Greetings from a relatively new member of the list.

   Date: Mon, 01 Jan 1996 23:09:46 +0000 (LOCAL)
   From: polaris@interpac.net (Jon K. Hayashi)

   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_).

Charles makes an interesting point.

I've recently wondered why there are so many Ranma fanfics, and why so
many of them (relatively speaking) are fairly good.  Beside the
obvious fact that the classic Ranma anime (first series) has captured
many hearts, and Viz's versions for the masses, the following recently
occured to me:

R. Takahashi, perhaps because she was just coming from the superb
Maison Ikkoku, set up a wonderful romantic situation, which
(amazingly) the producers of the anime improved upon.  She (and they)
then fell back to UY style fun and games that only occasionally and by
small increments advance the romance.  

The bottom line: serious romantic advance is a wide open and very
attractive area for fanfic writers, and can be done without having to
invent major characters out of whole cloth (something that I gather is
very hard to do well).

Getting back to the point that Charles made, what's happening is the
creation of an (alternate to what Takahashi will do) set of future
histories, and it's not supprising that certain conventions have
become cliches, just like most broad fiction genres have their cliches
(the hard boiled detective, the mystical sword that will defeat your
people's enemy, etc., etc.)  BTW, I think good art can be done with
cliches, but they can be overused....

   [...]

   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.

If anyone needs help in this area, I'll be happy to provide such, time
permitting, although I'm not up on what's currently "hot" (since I
feel that the art of small arms design has mostly gone downhill since WWII).

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

Now *that's* a good idea.

					- Harold