David Dai:
Authors' Foreword: Explaining Ah! My Goddess!

Rod M.
Another Foreword: Explaining John Constantine: Hellblazer

<rant>
YES!!!  Someone finally put in explanations of their source 

materials.

Those of you who are fond of putting out fics that are based on
less-well-known sources, please take note!  While they obviously 

don't

cover every aspect of the two series, these two gents have managed to
provide readers with everything they need to know, making it much
easier for those of us who don't know all the material off the top
of our heads.</rant>

Less well known? I guess pretty much the only people on the list  who 

aren't aware of what 

AMG and Hellblazer is all about is the Ranma Fanfic Crowd.  John 

Constantine: Hellblazer is 

published by DC Comics's Vertigo Comics line, which is quite well known 

in the comics 

world. 

This is what I get for typing in a hurry.  I am familiar with the 
formidible Mr. Constantine (and just about every other continuing 
Vertigo title out there).  However, I have seen a *lot* of fics that 
give no background on the source series at all.  In X-Overs, where you 
can occasionally have characters with the same name, this can be 
extremely confusing, and confusion leads to a deleted fic.

Believe me, I would like to own every anime volume out there, and be 
totally familiar with them, but budget considerations just don't allow 
it.  As a result, I wind up cutting fics that have a high ``assumption 
of knowledge'' ratio, even when its an author I *know* I enjoy 
reading....

BTW, some series require little knowledge of the source material (the 
recent Ranma/Video Girl Ai Xover was proof of this), simply because all 
the material that is important can be derived from the text of the 
story.  Likewise, ``cameo'' appearances don't really require any 
explanation.

  All I'm asking is that authors using a source that a sizable portion 
of the ML might not be familiar with provide background info, similar to 
what was provided with Dire Fates.

--Freemage

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