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.
Again, something I agree on. The reader should already be aware to a
degree of the timelines of the fiction, and where it stands with the
canon timeline. This is, again, another failure to effectively
describe, this time temporal details that serve to give the sense of
place within the series. If you don't think your readers are
intelligent enough to figure out details like that, perhaps you should
be writing Sesame Street fics, not anime.
Really?
I'll get started on 'Elmo Under Earth' within the next few days. ;)
It's not that I think my readers are stupid... it's a case of simply
wanting to be courteous towards them, in the same way that I would put a
[Dark] tag on an extremely dark story, or a [Lemon] tag on any lemon I
ever wrote (Heaven forbid!)
See explanation below:
Admittedly, while some
people need things like that hammered out to them, it is the exception
rather than the rule; at least I would hope so.
I think an outright dismissal of putting a short note before the story
as to "this is an alternate universe" or "this takes place after V38"
is, like most every other outright dismissal, misplaced.
While it's certainly not NECESSARY, I've always considered it (when I've
done it) to be a courtesy thing to the readers for the most part. Not
everyone is familiar to the same degree with a series. Case in point,
Ranma 1/2: people may only know it through the anime, or through the
American manga, or through reading manga summaries. Thus, a fic which
requires a good familiarity with, say, Japanese volume 38 make little
sense to someone who's a new fanfic reader and has never seen anything
but the anime and the North American manga.
'Dies Irae', for example, which never mentions Saffron by name, will not
be understandable to someone who is not aware of the events of V38.
Moreover, to fully appreciate it, I think you have to actually read a
copy of manga volume 38; the summaries I have seen are not detailed
enough to get some of what goes on.
On the other hand, I never stuck an "after V38" tag on Waters Under
Earth (which requires by now a far more extensive knowledge of the
Japanese manga to appreciate), and I've only received one letter ever
from someone so unaware of the events of the Japanese manga that they
thought they'd missed previous stories in the series - though I have
received them from people who were only vaguely aware, and wanted a
pointer to where they could get more information. So maybe I'm wrong in
occasionally putting such a note before the story.
But in counter, noting before the beginning of the story that it takes
place after a certain manga volume can simply be seen as a courtesy to
readers, rather than a laziness on the part of the author. That's
certainly how I've always seen it. And it's a damned sight less
extrusive than 'FLASHBACK' notices within the text, and not necessarily
a product of the same laziness that causes people to describe characters
as wearing 'the same skimpy dress as in Movie #2'.
Also, I will note, less extrusive in many cases than sticking in a
gratuitous reference to Saffron in a fic that may not need it.
Well... that's me heard from.
Ciao,
-Alan Harnum
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