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May. 10th, 2006 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickDear fanfic author: I love you, I really do. I love you more if you can plot and spell and throw fine dialogue than if you can't, but my love for things fanficcish is deep and abiding. I note with a delightful shiver of anticipation that you have written (in thirty parts) a meaty and angsty and smutty fanfic about random fandom character. I like RFC a lot and more people should be writing him, so yay! And you paired him up with other random fandom character (I'm trying not to point fingers. It's WK fandom, Brad and Schu, if you must know.), which is a double YAY in my book. Right on! (Today is "Use an Archaic Expression of Coolness Day", which I guaran-damn-tee would be more popular if it had a proper acronym. Think USA PATRIOT Act.) They look so cute together! Damn, I can't fucking *wait* to read this...
However, there's this one little thing that would make every multipart fic that lacks it ever so much better, and you're one of the ones with the lacking going on, so I'm telling you. See, I should not have to fuck around with "open in a new browser tab" bullshit so that I can keep a tab on the index so's to be able to locate the next page of your fic. That does not make for smooth one-handed reading, not that I would ever do anything like that. Ever. (Yep, were-pumas! <-- I don't know if this joke is going to be funny to anyone but me. It's from the fan parody This is Otakudom.)
Anyway, in a perfect world, I should get to the end of Chapter 4, for example, and there should be a link to Chapter 5 at the bottom of the page as well as a link to the story index and/or to the homepage in case I'm bored with this one and want to try something else you've written instead. That is how it should be and if you are not managing that, I will try very hard not to hate you. While I will not be thrilled to completion (where there is usually a shower of red and green sparks and sometimes larks sing <-- another joke that's probably only going to be funny to me. I slay me. It's only a little death, but still...) if you cannot provide me with links to the next chapter, I'll at least whine less if you name the successive pages of your fic with some sort of sensible scheme so that I can edit the address from being (for example) name.of.server/path/to/file/fic4.htm to name.of.server/path/to/file/fic5.htm -- While I find address editing annoying, it still beats "open in a new browser tab" all hollow.
This is a minor whine, I admit. I have read multi-chapter fics without links to the next chapter but I have also navigated shitty frames, horrible color schemes, fixed-width pages, annoying backgrounds, popup ads, and tracking a fic through three archives and a dead geocities site. If the actual smut is worthy, I will do almost anything in order to read it, including sending you a dead-tree photocopy of my driver's license and waiting two weeks. (I bet you think I'm making this up. I am not.) I will click age statements or carefully read disclaimers so that I know to click on small smiley faces in the corner of the screen. If I want to read your stuff, I will jump through fucking flaming hoops and wade through streams of small biting fishies native to the Amazon basin. [Starts with a P. Those buggers, the ones that can skeletonize a cow in mere minutes. (Why is it always a cow? Is this some kind of standard unit? Is it because there are lots of cows being raised for fast food beef on clearcut amazonian basin land? What's with the cows?)] Just... it's easier if you put the damn links to the next chapter at the bottom of each chapter.
However, there's this one little thing that would make every multipart fic that lacks it ever so much better, and you're one of the ones with the lacking going on, so I'm telling you. See, I should not have to fuck around with "open in a new browser tab" bullshit so that I can keep a tab on the index so's to be able to locate the next page of your fic. That does not make for smooth one-handed reading, not that I would ever do anything like that. Ever. (Yep, were-pumas! <-- I don't know if this joke is going to be funny to anyone but me. It's from the fan parody This is Otakudom.)
Anyway, in a perfect world, I should get to the end of Chapter 4, for example, and there should be a link to Chapter 5 at the bottom of the page as well as a link to the story index and/or to the homepage in case I'm bored with this one and want to try something else you've written instead. That is how it should be and if you are not managing that, I will try very hard not to hate you. While I will not be thrilled to completion (where there is usually a shower of red and green sparks and sometimes larks sing <-- another joke that's probably only going to be funny to me. I slay me. It's only a little death, but still...) if you cannot provide me with links to the next chapter, I'll at least whine less if you name the successive pages of your fic with some sort of sensible scheme so that I can edit the address from being (for example) name.of.server/path/to/file/fic4.htm to name.of.server/path/to/file/fic5.htm -- While I find address editing annoying, it still beats "open in a new browser tab" all hollow.
This is a minor whine, I admit. I have read multi-chapter fics without links to the next chapter but I have also navigated shitty frames, horrible color schemes, fixed-width pages, annoying backgrounds, popup ads, and tracking a fic through three archives and a dead geocities site. If the actual smut is worthy, I will do almost anything in order to read it, including sending you a dead-tree photocopy of my driver's license and waiting two weeks. (I bet you think I'm making this up. I am not.) I will click age statements or carefully read disclaimers so that I know to click on small smiley faces in the corner of the screen. If I want to read your stuff, I will jump through fucking flaming hoops and wade through streams of small biting fishies native to the Amazon basin. [Starts with a P. Those buggers, the ones that can skeletonize a cow in mere minutes. (Why is it always a cow? Is this some kind of standard unit? Is it because there are lots of cows being raised for fast food beef on clearcut amazonian basin land? What's with the cows?)] Just... it's easier if you put the damn links to the next chapter at the bottom of each chapter.
