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

At 05:14 PM 5/14/99 -0500, you wrote:

If it is not possible for people to make this sort of judgement, then the
comments and commentary aspect of this list is useless.  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.  

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.  

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.

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.

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

For one, character debates are banned topics on this list, so I fail
to see how a lot of criticism regarding an out-of-character gripe
doesn't fall into that category.  Ultimately, it simply doesn't
follow that the quality of a piece of work is proportional to the
degree of justifiable consistency.

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.

The burden of proof isn't mine.  However, I will point out that the
entertainment industry, particularly the book industry, does not
consider consistency a major consideration when trying to determine
what will and what will not sell.  Instead, they use market research
techniques that try and key in on the interests of a general audience.

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

out that the 380 messages between May 3 and today were generated by
less than 50 people.  That's on a list of 1300.  From the criticism

And?

 

the obvious example of where such incredible variations have been
successfully received by their audiences?  No, what you're talking about

Not all fanfics are parody, and parody is typically labelled as such.  

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.
 
 

Seriously, it also doesn't follow that people will CARE about these
differences.  The fact folks can be indifferent to even internal 
inconsistency is established by the continuing popularity of 
situation comedies, long-running science fiction series, and--closer
to home--Robotech.

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



John Walter Biles :  MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas         
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu       
rhea@tass.org              http://www.tass.org/~rhea/falcon.html
rhea@maison-otaku.net      http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/

"If you're looking for a new coaster, the album _13_ is perfect for you."
--Daily Kansan Music Review