Fanfic Reviews Revisited

Some of you may recall that I said that I would start posting reviews of fanfic here in addition to the occasional movie and book reviews. That was back in April and I haven't done it yet so it's OK if you forgot about it

I actually did start writing about the very fic that had me so ready to stick a spork in the author but when I got to four pages of rant and I hadn't even covered half of what was wrong with the story or gotten past chapter two I realized two things. First, to continue on would mean reading the other 30 or so chapters and that may have caused permanent brain damage. Second, most of those who I know read this probably wouldn't bother to plow through that much verbiage about a genre they aren't interested in.

I saved what I had with every intention of going back and rewriting it and making it a short review instead of a detailed sporking but then I got busy with other stuff and I would have needed to re-read at least part of the story to remember where I was going with some of it and it was just too much effort for something that probably would just get skipped anyway.

I can enjoy reading the reviews at Ficbitches or Deleterius even when I'm not familiar with the original series the fanfic was based on because they are so good at what they do. I'm not so sure that my own attempts would be up to that standard.

Not that I'm giving up completely. I'll probably post something along those lines eventually. If I do then there is a third problem. Because most of you don't read fanfic you aren't familiar with the jargon and I don't want to have to stop every time to explain what sporking, lemon, slash, het, beta, etc. mean.

Plus, although I also read fanfics set in universes that should be familiar to you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Narnia, LotR, and Star Trek, a lot of what I read is based on anime and manga which most of you aren't into. It's just not possible to condense a lot of these series down to a paragraph or two of background information. One of the reasons that Japanese comics and series have become so popular is that they don't assume that the audience is stupid and everything has to be simple for them to get it.

So, here's what I plan to do. First I have in mind several articles on fanfic in general. Trends that tick me off, things that I like, and why I think reading it is a good learning experience for an author. Which would be much more universally interesting than picking on a single story.

Secondly, instead of trying to explain everything as I go I will post a link to one of the online vocabulary lists with the rest of the permanent links. It'll probably be this weekend before I get around to that. If I'm talking about a particular series I will post a link to it's Wikipedia entry in that post so you can get as much background as you care to without clogging up the post here.

I plan to cross post these planned articles to WASIF and maybe we can discuss them there since the blog comment format isn't really good for that. We really could use more participation there. Lately it's just been me, Spe, and Mandy talking to ourselves and I know from the visitor's list that we aren't the only people there.