I enjoyed reading those links, but I now have a terrible urge to write a fanfic in which Merry Brandybuck and John Watson criticise each other's Three Character Flaws and then Snape turns up and they all indulge in a Quote War...

I think I'm fairly tolerant about characterisation. A good writer can convince me of a lot, because I tend to believe that character is very experience and situation-dependent, so I am quite happy with, for example, movie-Legolas and book-Legolas and a post-book Legolas who doesn't quite match either the other two...

But I get the impression that a lot of people fall in love with a particular characterisation and will defend it to the death.