What is fanon?

Of late, from several directions, I've observed debates over whether certain interpretations of source material constitute fanon. Don't worry if you've never heard the term. It's a bit nebulously defined, and what it means is something of the topic in and of itself.

When people talk about fanon, I think there are actually several distinct concepts in play. In the long and difficult task of interpreting a work, readers often make assumptions to try to fill in the gaps in stated facts. To reference tvtropes once again, it would be an assumption to state, for example, that balance within the force is balance of good and evil. It's a natural assumption, coming at Star Wars and the light and dark sides as constructs of morality, but it's also just that--an assumption, something not specifically stated, even though it seems sound and, indeed, common or ubiquitous. A fair bit of what's called fanon falls under this category: people take literal text and extend it perhaps one or two steps too far. People think the text says more than what it really does say.

But there's another type of fanon, one that differs, perhaps, only by a matter of degrees. This is where people totally make up story elements and those elements become accepted and treated as if they were canon. As you can imagine, this is most prevalent coming from fanfiction. One particularly popular work, with a totally valid means of filling in holes in canon (like, say, Akane's mother's name) can be referenced in other works as a shout out or whatnot, eventually spreading to the point that nobody can remember where the name Tendou Kimiko came from, but suddenly, a bunch of people assume that's Akane's mother's name. As you can see by this example, when one person invents something on their own, with original creativity, it's merely doing what a fan-author needs to do in order to tell a story without having to avoid the unfilled canon pot holes. It's the morphing of this once original, invented element into something treated as fact that makes the idea fanon.

Or does it? Does any suspect interpretation of the source work make that idea fanon? Or is it the statement of that interpretation as fact that makes it fanon? It's the difference between being factually inaccurate and factually unsubstantiated, between "not known to be true or false" and "provably false." Of course, any interpretation likely relies on several different elements, each of which may be one or the other and in total make all assertions fall on a continuum, an plane with axes of certainty or uncertainty and truth or untruth.

Perhaps I don't really know what fanon is, either.

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Identity 4.1 - "The Sorcerer Priest"

Chapter Four, Act One on FFN

First, the writing progress update: I've finished the sixth act of chapter four by cutting it in half and planning to do the rest in act seven, a change that I'm not happy about (I wanted this act to be longer...) but is likely for the best structurally, especially in terms of tempo. I'd hoped to have all of "Monsters and Demons" finished before posting this act, but that'll have to wait for act two.

I also put in some time and finished chapter two of "Before and After," so I imagine that'll be up by the end of the weekend.

As I mentioned at the end of the chapter, I decided to post the commentaries to each act in the chapter body itself for those who are interested. They will continue to be posted here, too, however, so that's below.

In the past, I’ve tried to keep the chapters free of remarks, but of late I’ve thought maybe it would be a good idea to share some of my thoughts with you, the reader, rather than just say, “Hey, everybody, go look at my blog!” I’ll still archive my comments there, so if folks want, they can read all the commentaries in order without having to jump back and forth.

When I had the original outline for “Monsters and Demons,” I hadn’t planned on Ranma being present on the mountain (I’ve mentioned this before, in the commentary for “Occupation”). It was logical, yes, but it also took some of the tension out of the chapter, I thought. The series is Ranma 1/2 after all. In a story that doesn’t explicitly focus on some other character, you’d be right to expect Ranma will play a significant part. It was, in some respects, bad enough that he didn’t appear at all in “Journey to Jusenkyō” until act five. The nature of the plot demands some split time, but perhaps not to that extent.

So I made the instinctive decision to include Ranma in “Occupation” (which wouldn’t have existed without that choice, and indeed the chapter is better for it), and I’ve been reworking “Monsters and Demons” to accommodate that ever since. Of course, it wouldn’t do justice to just shoehorn him into the chapter. He really needed his own plotline, and “The Sorcerer Priest” is the beginning of that. It dovetails nicely with one of the issues I’d been struggling with since chapter two: why Sindoor would send Kohl/Wuya to Jusenkyō, aside from the idea of separating him from Tilaka. Henna is part of that.

Originally, I wanted Henna to be a man, but I thought, to better contrast against Kohl, she should be a woman instead. I’ve kept some of the workings of the Sorcerers and their curses deliberately nebulous, but the reinforcement should be particularly clear: Tilaka thinks himself a girl, even though we see him as a boy, and Kohl thinks himself a man, even though to fight as the captain, he must use his girl’s body.

All throughout this act, there’s a big focus on Ranma, on the contrast of strength versus weakness, of just reasons for killing against the emotions that drive you to do it. And that, to me, is a big source of Ranma’s intellectual dissonance. He had every reason to kill Saffron. That doesn’t change that he still killed him because he wanted to, because of fear or rage or whatever you want to call it. It’s about control, and as power increases, one has to wonder, “Am I in control?” Is Ranma in control with three or four girls all desiring him? Probably not. I think in some ways Ranma’s a control freak, at least to the extent that he avoids situations where he lacks that.

It’s never clearly stated in canon what mixing cursed waters will do. This whole chapter is, in some ways, my own interpretation of what might happen and, indeed, a possible theory as to why Ranma wouldn’t just cure himself right away at Jusenkyō once he was cursed. Can you imagine if even a trace of Drowned Girl water stuck with him as he dived into the Drowned Man spring to cure himself? Yeah, you might think so much water of one should overwhelm the other, but it’s squicky enough to not want to risk, I’d imagine. It’s not something I plan to explicitly state in the story, but goodness knows if I were in the same position, changing gender is bad enough. Trying to fix it and ending up with parts of both … well, that’s not what I’d call a better situation.

Anyway, thanks for reading “The Sorcerer Priest.” As always, I welcome any remarks or comments via review. For commentary on chapters prior to this one, you’re welcome to check out my blog at westofarcturus [dot] blogspot [dot] com (or click the link in my author profile). And if you’re not inclined to do either of those, then I hope you enjoyed this installment and that you’ll be back next week for “The Flood.”

Until next time,
Muphrid
2010 June 11

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Analyzing hits: Identity in May 2010

One of the things I find interesting is the pattern of hits to my stories. I hope to discover, through statistical behaviors of readers, what is effective and what isn't. It's not exact science, but I think some reasonable conclusions can be made through some examination of data. Below is a table of hits to Identity for the month of May 2010. The total number of hits is 4603.

Act	Hits	Hits Ratio
Prelude to In the Cold Rain	1327	N/A
Monday	374	0.28
Akane	303	0.81
Sounds of Night	218	0.72
Doubt	173	0.79
The Cold Rain	172	0.99
Prelude to The Village	126	0.73
Valley of Magic	118	0.94
The Sorcerer's Den	113	0.96
Ritual at the Spring	104	0.92
Escape	115	1.11
Prelude to Journey to Jusenkyo	110	0.96
The Nerima Conclave	129	1.17
Night Life of the Dotonbori	143	1.11
The Amazon Charter	192	1.34
The Nine and the Three	326	1.70
Occupation	337	1.03
The Last Right	223	0.66

The third column is calculated based on the ratio of hits from that row to the chapter of the row before (so the hits ratio for "Monday" compared to "Prelude to 'In the Cold Rain'" is 374/1327=0.28. I think this is a useful measure for a number of reasons: it shows how many people stop reading at a particular chapter, for example. In the case of Identity, having been updated three times in the month of May, I think you have to divide the story into roughly three regimes: the first being the beginning, where every new reader will pass. The second, the middle, where readers have already made a reasonable commitment to read the story. The third is the most recent set of chapters, where readers who've already read most of the story will check in for new installments. I think each regime has a different statistical behavior, in ways that the data indicate.

First, we have to consider that FFN doesn't have a table of contents page, and as such, people often go to the first chapter, reach for the drop down, and then go to the chapter they like. Thus, the first chapter has an inordinate amount of hits, and the hits ratio of the second chapter / first chapter is very small. Beyond that, however, I think we can see that the first few chapters of a long story suffer significant loss. Readers are discriminating, after all, and there's a lot of fanfiction out there and not a lot of reason to read any unknown story over any other. The first few chapters show losses of 20-25% of new readers from each chapter to the next. One thing that's interesting, however, is that "The Cold Rain" shows little loss from readers who already read "Doubt." I can speculate this shows "Doubt" to be a good cliffhanger, especially considering the loss between "The Cold Rain" and "Prelude to 'The Village,'" but again, this is just speculation.

Starting with "The Village," I think we can see that we've entered the second regime, the "middle" of the story. Losses here are only on the order of about 5%--I would suggest this means everyone who's read to this point is reasonably committed to finishing whatever's already done. Again, "Escape" has a good hits ratio, which may reflect more on the strength of "Ritual at the Spring" or perhaps indicates that "Escape" was itself very memorable and drew some return hits from people who wanted to reread it.

After that, however, I think we're squarely in the third regime, as new chapters posted (or even just recently posted in the last couple months) draw increasingly more attention, up to the final posting of May, which has fewer hits because it had only 3 days of visibility before we entered June. I'll be interested to see over the next few months how the numbers for "Journey to Jusenkyo" level off as those chapters enter the middle regime, as well as to see whether these readership losses change over time as the story becomes more saturated with the typical Ranma 1/2 readers.

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Evangelion 2.22: You (Can) Not Advance

I watched Eva 2.22 the other day.

In truth, I still kind of don't know what I watched. I mean, I know what I watched. I knew, from people who'd seen the raws or the original screenings in Japan what would happen.

Despite all that, I still don't really know what I watched. Allow me to explain below.

I want to break down my review of 2.22 into two parts: the first on the movie as it stands, the second on how it deviates from the NGE continuity and how those changes work.

Like its predecessor, 2.22 maintains a brisk theatrical pace, starting with battle, taking a break to put the characters in the right mental and social states, and then knocking them down the way Evangelion always does. Compared to television, it does seem fairly fast, but less so then 1.11, which I'll explain a bit later.

Character interaction is a times both subtle and blunt. Shinji is glad to see Rei at the aquarium, and Rei's reaction to his offer of food is a bit muted. Her offer to Gendo to come to a dinner she'll prepare, however, is anything but. Asuka's last conversation with Misato before entering Unit 03 is almost too sophisticated and self-aware (which is also, in a train wreck sort of way, why it's more painful to know she's going there). Shinji's portrayal after leaving Eva and piloting, particularly his conversation with Misato, is also way too adult for my taste, but then, perhaps this is meant to signify how he's not really looking at the world the way a child, a 14-year-old, would. Or perhaps that he's trying to look at things as an adult and just coming off a little wrong. At any rate, despite the pace, emotions seem real and true, at least to me, and that makes them effective.

Perhaps in true Eva fashion, however, plot seems like a bit of a secondary concern. We don't even know why Asuka's in the vicinity when she saves Shinji and Misato in her entrance. Mari's reasons for "invading" Japan aren't really elaborated upon, and it seems like a convenient excuse to have her be there for the final battle. Granted, some things can't or won't be explained yet, but these really stand out as things that are odd without the strong possibility of explanation in the future. The Vatican Treaty is simply there, again for no discernable reason, just to handcuff the pilots. And let's not even get started on the mind trip that is Shinji's descent to save Rei. That, however, at least might get some explanation in 3.0. Or will it be 3.33?

As I said, though, no discussion of this film is really complete without comparison to the television series. On its face, the idea of Mari makes sense, even if the thought that she's Japanese in America kind of doesn't. That Asuka is a captain and so forth? Sure, I buy that, and her entrance was impressive, if lacking in the chance to really bond with Shinji. She makes up for that, though, and her doll complex is still there, albeit without the same details. Rei and Asuka seem to come to an understanding, which is admittedly pretty cool, and Rei, despite having a less emotional first reaction to Shinji's kindness, seems more affected by it than in the series. That too is fun to see. And while the roles of Misato, Ritsuko, and Kaji seem a hair diminished, Misato still has an important role to play, Ritsuko is still (directly or not) her balance, and Kaji is still making his moves, too. I think, for packaging this series into movies, this one was pretty good.

But by now, the New Movie Edition series has gone Off The Rails, so who knows what'll happen. 2.22 is a fun movie. It's also unabashedly brutal emotionally and graphically. I found myself just laughing out loud during the most horrific scenes, in part because I couldn't believe they would go to such lengths to amp up the gore. But don't take that to mean it was ineffective. Maybe that's just how I react to the insanity of it.

Edit: and finally, let me say that now and forever, when Megumi Hayashibara starts singing, Eva fans will know it's time for the world to go to hell. And that's okay, because it was kind of wicked crazy.

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Identity 4.0 - Prelude to "Monsters and Demons"

The chapter four prelude on Fanfiction.Net

I noticed FFN is now sporting a mobile website domain for use on phones and other mobile devices. Kind of wish they'd had that when I went on vacation, but still, pretty cool. As much as people rag on FFN and it's culture from time to time, I have to say overall I'm pretty satisfied with the site's layout. Maybe that's coming from a perspective of familiarity, but having considered uploading to MediaMiner, I find FFN much easier to work with. But then, maybe that sentiment stems solely from the lack of a "Document Manager" type system where I can see what I upload looks like before I post it. Or the lack of OpenOffice support (granted, RTF is fine, but...).

Anyway, as usual, commentary below.

As is customary, the prelude to a chapter is short, and I'd hoped this would be where I gain a little time, especially with chapters 5, 6, and 7 already having extensive outlines, but alas, I'm still looking at only a fraction of chapter four, act six completed, so I have catching up to do. Even still, the chapter as a whole is very, very solid in my feeling, so I'm not too concerned with posting what I've got so far. I suppose in this way I've made the acts all stand on their own much more, as a consequence of posting them in these small installments.

On balance, I do have to realize that this is kind of taking an abrupt jig in the plot. Water spewing over Jusenkyo, you say? What does that mean? How is that possible? What does it have to do with fighting the Sorcerers? In truth, it may not mean a whole lot, and I say that in the sense that I've said before I take a lot of inspiration from Babylon 5, and one of the big things about that series was how episodes that seemed unrelated to the main story arc still contributed in some way to changing outlooks and opinions, to character growth. What I can say is that this chapter means to do the same. There's a lot to explore here, between how these characters who are so physically strong confront weakness, the lack of power to change their circumstances. It looks at the nature of humanity and how we perceive ourselves in relation to others. Without a doubt, there must be a confrontation here, and how it ends will have repercussions for conflicts to come.

Originally, I meant for a catapult to be the means to break through the Maze, but I had conceptual issues with how you tie a rope to something a catapult would launch. For this reason, I...watched an BBC show on a ballista on youtube and decided that that would do the trick. Even though it was a Roman ballista, it seemed like something appropriate here, too. In retrospect, the inviolability of the Maze is much like how I made dimensional areas difficult to penetrate in Echoes, subject to specific rules. The Maze, too, will only have certain people and things able to penetrate it.

What about Shampoo and Ukyo, you say? Akane and Ryoga? Stay tuned for acts two and five.

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Writing a novel using the memoir class in LaTeX (with notes for uploading to fanfiction.net)

For the last few months, I've been writing Identity using LaTeX, a document typesetting system often for the preparation of technical papers but applicable to the task of writing a novel, too. Why do I do this? For one, I often had conceptual issues with formatting using programs like Microsoft Word. While you can control to a fine degree how things look in LaTeX, often times the engine or class will give you very good results that need no further tinkering. Futhermore, LaTeX allows you to greatly decouple the content of something compared to its presentation. Especially using content in separate sub-files, you can present the same information in different ways depending on the needs of the situation.

The Basics

All you need to start LaTeX-ing is a text editor and a LaTeX installation. A popular LaTeX installation is MikTeX, which is what I use. LaTeX benefits from syntax highlighting (like programming language editors offer), so I use Notepad++, but there are many TeX and LaTeX editors available. Finally, if you often use LaTeX to output PDF directly (as I do), you may find it convenient to use a different PDF reader than Adobe Reader--Adobe's reader locks out access to PDFs, preventing them from being overwritten while Adobe has the file open. You can feel free to use another editor that allows you to preview the file without Adobe Reader (I think Windows 7 comes with TexWorks), or you can use Sumatra PDF, which is every bit as functional as Adobe Reader.

In addition, if you plan to upload to Fanfiction.net, I advise using a utility such as LaTeX2RTF to convert to something FFN understands. RTF is fine for FFN.

To compile LaTeX, you can simply type "pdflatex blah" in a command line to compile blah.tex. This will generate a PDF for your document...that is, provided there are no errors, anyway. But to start, you need a simple text file that you save as a .tex file.

The Preamble

LaTeX is all about structure, commands, and environments. A document begins with a preamble, which in turn begins with the \documentclass command: this tells LaTeX what class to invoke for the document (there are many; I use memoir) and what options the class allows that are used in this particular document. After one states the class, one can load various packages using the \usepackage command. The part of the preamble I use for class and packages looks something like this:

\documentclass[ebook, 10pt, openany]{memoir}
\usepackage{fourier}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{verbatim}
\usepackage[calcwidth,nobottomtitles*]{titlesec}

The class is memoir, with options ebook (changing the page dimensions), 10pt (font size) and openany (chapters can begin on either left or right pages). The fourier package tells LaTeX to use the Utopia-fourier font. Hyperref allows the table of contents to directly link to the beginning of chapters. Verbatim gives several options for comment environments (which I'll touch on later), and the titlesec package allows me to change how the section titles look.

This is not the only part of the preamble, however: before the \begin{document} command (which actually starts the real document), you can define new commands and environments, redefine old ones, or otherwise tweak some formatting aspects to your liking.

For example, I define several commands that are basically just simple macros. You might notice at the end of my chapters, I have a line plugging the blog: For notes and commentary on this chapter and others, visit my blog at westofarcturus [dot] blogspot [dot] com. This is done (in a very simplistic sort of way) through a command I define in the preamble:

\newcommand{\blogline}{For notes and commentary on this chapter and others, visit my blog at westofarcturus [dot] blogspot [dot] com.}

This way, I don't have to type it out at the end of each chapter: I just type \blogline{} near the end, and it's always the same. That's another advantage of LaTeX: you can freely define commands and automate a lot of stuff that otherwise must be repeated.

You can add stuff to your preamble over time, as you get more and more familiar with LaTeX.

The document body

Your document truly begins with the \begin{document} command and must end with \end{document}. This, in a way, is a top level environment. You can wrap quotations in \begin{quotation} and \end{quotation}, and so on. The only fundamental difference between environments and commands is that environments come with begin and end commands like so, while plain commands begin and end with braces to wrap their arguments.

One of the first things you'll want to do is give your document a title and put your name on it. Identity begins like this:

\title{Identity}
\author{By Muphrid}
\date{Rev. \today}

This actually doesn't write a title or anything like that. For that, you need a final command to say that you're "done" with title stuff and put the title on a page: \maketitle - that will do it. For a novel, with a complex title page, this is woefully insufficient, but for us, it'll pass for now.

Once we're done with that, we can get to more interesting business. If you're like me, the next thing you want to do is have a table of contents. With LaTeX, this is easy: just type \tableofcontents and each time you compile, LaTeX will generate a .aux file with the page numbers of chapter headers and so forth, so that on the next run, it can generate a TOC list. That means whenever you make a change, you should compile the document twice: once for the TOC, once to finish.

After that, you can get writing! Writing a novel in LaTeX has a few quirks, but it's otherwise very easy. Use `` (two grave accents) for opening double quotation marks and two apostrophes on the keyboard ('') for closing double quotation marks. Single quotes are just one of each. So no, LaTeX won't auto correct your quotation marks, but it's not like HTML, where you need to type out a five or six character entity to get it right. Other than that, separate new paragraphs with a blank line in between (so two hard returns, not one; if you refuse to word wrap in a text editor, you can use one hard return safely and not start a new paragraph). Use \emph{text} to emphasize (usually italicize) text. I personally define a \thought command so I can denote thoughts differently from run-of-the-mill italics if I choose to--again, this is a great thing about LaTeX, for if I change my mind and want thoughts to be double-underscored with glitter, I can do that by changing the command definition, rather than going back and doing that each time somebody thinks something.

The only other thing you need to know by then for just writing in LaTeX is sectioning commands. The memoir class allows you to use the \chapter command, so if you want a chapter entitled Journey to Jusenkyo, just type \chapter{Journey to Jusenkyo}, make a blank line, and start your first paragraph on the next. The same goes for sections. \section{Night Life of the D\=otonbori} begins act two of chapter three, for example. That's another nice thing about LaTeX: using the macrons needed for some forms of Japanese romanization is easy with the \={} command. Fiancee can be given its proper accent with \'{e} before the final e (as you might notice, you don't strictly need the braces when it's just the one character accented--fianc\'ee will do fine, as will Uky\=o, and so on).

Uploading to Fanfiction.net

FFN doesn't understand LaTeX (and I doubt they ever will), so again, use something like LaTeX2RTF to get something FFN will understand. A note on this particular utility: it has a couple bugs. First, it's not a true LaTeX parser, and as such, while it ignores ordinary comments in code (denoted by the percent sign, %), it will often simply skip over environments or code that it doesn't understand. I actually use this bug to my advantage. The second bug, however, is that it inserts an extra space between question marks and exclamation points and single or double quotes after them--use find and replace to fix this. Actually, it inserts extra space in a lot of other places, but this is the only point of consequence (FFN strips all the other space anyway).

On using the first bug, I actually put all the header and footer stuff in my chapters in special comment environments that the RTF converter doesn't understand but won't show up in PDF: hence, I can compile LaTeX and get something without teasers and stuff (in other words, I get a book), and I can run LaTeX2RTF and get what I want to upload to FFN.

Sample code

For people's perusal, I provide a basic idea of what the documents I use look like in tex code. Have fun with LaTeX! And to see how it looks in PDF, download Identity from Scribd.

All code is kept below the "Read more" link.

This is the main file, Identity.tex.

\documentclass[ebook, 10pt, openany]{memoir} %comments after percent signs; this is the document class with options
%\documentclass[oneside, openany]{memoir} %I keep this line and uncomment it out (and comment the above) if I want to have the pdf in a one-sided format
\usepackage{fourier} %font package
\usepackage{hyperref} %links in toc
\usepackage{verbatim} %comment environments
\usepackage[calcwidth,nobottomtitles*]{titlesec} %section header formatting

\newcommand{\separator}{\rule{\textwidth}{3pt}} %I use this to denote where I want horizontal rules in FFN uploads

\newenvironment{anote}{}{} %creates a blank environment %the lines below map this environment to a comment environment; you must do it this way (you can't just make the environment identical to comment in one stroke)
\let \anote \comment
\let \endanote \endcomment

\newcommand{\blogline}{For notes and commentary on this chapter and others, visit my blog at westofarcturus [dot] blogspot [dot] com.} %the blog line at the end of a chapter
\newcommand{\summary}{\textbf{\emph{Identity}, by Muphrid.} A tribe of Chinese sorcerers captures Ranma to purge emotions from the hearts of men. A continuation story, set after the end of the manga.} %The macro at the beginning of a chapter
\newcommand{\whatsup}[1]{\textbf{What's going on here?} #1} %The macro after the story summary. \textbf bolds; #1 is provided as the preview of the chapter.
\newcommand{\whatsnext}[3]{\textbf{Next:} #2 \textbf{#1 - Coming #3.}} %the macro at the end of the chapter, with a preview for the next. I originally had the arguments in a different order.

\newcommand{\fftitle}[2]{\begin{center} \textbf{#1} \\ \emph{#2} \end{center}} %this is how I get a title in format of bolded line above an italics line, centered.


\newcommand{\ffend}[1]{\begin{center} \textbf{\emph{Identity} #1 End} \end{center}} %and this is the macro at the end of a chapter chapter, as opposed to an act.

\newcommand{\pbreak}{\pfbreak} %this inserts a blank space in PDF between paragraphs for a scene break; I map it like so in order to do...
%\renewcommand{\pbreak}{\begin{center} \# \end{center}} %this; in FFN uploads, I map it to a single centered line with a pound symbol

\newcommand{\thought}[1]{\emph{#1}} %thoughts are italic
\newcommand{\thtdia}[1]{\emph{`#1'}} %dialogue in thought is denoted with single quotes
\newcommand{\ellip}{\ldots} %just in case, I can change how ellipses are presented
\newcommand{\qs}{~} %this is the space between a double and single quote if someone is directly quoting someone else

\chapterstyle{thatcher} %this is for the memoir class; there are several possible chapter styles
\renewcommand \thesection{\Roman{section}} %section numbering in roman numerals


%all the below formats section titles with number on the first line, a line between, and title on a second line \titleformat{\section}[display]
{\Large \fillast}
{\oldstylenums{\thesection} {\titleline[c]{\rule{.5\titlewidth}{1pt}}}}
{-12pt}
{\Large \scshape}

\hyphenation{strike-throughs cinder-blocks o-ko-no-mi-ya-ki} %hyphenation aids for unfamiliar words to latex

%\includeonly{ch01,ch02,ch03} %when I want to upload to Scribd, I include only the chapters that are done and proofread; I keep a pdf on my computer that is up to date with everything I've written
\begin{document} %begins the document

\frontmatter %pages after front matter are numbered differently than main matter


%all the below is the title page \title{Identity}
\author{By Muphrid}
\date{Rev. \today}

\maketitle %makes the title?

\newpage %blank page

\tableofcontents %obvious

\newpage

\mainmatter %this is the main part of the document, starts with page 1 instead of i or ii

\part{Tribe of the Ki Sorcerers} %this first part of the book

\sloppy %with ebook dimensions, sloppy space management between words is preferred over nonsloppy (the default), which overfills lines; sloppy spacing underills lines but is much less noticeable with my page size


% I write the book in separate subdocuments; each ch01.tex etc. is just a dummy for each act; I did this because doing a chapter in a single file was simply too big for Notepad++ to handle without cpu lag, but for files under 100kb you probably don't need to do that. \include{ch01}
\include{ch02}
\include{ch03}
\include{ch04}

\end{document}

The following is a dummy chapter file, like the \include commands at the end of Identity.pdf.

\chapter{Journey to Jusenky\=o} %begins the chapter
%all this stuff is using \input instead of \include because you can't nest include; the only functional difference is that \include inserts newpages before the content included, but with chapters, this is done anyway (and not repeated, so there are no blank pages between chapters)
\input{ch03a0}
\input{ch03a1}
\input{ch03a2}
\input{ch03a3}
\input{ch03a4}
\input{ch03a5}
\input{ch03a6}

And for reference, ch03a6.tex. Compare this against chapter three, act six on FFN.

\section{The Last Right} %act title

\begin{anote} %everything in the anote environment doens't go into PDF but does go into the RTF

\summary{} %the summary macro at the beginning of the chapter, "Identity, by Muphrid..."

\whatsup{The Council of Elders has silenced Shampoo. Mute to all but her family, she watches, helpless to save Ranma, helpless to reclaim lost honor, and the time for battle against the Sorcerers is nigh.} %The preview of the coming chapter at the beginning

\separator{} %I replace this with a horizontal rule in RTF

\fftitle{The Last Right}{Chapter Three Finale} %the title in FFN; included here because LaTeX puts a title with \section, but this title is not well-formatted for upload to FFN

\end{anotetop}
Chapter text goes here.

Separate paragraphs are like so.

\pbreak{} %where I want a scene break

``Dialogue,'' I said in \emph{another} paragraph.

\thought{I'm thinking in italics.}

\begin{anote} %end of chapter footer

\ffend{03} %Identity 03 End
\separator{} %hrule

\whatsnext{The war against the Ki Sorcerers begins with chapter four of \emph{Identity} - ``Monsters and Demons''}{The Amazons stage a rescue attempt for Ranma, but the battle against the Sorcerers ends in cataclysm for both sides, tainting Jusenky\=o for miles around. The springs may be relatively tame now, but it won't be long before it's an abomination on this earth.}{June 4, 2010}

\blogline{} %Visit my blog at yadda

\end{anote}

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Iron Man 2

Well, summer's back, boys and girls, and there promises to be plenty of summer movies to see and break down here. The first (and I realize I'm a couple weeks behind with this one) is Iron Man 2.

Once again I must reference tvtropes, in particular their concept of "fridge logic", or the subtle questions and inconsistencies that you don't notice at first but suddenly dawn on you as you make your way to the fridge for another beer, so to speak. Fridge logic isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are some things that, if brought up, would seriously reduce dramatic tension and thus should be glossed over---this is especially true if dealing with them just doesn't do much toward making the situation any more plausible or realistic.

But there are some things that should be brought up---and, indeed, the concept of fridge logic can, at times, border into the more general plot hole territory. I think Iron Man 2 has altogether too much of both.

Overall, this is an enjoyable movie. I'd say it lacks a little of the punch of the first film, but it doesn't suck. It's just...not that compelling, truthfully. Motivation is there, but both villains just want to find some way to screw over or kill Stark---everything beyond that is reduced to afterthought (even when, in Hammer's case, he has a lot to think about after that---making money off selling weaponized armors to the military). And while not every villain need a goal of conquering the world or advancing an agenda, a vision in their eyes of right and wrong, the profound lack of that makes these villains awfully simple. There's not a whole lot going on for them.

The broader issue, however, is that the plot just doesn't have a lot of tightness to it. It's comprehensible, to be sure, but some things about it simply don't make sense. Why should Howard Stark outright hide the secret to a non-poisonous arc reactor in a riddle? It seems like a convenient puzzle that adds dramatic tension without really having any justification (even though several could be easily provided---hiding it from Anton, etc.). Why is the palladium subplot even there? To give Stark some reason to make a fool of himself? My biggest problem is that, while it enables the villains' plans, it's something that's still woefully unconnected and is resolved oh-so-conveniently. Vanko basically seems to have no other plan than to kill Stark, and while that's fine, the idea that "the god bleeds" as he claims just doesn't seem to take hold. It's not other people who see Stark as weak so much as Stark himself imploding---which, dying as he was, he was doing anyway. In short, Vanko's prediction just doesn't seem to hold with any strength, and Hammer's behavior is merely opportunistic. The SHIELD agent Natasha also seems to be goading Stark into imploding, which doesn't really add up either (unless, of course, knowing she's herself part of the supers business in the future, that's part of who she is, but say what she did in her report at the end just kind of seemed off).

I will say that I liked a good bit about the film: Hammer seemed quite hilarious yet still had a good edge on him, and the birthday party scene with a drunk Stark casually blasting things with his beams was, to me at least, extremely chilling. You can tell Potts and Rhodes are very, very afraid that Stark will just blast a person and splatter their guts over the walls, and with good reason. But that felt like the only moment of genuine emotion in the film, and that's...unfortunate.

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