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Date Posted: Tuesday, September 13, 08:48:40am
Author: sk
Subject: repetition

I've been re-reading sporadically over the summer, mostly in Ranma's archives, and have become curious about why certain scenes or moments from the series keep being incorporated in fanfiction. The "hand dance" from Escape, the scene in the nightclub at the beginning of Mercy (finishing the dance) -- they pop up all over, not just in stories that narrate those episodes, or references to those specific events, but as dialogue or action in stories that have nothing to do with those particular moments.

I don't think I'm hallucinating about this, so I've been mulling over why we use this kind of repetition, and what kinds of moments or ideas from the source material get referred to over and over again. In some cases, especially with dialogue ("behave yourself") it's just quirky enough or unusual enough to be specific, and seems to act as an identifier for a character, but in other cases it seems to be used as shorthand for whole aspects of a relationship (Madeline brushing Nikita's hair).

So have you noticed this phenomenon? As a reader, what themes or situations do you see over and over again? As a writer, do you pull things directly from the series itself? And what do you think about it -- does it work well when you read it, or do you want the author to find another way to say what they're trying to say?

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