On Thu, 2 Oct 1997, Stephen Tsai wrote:

I'd say no.  Name changes and cultural omissions aside,they're
substantially the same characters and same
plots.

True, but you run into the problem that some fan's of BSSM may not read
SM_USA fics, and vice versa. Although not a huge problem, it is something
to take into consediration...
 

I disagree.  You could easily do a yearly *Non-Ranma* fanfic
poll.Granted, most of the "other" would be Sailor Moon and perhaps
Dragonball (which seems to be on a recent surge), but in general,
there are plenty of titles put out in a year's time to vote yearly.

Don't forget BGC, which seems to be the only fanfic series beyond Ranma or
SM to maintain the same volume of fanfic production every year, unlike say
Oh! My Goddess! fics which have almost dissapeared off the face of the
planet over the last year and a half. But yeah, there are certainily
enough other fanfics out there to hold a poll..I just don't pay attention
to alot of them because I don'tlike the series (DBZ...)
 

The problem I see is that the readership is so fractionalized.
For example, I have no interest in Dragonball Z.  Therefore,
no matter how well written and brilliant a DBZ fanfic is
I'll never see it and hence cannot vote for one.  On the
flip side, if a large number of fans out there don't care
for Orange Road, my own fiction KOC would not
receive votes from them.  Even for anime I do like
(like Sailor Moon), there are simply too many fictions
out there to read all of them and to be blunt a lot of them
don't capture my interest even when I do read them.

Well you could break up the vote into the different series, but you run
into another problem there in that only Ranma/SM/BGC stories seem to have
a constant or increasing out put of fanfic's every year. Everything else
seems to increase or decrease on a yearly basis. An example is O!MG! and
Tenchi Muyo, where O!MG! had a very good fic production out put a year and
half ago but now it's almost dead in the water whereas Tenchi Muyo has
seen a marked increase in fic production. Will that continue overthe year,
or will series like Eva or Escaflowne creep up into prominence...

It's all very hard to predict, and I'd say it lead to too much effort for
something of nominal importance (it's nice but not needed for fanfics...:)
 

Read KOC! :-)

I will...I will, I just need to find the time...Hmm, let's see...If you do
my Chem Lab for me I'll read your story, how about that!!! ^^
 

But seriously though...There are a few one-shots, but KOR is mostly
dominatedby people (like me) who are trying to recapture
the TV series' or manga's tone and style.  Character-driven
storylines like KOR tend to encourage longer series because
it takes time to develop the characters in question.

And by the time I discovered KOR most of those series were under way and I
was nnot going to spoil myself unlike I did with other series....:)

Unfortunetly that means I have to start catching up on these series, and I
doubt that it could be done easily...Oh well, at least I'll be wasting
time on a good cause...:)

Ja ne!!

Richard Beaubien
----------------
Matsunaga Mikage "Chemistry Forever!!!"

Fanfic homepage http://www.anime.usacomputers.net/~beaubird