old fandoms and other tripe

I have massive story archives of other people's fic on my hard drive. over 100mb's worth, at the last count, and I'm a multi-fandom whore. I read pretty much anything, and the fic files on my computer are sorted by fandom for easy re-reading. Occasionally I get a hankering to go read old favourites, as you do. Last night it was X-Files/Once a Thief, a fandom of pretty men and Nicholas Lea. XF/OaT was pretty much fandom #3 for me. I started in X-Men and comics (most of the stories now long gone after successive hard drive moves), went on to Buffy, then landed somehow in XF and progressively OaT due to the archives being closely linked and some crossovers (normally how I start reading new fandoms). And I got hit with the old law of 'tastes change, and so does your pickiness'. When applied to stuff you've written, it's normally the cringe factor of looking back at stuff you wrote a few years ago and were so proud of then, but now you look at the style, the prose, and go 'Oh dear god, what was I thinking, posting that?' Have discovered that that also applies to fic. Went over several old stories and old favourites in writers, ones I remembered as writing some rather nice hot sex and decent plots. Opened file, read... and recoiled in horror at some godawful lurid, badly-written and highly questionable sex and dialogue. Not nearly as bad as some stuff I've read, but it was nowhere near as good as I remembered. I spent most of that session cringing, finding maybe one fic in ten that I still respected.

Just goes to show. You get hellishly picky the longer you spend in fandom. And my fluff/plot tolerance is really getting snarky.

So, er, the writers must know....

Just watched Smallville. Episode 'Red', aka Clark gets hit by red meteor rock which makes him lose his inhibitions and basically act like a normal teenage boy. So, there was much drooling, giggling, worship of Lionel and Lex and telling Lana to piss off. A fairly okay Smallville ep, but not up with the absolute greats.

Except. And this is a big except. Smallville has the rep for massive amounts of HoYay. Massive amounts. A show that has a 'Gayest Look of the Episode' thing. So, we watch the usual hoyay and then... Clark and Lex's scene where Clark asks to borrow the Ferrari. I had my mouth open for the whole thing. Literally.

First Lex blatantly checked Clark out. Camera as his eye. Then the rest of the scene? Nothing but blatant, playful flirting. It seriously couldn't be construed as anything else. The writers couldn't have been writing anything else.

And lo, there was an impression of a goldfish by yours truly.