Well, after the discussion on MST's, maybe it's time to clean up and post 
the bit I wrote on reviews for some friends at A-Kon...

No, I don't use "MST" to describe these reviews, despite the popularity 
of the term. I know I'm probably fighting a losing battle, given the 
number of people who use it, but I still think it's worth fighting. For 
one thing, a number of people take 'MST' as a derogatory term, as the 
original Mystery Science Theatre focused on bad films, and many people 
here do reviews of 'fics they really like. For another, my friends and I 
came up with the review characters I use long before any of us had heard 
of MST3K; our model was Siskel and Ebert. ^_^

The whole reason I started writing these reviews myself, and putting up a 
page to collect them, was to make better C&C; I had this strange, naive 
idea that if C&C were more fun for the reviewer to write, and more fun 
for the author to read, that more people would do it. Oh, well.

What makes a good Fun Fanfic Review
===================================

After putting up a web page collecting these reviews, and writing a few 
of them myself, I've seen a lot of reviews cross my screen. Some of them, 
unfortunately, have been utter drek. Others have been wonderful. These 
are some of the things that I enjoy reading in a review, and try to put 
in my own reviews:

1. Be original. To be blunt, I get bored by reviews that follow the 
original MST3K too slavishly; if the first 2-3 screens are nothing but 
Joel and the 'bots, I skip it altogether. Try to come up with some of 
your own review characters, or at least use anime-related characters. And 
while a theatre is almost a requirement of the format, it could just as 
easily be Siskel and Ebert, not Crow and Servo. (An exception to this for 
me is John Biles' reviews, which use a strongly MST-flavored setting; 
however, at least he manages to make it feel fairly fresh, and he uses 
his own characters. Besides, he gets licence; he's the first one I know 
of to do fun fanfic reviews for anime. ^_^)

However...

1a. Don't be *too* original. Remember, you're here to review someone 
else's fic, not write your own using bits of theirs as filler. I've 
broken this rule once, in my review of The Great Anime Crossover From 
Hell -- and before I did it, I checked with the author first. I try to 
slip some character development and ongoing threads into my reviews, but 
I also try to keep them from distracting from the business of the review. 
Which brings us to the next point...

2. Do a critique, not a joke. I first started doing these reviews because 
I wanted to make a good, thorough critique *fun* to do and read. That 
means doing more than smart-aleck comments; it means trying to point out 
parts you thought were done well, areas you thought needed improvement, 
and possibly making suggestions for improvement. It means being 
constructive, as discussed in some of the recent 'Public C&C' threads, 
not hack-and-slash jobs trashing a 'fic. There are occasional exceptions, 
when a 'fic is so bad that it needs such a treatment, as a warning to 
other writers if nothing else...but these aren't the rule.

One reason I like using three review characters that are so different is 
that it lets me look at a fic from three different viewpoints: Windir the 
elitist, artsy snob; Frito the 'beer, broads, blood 'n guts' B-movie fan; 
and Lyra, the more-or-less sane member of the trio, albeit with a wicked 
sense of humor. (Not that it always works out that way, of course...)

Yes, I know this means putting some work into a review, not just dashing 
off a lot of smart comments... and to be honest, I've dashed off a few 
comments in the past myself. But if I had to pick a 'most common flaw' in 
fanfic reviews, this would be it. I see way too many reviews where the 
reviewer thinks putting a one-line joke every few paragraphs is a good 
review.

3. Make it clear what text is your contribution, and what is the fic 
you're reviewing. This is another common problem, when the reviewer runs 
his contributions together with the original fic, until you can't tell 
which is which. At a minimum, put in a blank line every time you switch 
between your material and the original 'fic, and put some sort of marker 
around the original text. Preferably, put a quote marker in front of each 
line of quoted text. (Of course, I may prefer this because my e-mail 
program puts text quoted this way in a different color. ^_^)

4. Be clever. I know, this isn't something you can always do on demand. 
^_^ However, the whole point of doing one of these reviews instead of a 
regular C&C is to have fun; cleverness and wit is at a premium here. Just 
be careful about breaking rule 1a. :)

I'm not perfect, and I've probably broken one or more of these rules 
several times. But this is the ideal I try for when writing fun C&C's.



Travis Butler
(The Professor, formerly of Myth and Magick!, Lawrence, KS;
 tbutler@tfs.net, now from the Wandering Powerbook;
 <http://www.tfs.net/personal/tbutler/>;
 Mac page <http://www.tfs.net/business/tbutler/>)

...I'm sorry, but all questions MUST be submitted in writing.