OK, now it's more clear: your objection is to a lack of emotional commitment, on the author's part, to the characterization? There is a level of heartlessness; the other charactors breathe and move and that one is a cardboard figure, who gets propped up to say a few canon-coherant lines but doesn't quite have the three-dimensional quality of the others?

I hear you on that; I don't know, though, if there's any cure for it minus the writer just leaving the character out entirely, which isn't always possible (which is why there are so many really bad Xanders walking around the fic world, and Wesleys, and Freds, and Cordelias) when writing in canon time. It's irksome even when the charactor is just in a supporting role, in the fic or in canon, but when it's a major actor and he/she is just standing in the corner propped up on a triangular stand and saying lines which are entirely plausible but not very lively, it's damned annoying.

Julia, (and don't feel any pressure to read "Rose"; I've yet to do a final revision for archiving because I got so fatigued with the writing of it)