A Minor Variation

As the subject has come up from two completely separate avenues recently, I feel obliged to ramble on it for a little while. Whee.

Now, I've had my share of mental scarring from bad fanfic and worse RP. I have nothing but contempt for people who throw canon characterization out the window for their own gratification, be it sexual or otherwise.

However!

Bad characterization is bad characterization. There is such thing as bringing one's own interpretation to an existing character, or taking said character in a previously unexplored direction through RP. This does not automatically equal bad characterization. If it did, all movie and TV adaptations, all novelizations and What Ifs, all spinoffs would suck. Unequivocally. 'Cause that's essentially what they are.

Furthermore, it is, or ought to be, fundamentally impossible to RP feature characters without deviating at least a little bit from canon. Because, y'know, stuff happens. Relationships are formed, not just sexual or romantic ones, but friendships and enmities and business partnerships, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. Things happen that shape the character's attitudes and behaviors. They learn stuff. None of this means that the character is suddenly OMG NOT THE REAL THING any more. The essential character is true to canon, or should be if the RPer is doing a decent job of playing them.

And it can be fascinating to see alternate interpretations of a character, so long as the characterization is handled well. Canon doesn't show you everything about them, especially if they're not the main character of whatever work you've borrowed them from. With sources like comics, frequently a lot is glossed over, or only hinted at. Situations that could be very cool sometimes just never come up. If it's done well, it can be great to explore some of those things, to do a little bit of what-iffing, to put the spotlight on a character who's usually playing a secondary role, to shed a little more light on what makes them tick. That's why they call it interpretation, numbnuts.

Not to mention that, especially with series formats - especially with series formats that are handed from writer to writer like comics frequently are - canon doesn't always stay true to canon. Characters get written badly, subjected to horrible storylines, neglected in favor of more popular characters. Writers and publishers play to the lowest common denominator of their audiences. Things that might be entirely in character but wouldn't be accepted by a mainstream audience are avoided or carefully glossed over. Like, say, homosexuality. It happens. Some of the best interpretations have come about when intelligent writers and roleplayers have taken a horrible storyline and said "so what if this happened this way...?"

So, hey. If people want to complain about bad slashfic and gratuitous character-mangling, I'm right there with them. Just as long as we don't start tarring all fanfic and RP deviations from canon with the same giant brush. The folks who do that can bite me.

Now I'm going to go play some Diablo II.

I am not happy.

I'm spending the weekend at home to watch the animals because my mother is out of town.

My mother has apparently updated her method of connecting to the internet.

I am suspiciously unable to connect to any MU*.

Whether the two are related or not, I do not know, but it seems likely. I know the whole internet isn't broken because I can surf the web just fine.

I may retreat to my dorm and attempt to connect from there, just to check.

Grump.

Walked back from class across the drill field. Counted twelve people on cell phones.

I don't get it.

What are they all talking about? What could possibly be important enough to have a conversation about while you're walking somewhere? I mean, I have a cell phone. I hardly ever use it. Mostly for long distance calls 'cause it's prepaid, or when I need to know something that can't wait until I'm near a phone. It's pretty much reserved for emergencies, only I haven't had any that have required it.

Then again, given the impressive online times I've been racking up, maybe I shouldn't criticize.

A society of communication junkies. Whee.

Don't mind me, Ethics class always makes me a little introspective. We discussed covering war today, natch. I got to gripe about being kicked around for not supporting military action in Iraq. Stammered and fumbled like a go-tard when called upon to explain the contents of my homework assignment; no wonder I don't talk on the phone much. Bweh.

Well, anyhow.

Speaking of griping: they're calling the bombing operation in Baghdad "Shock and Awe"? Sounds like reactions to a fireworks display, which is fitting, 'cause the footage last night on CBS sounded like one. It didn't look like one; they didn't show any explosions, just an attractive street with a pretty dawn sky that occasionally had tiny dark things zip across it.

If my information (from my Ethics professor, whose stance on the whole business is as yet unknown) is correct, only a small portion of the attack used those highly accurate targeted missiles. The rest were "bunker busters" dropped from stealth bombers.

Hell of a fireworks display. It's only just started and I'm already tired of the sanitized imagery we're getting from the media. Shock and awe, my ass. Maybe Joe Public would be a little less inclined to rattle the saber if he actually saw some stuff blowing up and people getting hurt.

Then again, Joe Public would probably enjoy that. Ugh.

And the next person who accuses me of being unpatriotic and cowardly can bite me. I love my country. For the most part, I love living here. But I think we need to be collectively taken down a couple pegs until we stop trying to control the whole world. I don't even know what we're bombing Iraq for. I've got a brother in Air Force officer's training, and I'd just as soon he didn't go anywhere near the Persian Gulf, k thx.

That is all.