At 05:11 PM 5/14/99 GMT, Gary Kleppe wrote:

I'm gonna agree with Krista and Reid here. This tired old argument is
your basic logical fallacy of "all or nothing." I think just about all
of us would agree that any reasonable reader should be willing to accept
some variation in the characters. But it doesn't follow that a reader
should accept anything a writer does with the character.

That sounds offly capricious.  How do you define when a fanfic writer
has "deviated" from the source too much?  It's an arbitrary call, and
any feeling on the matter is subjective and therefor shallow.

To draw an analogy, if a fan artist does a picture of Ranma, it's
probably not going to be indistinguishable from one of Takahashi's, and
that's fine; but if someone hands me a picture of Dagwood Bumstead and
tries to tell me it's Ranma, well, sorry, but I have a bit of a problem
with that. Because *some* variation is acceptable (to a particular
reader) doesn't mean that ANY variation is.

Any variation is acceptable, because you cannot quantifiably prove that
audiences will NOT accept Dagwood renamed as Ranma.  What about parody,
the obvious example of where such incredible variations have been
successfully received by their audiences?  No, what you're talking about
is an outmoded, baseless and entirely subjective code of honor that
has absolutely no legal, historical or moral basis beyond one's own
personal feelings.

In short, I don't know about you, but I could write or read a fanfic
that depicts Dagwood as Ranma.

"The Death of Love" by Steve Pardue. I also liked the story, though I
did have a problem with its treatment of Kasumi... but I digress. :)

Of course, this is the prerogative of the audience--to take issue with
aspects of a certain story or a broad form of practice.  Nevertheless,
understand that the audience can easily go the other way.  I, for
example, NEVER take issue with an author's representation of an
existing character--unless it is an historical character.  There
lies my preference for technical and historical accuracy, which
I readily admit distends arises from my *personal* taste.  Once
again, I must point out with extreme emphasis the exception of
parody.  I must admit that Jackie Chan's "Fantasy Mission Force"
had my rolling over myself and laughing hysterically.

-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>------+
+     Author of Liars and Dreamers, a Robotech fanfic    +
+-------<http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/1731/index.html>-+
| MIDN 4/c A-2-2 SQD, MIT-Harvard-Tufts NROTC Battalion  |
|_|"The art of war is of vital importance to the state"|_|