Eclipse of the Heart Or What one fanbrat thinks would happen if the Tool lived

I'd say Nihlus is more important to establish the whole Spectre thing in the beginning. As far as his death kicking off the plot goes, it was a nice HEY SAREN'S A BAD GUY finger to point for our heroes, but the dude left enough evidence behind as you shot up all his Geth buddies that it's something they could've discovered simply by prioritizing the Prothean beacon... just like they did originally.

Really, it's hard to imagine a more ancillary character.

Alhazred wrote:

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I ask because I actually wasn't aware any sort of review was necessary when snarking a fic.

You and the rest of the board, I'm sure.

The quote-light summary/review meathod was always the preference of Site Guru. Personally I think we moved beyond that years ago, what with this not even being GAFF and Guru not having anything to do with us anymore.

To my way of thinking we are out of truly awful fic. It is all in Golden Oldies. New fics at that badness level may still be written, but they are not anything new, not to this community. Might as well snark mediocre fic and make the snarks entertaining to read with witty commentary. If the snarks are not entertaining constructive crit about why exactly is more productive than bitches about how no one reviews fic like they used to, IMHO.

But then I have always liked the quote heavy reviews, myself. Cy's original (green GAFF I think) quote-heavy chapter-by-chapter snark of that GA Transformers fic about Prime turning in to a chick was waaaay more entertaining to me than her summary/review entry on the same fic she posted on WGW. She apparently disagrees. Certainly I understand what she wants, and why she wants it, but I do not agree that her vision of proper posting procedure is practical for this community at this stage of its life.

For the record, the following is one of the reviews posted on the godawful.net website. I am assuming getting immortalized on the actual non-forum, never updated primary website means Site Guru approved of it:

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Kira's Surprise by Anonymous [NC17]

The tone of this piece is set early on when Cardassian "Gull Docote" growls

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"So Kira Nareece, I told you we would meet again and you mocked me, you haughty, little, Bajorean fuckmuffin."

and it goes downhill from there.

Yes, this is yet another inept piece of DS9 porn in which our heroine gets the badly written, anatomically impossible ravishing the author feels she deserves. What the reader did to deserve this story is still a mystery.

And, yes, that is the entire thing. Check out [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] for more GAFF history, if you wish.

Ahh... and here I was thinking that the quote heavy reviews were boring people. Hmm.

Still learning here.

gaijinguy wrote:

Well, Mass Effect is a franchise you'd really have to think about before writing in. Given how much of the games beyond the basic premise (the Reapers want to enslave, butcher, and liquefy us and we'd rather they didn't) is determined by the player, you have to sit down and actually plot out what you want to happen if you want to insert any original elements. It's one of those fandoms where it's actually a lot easier to write prequels and the stories of background characters, because those are the existing narratives that are completely identical whatever the player chooses while still providing enough room to work in. Hell, the story of the Matriarch bartender in ME2 would be a fascinating read.

Apropos of nothing, this is part of the fun for me, I enjoy the process of making my Shepard interesting on his own (not that I always succeed) and finding ways to flesh out his backstory either by insinuating how he made certain choices or getting into the specifics the game doesn't (I seriously think I'm one of like...five people in the fandom with a male spacer/sole-survivor.) Although the idea of re-writing almost anything from the games bores me to tears, possibly because there are two excellent novelizations I'm keeping up with.

Also, on a sidenote, it's entirely possible the bartender will be a party member in ME3, what with Bioware commenting that we've met some of ME3's party members in ME2 (and if she's not our recruitable asari, I can't imagine it being anyone other than Aria.)

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

To my way of thinking we are out of truly awful fic. It is all in Golden Oldies. New fics at that badness level may still be written, but they are not anything new, not to this community. Might as well snark mediocre fic and make the snarks entertaining to read with witty commentary.

So all the truly awful fanfiction that will ever be written has already been written. And even if some new truly awful stuff is written, ho-hum we've seen it all before. Therefore we should snark mediocre, ho-hum fanfiction that everybody's seen before and do our best to dress it up with attempts at witty commentary.

Are you fucking kidding me?

The irony just gave me haemochromatosis.

That is how I feel about it, yes. I find a long, funny post with humorous riffs on multiple quoted lines of a mediocre fic of more value then a few bitchy, detached lines about how awful a truly bad fic is.

So, Cy, basically we should stop trying to be funny and just linkdump and summarize?

I'm okay with this.