It is important to realize that size is not everything.

	Good fiction can be remarkably large -- as in the case of one of
this edition's "Best" -- or small -- as in the case of another.  As can,
naturally, bad fiction.

	But some writers, and I'm as guilty of this as any, have a
tendency to think "Bigger is better".  After all, if you've spent enough
time to swell up the size of the story to huge sizes, you *must* have also
spent a proportionate amount of time checking for errors, making sure that
the characters are behaving in-character, and editing, right?  Of course
not.  If you spend hours agonizing over each and every word chosen, as
Flaubert is said to have done while writing his novel "Madame Bovary",
your work will have a greater level of quality, but unless you've spent a
couple years at it, it won't be very long.

	As a piece of advice to new writers, I'd ask them to remember that
a typical Sailor Moon episode could probably be written as a single 
chapter in a novel.  I'd argue that you could probably fit the entire
first season of Sailor Moon in six books about the size of Jack McKinney's
Robotech novels, with the same amount of additional character development
and exposition that the McKinney authors put in.  The first movie is a
novella, the second and third are short stories.

	Many authors seem to be intent on writing novels -- in other
words, SEASONS -- in a single story.  (The multiplicity of "Sailor Moon
LETTER" stories speaks of this trend, as well.)  If this is your intent,
it would probably be best to write everything out in advance, and then
release it, one chapter at a time, as did the actual writers and animators
behind Sailor Moon.  But also remember, there are typically about 26
episodes in a "season" -- or perhaps the British term, "series" is more
appropriate -- of Japanese animation.  Unless you believe that your serial
can keep up that pace, I wouldn't recommend it.

BEST:

Kenji 
by Douglas Helm <dhelm@log.on.ca>

	This is a quiet tale about the life and times of Tsukino Kenji.
Sailor Moon is not mentioned, nor does she appear, nor does her father
learn of her secret.  What it does instead is paint a vivid, living
portrait of a life lived without ever knowing that one stood on the edge
of a legend.

	Very few authors have dealt with the character of Kenji,
reflecting the fact that in the series, he is generally relegated to a
comic relief role in the first and second seasons, and rarely appears AT
ALL in the later ones.  In this instance, the restrained style which mars,
sadly, much of Helm's other work -- including "Chibi-Usa Times Two", which
also has a new chapter out this week -- is perfect for both the character
and the story.  He gives Kenji a greater degree of dignity than I've ever
seen the character granted, especially in the scene in which he realizes
that his objections to Mamoru are founded less on suspicion of his
character than on the fact that "the boy" hasn't been courting Usagi in
the traditional manner.

	A nice, brief tale that will possibly make you look at Usagi's
father in a new light.

Secondary Characters: The Beginning
by Jon Carp <jcarp@med.unc.edu>

	Jon Carp has an almost disturbing insight into --

	Wait.  Already done that.

	Did I mention that he has a wicked sense of dark humour as well?
This chapter, picking up immediately where the previous one left off,
while dealing with horrible subject manner -- and the fans of a certain
Senshi are *going* to be annoyed by the cavalier manner that a certain
event happens -- is INCREDIBLY funny.  But it is a very macabre amusement,
except when Jon is enjoying himself by making fun of the recent Disney
"Hercules" movie and its portrayal of a certain Greek god.

	He also demonstrates that he's not above doing a bit of mild
self-parody, as he has Haruka and Michiru engage in an angst-fest to end
all angst-fests, which will be very funny when you consider how much
trouble he's put the two of them through.

Trio
by Flashman <MXJK67C@Prodigy.co>

	It is difficult for me to recommend this for a number of reasons.
While the first two chapters -- those included in Luna and Artemis' zip -- 
are ... not exactly promising -- the methods used to get the three main
characters together are extremely deus ex machina; it's liberally laced
with spelling and punctuation mistakes; and you will need to know about
Ranma 1/2 and ... Dragonball Z ... to really get a lot out of this story
-- I have been following the story on the Fanfiction Mailing List, and the
quality of the stories does improve quite a bit.

	I feel the need to stress that this *is* a crossover story, and
that the two "other" universes -- from a Sailor Moon reader's perspective
-- are not explained in great detail within the story.  However, after a
slow start, the series picks up dramatically ... and the unpromising idea
becomes a great, involving story.

End of the Beginning 
by Tim Nolan <nomad@cyberverse.com>

	I'd like to be able to say that it's rare that I encounter a fic
which is utterly beyond my ability to critique.  Unfortunately, it's
awestrikingly common for me whenever I set out to analyze one of Tim
Nolan's fics.

	This ... I am truly, truly humbled by the experience of reading
this nearly *six* *hundred* kilobyte long (there you see, using size as a
way to indicate quality, aren't I a hypocrite) *epic*.  And all kidding
aside, I'm not sure if *any* fanfiction in *any* genre has ever had such a
huge tale in a single release.  There is a single Bubble Gum Crisis story
which I know for a fact is larger, but it doesn't hold a candle to this.

	The sacrifice that the Senshi are willing to perform to ensure the
safety and survival of their world this time is ... it's quite possibly
the most frightening idea of how Usagi will become Neo-Queen Serenity that
I've ever seen.  I can't say another thing about it, except that the plot
grows very naturally out of "Obligations" and "Awakenings" ... and that
the man still gives us room for more tales to come.

	Tim ... my old friend ... you've written the masterpiece.  

	Everyone else ... READ THIS.  NOW.

WORST:

Ultimate Battle 
by Undertaker <no address available>

	If this were *just* a badly written Sailor Moon fic -- and it is,
with half the scouts being killed and then replaced by characters that the
author apparently finds "cooler", Mercury becoming evil, Darien getting
offed, and just general errors in spelling and style -- it wouldn't be so
bad.  I see lots of those in every pack.

	No, what singles this one out is the way that the villain is
treated.

	Dr. Victor von Doom, better known as Doctor Doom, logically
enough, is one of the handful of truly great, enduring supervillains of
the comic books.  He is at the very least a peer of Lex Luthor and the
Joker.  He has been written brilliantly, and he has been written
abyssmally, in the nearly forty years since his creation by Stan Lee and
Jack Kirby.  At his best, Doom has been shown as a villain who almost
verges on being a hero, demonstrating a style and a code of honor the
equal of his opponents.

	This isn't one of those cases.  A sample of his dialogue:

-----

-WELL, YOU HAVE WITNESSED MY POWER, THEREFORE YOU KNOW OF WHAT I'M
CAPABLE OF, NOW ABOUT OUR ORGANIZATION,   LET ME ANNOUNCE TO YOU THAT I
HAVE A NAME FOR IT, THIS IS THE SECOND TIME I CREATE IT, THE FIRST TIME I
GOT TWO POWERFUL ALLIES BUT THEY WERE STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK THAT THEY
COULD DO EVERYTHING BY THEMSELVES, SO I DECIDED TO DISPOSE OF THEM AND
YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN BY THAT, THEREFORE LET US BE THE SECOND !!!NATION OF
DOMINATION!!!

-----

	Uh-huh.  Please note the total lack of any punctuation aside from
commas and oddly used exclamation points.  Please note also that the fic
is in a charming style which poses as script format, but which shifts into
prose rather than use stage directions, and lacks any attribution of
speaker.  Of course, it's obvious when Doom is speaking, he's always in
caps only.

	Remember my previous rant about caps only?

	I have no idea what the author was trying to do in this fiction,
as the background and setup for the inclusion of Doctor Doom bears no
resemblance to anything that I've ever seen about him.  (When exactly did
Silvermane, a New York city gangster, become one of Doom's lackeys?)  But
it's really bad, and I caution all readers of quality Sailor Moon fanfic
to avoid this.

	This *hurt* to read.

-----
Chris Davies, when he's not being an irascible commentator on Sailor Moon
fanfic, has actually written some himself.  You may have heard of them.
http://www.ualberta.ca/~cdavies/hmpage.html