I'm not talking about being serious about attention to things like spelling and grammer.

I was tooling around with a fourth in what may be turning into a series featuring the Las Lindas characters. As this would be the 4th part I thought I might fill in the background on the mind-controlling serpent a bit more.

Then I thought, am I taking this too seriously? Adding background would mean a longer caption. While there are those who like longer captions, the general consensus seems to be that brevity is the soul of wit

Also, do people really care? Look at Chaoscroc and his ongoing fixation with the Sonic universe. What's Chaoscroc's motivation and background? He's just a robo-lizardy thing that zapps every girl he comes across with hypno-rays. Perhaps I should not get so lost in literary pretension that I forget that people mainly see the character as a vehicle for seeing sexy anthros getting hypnotized.

Everybody likes different stuff: just do what you enjoy, and others might too.

That said, a good story is worth a heck of a lot.

Sure, some folks do alright without much plot... but their stuff starts to get pretty samey. ChaosCroc's been drawing the same thing over and over for a long time: I, for one, have lost interest.

Not that there's anything wrong with what he's doing; different people just like different stuff.

I used to make pretty long sequences of text manips that told a story. They were pretty well received, way back when. There is a niche for it, and it does always need some filling, so if you want to flesh out a story, then feel free. I'm more than a little sure that others will enjoy it.

It's just my opinion, but for material which relies on the setting or text, fetishes which cause a change in character are more appealing when you can actually tell there's been a change in character. Having an original character in a text manip who starts out mind controlled/mind broken/NTRed/etc. isn't as satisfying as seeing an established character (which, of course, varies depending on the audience) or a character who has been built up. That is to say, I personally have little interest in original character text manips which follow the formula:

---

X was caught unawares and is now under Y's control.

"You're a good little hypno-slave, aren't you, X?"

"Yes, Master Y..."

---

To be honest, I find them boring, and to me they may as well just be an image.

With Chaoscroc's stuff, Sonic characters are well known and well established, so the short, few panel antics work out. You know Rouge is a devious rogue who flaunts her impressive... skills; you know Blaze fits into the confident, heroic archetype - you don't need to be told that to recognise the extent of the subversion. That's not to say setting the character in-context doesn't help.

In short, I'd say shorter text manips with recognisable characters, as well as longer text manips which establish the pre-mind control personalities of the characters work better than the fairly shallow, generic template mentioned above.

I couldn't have said it better myself, MegaHypno. You put into words exactly what I have been feeling for years. I never really gave it much thought, though.

Yeesh, and here I thought I was taking the captioning TOO seriously! :D
Well darn, you guys have sent me back into rewrites.