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

[baphrosia]

Funny how you keep echoing my internal dilemmas. All week I've been thinking about how I either need to reject the comics for once and for all, or rethink my views on Spike.

I came to the Buffyverse years after it was over - S8 was just wrapping up - so I never experienced that sense of disappointment over how they changed my perceptions of a character. The characters were who they already were, long ago set in stone. Until now...

[red_satin_doll]

I either need to reject the comics for once and for all, or rethink my views on Spike.

REJECT THEM, hon! I've finally come around to thinking of them as crackfic, or as a variation on all those "authorized" Star Wars novels that my brothers had - which were basically fanfic people actually got paid to write. I know I'm much happier for it.

[baphrosia]

But (crazy person that I am) I actually *like* some of the stuff from comics (just some. just a very little bit). The S8 storyline with Dracula, for example.

And I'm with Barb, my mind needs to make sense of it all, even when there is no sense to be made. :P

[rahirah]

Heh, I'm an old hand at dealing with the disappointment Joss doles out. Or delegates his third-level minions to dole out now that he's Big Movie Producer Guy. *g*

[dwyld]

Being hugely Jossed was very traumatic at the time. But with time and distance it was also quite liberating. I suspect that if it hadn't happened I would have been like you and felt the desire to fit in every last little piece as 'correctly' as possible. But the experience of being Jossed to hell and back freed me. I had to choose between giving up writing the relationship that interested me, or ignoring canon. Fortunately I went for the later and had a lot of fun with it. It is still fun to work in pieces from the show, but now I am like someone who takes the puzzle pieces and glues them on top of one another to make a collage, with lots of string and junk added as well and maybe some new pieces that don't fit at all and - you get the idea. So I feel I get the best of both worlds

[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

[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.