Mina-san, Ohayou!
On Thu, 18 Sep 1997, Richard Lawson wrote:
: Hunter Kid wrote:
:
: > One what-if, unless it spawns a *lot* of changes, can
: > be boring, though - a good example (no offense to the
: > author) is the fanfic 'Ranko 1/2,' which is so similar
: > to the original that it's almost plagarism. Because of
: > this, I got annoyed and didn't read past the first book.
:
: The author is Sebastian Weinberg. And I absolutely agree - I told him
: much the same thing myself. He's very well aware of it. According to
: him, he vastly underestimated how interesting it would be to try and
: stay completely faithful to the manga
Heh, on the contrary. :) I vastly *overestimated* the interest in
such things - what I underestimated was the boredom it would
create in the readers. Ah, but I was young and foolish - I'm
older now. :)
: However, if you read after that - in Volumes Two and Three - the changes
: accelerate.
That was my initial concept. To start out slow and almost
identical to the manga and show the snowballing changes that
steered the storyline more and more away from the original. While
I still think that it is feasible *in theory*, I wouldn't do it
that way today, because I know now that it makes very
uninteresting reading to people who have seen the material re-used
as often as the average fanfic reader.
I do get better reactions from readers who have only just started
reading fanfics, since the re-telling does not grate on their
nerves as much.
Thanks a lot for speaking up for _Ranko 1/2_, Richard! The check
is in the mail. ;)
Sebastian