And what we all want is to see those two crazy kids live happily ever after, in a house with a white picket fence, with Adam and whatever other children the two of them churn out.

What is it that compels this kind of things in the darker fandoms? (LFN, XF, etc.) When I read about a domestically blissful Spuffy, I can't really connect the story to the show I know and love. While I get the same kind of disconnect when i read about Psychopath!Fraser or Suicidal!Ray on dS fandom, I don't think it comes from the same sort of impulse.

My guess: That kind of fluff comes from "I really like these characters and I want them to be happy, so I'm going to write a happy ending for them, which they'll never get on the show."

I actually have sympathy for that, most of the time, though I don't generally read it. Bad fluff I can just avoid. Bad darkfic makes me feel like the characters are being vandalized, so I have to avoid it. (Good darkfic is a thing of beauty.)

Admittedly, I've know how that story was going to end for a couple years now, but from a show perspective it might just be a result of changes that ARE canon, but the fans don't like. Nikita went from painfully idealistic (still shown in the story), to terribly (and implausibly) hard as a result of one of the world's most bruising retcons.

I resist the canon of it, true, but I appreciate stories (like Dana's) which use it, and BETTER than the show did, really.

Preferred feedback? Honestly and embarassingly, I like hte feedback that weeps incoherently about how glorious it all is and how it's helped them heal from the wounds inflicted on their psyche by Joss' cruel heartlessness.

Hey, we're all on the road to proper self-actualization, aren't we? At least I admit it.

I don't mind people saying, "Nope, I don't buy it" if it's well-explained and not couched in terms of "that bleep-bleep stalker/rapist/serial killer bleep Spike" or "gosh, you might be pretty good at this if you do this writing thing a bit longer". All right, dammit, I'm shallow. But if someone's got a difference of opinion, I'll be happy to talk about it, but odds are I'm not going to change the story.

Once again, may I make the argument that "happy ending" does not necessarily equal "white picket fences, 2.5 kids, life in the suburbs." Happy ending can equal "on the run for the rest of our lives, but at least we know we love each other and have some sort of contentment." Yep, Scully and Mulder.

Oh, I wouldn't expect anyone to change the story. The idea honestly wouldn't occur to me. (Well, maybe if it were a matter of undoubted canon or something - Buffy's father's name, etc.)

Dumb question. La Femme Nikita fandom always means the TV series, not the movie, right? Because, knowing the movie rather well, and never having much liked or watched the TV series, I suspect my vision is a tiny bit skewed.

You know, in a nice, angsty-Tchecky-Karyo way, but probably not in a way that would be relevant to the ongoing commentary.

Katie, I like to think that good feedback indicates understanding of the chief point of the story. There are some who can't bear to receive constructive criticism; there are some who, lacking understanding what the story in question is actually about, will give constructive criticism that's not constructive at all; but I think a happy medium exists somewhere.

Bad darkfic makes me feel like the characters are being vandalized, so I have to avoid it. (Good darkfic is a thing of beauty.)

Exactly. That's the difference to me between Kat Allison's "The End of the Road" and some really, really bad stuff I've seen where my beloved characters are sixteen kinds of criminally insane.

Good darkfic often has a feeling of inevitability or tragedy about it, and should grow from what we know about the characters. Either the writer explores a darkness we've seen in the character, or shows what happens to that character's strengths and weaknesses while under different kinds of pressure.

If you're giving me a happy ending, the characters have to earn it throughout the course of the story. If you're giving me a dark ending, then the seeds of those darkness need to have been planted before the story even begins.

Once again, may I make the argument that "happy ending" does not necessarily equal "white picket fences, 2.5 kids, life in the suburbs." Happy ending can equal "on the run for the rest of our lives, but at least we know we love each other and have some sort of contentment." Yep, Scully and Mulder.

Oh, sure, but that's not the Great Happy Ending that we're culturally trained to recognize. It's not an ending at all, really, it's a fade-out. Their life goes on. In the white picket fence version, I think the life that made the characters the focus of a show is supposed to have ended, which is supposed to be good. (Which may or may not be true.)

I think the life that made the characters the focus of a show is supposed to have ended, which is supposed to be good.

A sort of "And at last they were able to lay down their arms and rest" sort of thing?