I guess I'll chuck my 2 yen in as well. I'm hardly the one to be yelling at people about their spelling, but I do agree that running it through a spell check does make it that much easier to read. Then again, I've had so much experiance with misspelled words that most of the time I'm able to get what the author's trying to say.
As for everything else, it's my turn to do a small rant. I've noticed on the FFML lately that some people are yelling (Loudly I might add) for more of a 'pure' form of fic. That is to say, anything that is not cannon, or slightly OOC should not be in the fic. This I feel cuts down majorly on the ideas that writers can use, I mean, it eleminates cross overs all together. While I'll agree that saying Ranma is an ax murderer in your fic, or that Tenchi is actually a ladies man is against what the orginal creators had in mind, but if that's what you're basing your story off of, go with it, if you can tell it well. If we all stuck to writing stories that are so like the origal authors that you can't tell the diffrence, not only would we be making tons of money becuse we would be the orginal authors, but we would be cutting our own throats by not using some of the more fun ideas. To actually tie this into the topic that this email's supposed to cover (Didn't think I'd do that did ya?) That's what I look for, is the fic entertaining? Does it make me want to stop whatever it is I'm doing do devote all my time to it? That's what I look for, not that everyone's IC, or that the stories are so bang on it could have come from the manga. If you don't believe me, try checking out off the wall fics that never would have happened in the manga or anime and see if you still say that they are not good because of it. (Thy Outward Part, The SurReal World, and Past/Future sort of spring to mind)
JG (Catching one last email before heading to AX98)
---
Here sir we come to famous training ground of accursed springs
--------------------------------------------------------------
|Guide of the training grounds|Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Muyo, BGC, |
|of accursed springs, 8th |AMG, Tank Police, Gall Force, |
|Disciple of Eriond, and proud|YUA, GitS, ADP, Evangelion |
| member of the #SkAS# |Project A-ko, UY, VPM, BGC! |
|--------http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/6549 ----------------|
|Akane, Linna, Washu, Nene, |Nene showed Mackie just how |
|Skuld, Belldandy, Kiyone |much she knew. Winter Blossoms|
---------------------------Jusenkyo---------------------------
Shortly after rereading Taleswapper's essay on Annoying New Characters, I
started reading "The True Cat Fist" by Jeff Groves and currently on RAAC.
I wonder if Jeff read Taleswapper's essay before writing the fic since he
manages to incorporate almost every single quality that Taleswapper
dislikes about ANCs in Ranma fics. Exceptional martial artist with
strangely named attacks - check. Successfully romances Nabiki - check.
Perfect beyond belief - check. Steals the story away from the Takahashi
characters - check. The story wonderfully, if unintentionally, illustrates
the points raised in Taleswapper's essay. It is a pity that Jeff seems to
have put a fair degree of effort into writing a mediocre fic.
I am commenting about it because otherwise it is not a badly written story
and illustrates that a story can be well written technically and still be a
mediocre or bad story. Recently, I have had the impression that too many
of us on the FFML only read a story when the spelling and grammar are
correct. Certainly, mea culpa. The very fact that I read through a story
that had little appeal for me demonstrates this phenomenon. Although a
good story should be independent of the quality of the spelling, often I
skip a story because of poor aesthetics (repeated misspellings, poor
formatting, and the like), perhaps because stories with poor aesthetics are
rarely well written. Misspellings, poor grammar, and bad formatting signal
to the reader that the author did not put much work into the story. If the
author doesn't care about the story, then why should the reader? .
What should critics look for in a story? We use terms like "character
development", "plot", "consistency", but each of us have a different idea
of what these mean. I would like to see some discussion on the FFML about
what we look for when reviewing a story, what we like, what we dislike,
i.e. what makes a good fanfic.
dml
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