On Tue, 5 Jan 1999, The Eternal Lost Lurker wrote:

Has anyone here ever run across this in a book of fictional prose? I would
assume not.
So my question is...
WHY do some fanfic authors feel compelled to use such breakers in their
fanfics, when it completely wrecks the flow of the story?

	And the follow-up to this, and a personal annoyance of mine, is
the other numerous 'fanfic-conventions' that you never find in normal
fiction.  Flashback indicators aside, there's the large number of
dialogue/thought indicators: asteriks, tildas, etc... Personally, I can't
think of a single novel I've read that does so.
	(The one convention that I actually do like is the "...".  I don't
know why.  It's just cute.)
	Then there's the occasional act of sheer laziness on the part of
an author: describing a character via episode or manga references (ie. 
'she was dressed just like in that OAV episode where...').  It'd be like
reading a novel where the narrator inserts, "and she had a
Rachel-from-Friends haircut..." -- I suppose that could work, with a
specific type of narrator, but anime characters, of course, are not aware
of their status as pop-culture creations.  Unless you're writing a fairly
odd story, but that's a different topic altogether...
	There are other little nitpicks: things like situating the story,
giving pages of force-fed introductory details, for instance.  Is it
really necessary to say: this story takes place after v.32, but before
v.34, though the Googlesmash hyper-blast mongotechnique hasn't been learnt
yet?  If the reader is familiar with the series (and that, as far as I can
tell, is the greatest inherent benefit of fanfiction) then he/she will
figure it out pretty quickly.  If one sees Ranma walking into the
schoolyard as Akane beats up hordes of guys, we'll probably assume it's
day one; if he launches a Hiryu Shotenha, we know its later; if there's a
mention of Saffron, we know it's after v.38.
	And... errr, well, I've ranted enough as is.  Who am I to
complain, considering how little fanfiction I've written lately?

	-Mike Noakes
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