I don't know how this will go down, but I just felt I had to raise this issue.

I'm writing this because I'm getting a little annoyed/worried about a trend I see happening in some of the EVA fics posted to the list. I don't know how much of this is relevant to fanfics on other series, because I don't know enough of any anime but EVA to read them, but hopefully some of this will excuse me wasting your time. I'm sure this will get some people's backs up, but hey, what the hell. I'm really not intending to single people out here, this is not a witch hunt.  Flames by private mail only please!

The trend I'm talking about, put bluntly, is this: I'm seeing fics that don't add anything.

What I mean by that is, that some of the fics I'm seeing are merely character sketches, illustrating the features of a character's personality, and containing little or no original plotting of their own. Hell, some of them have no plot whatsoever, just the character sitting there. While this is encouraging in that it shows that the writers understand the characters, something that is vital to any attempt at a fanfic, especially one with characters as complex as those of EVA, I find it slightly worrying that the authors of these pieces don't feel that they need to add to the series. To my mind at least, adding to a series is the essence of what fanfics are about.

Permit me to quote Tex Avery: "What you (do) with a character (is) even more important than the character itself." To put it another way, its all very well having an understanding of these incredibly complex characters, but if you don't use that understanding to do something interesting with the characters, it really defeats the purpose of writing a fanfic.

Engage flame-retardant shields!

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