Ellen Kuhfeld wrote:That depends on who's being bashed. It's harder not to bash Genma or Dumbledore. But do I think the author will do it fairly and well? That's more important. As Tom Lehrer sang, "It was done with such grace and skill that the witnesses awarded the driver both ears and the tail."
Nope. Character bashing can never be done well because it by its nature requires a mix of several other fanfic and general authorial sins to be commtied to be done.
It requires both the bashed character and the characters being used by the author to deliver the bashing to be grossly out of character.
It requires the author to stop focusing on making a good story and instead put out a second of spiteful meanspiritedness that pulls the reader out of the story.
It sucks any humor or wit out of the story and replaced it with mean spirited non-jokes at the expense of the bashed character.
Character bashing shows that the fanfic author has failed to understand the story they are allegedly writing fanfic of, and are better off rereading canon until they can portray characters properly.