At 01:05 AM 2/11/01 +0000, Tavia Chalcraft wrote:
...poor settings and the seeming antipathy to original characters (aka Mary-Sues) are two of my pet peeves of fanfic. The whole anti-Mary-Sue feeling has (IMO) done more to stultify B7 fanfic than anything else. I'd rather put up with a whole host of blatant Mary-Sues in the hope that people felt freer to invent new characters and new situations.
This is reminiscent of the "Alternate Universe" discussion--and again I don't think either way of looking at things is intrinsically better than the other. Myself, I like the convenience of a pre-established (yet conveniently vague) universe and timeline, *and* prefab characters (with conveniently vague back-stories). It's like having a sous-chef to peel my plot potatoes and grease my characterizational cookie-sheets, thus freeing me up to create exotic and luxurious (to the sufficiently refined palate ;-p) literary meals without having to do all that bloody tedious *work*...and ain't nobody forcing nobody to eat it...
--Penny "Iron Chef Botulism" Dreadful -- "These must be T.V. potatoes." --The Inn Chef