Max,

Forgive me if I say, "Oh brother, another college student taking
Literary Criticism 311, trying desperately to let everyone know how
smart he is."  You're trying too hard, Max.  Don't get me wrong,
you've got points here, actual references to actual authors, and some
fine use of vocabulary.  But you also have problems.  See, I once was
where you are now, trying desperately to place literature's rules on
fanfiction, trying to teach fanfic authors how to write properly.  

It doesn't work.  

Does Bebop need a continuation?  Probably not, from a LitCrit
standpoint; it's made its statement, that life is inherently finite
and tragic, and that a second chance often proves inconsequential. 
You may as well just have him reincarnated many times until he gets it
right, or go into a Kafka-esque study of how every character in the
main cast is Spike in different reincarnations, all trying to tell him
something.  But don't begrudge your fellow fanfic author a little fun
simply because your view of the subtext says the story is done.  Give
him comments and criticism in the context of his story.  Pretend, if
you will, not to have the prejudice of LitCrit learning, of your own
set of "rules" for the series, and view the story on its own merits.

I suggest you stop trying to impress people with your bold statements
of generic LitCrit claptrap (ooh, that sounded nice); it's pretentious
and ultimately underwhelming.  Focus instead on the little things:
punctuation, for example; I noticed quite a few missing apostrophes,
and at least one comma splice.  Or perhaps focus on having the
foresight not to quote the entire story you're replying to when you
don't provide line-by-line commentary.

And if you have not, for some strange reason, taken Literary Criticism
in the 300 or 400 levels, I apologize.  I also congratulate you for
having internally summoned the poor judgment and elitist attitudes of
a student who has taken the class; it is not often such poor traits
are revealed without the assistance of college.

--Matthew

"Max M." wrote:

Forgive me if I say, "Ahh... *this* story again, brought to light again out
of the medium of someone elses artisic intentional mis-interpretation." Dont
get me wrong, this was well written and really nailed down all the important
points: the lethargy, the third person view, and the realization that giving
away responsibilities, even the ones that seem so heavy they will crush us,
makes you less free and not more. I take it you know the story well, it took
me a bunch of episodes from the series until I realized that Bebop was
telling it to actually try and play it down, just like Jeff Noon. I think
whoever wrote the series was trying to show how this story of the 'last real
chance at life that you know wont work' is still a chapter of real life
itself, like Memento. The series focused on the fact that more was going on
than just the creep of entropy, and tried to inspire a little hope. Im not
sure your trying to do the same. Not, of course that you have to, or that
this is in any way would be your intention, it's just my opinion that you
seem to be rehashing the episodes with out the benefit of portaying the bits
of real, interested and interesting, life that *does* go on even while spike
spirals downward. The cowboy bebop series itself was a continuation of some
other inherently similar series; as you remember Spike admitted he was
living on borrowed time to begin with. And whatever that series was, it was
a continuation of another one and another one all the way back until you get
to spike and julia as kids, wishing they were *something* else and secretly
deciding that the inner love the felt was all that would ever really matter.
Its a beautiful, deeply sad and tragic story, and i think the bebop series
did it well. It doent need a another continuation, though yours is certainly
not horrendous. Just promise me you wont make up an ending to it, one that
involves a big battle or a verbal showdown between the main characters
because you know that stuff never happens really, and it **never** solves
anything. But I will definitely keep reading.

Oh yeah, great quotes at the end. Especially the 'felt stupid briefly' one.

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