Subject: [REVIEW] New Fanfic Review Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 00:01:30 GMT From: bjorn_paulsen@my-deja.com Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars For a while I have entertained thoughts of writing up my own fanfic reviews. I hope this first review doesn't irritate anyone too badly. I can only hope that it, in some strange way, might benefit anyone. =) I decided to start easy, with only 3 reviews. Remember, a relatively low score is not meant to reflect low quality. A rating of five really means "pretty good, but nothing exceptional". ----- (The following reviews are rated on a scale from zero to ten, where zero is bad and ten is godlike.) Fenix Fanfic Review #1 Name: The Lost Author: Sam "Deimos Anomaly" Jamieson Type of story: Large scale war story, not concentrated on any particular cast Progress: Latest chapter as of 18-09-2000 is Chapter Five. Premises: A fleet of Dominion vessels are suddenly catapulted into the Star Wars galaxy. Review: This piece of Fan Fiction has a strong storyline. It opens up In Medias Res, which is nice. It's also packed with action. Some fanfics feel the need to explain everything, and some leave most details up to the imagination. The important thing is that the details come together right. That not really a problem for "The Lost" - though certain deciding factors don't really jibe with canon and official evidence (most notably the devastating assault on the Executor-class destroyer Legacy of Kun, falling to turbolaser fire despite only having dropped its particle shields for TIE launch) it is internally consistent all the time (unless you dig very deeply), and so there is no glaring problem. And despite these minor problems, the descriptions are damn good. The greatest problem of "The Lost" is its rather weak picture of the conquest itself; its tactics and strategies and scale. The battle plans of both the Jem'Hadar and the Imperials are frequently simplistic to the point of pain. The major engagements in the story are ultimately won by luck and numbers. The Imperials even refuse to understand the concept of friend-or-foe designation, allowing a ship that has fired upon them free reign. That said, the Lost is getting better and better. With a bit more work on tactics, a clearer description of territories and a dash of the unexpected, it could very well grow to rival such renowned classics like Galaxy of War and Conquest. Rating: Action - 7,0 Atmosphere - 5,5 Consistency - 4,5 Impact - 6,0 Humor - 2,0 Total - 6,5 ---------------------- Name: Portal Author: Graham Kennedy Type of story: Propaganda lauding the mighty Federation Progress: Six chapters; Completed Premises: *The Enterprise-E is sucked into a Wormhole *The Enterprise-E is as powerful as ten thousand Star Destroyers Review: There are some stories that cannot be finished too quickly. Stories that you read from page to page, with bated breath, because they are that good. And then there are stories like Portal. Portal is probably the single worst piece of Fan Fiction I have ever read. Where Paul Jacques' "Second Contact" was inadvertently amusing, Portal merely paints a frightening image of an author devoid of any sense of dramaticism, logic or reason. The story is honestly so bad that I couldn't read through more than half of it. Every single known natural law is turned over in order to give the Federation an advantage. It is almost pornographic in its bias. A seasoned debater can find almost any argument ever used for trolling the NG in this story: the laser argument (albeit with a twist that carries it from absurd to ludicrous), the "SW Reactors Are Fusion" idea, the "Force Doesn't Work on ST" crap... trust me, it's all there. Don't believe me? Well, try this on for size - the author thinks Star Wars uses radio for communication. The characters are all very reasonable and enlightened superior beings - the Federation characters, that is. The Imperials, led by Vader, use tactics apparently devised by a hen on extacy. If there are any positive factors in this story, it would be that the quality of writing seldom drops below average, and that the Federation characters are decently portrayed. But this is but two single redeeming factors in a sea of auto-erotic garbage. The problem is not merely that the story is inconsistent with Star Wars; the problem is that in addition to that it is inconsistent with probability, cosmology, logic and finally itself. Someone once said "One of the problems with Federation fanatics is that they almost always take the immature tack of having a miniscule Federation force slaughter the entire Imperial armed forces. This to me is a perfect example of their stunted emotional development, not to mention their deplorable ignorance." I couldn't agree more. Rating: Action - 1,5 Atmosphere - 0,5 Consistency - 0,0 Impact - - Humor - - Total - 0,5 ---------------------- Name: Conquest Author: Michael Wong Type of story: Galactic-scale conflict Progress: Twenty chapters; Completed Premises: *An Imperial Star Destroyer is ten times as powerful as the Enterprise-D *The Empire has risen from the ashes Review: When you want to review stories that deal with Star Trek battling Star Wars, you will sooner or later reach Conquest - in many ways one of the cornerstone crossover fanfics on the Internet. The story started as a simple sort of accompanying yarn to Mike Wong's own homepage, I Want You For the Empire. As the page was written as a sort of mock report on the differences of the Federation and the Empire, Mr Wong wrote a small piece dealing with the question of how the two worlds had met to begin with. After Email encouragement, he extended it until it passed the point of no return. It had become a fanfic, and a fanfic demands a lot more than a simple account of the enemy being slaughtered. For one, a fanfic needs a name. It took a long time before Conquest got its own. The beginning is pretty spectacular, though a tad common. Despite that the premise is based on a stereotypical wormhole, it is made slightly more palatable by the fact that the wormhole is semi-stable only. Thus, it is at least *slightly* more plausible. It is obvious that Michael Wong, like many other ASVS veterans, favours Sun Tzu's approach on the strategic type of war. The saga is rife with strategic thinking, and pragmatic - sometimes even ruthless - solutions to problems at hand. Since Wong presents a nuanced portrayal of the enemy as well, the story flourishes well into the second act. At that point, the natural focus of the story is shifted (I won't tell you how). The Borg do their best to liven up the story, but somehow it's less interesting than the first arc, at least to me. Even so, it manages to build towards a decent ending, with a nice revelation that seems to have been planned from the beginning. All in all, Conquest is an enjoyable read. The strategy is excellent, the tactics rarely mediocre (the only SNAFU I could find having to do with the DS2 shield opening), and the technobabble as accurate as could be expected from a BASc. All in all, very nice. Rating: Action - 8,0 Atmosphere - 6,5 Consistency - 8,0 Impact - 5,0 Humor - 3,0 Total - 8,5 -- Björn Paulsen