On Sat, 9 Mar 1996, Matthew Trotter wrote:

My take on Childhood's End: pretty much every criticism was dead on the 

  <CHOP>

scenes in any fanfic.

Uh . . . You DID read pretty deep into it . . . maybe I oughta give it 
another chance . . .

I didn't see much similarity between that story and Clarke's
_Childhood's End_, other than that both were depressing.

What I ment was they both left me feeling the same.  They had the, "guess 
what, sometimes no one wins" feeling.  I can't explain it.  "Dropping 
Anchor" was depressing <REAL depressing>, CE just left me feeling  . . .
I don't know, down . . . Oh well, either you know what I mean or you 
think I'm a complete idiot now <c: all of the above>.  I think the story 
might work better in one of two formats,
 1> Much shorter.  In a very short story you can excuse low work on 
     characterization, just a plot and as you said, maybe a point ...

I totally agree.  When I wrote it, I was aiming for roughly 13K, because 
that seems to be as much as my news reader can send at once (for when I'll 
post it to RAAS).  As it turned out, 28K to 30K is about as short as I could 
make it.

 2> Much longer.  Characterize as much as possible, give everyone well 
     defined reasons.  Make people see the transition from Ranma A(Hell 
     no I don't wanna be a girl) to Ranma B(I have to stay a girl for 
     my child), and make them buy it.
Well thats just what I think . . . blabla bla blablabla my opinion bla 
bla blablablabla bla I'll shut up now blablabla

Matthew Trotter, anybody care? anybody? anybody? Buler? Buler?