Ah, fandom. She works in mysterious and often alarming ways.

I have seen Brian/Justin/Clark/Lex, though.

Heh. See, I envision this story of Brian trying to pick up Spike in a bar, and the two of them getting so caught up in trying to out-wit, out-alpha and out-top each other that it never goes anywhere, and they get increasingly frustrated.

Then a bald guy from Smallville walks in...

Probably good reasons I don't write fanfic.

Probably good reasons I don't write fanfic.

Please make an exception in this case? Cause... GUH!

Please make an exception in this case? Cause... GUH!

I may. But if someone wants it, it's fair game. just let me know.

Somedays, I almost feel bad I don't get Showtime.

So, what do people think of their remixes? (I did this one, and was remixed here.) I liked the shift of POV in the remix of "Lost" so much that I didn't even notice at first that it was really not a shift of POV at all, but a reversal of the story (instead of Clark flying in through Lex's hotel bedroom window, Lex drives back to Clark's college dorm room). I think it's clever, but it's not at all what I expected!

I'm okay with mine. It's basically just a complete shift to Xander's point of view, with most of the story intact. I just thought there were better stories to remix. It makes me wonder what people think of my stories, you know?

Why did you think other stories would be better?

I was convinced the remix would be Study Break, because it's fluffy and short but things happen in it. "Lost" was as much an attempt to write sleepiness convincingly as anything else -- she had to flip the plot around to get something new out of it.

I just thought there were better stories to remix. It makes me wonder what people think of my stories, you know?

Heh. I know that the remixes I did were not always the most complex and interesting stories written by the writers (espec. my assigned remix, as it was venturing into ACK! I don't dare touch a word of it! territory), but were the ones I thought might be interesting to expand on, or the ones that spoke to me.

The second mix I did, I was 3/4 through remixing another story, and not happy with what I was coming up with.

So I don't think it's about the original author so much as the remixer. I never would have thought Of Incubi and Inversion was the one that would get picked. It's the one I tend to forget is there, and all.

I know that the remixes I did were not always the most complex and interesting stories written by the writers

Exactly. "Stumbling Fast" (and Slod knows it was me, so, I'm owning up to it) wasn't my favorite of her stories. That's "Still," which I loved, but I wouldn't have wanted to change even if I could come up with something. "Stumbling Fast" had a way in for me.

Okay, so this is, err, weird. My remix fic. Silly little thing to start with, sufficently so that I had to read my own story again to remember which it was. They've swapped from Angel POV to third-person focused on Buffy, which is fair enough and they've done it very well, but then they changed the ending so that the main point of the story, insofar has it had one, is completely gone and the thing's nonsensical, or it seems that way to me.

I wish I knew who they were, so I could e-mail them and say "you've done a nice job, I enjoyed it, especially some of the character details, but could you explain why you made the Scrabble tile Buffy gives Angel a tile 'in Gaelic' rather than a 'B'? Because, you know, I'm no expert on Gaelic but Scrabble tiles have single English letters on them, and even if Gaelic has its own alphabet, which I don't think it does, what did you mean?"

It feels like I was hoping to learn something about one of my stories, and all I've got is something I feel I don't understand. Which is unsettling somehow.

ETA: it also feels slightly inappropriate to be going through this in a public forum not in private e-mail, but as I don't know who it is, I... I don't know. Maybe I need some more sleep.