Must not smack (fan)fictional characters....
There is something very cool about a brilliant fanfic which does amazing things with an already-excellent story and transforms it in really interesting ways that add to the world-building and make the whole thing much more complex and interesting-- and often more realistic in ways that are disturbing, since they deal with the fallout of war and problems of relationships across cultures in a way that the original source material didn't, and probably couldn't at some level.
On the other hand, it's really disconcerting to see characters I know and am very fond of from the original behaving in ways that make me want to whack them repeatedly about the head with a brick for being incredibly idiotic in ways that, while they make sense in terms of the cultural stuff the author has set up in the text, are amazingly, breath-takingly short-sighted and stupid, and showing an almost complete inability to learn anything about anything no matter what actually happens.
*sigh*
Seriously, I do not at this point know HOW one character in particular is going to get past their issues, because they are being written as so incapable of thinking outside of their own cultural prejudices and personal trauma-- and I can't tell if that's being extremely realistic about how difficult it would be to get past those two things, or if it's something the author is doing to ramp up conflicts and problems. Or both. Could be both. Thing is, it just reads as this same character jumping to the same conclusions every single time, no matter HOW many times it's proven to be wrong, or misreading the situation, or whatever. I swear; it is worse than those Old Skool Harlequin romance novels where the idiot protagonist hero basically assumed that anything and everything that happened anywhere automatically meant that the (virginal, natch) heroine was obviously a Complete Harlot.
On the other hand, it's really disconcerting to see characters I know and am very fond of from the original behaving in ways that make me want to whack them repeatedly about the head with a brick for being incredibly idiotic in ways that, while they make sense in terms of the cultural stuff the author has set up in the text, are amazingly, breath-takingly short-sighted and stupid, and showing an almost complete inability to learn anything about anything no matter what actually happens.
*sigh*
Seriously, I do not at this point know HOW one character in particular is going to get past their issues, because they are being written as so incapable of thinking outside of their own cultural prejudices and personal trauma-- and I can't tell if that's being extremely realistic about how difficult it would be to get past those two things, or if it's something the author is doing to ramp up conflicts and problems. Or both. Could be both. Thing is, it just reads as this same character jumping to the same conclusions every single time, no matter HOW many times it's proven to be wrong, or misreading the situation, or whatever. I swear; it is worse than those Old Skool Harlequin romance novels where the idiot protagonist hero basically assumed that anything and everything that happened anywhere automatically meant that the (virginal, natch) heroine was obviously a Complete Harlot.