TJ Hamilton <ryougaecho@abraxis.com> wrote:

Its fanfiction. If you want to see it stick to Character lines, go read
the original stuff, because only the original authors know for sure how
they would act. It's their series, not ours. All we can do is guess.

Gotta disagree with you here, TJ.

It's true that there's a lot of gray areas in characterization. Fanfics tend to
put the characters in situations that they never encountered in the original. In
such a case we can only estimate how they might react.

But it's a fallacy to go from that and say that characterization in fanfics
shouldn't be discussed at all. That's all-or-nothing thinking. There *are*
things we do know about the characters. Part of what we do as C&Cers is to point
out when the author is having the characters act in ways that aren't believable,
because that kind of thing lessens the enjoyment of the story. If someone felt
that way about something I wrote, I would want and expect them to say so. I
won't necessarily agree with them, but I will listen to what they have to say.

You are of course entitled to your opinion on these matters, however the
entire 'opinion' seemed to be a 'diplomatic attack.' Most of us are
writing for personal entertainment, much like Mr. Eddy, or most of
Colliding SYmphonies, as are many readers. I've read many works where I
did not enjoy the content, and took the entertainment out of reading
fanfiction, but I didn't use subtle attacks on the author because his
story didn't agree with me, which is what this seems to be.

I didn't perceive this as an attack -- just some honest negative feedback.
Personally, I consider Dave Eddy a very good writer and a friend, but that
doesn't mean that he's above criticism, as I'm sure he himself would agree. I
myself was quite critical of his treatment of Ranma in "Second Time Around," and
I would say that Grayson made some very valid points in his response to
Nekophobia.

To have others to adhere to the opinions that were pointed out in your
response to Dave Eddy's Nekophobia, many -good- fanfictions would never
have been written.

Again, this is all-or-nothing thinking. Saying that the characters could've been
treated differently in a fanfic isn't the same at all as saying that the fic
shouldn't have been written at all. Neither does expecting the characters to be
recognizable mean that all you can write is original flavor.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics