Indeed, from Mr. Davies' posting
pattern, we saw the Raye Trilogy (Five
Minutes, None of Your Business, and One Moment
Longer) before the release of Together Again: 2937
Chapter. From that moment on, we had already seen the
references to the Usagi/Rei relationships, parts of the
history after 2937, and even hints at the emergence of
Serenity as Queen. Always, there was foreshadowing (for
later stories... which were in reality,
earlier [chronology-wise] stories). None of this
detracts from the depth of Davies' writings, it does not
weaken the arguments that his supporters as well as his
opponents raise. It appears that it is very difficult to
take a middling position about his writings; I know of those
that dislike his writings with a passion, and an equal
number of others that like his work with similar force.
This ability to raise a
reaction is something that every writer (or aspiring writer)
should reach for. There is nothing worse than reading a
story that engenders NO feeling (positive or
negative) from the reader. When a reader happens upon
something that encourages a reaction, we should write to the
author/creators to express ourselves. We often write to
authors that have written fan-fiction that we may have felt
sympathy to their character portrayals, or else, we might
write to the author and denounce their portrayal of a
character. Feedback is important to the entire process of
enjoying a piece of fan-fiction -- how else are people going
to be able to determine what has worked and what has
not?
Just recently, on the alt.fan.sailor-moon
newsgroup, Mr. Frank D. Barr conducted an informal
polling of what 'worked' for people on web-sites: examples
of Java applets, images, midi's, and other 'gadgets' that
most Sailormoon web pages contain. Just as long stories with
no plot lines, and no quality writing will turn the reader
away, so will a poorly designed website that is filled with:
1) large graphics, 2) unnecessary use of Java applets, and
3) false (or deliberate) mis-information. But these 'sins'
cannot compare to that of site plagiarism.
Most people consider site
plagiarism akin to fiction plagiarism (at least in
terms of Internet content and design). Recently, we saw the
plagiarism of the nigh-legendary Sailormoon fan-fiction
archive: A
Sailor Moon Romance by another web-site. The uproar that
ensued led to both an immediate removal of the site as well
as public attention being drawn to web site design and
linking. With the technology and ease of access that is
available to us, it is very easy (and fallacious) for
web-page creators to attempt to minimize their own creative
involvement by linking graphics, music, movies, as well as
stories from other original sites.
Most people on the 'Net do not go to a
site merely expecting to see the same animated gifs, or the
same background information as the next site. Creativity and
individuality is what separates your site from the
tens of thousands of other similar websites. What's
even worse is when site owners will copy the best parts of
various sites, and then implant them onto their own --
without acknowledgement, or caution. The copied A
Sailor Moon Romance not only contained the same background
as the original, but even the the trademark poetry upon the
index page, as well as the original graphics. The original
ASMR was not the only site to suffer from graphic
thieves -- numerous other sites had their awards and
animated gifs directly linked and embedded on the page --
attributing a level of quality that was not originally
there.
There is a difference between
direct linking of visual, sound or written
sources as compared to providing a link to the original
site. A problem with direct linking has caused several main
Sailormoon sites to close down. I am pointing to the SM
movie AVI site -- Ms. Haruna's Homeroom (originally haruna.simplenet.com).
Without arguing the correctness of Simplenet's high end user
charges, it is easy to see that a lot of the other SM
sites with AVI's and midi's had tended to directly link to
the Simplenet site as opposed to providing a link to
visit the Simplenet site. Direct linkage of
files, be they AVI's -- which tend to run to MB's or text
files (which are smaller), means that the original
archive site is paying the bandwidth costs and not
the visited site. This translates to a high usage of
server bandwidth without the correlating 'hits' upon the
archival site -- something that means that
someone else is paying the storage costs of these high
density files and not the 'linking' web-site. In fact, when
these pseudo-archival sites are closed because of the
ensuing costs, a domino effect occurs among the sites
that featured direct links to various files -- suddenly,
movies are non-functional, text files are
non-retrievable...
A point is made to web site owners: if
you cannot afford the space and bandwidth to support midi's
and AVI's upon your own site, provide a link to those
sites that can, do not steal the
efforts of others. Similarly, Sailor Senshi Page on
Simplenet (sailorneptune.simplenet.com)
suffered such abuses -- direct linkage to both fan-fiction
text files, as well as a large collection of music and video
images, with the result of the closing of the page on
Simplenet and increased efforts to find server space for
this collection.
There are free server sites
available: the most popular free MB providers are: Geocities, Tripod, Fortunecity.
Regardless of the amount of space they offer,
most offer enough to ensure that basic text files,
and graphics will be supported.
Free servers mean that the revenue to
support these efforts must be garnered from advertisements
-- the nigh infamous Geocities and Tripod pop-up
windows, or else other forms of advertisements (off-site ads
on the Crosswinds servers). For those that complain about
the sheer magnitude of advertisements, I offer the only
alternative: pay for your own site and have no
advertisements. There are no such things as free web pages
without strings attached. There will be advertisements
either on-site (such as Geocities, and Tripod) or else,
off-site, such as Crosswinds.
All three of the main archival sites are
not located upon any of these free servers: A Sailor Moon Romance,
GSCP -
Anime Fanfiction "Tuxedo" Will's Fanfiction Archive, and
Jupiter
Knight's Sailor Moon Page. John Hitchens The Best
Sailor Moon Fanfiction on the Net site is a more
selective site -- carrying only his top picks for each
category of fan-fiction.
Most web sites carry either fiction of
certain themes (i.e., focussing upon the Outer Senshi, or
Inner Senshi, or single characters) or certain authors
(tending to be the site-creator). Various sites have also
featured specific favorite authors or stories. Few
sites have managed to provide an over-arching view of
SM-fiction. Levar Bouyer's site reviews
fan-fiction by individual works. Chris Davies has reviewed
fan-fiction from the archives of A Sailor Moon Romance
but due to the increased size of the zips and the numerous
parts of stories released, Davies has given up on reviewing
the weekly zip. I myself, am continuing to review stories
and authors. My focus remains on individual authors (or
multi-story authors) and themed reviews.
The complexities of reviewing fan-fiction
are matched only by the biases that the reviewer carries
into the reading. The more the reviewer reads, the more
comparisons are made. It is almost impossible to demand
absolute impartiality towards reviewing from a reader of any
significant calibre. What we (as readers and by extension,
reviewers) can do is this: look for original story points -
look for something that distinguishes this work from all the
others available for reading. As a reader, I'm not looking
for a new story everytime I read a fan-fiction, I concede
that the number of 'original' ideas written of... are
exceedingly rare. More importantly, an 'original' idea must
be written well in order for it to be acceptable to
the readers. Nothing is worse than having a wonderful idea
(to the reader) ruined because of poor writing.
There are many that would argue that a
good author cannot write a bad story.
Similarly, that concept would extend to: 'good' stories
write themselves regardless of author. The debate as to the
quality of writing has been raging within the fan-fiction
community for as long as fan-fiction has been written. Who
are considered to be good authors ? What is
considered to be good fan-fiction ? What criteria do we (as
readers at large) use to determine the 'good' and 'bad'
within Sailormoon fan-fiction ?
Continue to Part 6 »
