scottishfae

It's posted over at MediaMiner.org, I believe in it's complete form.

I read this story ages ago, and I don't remember most of it. Just bits of scenes, really. I remember there being a tiger tribe threatening Koga's clan that they were constantly fighting with. At some point (for whatever reason, i don't remember) Kagome ends up with Koga's clan and they fall for each other (I remember he sleeping in a bed of furs). Then, the tiger tribe kidnaps Kagome while trying to hurt Koga & he rushes after her to save him. That's all I have in my brain. Sorry. I hope someone recognizes it.

I think it all depends on the effort you want to put into it. I post at a lot of places (um...6 places w/ general interests, and then a handful of ones with specific themes/fandoms/etc) and it takes me close to 30 minutes to format my fics/chapters as each site specifies. And while I often have to post on the fly given my current schedule, I can't bring myself to stop posting to all those sites because I have people who follow my fics only on certain sites.

I've been writing in lots of other fandoms between my updates, b/c those are usually short stories that I can pop out in a day two. UE is something that takes a lot more to it, and the fact that I'm (now) putting a lot of research into it--which is kind of what I"m doing for all my works that I"m basing in Japan now. I"m noticing that a lot of people don't cross fandoms though. They kind of stick to one or two at the most, and for that, I'm possibly happy. I'm thinking a lot of this drama is completely unique to the IY fandom. A friend of mine listened to vent and then told me that other drama has been happening in the fandom similar or a lot worse. I'm kind of wondering if the fandom will slow down and thin out now that the series is over with; or perhaps it already has and the drama is caused by the people left.

As frustrated as I get at times, I don't think I could ever hold my own fic for hostage. I have gotten to the point where I've wanted to quit writing (though that was mostly for my own self-depreciation more than outside forces) or stop publishing on certain sites. As much as I love AFF and many of the people here (especially you, DemonGoddess061, who has become one of my dearest friends), sometimes the way people act make me just want to pull my stories. I don't b/c there are a lot of people here who aren't so self-absorbed and that would be unfair to them. I find it's pretty rare for people to not update for a long time w/o a reason. They don't always share it with readers, but there is usually something foregrounding the lapse. So while I'm sure readers may lose interest after a while, sometimes it just can't be helped. As quirkyslayer pointed out, most writers aren't "writing robots" we don't all have the expendable time, budget, energy, resources or even creativity to pound out 10-20 page chapters every couple of days. And with that said, I do want to say that I'm on both sides of this situation. I'm a reader just as much as a writer and I get just as frustrated when people don't update. But the big difference is I know when to walk away and be mature about it. If I see the author wrote a new story, I wouldn't immediately flame it b/c it isn't the story s/he wants. I'm not always very proud of my stories (again, self-depreciation queen, right here!) but the one that was flamed I am very much in love with. To see it not even get a chance kind of hit my buttons, which caused this thread.

I had a professor in undergrad who looked like Ron Jeremy. That is, his outside, fully clothed, appearance. I wasn't going to see if all of him matched. *gags just thinking about it*

So basically, from what I'm reading, there is a general consensus that sex scenes need to avoid clinical words that make it seem impersonal and well, unsexy. At the same time, writers should avoid using cliches and definitely think very carefully when applying their own metaphors to anatomy and sexual acts. I think sometimes what happens is that people who aren't as well...versed...in the material they are writing about take the 2nd+ hand experience of others and morph that into their fiction writing. Then we get these sloppy, unsexy scenes which we all cringe over (or most of us since a lot of it still does well on this site). Oh...and I still think "man-meat" is one of the funniest things I've heard all week.

Lots of good examples there. What a great endeavor too! I think too often we assume things are common sense, but I think some people, especially people who grew up immersed in certain aspects of culture, don't have the distance to see why some things should and shouldn't be done.

I'm hoping that some of the people angry at me for not updating my IY fic Unexpected Endeavors will come to the forums instead of acting like twats through the reviewing/rating system on the archives. That system, btw, is not meant to be a way to act out your personal vendettas. Okay, so people are angry at me because I posted a Koga-centric one-shot called And They Cried... today. They are angry specifically b/c I haven't been able to update my other IY story "Unexpected Endeavors" in a couple months. Why? Oh there are many reasons. I'm working on it, for one, inspiration is slow, for seconds, and of course, the fact that I had to stop writing all fanfiction for a while so I wouldn't have to drop out of grad school. And that's just the beginning. I don't know how many people who may read this are writers and how many are only readers, but the writing process (which is different for everyone) is something that doesn't always work how you mean it. As I was trying to hunt down the origin of my lost mobile (still not found, btw) I got inspiration for a story that has been on my "To Write" list for over 2 years now. Inspiration struck and I ran with it. Hell, that's how UE started to begin with. It was a one-shot, as it was supposed to be, and I posted it after a few redrafts. Honestly, if anyone is going to rate or review a fic without actually reading it, then I probably don't want their readership to begin with. I appreciate support, but it's hard to know what life is like to each individual author and until I get paid for churning out those chapters, I have to put them aside when necessary for things that are important to "real life." And so this doesn't become just a personal rant in the forums, is anyone else having problems like this too? People who are being increasingly pushy about updates without consideration that the authors too have lives outside of fanfiction that they need to interact with? Has anyone had success bringing their readership to the forums to discuss these types of things?

I vote for the Dewy Decimal System!

What is your favorite cultural festival episode in anime? The ones most commonly seen in anime/manga are bunkasai, which are specific to schools. Classes and clubs come together to either put on plays, set up booths, or change their classrooms into something that will attract students, parents, visitors, to their display. Also--if you have experience with real ones and like to share that, feel free!

Good job at belittling a whole country's art form! To pass off anime as cartoons is not just an insult to people who are fans but it is literally taking it for something that it isn't. A cartoon, as we know it now, is a form of animation. Anime (or Japanime, as some people have termed it) is also a form of animation. Cartoons and anime are two separate things--there is cultural significance to them both. Yes, styles of animation change--you can see that within anime through the decades just as much as you can through cartoons--so argument invalid that they're one in the same. By using the word cartoon as something that is the same as anime you are supplanting one country's animation styling over another's. And yes, this may seem like a trivial thing, but it comes down to the old arguments of colonialism and superiority. Why must you lump them together? Why must you assume that everything must be the same? I'm not saying that every form of animation has to be classified in and of itself, b/c many show very many of the same qualities. European/American animation tend to mimic each other more often than not, and Asian animation does the same; however, you simply cannot say one thing is all the same without looking at the finer qualities. If you must make things non-complicated for your own feelings of self-worth or whatever, call everything animation--not cartoons. That is, I will repeat for the last time in this reply, a culturally dependent term and should not be used as an universal term. And you argue that "anyone with a brain should know that anime is the same as cartoons"--and yet, you've not proved your own brain's worth. All I see is random sentences without any valid points to back up your argument. You have no knowledge of the history of anime or cartoons, no outlook of the cultural impacts each have, you just see that they're moving drawings and assume that everything is the same. Over generalizations are one of the banes of humanity, and that, in itself, is an over generalization. And no the world doesn't end over something like this, but you should think about cultural aspects and origins of things before you simply conclude that everything is the same. Too often people think only of themselves and their own views of the world and that leads to more problems. We live in a world that is becoming more connected daily but we're not opening our minds through this connection to see that everyone's values don't always meet. We need to see this, our future is dependent on this acknowledgment that what we think or what mean isn't going to be the same as everyone else--and that no one person's ideals are better than another, no one country's is better than another's.

May I suggest that you never repeat such an absurd and utterly incorrect observation about anime in front of any anime fan? Honestly, you will be ripped a new one by fans because they are absolutely not the same things! Why? Well cartoons, for one, is a specific style of animation on it's own and it's most typical within the US (and other European or former European-colonized countries). Anime is a specific form of animation style unique to Japan--but also seen in other Asian countries (Korean has a huge manhwa industry and is breaking into anime, as well). Granted, anime can be traced back to roots in the cartoon style--the Japanese based a lot of earlier animation off of Walt Disney, whom there was a very curious obsession with during Walt's hay-day. But they have taken these early inspirations and created a style of animation that is so uniquely their own that, now, other countries--including the Americans--are trying to mimic it (i.e. Avatar, which is still a cartoon, imo, b/c it is still American-made). Besides just the obvious, cartoons also have a very different connotation than anime. Even with the popularity of [adult swim] growing, cartoons are still primarily thought of as "children's shows." Again, shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and a handful of others have been challenging this concept, it still remains that most Americans think all cartoons should be for kids. Anime, however, is not. Anime is an art form in and of itself. The people who make anime--the industry itself--still place heavily on the aesthetic value of how the animation looks and feels. Look at series like Seirei no Moribito and just be amazed at the high quality of work that no American Cartoon company would ever put into their series. Anime is also for all ages, from things like Pokemon (which still has a lot of sexual innuendos that has to be edited out for American audiences--stupid 4Kids) to things like Hellsing, which contains lots of blood, gore, sexual references, and just plain violence. And I'm not going into the thousands upon thousands of hentai, yaoi, and yuri anime out there--all of which show explicit sexual situations. And of course, there is also the fact that by lumping anime into just the generalized "cartoon" category (and this is beyond just AFF), you are basically telling an entire nation that one of their main forms of entertainment--an art form they prize so much on they are making it one of their country's marketing forces for tourism, something that has been quite successful in its first few years--that it isn't anything special. That it's just like what everyone else in the world, just the same as American cartoons, and it shouldn't be separated and treasured as something different--and it's very obvious that it is different. No offense to some American cartoons, which are great in their own right, but stories, art style, and animation quality of cartoons are rarely, if ever, anything to be compared to most anime (though there will alway be exceptions). Anime (and manga, really) are matters of national pride, and a huge economic force, and to just decide that it shouldn't be something free-standing as it is is a travesty to the art (and to the country). Oh--and of course one more obvious thing, anime/manga caters to fandom a lot more than other mediums/forms of entertainment. And what is fanfiction, but a tool of fandom? Why would you insult one of your bigger fandoms by combining it with another source of fandom that it's not entirely like? Doesn't make much sense.

I love your use of the words "creatures." It's so great. And congrats on the 26 reviews. It's so hard to get people to review on AFF--I usually go with hit count to judge if people are at least looking at my story. For chapter 19 I had...4 reviews on AFF but 400 hits--so, not so even; but whatever. So if you get any reviews at all, then you're a step up in the ballgame. (Yes, yes--I mixed imagery there, it was great!) I'm really big about leaving big reviews. The last review that I posted to this thread, while aggravating, was nice because it very clearly spelled out what they thought.

That's a very smart idea!

Why I haven't done that is because I haven't decided if it'll remain that way. I honestly am trying to become a better writer in all counts, which includes lemon scenes, but haven't gotten to that point thus far. I do want to go through and do some formatting changes though, so it wouldn't hurt to explain that. Thanks.