There are a lot of features/innovations, both in web design and in fanfic, which may look good on paper or look cool to the designer--but to the surfer/reader, they're a first-class pain where the sun doesn't shine. This is my personal rant page, where you can get my (extremely overrated) opinion on what's wrong with web design and fanfic today. While I'll never refuse a link based on what I trash below (unless the site managed to crash my browser), when I'm site-hunting and have to choose between two sites, all else being equal I'll go for the one that looks out more for the little people--the surfers.
Before we begin, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the undisputed Lord of the Rants, Second Impact. He was there first, he was the inspiration for this section, and God bless him (or damn him, as the case may be :) ) for it.
And now, without further ado...
FRAMES
APPLETS
BAD CROSSOVERS
MISSING MOMENTS
JAVASCRIPT
BAD LOVE STORIES
GRAPHIC-HEAVY PAGES
You may have noticed the "I Hate Frames Club" button on the Welcome Mat of the Clearinghouse. (It's possible you may even have arrived by it.) The I Hate Frames Club has since disappeared from the Internet; so, like the unoriginal parasite that I am, I am now stepping into the gap with my own little anti-frames manifesto.
What's there to dislike about frames? Plenty:
The whole situation is even more grievous because in almost every single case the "menu" function and look which is sought can be duplicated with tables. (For those who don't know what tables are, throw "HTML tutorial" into any search engine.) Tables load faster and are much less wieldy than frames.
Sadly, frames proliferate while tables stagnate. Why? Because webmasters are lazy creatures, and it's a lot easier (for them--most definitely not for the surfers) to code one menu page than it is to paste the table code onto every page, making changes to adjust for the page which is active.
The only website I can recall where frames are well-used is RPGamer.com, and there only because they are a member of IGN, and have to display an advertising banner in a frame at all times; they have made the best of a bad situation. Outside of them, frames are used only because of sloppy site-planning and webmaster laziness. The websurfer suffers in either case.
If you ever reach the Clearinghouse and are stuck in a frame, clicking on the logo on the Welcome Mat will break you out. If you are stuck in a frame right now, then for God's sake, click here IMMEDIATELY!
First of all, let me state for the record that I am a big fan of Java. The first Object Oriented Programming language, it promises to at long last break down the barriers between machines (unless Microsoft has its way again) and create a common programming standard. It is the language of the future, and I am in favor of Java applications in every possible way.
Java applets, however, are another story. For those new to the Web, "applets" are Java programs which are embedded into a webpage's HTML code and converted and processed by the web browser when it loads the page. Applets can be anything from a "ripple" effect on a graphic to a full-fledged scrolling announcement board, and more. Applets are also the single biggest menace to web surfers today. Why?
Applets take over your computer. When the browser detects an applet, it opens Java to run that applet, and that takes top priority--literally. Everything else, including the keyboard, is frozen while the computer directs its attention toward the applet. Even with an ethernet cable, this can take a substantial portion of time; with a 28.8 modem, loading times of 3-5 minutes and up are not uncommon, and when you try to access another page from one with a Java applet, there's a good chance that your browser will crash. At best, the webmaster, for what is virtually always a trivial graphical effect, has just succeeded in a)making his/her visitor (literally a captive audience) stew for what, on the Information Superhighway, is an eternity and b)likely disuading said visitor from making a return visit; at worst, applets can act as "Trojan Horses," releasing viruses into your computer--and worse--while you are helpless to disable it.
"Ooh, KEWL" effects are NOT worth pissed-off visitors, and you will never find a Java applet at the Clearinghouse. Consider this a plea to all websites, both those that I link to and those that I don't: DROP THE APPLETS. PLEASE.
I'll freely admit it--I'm a crossover junkie, in part by taste and in part by necessity. As such, I read a lot of them, and I've seen some real gems; some of my favorite fanfics (e.g. the X-Jedi series) are crossovers, and well-written crossovers in general serve as missionaries for the worlds they bridge (X-Jedi, for example, was my initiation into the X-Files).
(Parody crossovers, of course, are another matter, one outside the scope of this rant.)
Sadly, the vast majority of crossovers are pure, unmitigated crap; and in most of the remainder, even where the crap is mitigated what's there is often enough to ruin the reading experience. I know people who, overwhelmed and disgusted with the deluge, have sworn off crossovers altogether, which I consider a tragedy.
And I know exactly where to lay the blame--on the legions of amateurs who, in search of some undefinable level of "coolness" somewhere in their own small minds, have managed to sully an entire genre with their incompetence. And for them, I have a number of complaints (which I'll disguise as tips in hope of perhaps saving a story [or the prospective vict--er, readers of one]):
Basically--have a reason (by which I mean developing characters or concepts, that you think it's cool) for picking the universes you cross over. If you don't have a reason, DON'T DO IT.
On a tangent to this, I'd like to make a suggestion:
I'm sorry, folks, but just about every conceivable, or even remotely plausible, X-Files crossover has already been done, from Star Wars to Star Trek to Highlander to (I kid you not) Final Fantasy VII. Crossovers (for reasons I'll get into shortly) have fewer possible plots open to them than most other fanfics, and with the X-Files, almost all of them have already been used. Unless you're a veteran author whose works routinely become classics in their respective fandoms, I'd suggest you heed this big red flag I'm waving around and leave Mulder, Scully, Skinner et al in peace.
Now that you have two universes selected you'd like to cross over (yes, it's possible to do a crossover with more than two, but for novice crossers that's the equivalent of a six-year-old trying to lift a five-hundred pound barbell), you're ready to start plotting. So the first question you have to ask yourself is:
It's at this point which you may be forced to scrap your story (and if it comes to that, I'm on my knees pleading with you to follow that conclusion and see where it takes you). You need to figure out some way for worlds to collide and champions to cross swords while at the same time remaining faithful to the basic rules, physics, and characteristics of each world. If you have to radically alter a basic characteristic of the world in order to accomplish the crossover (for example, restoring magic to the world of Final Fantasy VI after Kefka's defeat without any explanation) then stop, get up from your desk, and rapidly slam your head against the nearest convenient wall/door/katana/keyboard/fist/etc. until you've changed your mind (for that matter, this is a good rule for ALL fanfics to follow--there's nothing that will piss readers off faster than authorial fiat).
If you've found a plausible way to accomplish the crossover, you can now start to formulate the plot proper.
For example, let's turn to that great-grand-daddy of all overdone-to-death-in-its-afterlife crossovers, the Star Wars/Trek crossover. Let's say that you decide that you're going to cross over these universes by creating an intergalactic wormhole (a plot device which, those who have sampled Wars/Trek crossovers know, is by now a cliche among cliches). That wormhole should then become the focus of the entire story--all the action in the story should happen because of it; if the Empire is invading Federation space through it (to speak of another cliche among cliches) and Darth Vader is trying to rape Counsellor Troi's head through it (to further compound cliches) then at some point the Federation should discover its existence; from that point on, they should seek to find a way to close it.
The same applies to other crossover plot devices. If some mysterious force has brought characters from one world to the next (not something I'd recommend under any circumstances, but still), then the author is from that point on honor-bound to 1)make that mysterious force the focus of events, if not the puppet-master behind them 2)reveal the mysterious force's identity at the climax--in short, make sure that all the events in the story happen because of this mysterious force and lead up to it, even if the reason you wrote the crossover in the first place was to explore, in a hypothetical Star Wars/Final Fantasy VII crossover, the potential impact of the Force and its philosophy on Cloud's psyche.
If you don't do this, then the crossover becomes gratuitous and unnecessary, in which case you should go back and reread the first "tip," and VERY SERIOUSLY consider whether you're writing this crossover only because it "sounds kewl." If you are, then you're much, much better off replacing the crossed-over characters with new ones of your own design--it'll be good practice for you as a writer, and you'll save a fandom the trouble of slogging through a piece of what is, to them, extraneous drivel.
I am deadly serious about this one--the purpose of fanfic is, to quote PS Pages webmaster James Maxlow, to "fill in the holes, answer the questions, explain the unknowns...presumably, each of us has our own answers to those questions," and when you make a permanent change to the landscape of the world like this, you're answering the question for others. Crossovers are a means to an end; it's important to remember that. Making an alteration of this magnitude to a universe at the end of a crossover is as big a no-no as presuming one at the beginning of a crossover.
I recently ran across a crossover between the X-Files and a Saturday morning cartoon series that went off the air a little over five years ago. I was absolutely ecstatic while reading the first part of the story; it read, sounded, and felt like a bona fide X-File, while at the same time treating the other world with all the respect and fascination worthy of a crossover. But about halfway through, the characters moved to the other world...and the feel abruptly changed from that of an X-Files episode to that of a cartoon. What's worse, the characters all abruptly changed as well, and the story degenerated into a campy mess with which I became thoroughly disgusted. While I have to credit the author for her versatility, she hooked me with the prospect of an X-File, and she should have delivered the whole package.
All writers need to write to their audience. In the case of crossovers, this becomes something of a challenge, because you're writing to two audiences; you have to remember that half the cast in most fanfics consists of nearly brand-new characters to half your audience--and the other half of the cast is composed of strangers to the other half of the audience. Write with too much familiarity on either side of the equation, and about half of your audience will end up completely and hopelessly lost.
The exception to this is when you're dealing with a Goliath/David crossover (e.g. X-Files/anything-not-listed-on-the-front-page) where too much exposition of Goliath will make Goliath's fans get bored. In a case like this, your best bet is to play to Goliath's fans; if need be, you can put a primer for David's fans next to the disclaimer so that they're not totally lost.
Don't forget, from a missionary standpoint, the purpose of a crossover is to sell fans of one fandom on another fandom.
Other essays on crossovers, in whole or in part, can be found here and here.
Everyone, it seems, has their least-favorite type of fanfic, the one that they just can't stand. For me, that's the genre called "missing moments."
This genre specializes in fanfics starring the main characters that take place during but apart from canonical events. Generally, these fanfics fall into three categories: "PWP," "Dismembered Characterization," and "Director's Discretion."
PWP. Normally, "PWP" is an acronym for "Plot? What Plot?" and is the porn fanfic signal for an unapologetic, all-out smutfest. In the case of missing moments, though, PWP means "Point? What Point?" The story exists for the story's own sake, reader interest be damned. No characterizations, no drama, nada.
PWPs are, for lack of a better term, the fanfic equivalent of a Norman Rockwell still life--verbal fanart. Unless your name happens to be Leonardo DaVinci, you're not going to convey anything to your readers, or have them take anything away that they didn't start with.
Dismembered Characterization. Pure, unmitigated character introspection--most frequently angst. It's a step up from a PWP, because it's developing a character--but it still has no drama at all; for those who don't care for the character or don't recall the circumstances, it's less than worthless--it's incomprehensible. (This is a flaw that it shares with many instances of that brand of fanfic known as the "prequel;" but that's another rant.) It's a character portrait, not a story. This, if done at all, belongs only in the context of a narration fanfic, where it serves a useful purpose as a subordinate cog; on its own, it's just pathetic. (And don't get me started on alternate reality Dismembered Characterizations!)
Director's Discretion. Most fanfics from the previous two categorys also fall into this category, whose premise can be best stated as follows: Something interesting is always happening to the characters, even when they're not being shown--especially where the director/producer intentionally does not show us that space of time. So, the ennobled fanfic writer takes it upon him-/herself to save us from the gross oversights of the ones who created the world in the first place by filling in the blanks themselves. The events chronicled or the insights garnered from these "missing moments" will inevitably have a major impact on and/or alter the main storyline, and will inevitably propel themselves to prominence challenging that of the main storyline, if not the main storyline itself--on those extremely rare instances where they manage to stay true to character. As far as I'm concerned, that's as bad as an authorial fiat. Deal with the potential ramifications after the fact, if they must be dealt with in a fanfic--leave the canon, so to speak, alone.
In short--I DON'T want to hear about Reeve's emotional wrangling after Sector 7. I DON'T want to hear about Ord Mantell. I DON'T want to hear about Rune and Chaz getting drunk. I DON'T want to hear about Mulder right after The Bee. I DON'T want to hear about Methos on his way to Europe after the Dark Quickening. I DON'T want to hear about Cloud and Tifa's special "night together" at the North Crater. I DON'T want to hear about Seska's thoughts in the moments before she's caught, and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES do I want to hear how Han and Leia "did it" on the way to Bespin!
If the only thing that your story has to lure readers is the appeal of the characters you're borrowing, you've already lost 3/4 of your audience. Anything that can be done with a missing moment can be done better with a narrative or post-narrative fanfic.
This is going to be a very short rant, because there's no need to go into length about the evils of Javascript. Everyone complains about its effects, but no one recognizes the root cause.
Why disable Javascript? Because it's responsible for two things that every surfer I've ever met hates with a passion:
How do you disable Javascript? If you have the misfortune of using the browser of that national conglomerate accurately called "AOHell," then I'm sorry to say that you can't. I've tried, and there is no such option in the browser menus (of version 3.0, at least--I've heard that 4.0 uses MSIE. If anyone can confirm Javascript deactivation on AOL 4.0, please e-mail me ASAP).
If you use Netscape, then go to "Preferences" under the "Edit" menu. Click on "Advanced," then click on the box next to "Enable Javascript" so that the X disappears.
If you use MSIE, go to "Options" under the "View" menu. Choose "Security," and click on the box next to "Run ActiveX Scripts" so that the X disappears.
There are a few pages out there that require Javascript--normally to activate a radio button. But it is just as easy to reactivate Javascript as it is to disable it; in the long run, you will save hours of loading time, window closing, and eyestrain by disabling it.