Peter L. Ward wrote:

As for being "better", what is the working definition of "better"?  If you mean 
stronger, that can be overcome in Ranma's case.  He's always managing to find a 
way to best his opponents.  The only ones I can think of he can't best are 
Cologne & Happosai, if only due to their experience (if not wisdom...).  I 
can't rightly speak for other authors, but my characters aren't that much 
stronger than Ranma & company.  Even Buffy, who's got superstrength, is more on 
a par with Ryoga and Shampoo where strength is concerned.

"Better" personalities?  In Ranma, that's all to easy to establish.  Ranma's a 
jerk, Kuno's a buffoon, and Genma's a fool.  Not too many other source 
characters are much better.  You'd have to work at making characters on a par 
or worse than Ranma & company in the personality department.

	What I meant was, you don't want a character who's completely
free of flaws, but has a balanced set of advantages and disadvantages.
Perfect people, like some self-insertion characters, can be annoying.

	Anyway, why are you responding to Taleswapper's post as if it
was an attack on your writing in particular?  From what he implies in
his comments, it seems like the story he's really got a bone to pick
with is Eight Days a Week.

My general approach to creating a character is just that, creating the 
character.  I don't design a character to be better than or worse than the 
source characters.  I *do* try to make them interesting, though.  Sometimes I 
succeed, sometimes I fail.  I give them a story hook of some sort and hope that 
it takes.  Again, some succeed and some fail.  That's how it goes.

	No one's saying that you should never take the focus away from
the source characters when you write a fanfic -- but if you do, the
characters you focus need to be able to maintain the audience's
interest as much as the anime characters do.

	What I like to see in terms of characterization in a story --
and I'm not directing this toward your stories, but in the general
case -- is for the author to treat the characters like people rather
than chess pieces: to convey the impression that they are living out
their lives, not just fulfilling a set of functions in the plot.

-- 
 Julian Fong                                     jhfong@ea.oac.uci.edu
   00001000111110000100010000000011111111100001000100001111100010000 
"I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know 
 most faults." - William Shakespeare, _As You Like It_, Act 3, Scene 2