It probably shouldn't surprise anybody that my de-flouncing post requires several bullet points. It's how my brain works, okay?

1. Howdy, y'all! I had a fab break from fandom, and I'm happy to be back! No, truly.

2. As some of you noticed, I'd set all comments to be screened while I was away. I wasn't planning on checking LJ, and I didn't want some bizarre flamewar breaking out while I wasn't there to monitor it. I did decide to go in every once and a while to unscreen comments because there were some people having discussions. I'm not planning on replying to any comments that were left during my hiatus, though.

3. I don't know if I'm gonna get caught up on my flist. Probably not. If you wrote something awesome while I was hiatusing, throw a link at me in comments.



4. If you want to read the introspective-y reasons behind the hiatus, it's under the cut. Otherwise, ignore it.

Honestly, whenever I find myself ranting against Buffy-hate or the whitewashing of Spike, I'm primarily ranting against...myself. Well, against opinions I used to have. That make me cringe now.

Cause I used to be solely a Spike girl. I only saw things from his POV, and I vilified Buffy to a large extent. It took a while for my Buffy-love to develop, but it did. And it developed in addition to my Spike-love, not at its expense.

So now, it's like I have two pairs of glasses. My Spike-glasses where I can see things from his viewpoint and where I understand the motivations behind his actions and sympathize with him. And there are my Buffy-glasses where I do the same with her. One thing I love about S6 is how Buffy and Spike are on two completely different journeys, yet they collide together anyway. It's impossible to view the whole picture from only one pair of glasses.

But since the glasses are separate objects, situations arise where I may sympathize with Buffy in a way that puts Spike in a bad light (or vice-versa). Well, that's cause I'm using my Buffy-glasses, and whatever Spike did, it affected her in a negative way. In the next sentence, I could switch to my Spike-glasses to grok and sympathize with his side of the story.

Okay, this is meandering, isn't it? Right then. The hiatus was the result of a lot of colliding things. A tough semester, bad health problems, stupid insurance people, and fandom being a not-so-fun environment at the time. My defense of Buffy rant prompted some responses that, frankly, annoyed the fuck out of me. I hate how fandom sees the need to polarize into "Spike fans" and "Buffy fans" in Spuffy fandom, and I hate how Spike fans defensively react against any perceived threat (even when...there's no threat). I know the reasons. I know the bile that gets thrown at Spike fans. I've defended Spike, myself. But this defensive reaction results in a need to tiptoe around anything that may be seen as dissing on Spike, even a sympathetic defense of Buffy that doesn't at all say a bad word about Spike.

I'm...well, I'm a frank person. I don't like passive-aggressiveness or dancing around subjects. Not to say I'm not polite, but there's a way to be polite while still being honest and to-the-point (Well...there's a way not to be rude about it). So let me attempt that feat and say that I hate having to tiptoe around the Spike persecution complex. Again, I know why it's there. I can't really blame anyone for it being there. But it's a pain in the ass when a post that's really not about Spike at all triggers such a response.

It's tiring in the long-term. And I knew from my initial reaction to the whole thing that I was strung out on fandom. I was considering a hiatus the morning after having written that rant, and as my annoyance only grew, I hit the point where I knew I needed a break.

Cause fandom is supposed to be fun. And I wasn't having fun. And I was starting to feel like I was becoming far too bitchy, which is always a sure sign that I need to take a breather.

I'm not saying all this this in any prescriptive capacity. I don't expect fandom to change. It doesn't have to. The hiatus was for me because I was stressed.

I'm just explaining my reasons because I received some curious inquiries from people. If you want to boil it all down to a simple sentence, it can be summed up as follows: I was stressed and fandom started sucking for me. Yep.





5. Clarifying a couple points about the Buffy rant that were apparently up for dispute.

I didn't want to draw much attention to the initial discussion that prompted the rant because the commenter clarified some of what she had said, and I don't like to spotlight people like that. So I generalized the rant to address common sentiments I'd seen around Spuffy fandom, and to address opinions I used to have. However, the rant was very much against Buffy-bashing. In the discussion that prompted the rant, Buffy was accused of, among other things, "playing the victim" by flinching at Spike in Beneath You. That crosses the line into an unreasonable attack for me. There also existed criticisms that should have been made towards the writers but were put on Buffy's head, instead. Again, that crosses a line for me.

Criticism of Buffy is very much 'allowed' (As if I had fandom-wide power over that). Criticisms of Buffy were brought up in the very comment section of the rant and were not perceived as attacks. I'm always up for debate, and if you take issue with anything I say, call me on it. Seriously.

The rant was not an imperative for people to like Buffy, nor was it intended to chastise people who do not like her. You like who you like. The rant was, basically, exactly what it said it was: a defense of the Buffster against opinions the likes of which I used to hold that I now feel are unfair or unreasonable.

And, most especially, the rant was not meant to further dichotomize the either/or Spike-fan/Buffy-fan 'division' of Spuffy fandom. Quite the opposite. The rant was intended to drive home the point that liking and sympathizing with Buffy is not mutually exclusive with liking and sympathizing with Spike. The fact that it was seen as a "point" for Buffy-fans pissed me off beyond measure (because it ignores the fact that I'm also a Spike-fan, and it's a sign of that Spike persecution complex that the mere act of defending Buffy is seen as something that sends Spike-fans underground).





6. I suppose it's hypocritical to speak of frankness while only subtly alluding to what I mean.

Okay, I did say I like to be upfront, and veiled references always piss me off. So I'll fess up and say that it was rahirah's post in reaction to the rant that annoyed the fuck out of me. That likely says more about me than it does about the post, because, as I mentioned somewhere upwind in this post, I was on a short fuse and the mere fact that I was getting so irritated was a sign to me that I needed a break from fandom.

I'll say this, though, that I've had instances in the past where people try to read passive-aggressiveness or ulterior motives into my posts. So let me just say: DON'T. I don't mean much more than...exactly what I'm saying (unless it's a satirical post, and I try to make those semi-obvious). A rant against Buffy-bashers is nothing more than a rant against Buffy-bashers. It's not a fandom-wide call to arms to disallow criticism against Buffy or anything of that sort. If you're having to "read into" what I'm saying, you're probably missing the point.



7. Yes, I missed a Sunday linkspam and the Tuesday episode poll (Though I suppose I could go ahead and do the episode poll today...but I won't). I considered doing both of them since they're prepared ahead of time, and it's not much of a bother to post them. But I was trying to stay away from LJ altogether, so I opted to just leave it be. They will return, and next Tuesday we'll be polling over School Hard.

8. I've been attempting to get my fiction-writing-muse back in order. This involves drabbling! Don't know if I'll post any of the drabbles as they're a little random and more exercises than anything else. But I hope to get a start on some of my WIPs I have lying around. *sigh*