On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Ben Kosse wrote:

     If you *MUST* write one of these sort of fics, please think twice about
posting it if the fic is purely a "how bad can I make this" type of fic. If
it's a serious look into Ranma being gay, then damnit, provide some sort of
reason for his obvious love of Akane. Hell, steal my reason from Wild Horse
Lost in the Mist if you have to, but explain it. Also, don't do it just to
make the reader sick. If that's your purpose, might I suggest that you make
it a lemon and post it to alt.sex.stories.gay or some such, or at least give
it a tag so those of us with less sturdy stomachs can avoid making a stinky
mess of our keyboards.

You may not be able to see it - but you and the original poster of this
thread are letting your personal aversions to 'these sort of fics'
override your ability to judge the quality of the stories themselves. Your
criticism was _not_ directed towards 'here is how to improve your
story/writing' - it was directed to 'Ugg. you are making me sick with the
subject of your story. Quit writing stories about that subject here unless
you can write a better story than I demand from _other_ "sorts of fics".'
In other words - you are judging the _subject_ of the fic - not the
_quality_ of the fic. You find gayfics and dark sex fics sickening - fine.
Don't read them. But don't launch criticisms based on 'the subject makes
me sick'.

Step back from 'I don't like the subject of this story' and switch to
'what constructive criticisms would _improve_ this story.'

My evaluation in particular of 'Half a Conversation' was good. Needs a
_little_ bit of tightening to keep me from guessing 'what comes next', but
other than that it was a very successful story and made me chuckle. I
liked it. 

My evaluation of the one that set this discussion off, 'The Surrogate',
was that it was too _short_. It didn't develop the premise enough. That
is, however, a personal taste. The 'reader fills in the three years' style
is quite legitimate, just not the way I would write it. I also felt that
Kasumi was mis-played in the third paragraph: I have never been
comfortable with 'Kasumi as near non-person' approaches. She has more
_depth_. I understand the story's point that this is the result of abuse -
but I still think that Kasumi did not play true. The particular sentence
that seemed the problem was 'Kasumi humming mindlessly, a small smile
frozen on her face.' The 'mindlessly' doesn't ring true. 

-- 
Benjamin Franz