Bandwidth Raep

It seems that people who search for "Bandwidth Raep" on Google will occasionally click on a link to this blog. Good for you. But this is not the place to learn to raep the width of band.

Instead, pop over to Partyvan and this article.

*EDIT* DISREGARD THAT, PARTYVAN.INFO IS DEAD.

*EDIT EDIT* DISREGARD THAT, CHANGING LINK TO THE NEW ONE. AGAIN.

This Cannot Be!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eh

WHAT HAS INTERNET DONE??????

Whatever...

I've started playing The Longest Journey, an old point-and-click adventure game that could use a healthy dose of anti-aliasing. A little on the obscure side, but nonetheless entertaining if you enjoy this sort of thing. Later, I'll probably play Beyond Good & Evil, Grim Fandango, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Who knows? I might just start playing Silent Hill 2.

Don't Worry Ma'am, I'm From the Internet

So, apparently, when The Pirate Bay went down on April 26th, they weren't hacked, taken down, or anything else. According to this entry on The Pirate Bay's blog, the reason it went down was "due to a broken fiber connection."

No worries then. No MPAA or IFPI intervention. All is good on the pirate front.

Fan Fiction

Oh god. I did it again.

I need to rant to make up for lost posts.

Since I am lazy, this post shall be updated intermittently.

Fanfiction. The final stage of fandom immersion (next to cosplay). Most of the world shuns these creations, others, like myself, find them entertaining. Many live with reading or writing fanfiction as a dirty secret.

Unfortunately, a good 90-95% of fanfiction is utter crap. I read for the 5-10%. The causes for the poor quality are endless.

In this blog post I will attempt to address the more prominent flaws of fanfiction in a futile attempt to raise the standards of the literary fandom community.

How To Write Good Fan Fiction

1. Grammar

This happens to be my biggest pet peeve. Awful grammar. Poor grammar (and spelling for that matter), distracts the reader from the plot of the fic.

• There/Their/They're - There is a place. Their is a possessive plural. They're is a contraction of "they are".
  
• Affect/Effect - This is most likely the most difficult to differentiate (even I get it wrong), but also the easiest to remember. Affect is a verb. Effect is a noun. Ex. The nail affected the wood. The nail had an effect on the wood.
  
• Your/You're - Your is a possessive. You're is a contraction of "you are".
  

2. Spelling

SpellCheck, however useful and expedient, is prone to miss words that were used improperly.

• Hot is spelled with one "t". If you spell it as "hott", you will sound like an immature, squeeing fangirl.
  
• "Ok" and "O.K."should be spelled as "Okay"

Sort of grouped into this category is word variation. Using "hot" all the time is a good way to bore readers and undermine interest. Instead, use different words such as "attractive" or "good looking". If you're using MS Word, right click on the word and go to synonyms. There should be a short list of good alternatives for that word. If you don't have MS Word, use Google. If you don't have Google (for whatever reason), get a thesaurus.

3. Punctuation

• Never, ever, end a sentence with more than one punctuation mark. Except for ellipses (these three dots ...)
• Don't forget to add commas to break up thoughts in a sentance.

4. Author's Notes

Now, there's nothing wrong with Author's Notes (A/N for short). But adding them within the fic breaks continuity and generally irritates the reader. If you absolutely must clarify something (ie. translations), add an asterisk to the word/sentence and then add the clarification at the end.

Also, don't forget to add a disclaimer at the beginning of the fic. For multi-chapter fics, you don't need one for each chapter, but you can if you want.

5. Formatting

• Traditionally, a character's thoughts are italicized and not placed in quotes.
  
• When possible, avoid USING ALL CAPS FOR SHOUTING. If you feel you must use ALL CAPS, it has a use for metallic, robotic voices. Again, use only one exclamation mark.
  

6. Plot

For fuck's sake, don't create a Mary Sue. (A perfect character.)

In my opinion, the best fanfics are the ones that stay canon and keep the characters in character. (Unless you're writing a crackfic.)

References:

Some ideas attained from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/345111/how_to_write_good_fanfiction.html and http://littlecalamity.tripod.com/HowTo2.html