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ETA: You know I should probably take this down, or flock it or something. But I feel the need to rant today. So you are warned. Self indulgent rant below.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I'm not leaving the fandom, or stopping writing, or anything like that, but I think once I'm done with Possession, it may be a while before I write any Spuffy again. Some of it is just me, for reasons I don't understand the 'ship just doesn't affect me the way it used to, although there are a couple of amazing Spuffy WIPs I'm still following.

I've started to feel like I write Spuffy now because I know that people will read it. But I got a review last night that made me wonder why I'm writing Spuffy. So here's the review:

I\'m all with Buffy about getting Spike back and ASAP too! But ya know, I wouldn\'t shed a tear if they got their hands on Angelus again and throw Darla in for good measure. Not that I like the initiative, far from it, they a need a good nuclear bombing that will wipe them out once and for all, but if D and A went up in smoke with them..... well, I wouldn\'t shed any tears. Loved the update. Thanks so much. more please.

Now it's a good review in the sense that she loves the story and can't wait to see what happens next, but here's the thing, she wants two of my (by which I mean Joss') characters to die. And they are not the villains either. Darla and Angelus are saddling up to help Buffy rescue Spike, and she's pretty much rooting for them to get killed in the process.

Now I've had a lot of other reviews on this story that have said, "Wow, you actually made me like Darla," or "I hate Angel but you made me feel sorry for him," which absolutely thrilled me. I guess the thing that bothers me is that there's this kind of Spuffy fan who loves Spike, maybe loves Buffy, but maybe just tolerates her because Spike loves her, and hates all the other characters.

Yeah sure I know, Darla and Angelus are unlikely characters for the role of hero, but if it was Willow and Xander. . . well I've seen so much discussion by Spuffy fans in the reviews of other people's stories about how horrible Willow and Xander are. How they deserve bad things to happen to them (usually because of how they treated Spike). And of course there is Angel, anything bad that happens to Angel is considered a good thing.

But I love all these characters, and I don't want to cheer for bad things to happen to them. Sure none of them are perfect, but that's why they're great characters.

I should admit right now that in my first fic Needy, Angel is the villain, and I do bad things to him. And you know something funny, that story just got nominated for an award despite all it flaws, and when I think about all the reviews that story got cheering Angel's demise, I wonder if maybe that's not the reason.

And now that I've said all that let me apologize. I don't think all Spuffy fans (or even most) are rabid hatemongerers. But since I've started to branch out into rare ships, I've realized that as great as it is to be read by lots of people, it's better to just write what you want to write.

So I think I'm going to start posting an all human AU Spangle piece I've started working on soon. I'm not sure because I'm nervous as hell about it, since I've never written a human AU before. And I hope to have another short Darla/Angelus fic by the end of May. In other words I'm going to follow my muse where she takes me, and maybe someday that'll be back to Spuffy again.