Elvy

But don't forget that trolls taste great roasted over an open fire with a nice seasoning of Mrs. Dash!

Oh! LOL! Thank you for the compliment! *bows profusely* I was just reading a lot of other people's works and tend to catch certain reviewers that do this when commenting about their spelling or grammar. I just feel bad for the writers because here they are being critiqued on their technical work by someone who's too lazy to type a sentence properly. If I were in their shoes I'd be like "What right do you have to say that to me?" You're right, though, in regards to people getting excited over a story and just going ZOMG that wuz da r0xx0rz !!!!111! mor plz! I'm not an English major of any kind, but man how I dislike Internet speak sometimes. I can probably count on one hand how many types of acronyms I use online: LOL, ROFLOL, OMG, WTF....and that's about it. And holy crap, you've written a few of the Disgaea fics! I need to read those by you (Is a Nippon Ichi Software freak). I still have to finish my D2 fic, I got stuck and now the conference I'm in charge of has sucked up all my writing time so I won't be able to finish it until this October. I will make sure to read some of your stuff!

Have any of you ever read reviews on fics and come across the kind that I consider to be the bane of existence? These reviews encompass commenting on a writer's spelling / grammar mistakes. Sounds harmless enough except when they're written like this: "i think u need to work on ur spelling & grammar skillz. i cant read wut ur writing." It's like the pot calling the kettle black in a sense. I may just be anal about this, but I feel that reviews, in some cases, are a "lead by example" scenario. When it comes to spelling and grammar comments, as a writer I would be insulted by a reviewer who lectures me about the technicalities of my writing when they can't even take two minutes to type out a complete sentence in proper format. I've been going around and reading fics of various kinds, and I read the reviews that go with them and have found this to be an irksome trait among certain critics. I'm not so anal that I get all butt-hurt by someone making this type of comment and they happen to misspell a word during the process. Hey, it happens to the best of us. It's just the ones who intentionally type like the example above that make my eyebrow twitch from time to time. Anyone else run into these types of hypocritical reviewers?

Oh this would be wonderful! I vote with both hands for this feature!

I'm cool with the lavender. It's nice to change up the color scheme every once in a while to make things fresh to the eyes. Maybe if we can't have multiple colors to choose from on the web, perhaps every year there can be a vote of what color scheme to do next? Hopefully this will be the start of some good feature additions in the near future.

Might I suggest Skype as a possibility in the future? It's a free IM serivce that also allows you to make phone calls anywhere around the world, along with IMing, voice chat, video conferencing, etc. I love it to death. My friends and I all converted over to it after some of our RP friends suggested it to us. Skype =

I'm not a Naruto fan by any measure, but my friends are so I see a few clips here and there and whatnot. From my perspective I would classify both characters' personalities as fairly 'seme' in nature. It is possible to write fics that are Seme / Seme...and usually they're the most interesting to read since both utlimately can claw and bite to be the dominate one. I can easily see the SasuNaru shipping be done that way. Then it also depends on the situation at hand. Even in the series itself there are times and circumstances when one becomes "more vulnerable" than the other (and I don't mean this in a "pussy-whipped" manner either) and it's possible for one to become temporarily more dominant than the other. I think Naruto's more likely to be a crybaby in the sense that his temperment and emotional ranges are more diverse than Sasuke. This opens up the fact that Naruto can't control his emotions and is "more likely" to become unsteady at a greater frequency than Sasuke (who angsts mostly to himself). I base this off of watching about 10 episodes randomly at completely different intervals of the seasons. But quite frankly I find them equally capable of being dominant at the same time without finding it too difficult to ship them without turning one into a simpering idiot. ---- To address another thing that's recently come into the topic. I am part of the "Oh god, why is it always about YAOI!?" groupie. I indulge in a little yaoi from time to time, but I like my het pairings better and I'm only frustrated with the rabid yaoi fandom in the sense that they make absolutely no freakin' sense in ANY of their arguements (and they're usually the most obnoxious to deal with). Most of the ones I've come across are girls who (in real life) want to become boys just so that they can fuck other boys. *clonks head* HELLO! That's why you were made a GIRL! So that you can still fuck the other boys! Enjoy what genetics gave you! Don't attempt to go down the road of being a transgender for the reason being that you want to live out your gay anime fantasies. They also tend to literally FREAK OUT when anyone mentions a het pairing in their favorite anime series. To the point where they flame, troll and wank like hella whoa to promote their illogical causes. Saying that any fic or story that "isn't guy on guy action is bad and sucks royal ass" has finally burned my last string of sanity with the yaoi fangirls to the point where I get murderous urges when I encounter them at conventions (Must restrain the Fist of Death). I don't mind yaoi fans and fic writers, the sane ones are cool and it's fun to chill out and geek with them from time to time. It's just the extreme folks that drive me absolutely nutty.

Argh! Stupid parents make my brain hurt! I can't believe that woman can be so absent-minded like that. I think it would be funnier if they went to her house and arrested the son. Oh, if only to see the aftermath!

I indulge in a little bit of guy x guy slashing, but otherwise the psychotic fanaticism of 'yaoi fangirls' has really ruined most of my love for anything guy x guy related anymore. I like my het pairings and in the end I'm a straight girl looking for some fun het stories to entertain my brain from time to time. But I'm with a bigger group of people on the whole scat thing. Playing with poo makes me want to pray to the porcelain god in my mind. Unless it's written in as a huge gag situation, I tend to avoid anything in that area. I'm sure there's a few other things I avoid, but I tend to think of each fettish as a challenge. Rape I actually have no issues with, and the whole child porn / abuse thing I'm a bit neutral about. I don't advocate it, but I won't hesitate to write it if the situation ever called for it. And just like rape, I would never glorify it in a positive light by any measure. I'm sure as I reach my 30's my mind will change significantly on this matter.

In the anime sections that rule doesn't really apply. It appears that readers in the anime realms tend to give high reviews based on anything that ships their favorite pairs from popular series (regardless of spelling, grammar, characters, and plot). I've read a lot of fics that are much better entertainment but hardly have any reviews or stars for some baffling reason. I do tend to utilize the reviews as a guideline for what I might want to read. If I see a lot of "OMG AWESOME!!111one one!! updat plz!11 sooo Grate!" then I will skim the first page just to check the formatting and usually it ends up hurting my brain. I'll actually read a fic that has even one reviwer that gives about 2 - 3 sentences of constructive feedback because those folks tend to read the fic and critique it based on their love for the characters in the story as well as how the fic was constructed and communicated.

My favorite is when you've completed a piece and the reviewers go "update please!" Umm...yeah...did you miss the end part where I type "FIN?" Or at the very least I say in my author's notes "Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this piece." I mean, y'know...I thought common sense could clearly dictate that I was done writing the piece.

The few pieces I've written are all for practice anyway. As much as I love fan fiction, it's not something I dedicate my life to, so I'll never end up writing anything in the 20 - 30 chapter range that EK mentions. When I read fics I also don't want them to be an eternity long in length. I've only read one fic that was hovering in the 30 chapter area, but the chapters were about 2 scrolls a piece, and the fic had 90+ raving reviews going for it, so I thought I'd give it a shot. My own pieces hover around 6 chapters, but I write everything in Word and my page range varies from 40 - 60 pages for the entire fic (Arial, size 10). Usually I break the chapters down by scenarios based on changes in location or a complete shift in the story's direction. I rarely think "Uh-oh, I should only make this X amount of pages because people might not read it." I would concentrate on writing a good fic that will lure the readers in and hold their attention. If you can do that then length can often be irrelevant in a lot of cases. As far as the inital turn-off of it being too long, that's where your skills in summary writing need to kick in and entice them.

It's a very good series of questions. I haven't been able to do a PWP yet because I'm all about the build-up and the purpose behind the characters bumping monkeys together. A lot of the fic-work I've been doing are all practice pieces to help me with different elements that I need to really work on and refine in my novel writing (minus the gratuitous sex). The other reason is to simply satiate the musings that go on in my head and to also give my brain a reprieve from any writer's blocks I obtain along the way. I've been finding these fic-sites very good starting points in obtaining some general feedback on whether or not my writing technique communicates correctly to other readers utilizing material that they're familiar with. I have yet to try refining the first part of my book and posting it to an audience to see if my original material would hold any interest to my intended demographics. But if you're looking for some solid feedback on your practice piece, I can offer to beta it for you if you'd like. Depending on when you give it to me will determine how quickly a review can be sent back in your direction. I'm heading up a conference at the end of September so things might be a bit hectic during that time.

1. Do you tend to write the sex scenes from one character's point of view most of the time? Or from the viewpoints of all the participants? Or from a third party, no internal dialogue view? Which seems to work for you the best? It honestly depends on the type of scenario that's being written and how I wish to convey it to the reader. You can usually still sneak in a little internal dialogue here and there in the third person depending upon how you set it up. 2. If you do both characters(or more), with internal dialogue....what the heck do you use to help you figure out what the other sex actually feels? Ask friends? Look at sex scenes written by the opposite sex? I've only got experience on how sex feels from one side of the fence, you know what I mean? And I often find myself reading some sex scenes and wondering: does it really feel like that for them? I've been estimating things by two methods: porn, and the real thing. For me, the porn helps give me ideas on some of the crazy-ass things that are done out there. The real thing helps keep my writing grounded in the pseudo-reality area. My first fic was a Full Metal Panic one with Sou / Kan and since they were both virgins I had the sex be clumsy, humorous, with a dash of first-time romantic on the side. A woman's physiology is usually more complex with more nerve endings down below. So if you happen to be a girl then you're already halfway to figuring out what might feel good to you (assuming to self experiment). I don't have the type of friends that I can "talk shop" with for the sake of my writing. I have one female friend for that, but the most I glean from her are more ideas from the woman's perspective and not really the man's. So back when I was still a virgin, I had to do a lot of imaginative gender-swapping with myself. The whole "If I were a guy, what would feel good to me?" If you've got a firm grasp on anatomy, sometimes the scientific aspects of books and research can assist in giving you clues on some interesting things to write about. 3. Do you find it difficult to write sex scenes 'in character?' And if you do, what helps you get the characters more clearly in your head? I find it difficult to write sex scenes: Period. Even when I go in saying to myself "Yes! I'm going to write this kick ass sex scene bubbling in my head!" it's always the LAST scene I write. I almost try to avoid it like the plague, it's pretty funny. I'm a writer that constructs scenes in my head by attaching them to songs. That's how I write the current novel I'm working on now. So when I hear a song I'll construct a scene, or if I get a scene in my head I'll hunt for a song to match it up with. The music helps me create a sort of 'music video' for me to play over and over again in my mind while I write. The song has to convey the feelings I'm building, so sometimes I'll listen to a song 20 - 30 times until I'm done writing up the scene. The sex scene is also something that I have to write out in one fell swoop. It's not something I can leave in the middle of and come back to the next day.

I think I would be absolutely flattered that someone took the time to write a fic based on any of my own original material.