Charles Lewis <clewis@virtu.sar.usf.edu> writes:

       IMHO, one of the most alarming things happening at the moment is the 
progressive canonization of Ranma fics.  The stories seem to resemble the 
series less and less (which, again IMHO, is OK) and come to resemble 
_each_other_ even more (which is almost guaranteed to be a _bad_thing_).

I'd seriously be worried about their mental health if someone else's fanfics 
resembled mine...

       Someone pointed out that, in the series, Akane just doesn't bash
Ranma every three minutes.  Nevertheless, a convention of constant 
superdimensional malletwork seems to be an everpresent facet of Ranma 
fics.  Akane just doesn't cook all _that_ frequently in the course of 
Nettouhen (judging from those that I've seen, and the synopses I've read) 
... and yet one would be hard pressed to find a fic where Akane _wasn't_ 
feeling hurt after trying <unsucessfully> to ram something toxic down 
Ranma's throat.  The gags were, and perhaps are, funny.  Taken as a 
whole, however, Ranma fics seem to be dangerously close to a point of 
saturation.  Then again, what the hell do I know...

Well, its going to kind of happen in mine, but more to bring up the point of 
why Ranma doesn't cook; I know that its practically non-existant in 
japanese culture, but if he's going to insist that she cook he has to take the 
consequences.

That's one of the most interesting ideas I've seen on here in weeks.  
Little, or no (?) work has been done with the Lodoss universe.  You've 
got magic, romance, violence and babes with really big ears.  What more 
could an author want?

I want to do a Gunsmith Cats fanfic... but I don't know enough about guns and 
I don't really have a burning desire to research it.

Maybe I'll just write a guide to fanfic writing...  "So You Want To Write A 
Good Fanfic?"

JK