At 11:05 PM 5/14/99 -0500, Ranma Al'Thor wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 1999, Presley H. Cannady wrote:

Once again, to the point of exhaustion, this is a fundamentally flawed
statement.  To say that the only thing worth commenting on about a fanfic
is how well it stays consistent with the source material is pure bull.

Did I say that?  But the issue at hand was characterization.  

No, you did say that.  Reprinted for your convenience.

If the opinion of
everyone on this list on such issues as characterization is innately
'shallow' and arbitrary, then we are simply 1000+ people whistling in the
dark at each other and there is no point in conducting any discussion of
anything.  

Of course, you may have a different take on what this means.  I personally
think it's crystal clear.

Yes, the issue at hand is characterization.

I'll tell you this much, of 1300 people on this list, I see fifty people
providing dangerously similar commentary.  If that's all the commentary

And?  Spontaneous consensus is usually worth listening to.

No, it's not.  It never was, and it never will be.  Not in political
discourse, casual debate, or in professional writing circles.  This
is a truism entirely without a base in reality.

If I were to post an entirely original work here, then tell me how
would you critique it.  From your perspective, an original work has
nothing worth criticizing, as it is in itself source material.

No, an original work is critiqued in some respects by different standards
than a fanfic because an original work isn't claiming any connection to
another work.  I'm talking about critiquing fanfics, and if you're going
to claim a connection to another work, then it's perfectly logical to try
to assess whether or not there's any truth to that claim.

Indeed, you're entitled to do so.  I'm merely pointing out that a
good portion of the folks reading the fic won't care either way.
I reach out to an audience that's not familiar with Robotech.  After
all, how else do you increase the fandom?  That's unless your
intent on keeping it some sort of exclusive little club.

In assessing an original work, the criteria of consistency of
characterization would be entirely internal.

And still subjective, but I digress.  The point is that 
characterization is an incredibly subjective quality, just as
any quality is.  When we originally discussed this, we were talking
about alternate worlds and justification for differing from source
characterization.  I say that an author's distaste for the source
material's original characterization is sufficient reason (since
I don't think you really need a reason in the first place) to
digress from it.  More to the point, I indicated that an author
could ignore such points with impunity and still maintain a
broad and diverse readership.

It does if one assumes that the point of using another author's
characters and world instead of creating one of your own is that you want
to claim some connection to that body of work.  What's the point of not
making up your own characters if you have to fold, spindle, and mutilate
the other person's characters in order to tell your story?  I personally
can't see the point.  And there's the 'truth in advertising' issue.  If I
see something labelled as a Ranma fanfic, I don't expect to have to
relearn the characters from ground zero because Kasumi now pushes drugs,
Ranma kills children for fun, Genma has just been canonized, and Happousai
just became the Pope in order for the story to work.  If the author has to
wave their magic twaggler too much in order for the story to work, this is
probably a clue it would work better with some other set of characters.

Why must there be any other point other than "I felt like it?"
Here we reach yet another basic disagreement, and I think we'd
disagree on a NUMBER of topics based on this train of thought.

That's nice, but that's no guarantee of quality.  Appeals to a general
audience does not necessarily equal quality.

Why not.  What's the measuring rod of quality?  For me, its
the breadth of general acceptance and survivability of a work over
time.  That's what I use to judge the quality of a work.

No, but it is an example of a fanfic.  I fail to see the distinction that
you're trying to make here.

Your argument essentially stated that because parodies can go wild, any
fanfic go wild, which doesn't necessarily follow.

Why is that?

You've never listened to fans bitch about inconsistencies in series, I
take it.  

As a matter of principle, I rarely ever listen to fans.  They'll watch
whatever they're given; they'll complain, but they'll watch.  I'm
more concerned with attracting a new audience.  Research some of
the Nielsen rating trends for popular television series.  Not
just sci-fi/fantasy ones, but take a look at daytime drama, or
any sort of fictional situation television.  I can't think of any more
irresponsible way to write than to appeal to the sense of the
fans.  If I want to attract Joe Jones out of the US Navy, I
write something appealing to him--maybe drawing from life experiences
he can relate to.  If I want to attract Mr. Slim Skin MBA at
the Sloan School, I'll write about something HE can relate to.
I don't write fanfiction for the purpose of appealing to the fans
alone.  They'll read or they won't based on their preferences, so
why waste the time?

Fans complain about this sort of thing all the time.  I've seen
plenty of movie reviews that complained about holes in the plot that you
could drive a truck through, too.  More importantly, it's too late for
fans to give any kind of feedback once something is on TV, but with
fanfic, you can tell the author they've screwed up, and it might change.
That makes this situation rather different from viewing a polished product
which is beyond one's power to influence.

I've also seen movie reviews that differ so wildly that you'll
never get an accurate gauge of how "good" a film "really is."
Hell, Siskel and Ebert's system permits that sort of disagreement.
The fact is that it's all very subjective, and some folks care
and others don't.  I say that the trends of the industry suggest
that most folks aren't concerned about SERIES consistency and
the preservation of characterization from one show to the next.

-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"|_|