Puzzling

[rahirah]

I was thinking about the whole characterization question, and it seems to me that one reason people disagree is that there are different ways to approach characterization. My way is this: I form an initial impression of a character from the first few books/episodes/comics/whatever they're in. As the series goes on, and the character does more

Comments

[rahirah]

I do tend to wait awhile before tossing new characters into my fic, so I can get a better feel for them. I also need to consider how (and if) new canon characters would fit into the established continuity of my AU. I might decide to use, say, Oz's wife from the comics at some point, but if I do, she and Oz will be meeting up with Buffy & Co. under very different circumstances.

I feel no obligation to stick to the events of canon when writing fanfic. For fanfic purposes, I see canon as the control subject. I know that character X behaved in Y fashion under circumstance Z, so if I want them to behave in fashion Q instead, I need to introduce factors A, B, or C. Etc. What I want is not to copy canon exactly, but to make a reasonable extrapolation from canon. I want readers to recognize the canon characters in mine, even though mine have developed in different directions, and find it plausible that things could have happened that way.

I don't think that people are doomed to turn out one way and one way only, so I'm fairly confident in my ability to create plausible alternative lives. What I'm talking about here is more about how I see the canon characters. We've got a situation now where a lot of people are saying, "X would never do Y," but my inclination is more to say, "What would make X do Y?" even if the answer makes me like X less.

[dwyld]

Oh right, that is an important difference, I hadn't twigged that was what you were saying.

Presumably some PhD student somewhere has categorised all these different types of fanfic and is making deep psychological assumptions about us based on which style we prefer.