Personally, I think these rules are total bunk.

1) The first and foremost purpose of writing fanfiction is 
to please yourself.  *You* are your primary audience.

2) If you intend to post your fanfiction, then some
attention to grammar and spelling is required, but
that's *all.*  Your style is your style, and whether
or not you accept or decline critique on the way
you present your story does not reflect on your
qualities as a writer.

3) Fanfiction is nothing more than original fiction
placed within the setting of an existing fictional
work.  If you're looking to remain true to the canon,
then follow the rules all you want.  If you don't
give a damn about what's canon or not, then shape
your characters whichever way you want to.

4) With these extremes outlined, you're probably saying 
"All right.  This guy thinks you can put just about 
anything up for sail and the average Joe will digest 
it."  Well, no.  Actually, I'm not.  There are 
considerations you must make when you right a story 
IF one of your driving motivations is to reach a 
sufficiently large audience.  First, you must define 
clearly what audience you want to reach.  Too many 
times I've read pseudo-literary essays that prescribe
general rules to catch the attention of the general 
reader.  That's pure bullshit.  Tell that to the guy 
working in the IBM plant in Kingston hanging on to 
Tom Clancy's every word. Tell that to the lit prof 
who forces you to read and understand every word of 
Tolstoy's divergent narrative prose on calculus 
concepts. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of 
audiences out there with varying tastes.  Some like 
"simple" stories that don't delve to deeply into 
character development and intrigue.  Others like 
sprawling epics with dense prose, massive casts, 
and enormous settings.  Others go for the whole 
character interaction thing.  I personally like a 
mixture of all these elements, although I have 
enjoyed stories that have one or two of these 
elements, or maybe none at all.

Mr. McAvoy brought up some good points.  He's
a reader as well as a writer, and he has taken the 
time to inform other writers that there's an
audience out there that shares his tastes.  There's
also an audience out there that likes something
completely different.  I don't give a damn about
the character interactions of NXE (or even UF).
Those are secondary to their hilarious antics, 
IMHO.  Maybe that makes me a shallow reader, but
hell--I know what I like.

-The Reverend Prez

*  *  *

+-----------------+-<The Badass Reverend of Funk Prez>---+
|    Presley H.   | Political Science / Computer Science |
|    Cannady II   | and Electrical Engineering Undergrad |
|<revprez@mit.edu>| at the Mass. Institute of Technology |
+-----------------+-<Anime Manga Development Group>------+
+-------<http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/1731/index.html>-+
|_|"The art of war is of vital importance to the state"|_|