Subject: Re: [FFML] [C&C] Review, May 14
From: "Presley H. Cannady" <revprez@MIT.EDU>
Date: 5/14/1999, 5:49 PM
To: ffml@fanfic.com

At 11:00 AM 5/14/99 -0400, you wrote:

    I've seen contentions like this before, and frankly they strike
me as nothing more than a feeble excuse for laziness and poor
writing.

Then you'd also be wrong.  There has never been a good reason for
an author to abide by rules of canon when writing a derivative
work.  If I wrote a SM fanfic and called it Hunt For Red October,
you could not objectively call it a lazy and poor attempt at
writing--no objective standard exists, and the closest attempt to
statistically judge the quality of a work analyses its survivability
over time and the diversity of its audience.

    Why do I read Ranma fanfics, and not, say, fanfics about "Odin:
Photon Space Sailor Starlight" (God forbid there should be such a
fanfic)? Because I like the Ranma characters (or most of them), and
find the overall theme of the series an intriguing one. As a fanfic
author, you're drawing off the accumulated good will and interest
established by the original author toward her original characters.
Simply changing them about for no good reason other than it's more
"convenient" for the story you want to tell is sloppy and annoying.

>From your perspective, that's an important qualification.  You
ignore cases where the source material is inferior--from a general
perspective--to the derivative work, or where the source material may
consist of various conflicting elements and toss the issue of "what
is canon" to the winds of ambiguity.

    I am not arguing that you are constrained to write nothing but
original flavor fanfics, slavishly imitating the original. Nor do I
necessarily have anything against alternate world, "what if" type
stories. If you're going to do that, though, do it right.

I'd be very interested in hearing what you consider to be a properly
done what-if story.  I fail to see how a failure to retain 
consistency with the source material in anyway influences the
quality of the writing or the internal credibility of the story.
Tom Clancy's works are fraught with contradictions, yet it's hardly
considered a sign of laziness.

A fanfic is not a continuation of a series--it is by definition
an originally-produced derivative.  It need not conform to any
so-called "rules" of series consistency.

    How do you do it right? Read "Ill Met By Starlight." Here's a
rather different Ranma (to put it mildly). Or read "Paint It Black."
Here all the characters seem like reflections in a fun-house mirror,
strange distortions of themselves. Why do these stories work, while
others don't?

It sounds as if you are speaking on behalf of the Ranma 1/2
fanfiction fandom, which I sincerely doubt you are.  With 1300
people on this mailing list, less than 50 people were responsible
for the 380 posts between the 3rd of May and today.  That's at
the most 3.5% of those here on the list.  If this reflects the
ratio of vocal commentary to lurker commentary as it does with
my fanfics, then I'd have to take extreme issue with what you
think washes or doesn't wash.

-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"|_|