From: Tavia Chalcraft tavia@btinternet.com
Curiously enough my non-B7 fan (and non-writer) other half made precisely the same criticism this evening on perusal of some of the TTBA proofs. We came to the conclusion that some of the problem might be that many fanfic writers spend a lot of time on the internet and so develop text-based ways of conveying emotion, including italics, ellipsis and emoticons, which
they
then find tricky to disgard when writing fiction.
It might be a contributory factor, but this style of writing seems to stretch way back into the dawn of fanfic history (well, early Horizon zines anyway), certainly way before internet use was commonplace (which has only happened over the past five years or so). I think Betty's explanation is closer to the truth - an attempt to recreate the tone of the series, and especially the characters, as exactly as possible. What someone recently described as 'reprographic mode'.
I've got some ideas as to why people might handle characterisation in that way but my bike's got a puncture.
Neil