What are your thoughts on fanfics meant to be written as "Anime episodes", i.e., those written using several of the common devices of anime translated into fic-terms?
Personally, I prefer trying to avoid them, mostly because even if you're writing in an anime-based fandom (not just centering around the Pokemon anime but also any other anime out there), you still have to remember that you're
writing fiction, so there's just certain conventions you have to keep in mind. Most anime techniques like the sweatdrop or the mushroom sigh are
visual gags and therefore lose a bit of their impact in written word. If it's comedy, you might be able to get away with it anyway (emphasis on might), but if it's a serious scene, stuff like that will probably just kill it.
How do you react to angst in fictions? When does it become overwhelming? How far do you believe it could be justified?
If it's well-written, I don't mind. Well-written as in, the character doesn't spend the entire fic moping in a corner and doing
nothing just because their BF or GF broke up with them.
I'd say that the line is drawn depending on the character and the situation. There are characters who really
would crawl into a corner and do nothing for hours on end because of a bad relationship. Likewise, for others, it might take the death of a loved one to reach that same effect. You just have to ask yourself whether or not the situation
and the character are believable enough to have them angst to X degree.
Not only that, but I'd say it's a good idea to avoid writing a scene just to have someone angst, as opposed to having someone angst because of a scene. For example, if you write an entire fic about Ash dying just because you want to make Misty cry, there's just something noticeably different about it compared to writing Ash's death and having Misty's sorrow come out of it as a side result. That is, if a writer focuses on the emotions instead of the events in the storyline, the writer tends to be over-the-top with emotions. (Or, at least, from what I've seen.) This differs from a writer who goes into a scene with his mind set on getting the events laid out and having the reactions occur logically, to a believable degree, if that makes sense.
