They work best in stories with touches of humor already, or in stories 'pointed' at certain individuals.
I think comment of Tank's sums up my opinion, as well. When stories are meant to be funny, unexpected things like this only add to the good natured fun. But in a serious story, if L&C were to watch a program with some gorgeous actor named Dean Cain or if Jimmy were to mention he chats online with someone named Tank and they'd become best friends
, I'd likely be pulled out of the story and wonder why the author chose to add it at that moment.
But if one is running out of character names and decides to use another FoLC as a basis for a new one (as I did in WFBL, as Wendy mentioned), then I certainly have no problem with that. Generally speaking, until something like that was pointed out to people, no one except the person would even realize it. (And as it happens, I had to tell at least one of the people in question after the fact that I had based the character's name on theirs. They had read the story and hadn't even caught the similarity to their own name.
)
Kathy
