You know, I don’t read AU fanfic. Of course, I don’t really read much fanfic, period, but I have no taste for AU at all, I’m the original Canon’s Bitch. The original author determines what the story is, and if I don’t like it, I don’t have to keep reading/viewing/etc. That’s how I feel. I even suffered five months of Post Traumatic Stress syndrome after the AtS episode “Home” because that’s how I feel.
But you know what I can’t deal with, and will never be able to deal with so much so it just simply never happened?
Richie’s death at the end of Season 5 of Highlander.
It was so, so pointless. Or maybe I had too much invested in a POV character and a show.
Doesn’t mean I’ll read AU fanfic or anything, just means I have to skip that part of the episode and jump straight to Season 6 and pretend said character went off to explore Nepal.
Where’s that “I ducked” icon someone gifted me with a few years back??
Author Nancy E. Shaffer 
That was so stupid. So so so stupid. I could never regard MacLeod as a hero after he murdered his best friend-former student-surrogate son. And I wanted him to be losing it–to be suffering from an overdose of Dark Quickenings (well, he’d had the one, plus he’d taken Kronos’s and Caspian’s heads a couple of months later) or to be hallucinating the whole mess. And the timeline was totally frelled up; everything that had been established before Season Five about when MacLeod met his first Immortal and took his first head was just thrown out the window. Nor did I really believe that Ahriman would just sit around for a year in Paris and do nothing while MacLeod was off meditating in some monastery in the East.
I could have believed that MacLeod was crazy, or turning Dark.
I could not believe that he was a saviour prophesied by Zoroaster. It just made no sense. It still doesn’t.
I can believe that former street kid Richie Ryan ducked and that MacLeod just thought he’d killed the boy a lot easier than I can believe Season Five. It may be canon. But it’s completely frelled up canon.
I could never regard MacLeod as a hero after he murdered his best friend-former student-surrogate son.
See, I don’t consider what MacLeod did to be murder. Not in any legal sense, anyway. He was hallucinating, under attack from all sides by a demon that was taking on the faces of his enemies (Kronos, Horton) and his friends (Richie). Manslaughter, not murder.
I thought the AAA arc was badly written and unnecessary, though I liked the temptation of Joe and Duncan’s epiphany that he can’t and shouldn’t fight. That it wasn’t always about battle and aggression and winning. But I think we could’ve had all that without Richie dying, and without the AAA eps being quite so surreal and omg chosen one come to save us!
I love Methos best, but I love Duncan as a close second. He’s fascinating to me, because he tries — again and again he tries, so damn hard. Even when he falls into despair, he’ll retreat, rebuild, pick himself up again. He can be so self-centred, and he can be so selfless. But then I’ve always seen Duncan as a flawed hero. He’s a knight, full of virtue and hubris and ambiguity, and with a lot of shine worn off from centuries of living.
Duncan was messed up and hallucinating big time; otherwise it would never have happened. That’s not where my problem lies. My problem lies in:
(1) The metaphysics of the Highlander verse NEVER mentioned that demons existed prior to “Archangel”. And then there’s a demon all of a sudden, who tricks Duncan into taking Richie’s head.
(2) Richie’s story arc over five seasons was about learning and growing and what it’s like to be an immortal just starting out. We only see this in snippets from flashbacks of other immortals. With Richie it’s front and center. Even in an episode as late as “Duende” the episode ends with Richie saying to Duncan, “see? I’m learning”. You invest in this character as someone who will go on from the end of the show to live for the centuries to come. And then they slaughter him like a dog. And for what? Duncan’s character growth??
*nod* on the reading part. The funny thing is I never thought of myself as much of a purist; but I guess there I am.
Have you noticed that there continues to be discussion on the the fan fic issue from authors? How would you feel about that. I mean if they were characters of yours?
I can see the complimentary aspect, and also the practical in that fan fic spreads interest.. I am not sure myself. I do think if it got pretty far away from what I had in mind for the character, that would bother me.
I am thinking more of my pictures here.. being how I am it would just make me wonder how I missed the mark so. Of course, I also com ein more that the reading experience is the space between the work and the reader. In the case of pictures, and I imagine it is true of books as well the reader/viewer can project.
And of course, writers aren’t supposed to read fan fic at all because of the legal angle.
I think if I was the original author of stuff people did fan fic on, I would be very flattered and leave it be.
But I wouldn’t read any of it. It’d be too weird.