What to do?
Part two of "How to MST"
Okay, you have a fic that hasn't been done by anyone and won't be done by
anyone except you. I pity you. The first fic is the hardest. Hopefully, this
isn't your first exposure to MSTings, and you have built up some tolerance from
reading other MSTings. You'll know if you have enough tolerance when you can
read an Oscarfic all the way through with the MSTing and won't be reduced to a
quivering pile of jello.
Now, you must read the fic all the way through and decide where to put
riffs in, and "hot spots", or places that just deserve to get riffed. An example
if that is in Dr. Thinker's famous quote; out pooped Sailor Mercury. Pay special
attention to the rest of the fic, because these spots usually just don't need
much work to riff.
After you've read the whole fic and made notes of hot spots and some
riffs, you should get to work on the frame story, the host segments. First, you
need to decide who's going to riff the fic. It could be characters from anime,
it could be classic style, it could be characters from a book series that you
like. The most popular version is classic, with the usual MSTers from the
Satellite. Next, your path needs to branch off. If you chose someone who is
anime-based, you need to decide how they got into their predicament. Where they
are MSTing from, who put them there, and why they are being forced to watch
these fics.
J-Boogie uses the characters from Ranma 1/2 in his MSTing. They are being
made to watch bad fics by Oscar. The two strings of characters are completely
unrelated, but J-Boogie handles them nicely. Jamie Jeans puts random characters
from anime in the situation where they are watching the fics to pass the time
away in a bar for anime characters called Club Anipike. No one is making them
watch the fics(although I may be mistaken).
If you chose the classic approach, then you must decide in which part the
action is happening. It could be happening when Frank and Forrester are forcing
Mike to watch bad movies. It could be with Joel, Frank, and Forrester. It could
even be when Pearl is chasing Mike and the bots around the universe in her
Winged Microbus Of Doom. Just make sure that you get the characters down right.
If you're using anime, then you can probably make up the personalities and
MSTing style, since no one knows, but make sure that the styles match the
personlities in the manga, original, dub, video game, etc. If you're using the
classic style, then there's a little bit of a legend that you should try to
follow.
Crow- a little bit of a hentai. A little bit full of himself.
Tom- a little bit of a fanboy. Less of a hentai than Crow. A bit dark at
times.
Mike- moderator. Even less of a hentai. tries to be bright and sunny with his
riffs.
Joel- moderator. not a hentai at all. warns when riffs get too hentai. bright
and sunny.
If you're going to make up characters of your own for your MSTings, you
have to do extra work. You have to make up a history, a personality, the outside
appearance, the style of MSTing, the relation to the other MSTers (if necessary.
The MSTers could have never met before the MSTings started.), and what type of
pudding he/she likes.
Now that you have characters figured out, you need a plot for the host
segments to follow. It could be anything that your twisted little mind can ome
up with, even the characters confessing their true love for each other (John!
Marsha!). Just make sure that they are somehow able to take it all back later so
that they can go back to normal, or what passes for normal in their case. Once
you have host segments(remember, you should have some situation for the Mads as
well), you can go on to writing the segments.
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