I shall remain baffled, and diminish into the west.

sudden visions of writing a slash-the-slashers entry for the Inappropriate Elf Challenge

My attempt at a drabble.

Nice, Lyra. I like the baby day camp, having irritated memories of going to Girl Scout day camp and doing macrame myself.

Thanks, Katie.

It's funny -- I sat down last night thinking, "Eh, 100 words, how hard can it be?" And went through about 4 premises before I found something that seemed natural.

Good drabble! Mine was my first one, too. I want to do more because I think they can be really useful writing exercises in miniature.

Nicely done, Lyra.

I like writing drabbles-- it's long enough that you feel you've written a story, and yet it's over quickly enough that you don't get stuck on a scene in the middle.

Theo, I loved yours -- the whole Bogart vibe is very Lilah/Wes.

I want to do drabbles because I feel like I *should* write fic, but it's rare that the plot bunnies bite me. And once you have 100 words, 900 or so more should be easy, she said delusionally.

When I first started looking for fanfic, I was in UTTAD's position: I loved the show, and I wanted more just like that. I gave up on Buffyfic in 1999, when after a quick search all I could find was smut--either about pairings I had never contemplated, or about pairings on the show, but described in completely out-of-character ways. I still do love big plotty episode-like stories, but I've also come to appreciate the some of the other kinds of stories. Finding *in-character* unconventional ships certainly helped.

And then (*shrug*) I write neither big plotty stories nor smut. (The latest story has my first unconventional ship, and my first attempt at explicit sex; the emotional connection works, but I'm not sure the sex scene does. I find it much easier to write erotically about attraction than about consumation.)

I find *both* plot and sex really hard to write, personally. Moody depressive interior monologues and descriptions of landscape, those I could write endlessly. Me and 75% of the fic writers on the Internet, alas.

(not looking at 1K challenge not looking at 1K challenge not not not)

My favourite international slang, alas, got translated into English for me and I fell so in love with the English version that I promptly forgot the extremely idiomatic French. Basically, "Good Afternoon! Please give my regards to your unwed mother!"

Fun.

I think that for me, the farther you get from slot-it-right-into-the-show canon the better the story and the writing have to be, for much the same reason that I expect my vampire shows to be consistent dammit. If you want me to buy Willow and Spike, you're going to have to impress the hell out of me with your Willow and Spike characterizations, the prose is going to have to be damn solid, and I'm going to have to get all the way to the end without once thinking "oh, look, there's the author giggling about how cool they are that they made Willow and Spike have sex!" That's difficult for me. (Depends on the relationship, of course. Some of them make sense to me - Buffy and Wesley is a really interesting what-if in my head, for instance, while Spike and Xander just makes me feel very, very puzzled.)

Unless it's just trying to be porny, which I can get behind.