I'm always fairly relieved when I write under thirty thousand words, as I'm less likely to overthink it and I don't know if you know this, but the dividing line between 30K and 150K is what we call when I stop to think about what I'm writing. The core, what I actually meant to write, is usually about ten thousand words in there. Call it an executive summary. In my fandom career above the 30K line, there are precisely two exceptions to that, where I needed every word; the second was And All the World Beneath. The first was Jus Ad Bellum, which I'm currently bracing myself to re-read in lieu of X-Men First Class, since this movie completely--and I do mean completely--changed my view of Xavier.

I didn't like him then, and whoo, checking one of my first X-Men fic featuring him using Rogue as a stand-in for Erik---I would say it's not like that, but really, it kind of is--I really, really, really didn't like him, and I forgot that, which is why I'm currently having severe cognitive dissonance. I remember not really caring for him, but apparently, there's a period of time in there that I was ready to kill him, and then finally I did.

Now I feel bad about it, because with First Class canon, he totally could have led a mutant revolt against the humans when mutants were enslaved. He could have kicked great amounts of ass in the camps. He could have made them all kick their own asses. It's upsetting; I killed him because to get a world where the mutants fought back after beign confined to camps, I couldn't have him there, I needed him to catalyze Erik and Scott with his death; I couldn't see him able to take the step they needed that Erik would run with to create a new mutant oligarchy on earth. I couldn't see Scott and Jean and Logan letting themselves be corrupted by the new world order if Xavier could pull them back. I didn't think if he was there, they could do what they had to do to survive.

Do comic fans feel like this when you get a new writer for the series (or hey, Ultimate)? I never was into teh Batman movies enough to feel the dissonance, but I am officially getting a headache from a.) guilt (I--know, leave me alone, I've been McAvoy's since Children of Dune and all that time without a shirt; way to go God!) and also b.) interpretation failure on a massive scale. I don't mind making leaps, but either they are that different in character or I missed something important in the first movie (and later, somewhat, in the second and various cartoons over the years).

I'm not sure I so much got better about writing out my character dislike (see, Smallville; it was a lesson), but I'm not sure I was ever so naked about before X-Men or after.

Also, for the record, I just realized I wrote Erik/Toad and I have no memory of why. I didn't even write slash back then. I didn't even write anything Logan/Rogue! And now I am all confused because ten years ago I didn't like Xavier and I'm pretty sure I didn't care for Erik and now I am in some kind of fugue state when I think of Charles (I think of him as Charles okay?) and realized I've really missed writing the apocalypse. And that I wrote Erik/Toad, and somewhere I have to have some notes on where the hell that came from.

Sometimes I think fanfic writers' problems are kind of unsettling. Feel free to share your own! That's kind of a plea, in case I need to be more transparent here.