Sean Connor <sec@konatsu.dhs.org> wrote:
I'll give a little advice to you. If you want to provide useful c&c to
an author, beyond simple spelling and grammar checks, you must understand
what the author is trying to accomplish. It seemed obvious to me that
the author was going for a sadfic/tradgedy more than a farce.
If the goals of a story aren't clear to a reader, pointing this out is a
perfectly good kind of feedback to give. I must admit that it wasn't,
and still isn't, obvious to me what the intent of this story was.
Akane's attitude "I have to let Ranma have one mistress, otherwise he'll
have more than one mistress" is, frankly, not something I can take
seriously.
Oh, and since you were so kind as to correct Don's use of "penultimate,"
I'll just point out that "tragedy" only has one "d."
The thing here is to keep Akane's character in mind. Taking into account
manga story arcs like Super Soba and Battle Dougi, I can certainly see
her taking steroids under certain circumstances. I really can't see her
taking them under the circumstances existing in this fic, though.
A more in character approach, IMHO, would be to have some unscrupulous
sports team coach pressure Akane into taking steroids to improve her
performance. This is more believable in terms of Akane's established
characterisation, and it also casts her in a less negative light.
I for one wouldn't believe this either. Akane didn't knowingly "take"
the super-soba; it was fed to her by accident, and she willingly took
the antidote as soon as she found out that there were even cosmetic side
effects. The side effects of steroids are well-known and go far beyond
cosmetic. You do the math.
Essentially then, drugs are not funny unless you handle the subject the
way Cheech Marin and Ray Chong did. People who do drugs are dumbasses,
(For the record, as I told Don privately, it's Tommy Chong.)
Finally, you *do* have a first rate comedy in the making here, Adrian,
but I don't think you are going to polish it out in three hours and 3800
words. I think you are looking at something between ten and twenty-five
thousand words along with some skull sweat. Still, the piece does have a
lot of potential.
And, as I said before, if you're going to provide useful commentary on a
fic, you must have some understanding about where the author appears to
be taking it. Granted, if the vast majority of readers mistake the purpose
of a fic, it should be an indication to the author that he is doing something
wrong. If you're the only one who mistakes it, though, then you need to
work on your reading comprehension skills.
And how is Don supposed to know what the majority of readers think about
a fic, hm? Do you expect him to poll the FFML about it before he sends
out his response?
A C&C is based on a reader's own understanding of a story. That goes
without saying. And as I said above, it wasn't just Don who may have had
a problem figuring out the tone of this story.
Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html