>>26985389>Topic of the Thread: When reading a story that interests you, how high are your expectations for it?Besides the usual standards of proper grammar/entertainment value, any story that I consider both "interesting" and good must have the essential components of a high quality story:
-A climactic battle sequence (preferably several). No violence = no me gusto. One sided beatdowns against a major antagonist are also acceptable so long as at one point said villain proved to be a sufficient threat to the main protagonist. Good battle sequences are a tricky business to write sometimes but on a fundamental level they should serve as clashes of ideology as well as fists. Watch Rurouni Kenshin or Fist of the North Star if you want to see how it should be done.
-A sufficient dose of vitamin angst. This can take the form of emotional breakdowns, angry debates followed by periods of self reflection, or dramatic speeches leading to self doubt among the heroes and/or antagonists. Character growth of some sort should be an inevitable outcome of this drama.
-A satisfactory ending. Good needs to triumph over evil, or at least end up less fucked over than the main bad guys. Hamlet-esque "everyone dies" endings are verboten. This will often require the author to take some sort of moral stand with their writing, clearly indicating that one side is "right" and the other "wrong" and rewarding the characters appropriately, unless they're writing some sort of existential dreck in which case I don't know what they're doing near Pokemon fanfics in the first place.
Any story failing to meet these standards is sent straight to the gulags and is never again spoken of among civilized tongues.
