Updates: November 2001
November 21, 2001 at 6:50PM Eastern Standard Time
MSROCAI was born onto the internet on April
16, 2000. A lot has happened to MSROCAI since then. MSROCAI
has moved locations seven times, and has lived through three totally different
layouts (including about a dozen different navigation menus). After it
went online, MSROCAI was the first place where my newest fanfics could be found.
In its first summer, MSROCAI also began hosting the fanfics of other authors:
Prince Vegeta, Ash the Wanderer, Chelsee, Fade, nahognos, mysticGohan33, Anija,
and numerous others. Less than six months after its creation, MSROCAI
recieved a complete overhaul, resulting in a cleaner appearance and far more
content. While MSROCAI was neglected at times, the fanfics continued to
fill the archive and the reviews poured in...until the beginning of last year.
The cause was a simple, sad one: I had no more free time...or interest. I
let MSROCAI drag on almost solely so that I could mess around with HTML code.
I wasn't writing anymore, and realy haven't this year. I dropped all of
the hosted fanfics because I didn't have the time or willpower to update them.
Things were looking pretty bleak for MSROCAI at the time. However, this
past summer, I gave MSROCAI something that it had not experiened yet: a total
reconstruction. Personally I love this layout right now, and it is so easy
to update. Only one problem can I find with the website right now, and
that is that all of the fanfics but Dragon War are still down. It takes
forever to upload new fanfics and a lot of energy--I have so many chapters and
reviews to attend to. And as I have spent many small blocks of time bored
because I just don't quite feel like adding more fanfics, I have been dwelling
on the state of the Dragonball fanfiction community. Two years
ago, when I first started writing fanfics, it was a blossoming area full of
interesting people and original ideas. Everyone was having fun.
Now it is not that way. The community is in decline. Authors are
writing about the same plots for the thousandth time, just because they can't
think up any ideas that have already been used. It has also been made
painfully obvious to me that the old, veteran authors whom I have spent
countless hours reading the fanfics of are getting older, quitting, or becoming
sloppy. Ash the Wanderer retired to go to college; Crono just got sick of
fanfiction; who knows what ever happened to Rideryu of Dark Ki; nahognos has
other interests; I am not even sure if Anija is still alive; Prezaurian hasn't
enough free time; Psyco Cat is missing in action; Fade quit. The only
authors that were in the community when I started and I began to follow and are
still here, other than myself, are mysticGohan33, Chelsee, and Goku Girl.
That is really sad. To make matters worse, the Dragonball
fanfiction websites have gone to the dogs. I can find a million out there,
only a few with any real content. There are a bunch out there that
are pretty crappy, have no original content, and only have fanfics that have way
over-used plots, yet they get a thousand hits a day. There are a
bunch more authors everyday, and most of them have no quality.
Punctuation, capitalization, grammar, structure, plot...all thrown aside for
easy-to-write "drama scripts," sex scenes, humor more immature than mine, and
really embarassing originality.
I have been here for almost two years.
I have written a lot of fanfics. I try very hard to be original and
produce quality material. I work very hard on MSROCAI and put as much
content into it as I can. I haven't recieved a review since June, and I
the total number of hits recieved in the entire lifetime of MSROCAI is not even
as many as some of these new crappy sites get in a day.
I am not saying all of the new authors, fics,
and sites are bad, but a lot are. I have worked too hard to be burried at
the bottom. And I think that some of the best authors out there are being
shunned so that garbage may thrive.
I want to quit very much.
Dragonball fanfiction is not something that I enjoy anymore. I don't
have time. I have other interests. But I also know that I have a lot
of friends here and have spent way too much time to let things decay into rancid
piles of fly-infested repulsion. Not a chance. I am going to make
sure that, come my second anniversary of writing fanfics in December, things are
different. I want to write out the rest of my ideas so fantastically
as to blow the socks off of everyone else. I do not want to write another
Dark Ki, Consuming Madness, Dominion: Reprise, or anything else of such calibre;
I want to write something completely unique. I want to rise up out of this
endless sea of hollow waste and make something grand. To do such, I also
have to take MSROCAI to another level. I do not mean another layout
change. I mean content-wise. I am going to make sure every last one
of my fanfics gets back up, complete with all of my reviews. Then I am
going to go through as many fanfics as I can and host quality, original,
outstanding work, and stories written by the other veteran authors that are
still around. I want MSROCAI to be a shining beaon to the whole
community--every last Dragonball fanfic author. My tools in this
task shall be my writing, the writing of exceptional authors, the Dragonball
Fanfiction Community Center (designed to fix these problems), and a whole lot of
willpower.
There will be no further updates to MSROCAI
until December the twentieth at the earliest. I ask all of the authors
still working their fails off out there to keep at it; show everyone just how
good you are. I encourage all webmasters to create such wonderful content
as to blow these nothing websites out of the water. Everyone, please use
the Dragonball Fanfiction Community Center. While it will not be updated
until December, any comments, assitance, contributions, or anything else will be
appreciated. I am going to write and work like mad until December.
Let it begin.
-Mike Steele
November 18, 2001 at 5:10PM Eastern Standard Time
Motivation is an essential ingredient in
undertaking a project. I have a major project ahead of me, namely putting
all of the fanfics back up with all of the reviews. However, I have no
motivation. None at all. I have so neglected this site for so
long that I have to force myself to update. So any reviews or
linking to me, anything to make me feel like it is a worthwhile task, would be
appreciated.
In other areas, Pink Floyd released
Echoes, a collection of their hits (of which there are may).
Unfortunately the album ONLY debuted at number two on Billboard's music charts.
Also, I got up and watched the Leonid meteor shower (or storm) this morning with
dad. Between 4:30 and 5:41 in the morning we saw about 300 meteors, 241 of
which were between 5:00 and 5:41. There were some really bright ones.
Man, it was awesome.
I am off from school Wednesday through Monday
of this upcoming week for Thanksgiving, so I might get some actual content
updated then. Content means fanfics or that little thing that never gets
used, the
Dragonball Fanfiction Community Center. Use it!!!
Contribute something to it!!!