Actually, I do remember now. But it's good for a giggle all the same, even if I should be doing work.

There do seem to be an awful lot of UK writers in SG, based on the number of times I've seen Jack realize that he fancies Daniel.

Ah! The Anais story is Dr. Jackson's Diary which is a lovely spoofy take on Bridget Jones's Diary, only with missions and plot and so on. Probably my favorite non-DS slash story.

I once tried to read that oft-recced Buffyfic in which a bunch of the Scoobs, Spike & Wes are turned into little kids, but the cutesy-ness of it all made me kind of queasy so I had to stop.

Oh, yeah, I had a several huge problems with that, too. Mostly of the have-you-ever-been-around-children variety, which is the same kind of weird feeling I get when reading a story by someone who I know (through idle lurking in their journal, or whatever) has had sex, as an adult, and participated in conversations with a significant other, and been out with said s.o. in public. And yet their story is like the fantasy of an unsocialized twelve-year-old virgin.

Also, I get incredibly irritated at people who keep on talking about how Spike has been mistreated in the show and how *their* Spike is the right Spike. Which is hypocritical of me, because I've said the exact same thing about Cordelia when I was reccing Julie Fortune's Angel fic.

Vonnie is me.

I loved "Small Fry" and "Son of Small Fry." Quick, how many folks can say "Are we surprised?"

I sort of feel that way about Spike. But I think Herself's Spike is Spike, so...

But I think Herself's Spike is Spike, so...

I think she writes the character wonderfully, but I don't think he has much to do with Spike as he has been developed on the shows after "Bargaining" or so.

(I suspect she'd agree with me on that, given what she's said about the show recently, and I like her version of him a lot anyhow.)

And yet their story is like the fantasy of an unsocialized twelve-year-old virgin.

I think that's often a writing problem -- it's like that line in "Sleepless in Seattle" about how one character wants to be in love in a movie, not in real life. People are trying to write movie love/sex, not the real thing as they experienced it.

I like h/c too, connie. Hey, we've all got our kinks.

I hate hate HATE this plot device. The hell? I once tried to read that oft-recced Buffyfic in which a bunch of the Scoobs, Spike & Wes are turned into little kids, but the cutesy-ness of it all made me kind of queasy so I had to stop.

Yeah. Well, the thing with that series I was talking about is I was sure it was undermining that, and I was all "hey! This is an interesting take!" And then it... wasn't.

I'm with erika and Lyra. And to me the Herself!Spike makes total sense, given that she started writing him that way back when it could be extrapolated from canon. Why drop a perfectly good WIP just because it gets jossed?

It's funny, the question of "Dark" fic, both how common it is in a fandom, and how it's defined. When I got into Farscape, Maayan and I spent a lot of time going, "where's the tough stuff?" Because we just weren't finding it.

Nobody was really pushing the characters all the way to the worst possible outcomes, nobody was breaking them in interesting ways. Which is odd, because the show supports that interpretation, imho. It's all about throwing people against the worst in themselves. And in fic, you can do anything you want, so I didn't understand why more people weren't experimenting with this.

In XF, there's no shortage or truly horrible stories, or at least truly dark outcomes: "Before I Forget Blue", "Drive, He Said", Nascent's Barnyard Stories, lots of post-col, lots of the profiler fics. SE Parson's work, M Sebasky's work, Sabine's "Are We Having a Good Time?" (I think that's not the right name, but it's close). Rivka & Sally's "Iolokus" and "Tikkun Olam". Rivka's "Wireless". LoneGunGuy's "The Tiger Complex". Sally's post-ep for En Ami. They push and they push and they push, all the way out.

Most of the SG fic I've been reading is the stuff off recs from Vonnie and company, so I expect it to be good and probably dark. I have no concept of what the bulk of the fandom is writing.

What I do know is that in Farscape, until recently, the really dark stuff didn't go over very well. The fans have issues with anything that doesn't show a glimmer of hope. There have been long-ranging arguments waged over this on various boards and lists, and basically the two sides have forced a detente. I'm never going to convince anyone that "Xenophilia" is believable if she's completely invested in the John/Aeryn romance, and I'm never going to buy a happy family story with aliens on Earth. (Well, never say never: but you'd have to work for it.)

But after reading "The Cost of Doing Business" I realized that I hadn't read anyone but Maayan who'd done that to the Farscape characters. And even she mostly did it by implication: I'm thinking of "Gehenna" and "Black(Ghosts)" primarily. People die, but it's mostly offstage. Not the way Tripoli does it.