So... I loved the X-Files for the first several seasons when it originally aired. My interest started waning, though, somewhere around the seventh season. I actually did like Agent Doggett (sp?), and got a little bit more into it again when he came on board, but I was only a casual watcher by then. I thought the final episodes were a huge let-down. To me, this series went out with an indifferent whimper - most definitely not a bang. I tried on three separate occasions to get through the second movie. I fell asleep every time. I vaguely remember some guy who looked a lot like Crazy Data, and something about a frozen lake or field or something, but it was all such a "meh" at that point. 

Youngest got her hands on  DVDs of the show and we've been binge watching them because she wants to "know the background" before watching the new series. I've discovered something that will probably make me hugely unpopular with most X-Files fans.

Agent Fox Mulder is a total [insert favorite pejorative here.] Seriously, I get that he went all the way (literally) to the ends of the Earth to save Scully in the first movie, but holy crabapples is he a self-absorbed jerk most of the time. I suppose on some level, I always thought this. It was probably why I didn't care when Duchovny left the series and was okay with the T-1000 taking over.

I don't know if I even care that the show is back. I purchased a "season pass" from Amazon, but honestly, I did it for Youngest. If she wasn't such a fan, I wouldn't have bothered. Why? Because I don't have that much attachment to either the lead characters or the show itself. Bring back the Lone Gunmen and I'm there, but otherwise... *shrug.*

Yes. I am very well aware that putting Trixie and Regan together is horrifying to most Trixie Belden fans. And you probably want to know why I've done it.

Basically, a joke backfired on me. A long time ago, pretty much in the Dark Ages in Internet Time, someone made a crack about Trixie running off with Regan. (She also said something about Jim and Miss Trask and no. Just no. Not even I will go there.) So, I thought, well, despite the way he acts, Regan really is only 22 when the books start. It's not *entirely* out of the realm of possibilities. Or taste. I wrote a story that was eventually incorporated into A Simple Kind of Fear. (The original version of the episode now called Falling, The Director's Cut, Part 1.) That was *supposed* to be the end of it. My joke on the person - she knows who she is - who threw that bit of insanity out there.

Up until that point? I was totally Team Dan. Sorry, Jim fans! I know you are legion, but Dan's the Man. Or he was. After I wrote Falling, I could not get Trixie and Regan out of my head. They took up residence and refused to leave. I wrote the first six episodes of ASKOF - Madness - and then kept right on going.

And that's pretty much the whole story. The idea grabbed me and won't let go. Please note, though, that there's nothing really hinky going on in ASKOF. Trixie is 17 when she falls for Regan and 18 before anything serious happens. In The Cold Lake Murders (an entirely different universe), she's 25, though in the interludes there are hints that she's had Regan wrapped around her little finger since high school.