Good news! I finally got the rest of the A-kon 11 footage, so look for some new vidcaps to be online soon. About the only thing I didn't get was the Cthulu vs. the Church of the Subgenius. Did that piece accidentally get recorded over, or just overlooked? Good news and bad news for people who hope to see transcripts of the interviews we did in the Ultra Lounge on A-kon 11's Saturday night...a few of them had bad sound -- either the microphone wasn't turned on, or had bad wiring, or maybe the plug was inadvertently pulled out of the jack. The good news is that we can definitely hear that cool interview with Jessica Calvello (even my bad manners bringing up the Orange Road Movie Mr. Kasuga thing -- boy can I backpedal! :)

On a sadder note, it's looking like the Anime Heretics of Houston might not happen -- the guy there hasn't had much luck finding a place to host the club, and unless someone else there can start pulling it together, it looks like we'll be adding another branch to our almost branches -- Deerfield, Washington DC, and Wichita. If anybody out there is in Houston and interested in helping to start a branch of the Anime Heretics there (and knows where it can be hosted), please e-mail me.

Yet another reminder -- Project A-kon 12 is coming up fast! Get your pre-reg money to me by the end of February if you want to get in on the group discount! (Only $27 to pre-reg instead of $32!) Also don't forget to reserve your room at the hotel of your choice -- Qeorita and I are getting a room at the Westin, where we will be holding the normal Anime Heretics showing after the Welcoming Ceremony of Friday night -- it'll be a chance to show off any video goodies we picked up at the con before we split up for the night in search of room parties :)

Okay, on to the articles! We have a special treat starting this month -- I got permission from Scott Frasier to reprint his story of how he moved to Japan and got a job in the anime industry, in serialized format. If you don't want to wait for all the parts (or if you want to see his version with pretty pictures, go to http://www.sockfairy.com/mystory/. I had found another cool article by someone else about what life is really like in a Japanese school, but the people who hold the copyright on it never got back to me. If you'd like to read it, though, you can go to http://www.projectanime.com/library/japaneseschool.html.

The Fic-Writing Fan

or How Not to be a Monkey
Part One

by Deanna
dj_11@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/reccamuseum/

Fans are an insatiable bunch. A series can have over 200 episodes, over thirty volumes of manga, or can be broadcast on tv twice a day-- and people still want more of it.

Hence, the popularity of the fanfic.

There are thousands of fanfic writers out there, churning out vast quantities of work like hundreds of industrious typing monkeys. And, to be brutally honest-- a lot of what they write *could* be churned out by industrious typing monkeys. But there are several good-to-brilliant fanfics out there, and many good-to-brilliant fanfic writers-- and hopefully, with a little attention to detail and flashbacks to English class, we can fall under the second category, and not be dumped in the first.

Number One: Know your series, and stick with one version.

By this, I don't mean have the dialogue of every episode memorized; know all the seiyuu and recognize their other work; and have every volume of manga collecting dust on the bookshelf. What you need is a tolerable working knowledge of the characters you choose to work with, the motivations that drive them, and the storyline in which they operate.

There are several factors which can make this difficult. Suppose there are three animated versions: the Japanese original, an American dub, and a Philippine version? Suppose the Japanese anime takes a ninety-degree tangent away from the manga halfway through? Suppose you read the Chinese/French/Spanish/English versions of the manga? It really doesn't matter. If you want to write a fanfic about the Philippine version of the anime, that's your call. But you're going to confuse people if you aren't consistent.

Number Two: Know your characters.

I've lost track of the number of fics I've read in which characters are hopelessly unlike themselves. They share the same name-- they look like mirror images of each other-- and the similarity stops there.

With some characters, they have room for development. Suppose you have an arrogant, smartalecky assassin who gets exactly five lines and less than two minutes of screen time in an anime. Oh, yes-- and he's tall and he has cute fangs. And that's *it*. With that sort of character, as long as you work within the established bounds, you can have a field day creating a past, giving them a background, making some explanation for how they got to where they are; or what happens to them after the established timeline.

But if you take the main character whose entire life has been spelled out in intricate detail, completely disregard that, and give them a whole new life/personality without warning or explanation-- that's frowned upon, unless it serves a point. "What If" fics can be terrific reads. "What if--" this small factor was different? How would it affect the timeline of the rest of the series? But such things are called "Alternate Universe" (AU) fics, and need to be spelled out as such. But if you turn a wimp into an aggressive cutthroat, or make a steely-edged villain into a lump of pudding, there needs to be some sort of practical reasoning behind it.

Some people enjoy bending the characters to match the plot. Don't do that-- if your favorite pairing isn't going to work in the master epic you have planned out, find a new pair that's better suited, or find a plot that would better fit the characters you have in mind. But no matter how brilliant the story is otherwise, if the characters are hopelessly not themselves, it's not likely to succeed.

Number Three: Plot!

Before you ever, ever, ever write *anything* down, have an idea of where you want to go, and how you want to get there. Sometimes, it works best to work backwards.

If you start writing without knowing where you want to go, you're most likely going to create a rambling, pointless story. Who wants to read a story that doesn't go anywhere? Either the story will be rushed and a random ending tacked on, or the author will lose interest and abandon it completely. Whichever happens, it's not going to help your name as a fic writer.

Writer's block happens, but it can be diminished if you know what you want before you start. An outline can help; or writing chapters out of order (or paragraphs, depending on the fic's ultimate length), and then connecting them. Personally, I try to keep myself from beginning a new fic until I've finished my old project. It's kept a lot of stories from falling by the wayside, and I make sure that I want to finish what I start.

Number Four: Watch your di-a-logue!

The characters aren't mimes. Make them speak. But make sure their personalities are in synch with the words coming from their mouths.

Unless a certified genius, a six-year-old character isn't going to spout off words you need to look up in a dictionary. Unless they're not particularly bright, an older character is likely to speak in compound sentences. A character who's rough-and-tough is going to have more aggressive speech patterns than a mousy bookworm.

Number Five: Action!

Unless the fic is entirely a philosophical look into someone's mind, it's likely that the fic will have some sort of physical contact in them. Your characters might be battling monsters-of-the-day, exchanging energy blasts at each other, or fighting pirates from their spaceships.

It doesn't matter *how* the physical conflict takes place. It just matters how you describe it. Don't describe every punch, kick, and blast in minute detail; but don't content yourself with, "Bam! Pow! They fought! He fell down!"

A good exercise is to watch a fight scene from your show. Try to describe it in writing. How did the characters pose? How did their voices sound? How did they move? What did they do? Then try carrying that knowledge into whatever conflict you're trying to describe in your story.

...To Be Continued....