Rantings and Ravings
  Joyful little columns by us.

Cats and Dubs

Dubbing and "Dub-Pages"

By: CereCere

Many of you that regularly email us know that I'm in charge of handling this page's email. This means I'm usually the first to see those wonderful things called flames. From my experience let me say "Flamers" have to be the densest people in the world. Most complain about us being too "harsh" and ask us to be more constructive, which I sometimes accept and I have tried to be, without totally giving up on my sarcasm. However, the one thing they all claim, and I never agree with, is we are biased against pages that are about the North American Dubbed version of the series.

This is simply not true, how many times do I have to tell flamers that, only to have them come back and claim that we are once again being biased. Like we used to say on our link to The Guidelines area, "Do flamers actually read these?" They say they do and refer to it, but they don't read it very well. It says clearly in there we are not out to get "Dub Pages." As long as a page doesn't attempt to dub episodes or characters that Dic has not dubbed yet, or doesn't give incorrect information about these episodes or characters in their original form, we think the page is fine, good or even excellent.

Sure some of us hate the dub- myself, I think the dub is fine. I have seen all 82 dubbed episodes, (yes, I'm Canadian) and would watch them from time to time again. However, I do agree the dub has many flaws, but so does the original. Nothing is perfect in this world. Despite our different attitudes we all accept that the dub exsists and there is going to be pages on it out there. So like I said, if it meets our guidelines, we have no problem.

Some flamers also claim it's impossible to meet our guidelines. Not true, Starfox's page does, "A Sailor Moon Home" does, these are a few pages that are so-called "dub pages" and that have been featured as good pages here. Those that say we're biased against "dub pages" should know we are just as quick to jump on a page that only talks about the original, but does it with incorrect info. Some have also told us that it's ok for those pages to dub items because it was in a fandub. We do not accept this for two reasons. One, fandubs are not available to all, and there are several different ones out there. Two, fandubs are ILLEGAL, end of story! Some have said, "But what about fanfics?" Yes, fanfics are a form of fandubbing, but they are not altering epsiodes that were made by someone else without permission, they are making new episodes that were never made and are therefore open to something called "artistic license." Those of you who have taken a writing course or art class know what I'm talking about. Plus, the people that are using fandub info on their pages don't tell you it's coming from a fandub. Fanfic people, however, usually tell you when what they are talking about is from their fic.

We take a stance against people who use incorrect information on their page for one big reason. It misleads new fans of the show who don't know any better since they haven't seen those episodes yet, or they are not sure which page is a reliable source. We try to show them which sites are reliable for info so that they don't pick up wrong information and then spread this wrong info around or later find out what they thought was right was wrong. Face it, if you have info about the show on your page, people are going to refer to it for help, so it better be right.

"Copy-Cat Pages"

By VesVes

We have been getting nominations lately about pages that have been copying ours. Of course we hate plaguriaism. So here I would like to talk about the 3 different pages that people have told us about.

The first one was sent to us in late summer, and used "Chibi-chibi" and "Chibi-usa" as the reviewers' names. When we saw the page, it had stolen word for word sentences from our page, but the page's links were not all set up. This included their email link, so we couldn't write them to ask them to change their site. So we left it and we never heard about them again, so that page is either in limbo somewhere or has been taken down.

The second one we found from an email we received just last night that CereCere told me about this morning in an email to me. It's by "Mistress 9" and some of her friends. "Mistress 9" sent us at one time 3 flames, we responded once, she didn't accept our response, so we felt it was a waste of time to email her back again. So she has gone out and made a page that parodies our site. Now, we would like to post her flames and show our side of the story, but we have long since deleted them. We also would like to do a review of her page, and post her URL, but that's exactlly what she wants us to do. So I'm only going to say this, Mistress 9, first read CereCere's article above about dubbed pages, then also consider how you're being a bit of a hypocrite. You included a review on your page about a site we reviewed for "worst of the month" back in September. You said you didn't like our review methods, yet you went and copied them for your parody. Even though you say you're paroding our methods, that's a real page you're talking about, then again it might be your page you're talking about, and that would explain a lot. (You can read what you want into that.)

Finally the last page is by "The M-Squad." This is the only page worth really talking about, because it's the only serious one out there. Sure it looks like at first they are coping our purpose and some methods, but when you review pages, they all have the similar purposes and methods. Even more "PC" review pages like "Project Help" have to admit to that. "The M-Squad" also came up with several of their own ideas, like a nice stars and pans rating system, and 3 different catagories of pages, "Good, Bad and Ugly." We wrote "The M-Squad" about some parts of their page being questionably too much like ours and asked them to change it. We tried to be as nice as we could, and they sent us a nice response in return. They have since altered their page slightly to distinguish it more from ours. Therefore, we have no problem with their page and wish them luck.

Addition: There are also two other pages we approve of, The Outer Senshi's Best SM Pages, and The Needleleaf Society

  • Dec. 17th, 1997
  • As usual any comment made on this page is that of "The Amazoness Quartet" or one of its members. Tripod has nothing to do with our opinions, etc, lalala...


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