2. Older eries

<snip> 

You did leave out two important series.  First, there's the Dirty
Pair, which at one point (1992 or so) had more fanfics than any other
series, and was in a way responsible for what followed.  Second,
Kimagure Orange Road, my personal favorite.  There aren't a large
number of KOR fanfics any more, but the ones there are tend to go on
forever. ^_^  They're the archeypal epic stories.

	Right. Should have done a bit more research. ^_^ Cor, I'm such a
sad case. Anyways, I'm not very familiar with either series anyway, so I
wouldn't be able to say much about them.

series (Lesson in Love, DnR/DnU, TMTC/TPOH, etc.) or written by a proven
author (Biles, Lawson, Palmer, etc.)--often it is simply deleted out of
hand. It is unfair--but that is life.

This, I'm not certain about.  Before this last summer, I'd never
written anime fan fiction.  Yet I've gotten dozens of responses about
Blue and the first two parts of Soulmates.  That's enough to convince
me that they're still being read by a majority of the list, and that
new authors aren't being ignored out of hand.

	But it does happen more often than not.... <shrug> But you're
right, I'd best not overgeneralize.

	Along with that, suddenly, fanworks based on other series--back
to Tenchi, or now El Hazard, and especially Evangelion--are receiving a
lot of attention. People are scrabbling for a breath of freshness, once
applicable to innovative Ranma fanfiction, now a near impossibility.
There has been talk of forming voting forums for non-Ranma fanfiction.

I don't mean to insult anyone who writes fanfics based on these
series, but I have to question whether it's a "flavor-of-the-month"

	That is true.

reaction or not.  In EVA's case, I'd guess it probably isn't, since
EVA has gained almost the same kind of popularity as SM and Ranma.
But Tenchi's popularity seems to be cyclical, and it's too early to
tell for El Hazard.

	Actually, what I had been referring to was a "general" anime
fanfiction poll idea that had come up. But, well, that wouldn't be too
great, considering that people who read one series may ignore another. It
would be rather lopsided.
	But I _am_ a little curious why no Sailor Moon fanfic polls are
out there. It doesn't have Ranma-level output, but it's pretty regular.

 7. Personal notes
	Okay, now I'm going to break out of the relative objectivity and
put in my own opinion. Ranma got me started into anime. Ranma fanfiction
also got me started into anime fanfiction. And I am one of those who has
become tired of Ranma--both the anime and the fanfics.

I've been headed in the same direction, but there's one more
consideration for me:  length.  I'm far more likely to read shorter
chapters.  Part of this is time constraints, and part is reluctance to
start what appears to be another drawn-out fanfic series.  I'm more
likely to read 3 350-line chapters than one 1000-line one.  (Assuming
prose, of course; script scans faster, so can get several times that
long.)

	Of course, those chapters still add up to the epics, sometimes.
^_^

This applies only to Ranma fanfic, though.  Why?  Partly because
there's so much more of it; I'm sufficiently intrigued by a Greenwood
or KOR fanfic to read it regardless of length.  (I also don't read SM
at all, so that eliminates the other large group of fics.)  Partly
because almost all of the long stories I -am- following right now are
Ranma.

	Yep. Again, those epic works that have a solid readership built
up.

>From Andrew Huang, brought to you by his computer, Oddzilla
Oddzilla says, "Mmmmm...Evanjellydonut...."
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~alhuang/
Harvard Anime Society, Secretary