Last updated on the 15th of January, 1999.
About the Categories
Title
I believe that most people are aware that fanfics come in two basic forms, either as a series of fanfics, or as single fanfic. Basically, it is a matter of titling and numbering. While there are some fanfics that are meant to be read in a certain order, they are not numbered or joined by any common title. They are "singles." With a "series," there is a common title and a numbering system. There is also a subtitle or a secondary title. This may be "Part 1" or "Section 1" or something of the like. It is simply information about the intended order of reading. However, others have a more descriptive or poetic title that may also need to be considered. This messes things up a lot.
The main problem is when I start categorizing by the length of fanfic in words. How do I do that for a series? I cannot assign a number only to the common title, because I can only give the length in words for an individual fanfic. However, if I were to categorize by the subtitle, many may have identical subtitles (e.g. "Part 1") and usually the common title is more well known. For this reason, I have, with regards to "series" fanfiction, decided to incorporate the Common Title and the Subtitle, e.g. "Lifelines: Michiru", "College Life: Part 10: The truth in deed." I realize that there are inconveniences to such an arrangement, but I hope that you will forgive me here.
In The Review List the title is linked to author's homepage (with granted permission), so if you want to read the fanfic, you can go to the author's homepage and read it from there.
Author
Self-evident. The name of the author. I had trouble deciding whether to go by first names or last names (since I only wanted to handle one of them). Last names are more proper, but in the community-like groups that one seems to get on the internet, first names are more personal and sometimes more well-used/known. However, in the end I decided to go by last name (like what they do in A Sailormoon Romance). So Jackie Chiang would be "Chiang, Jackie." For those who have names obviously not their true names, or single word names, the first letter of the name is used. So, for example, one would get the following order: Adrienne, Alina, Greenbeans, Lady Neptune H.
In The Review List the author's name is linked to his/her e-mail address (with granted permission), so you can write to the author with your own comments if you want to.
Length
For "singles", this is the length of the fanfic in words. For "series," this is the length of the "part" or "section" in words. I find this much more informative than knowing the size of a document in bytes, because that value doesn't always mean the same thing. However, the number of words will never change and is a unit that means the same thing for everyone.
Foundation
This tells us what version of Sailormoon the fanfic was based on. There are three options here: Anime, Manga, and Anime/Manga.
Identities
Because the main characters of Sailormoon have two identies, which ones do we see in the fanfic? The three options are Senshi, Civilian, and Senshi/Civilian. For example, is the fanfic about Haruka/Michiru (Civilian) or Uranus/Neptune (Senshi) or both (Senshi/Civilian)?
Time
This is a Time-setting category, and tells you when the fanfic is taking place, with regards to the five Sailormoon anime seasons. The five seasons are given the following abbreviations, SM, SMR, SMS, SMSS, Stars (I think they are self-evident). Below is a demonstration of how they are used. (This is not as applicable to the manga-based fanfiction. I'll make judgement calls when I start to review those. My apologies if this creates confusion in the future.)
">SM" = before the start of the SM season.
"-SM" = before and including SM.
"SM" = during the actual SM season.
"SM>SMR" = between but not including SM and SMR.
"SM->SMR" = includes SM, but stops before SMR begins.
"SM>-SMR" = starts after SM finishes, and continues up to and including SMR.
"SM-SMS" = between and including SM and SMS.
"Stars>" = after the end of STARS.
"Stars-" = including STARS and after.
Characters
This has a list of (what I think are) the main characters. For simplicity's sake, I will only use the senshi name for the Sailor characters, i.e. Sailormoon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto (I don't foresee needing to include the Starlights, but who knows? Maybe in the future that will change), even if we only see them in civilian form and they never once transform. There will also be the possible options of Inner, Outer, and All. The problem with this way of categorization is that it can have multiple inputs at a time, and the sorting of it gets messy. If you want to look for a fanfic with your favourite (group of) character(s), go to Edit, and then Find in Page (for Netscape, Windows). Type in the character's name and press Enter/Return or click on Find Next. Hopefully, you will see the name highlighted for a particular fanfic. Click on Find Next again if you want to see another fanfic. It may be a little tedious, but I hope you will bear with this method. My apologies if it puts anyone off. (Though, given the number of reviews I have at the moment, you could probably search by eye! ^_^ )
Genre
Again, this has the problem of having multiple inputs. If you want to use this category for searching, use the same method as mentioned above for Characters. Below is a list of the different inputs. I think most are pretty self-evdient, though I will give a brief explanation for those that are not.
Action
Dark
Drama
Humour
Romance
Suspense
Historical - a retelling of the history already set by the seasons. Telling the story/scene in author's own way.
Thought - thinkings, thoughts, going into the mind, dealing with character exploration. There isn't necessarily a story. Just looking further, dealing with contemplations, ideas, and such like.
Comments?
Email me at dfang@pomona.edu.
First image found here.