On Sat, 29 Jun 1996, Michael White wrote:

Which leads me to ask this question: Are there many ( or any ) 'fics like
mine, set in the world created by the anime writers but not featuring the
central characters? I know that in Robotech, for instance, those sorts of
'fics are actually the most common type, courtesy of 'purism'.

Well, I'm working on a fic called _Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Comet 
Kohoutek,_ which basically deals with another group of Sailor Senshi in 
the Sailor Moon universe, with similar basic goals and origins to the 
original, but a slightly different setting and different villains derived 
from the old ones.  The real Sailor Senshi feature in one episode, and 
there's flashbacks at one point that feature Beryl, the Four Generals, 
and the Seven Shadows before and after they get corrupted, but basically 
it's about a completely different team.

These types of fanfics can work, but you've got to work harder to get the 
readers interested in your characters, I think.  People come into most 
fanfics already interested in Priss or Usagi or whoever, but if you're 
going to put your own characters into the same setting, you have to make 
sure there's something that hooks the readers enough that they'll care 
about what happens to them.  (This came up in the recent authors-in-fics 
thread, about making people care about the author's representative, but 
it applies equally well to any new character.)  On the plus side, though, 
you generally don't fall into some of the easier traps of fanfic writing, 
such as having your characters try to 'fix' the setting and solve all the 
problems, as they generally won't be interacting directly with a lot of 
the problems.

Of course, a lot of the success depends on how much of the original 
setting can be detached from the characters.  Sailor Moon, I've found, 
works reasonably well, because even without the core characters, you can 
extrapolate to bits of the Dark Kingdom or members of the Sailor Senshi 
who could easily have been somewhere off in the background of the series 
- you keep much of the dynamic while giving yourself enough leeway to 
create.  It might be a bit harder with BGC, but you've still got GENOM 
and many of the social dynamics to work with.  With something like Ranma, 
though, I think it wouldn't really work - remove the Ranma characters 
from Ranma and all you've got left is another generic martial arts/comedy 
setting, aside from the Jusenkyo curses.

It's an interesting endeavor, anyway, I've found.  How do other people 
feel about this sort of thing?

--
Scott Johnson |
zagyg@io.com  |              This space intentionally left blank.