."

"Doesn't suck as badly as a lot of stories. If you work at it, you can almost find recognizable characters."

"Hallelujah! A real story!"

"Read this one only if you hate the characters."

"Author has inserted self with disastrous results."

Now I've entirely forgotten where I was going with all of that.

I guess I'm saying that I don't want to read fanfiction because I've been reading good pro fiction for quite a while now and so little fanfiction even pretends to measure up. But I'm going to go ahead and write new fanfiction because (a) I feel like it, and, (b) nothing appeals to me less than reading something I myself have written, so I won't ever have to suffer the consequences of my own suckage.

Also. POV? Don't wander from one POV to another. I hate that. Forget what the writing books tell you. You can't do it. I mean, it can be done. You just can't do it.

The next person who needlessly pads their word count by retelling every scene from an alternate character's POV without adding anything new to the reader's understanding of what's going on is going to get bitchslapped from here to Detroit.

The next person I catch doing it so that they can insert luminescent descriptions of the beauty of a quite unremarkable character will have their keyboard confiscated.

(Worse than deliberate attempts to switch POV are those inadvertent moments when the reader finds themselves in an alternate dimension from an unheralded and probably unintentional POV shift. The next person I catch changing POV in the middle of a paragraph is moving to number one on my hit list.)

That's pretty much it for the moment. I was probably going someplace different when I started this, but I really should be spending my day figuring out how to turn a 1584k jpg into a 45k gif that doesn't look like an abstract sketch on-screen.