The article you talk about got mentioned on Whedonesque, a Joss Whedon site that frequented by The Boss. Joss doesn't weigh in on this particular post though, but it still bears reading. Also, there is mention by posters of The Grantsville Gazette, and how its existance helps defeat her arguement.
As it is, I am semi-guilty of writing possibly bad fan-fic. A friend and I wrote an ultra-Mary Sue Crossover fan fic series when we were in High School. The series featured most of the major members members of the school's anime club and crossed over with a lot of other anime series. Lime from Saber Marionette J and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII (although he was played as a parody of bishounen pretty-boys - being followed around by a horde of fan-girls and excessively vein about his hair) were among the cross-over characters who played major roles. It started out, mostly, as a bunch of gag stories, but when I came in I kind of introduced an story arc to each season, basically going down to:
Season 1: Jerry Fallwell (or, to be more accurate, a caracture thereof) decides to declare a war on Anime, and chooses to start with our Anime Club. Fallwell is portrayed as a bumbling not-so-brilliant evil mastermind ala Dr. Forrester from MST3K. Ultimatly, he is repulsed, and his patron decides to take charge. The two "original" charcters of this season were Guido and Vinnie, two mobsters from a New York Mafia family, who were attached to us after Fallwell tried to join/take over the Mob (a task which he didn't quite understand the scope of) through subterfuge, and was almost clipped by being fitted for cement boots and dumped in the East River. We arrived and in the confusion Fallwell ended up in the East River anyway but was rescued. None of us, however, knew that, and through a reasoning I don't quite remember, one of the members of the Anime Club (who shall referred to as "Brian"), became a Made Guy, and Guido and Vinnie were made subordinate to him.
Season 2: The next season we introduced perhaps wour third original character, Lord Kylar Daas, galactic warlord, who was out to conquer Earth primarly because it was in his arc of advance. Daas was actually competant, and, although we didn't actually have any art of him, I imagined him as looking like Cats from Zero Wing without the cybernetics (that would wait for season 3). This season moved the Anime Club's base of operation from the school's theater to one of the school's modular buildings (as it did in real life), and added an vast under-ground base of operations, which housed all of our mechs and space craft. This season also had the anime club actually nearing defeat, and culumnated to the club being "publically outed", and a vast assault on Daas's hidden base on the moon (a slight nod to the one of the few bits I actually liked about the original Power Ranger - Rita's base on, presumably, the moon), with forces from all the across the world, in Battlemechs and with an infantry assault of the main base (in a nod to "Space: Above and Beyond", the infantry were carried into the base in the semi-drop ships from that series).
Season 3: Never really happened, but would have involved the formation of SG-42, which the Anime Club would have been placed in charge of, based out of Daas's old moon base, using a Stargate which he had in his control, which seemingly connected to an enterly different network. Would have included crossovers to The Slayers, Record of Lodoss War, and further crossovers to Saber Marionette J. The original characters for this season would have included three SAS squads attached lead by Sergents (sp) Winkyn, Blinkyn and Nod.
And the point of this is - over the three years of writing that series (and trying to put out one "issue" per month for the Anime Club), I would like to think my prose writing style improved greatly. While I haven't written any more fanfic quite yet (though I have a few ideas bounsing around in my head), I think I am a better writer, and better at plotting out, well, plot lines, because of it.
By the way...
As it is, I am semi-guilty of writing possibly bad fan-fic. A friend and I wrote an ultra-Mary Sue Crossover fan fic series when we were in High School. The series featured most of the major members members of the school's anime club and crossed over with a lot of other anime series. Lime from Saber Marionette J and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII (although he was played as a parody of bishounen pretty-boys - being followed around by a horde of fan-girls and excessively vein about his hair) were among the cross-over characters who played major roles. It started out, mostly, as a bunch of gag stories, but when I came in I kind of introduced an story arc to each season, basically going down to:
Season 1: Jerry Fallwell (or, to be more accurate, a caracture thereof) decides to declare a war on Anime, and chooses to start with our Anime Club. Fallwell is portrayed as a bumbling not-so-brilliant evil mastermind ala Dr. Forrester from MST3K. Ultimatly, he is repulsed, and his patron decides to take charge. The two "original" charcters of this season were Guido and Vinnie, two mobsters from a New York Mafia family, who were attached to us after Fallwell tried to join/take over the Mob (a task which he didn't quite understand the scope of) through subterfuge, and was almost clipped by being fitted for cement boots and dumped in the East River. We arrived and in the confusion Fallwell ended up in the East River anyway but was rescued. None of us, however, knew that, and through a reasoning I don't quite remember, one of the members of the Anime Club (who shall referred to as "Brian"), became a Made Guy, and Guido and Vinnie were made subordinate to him.
Season 2: The next season we introduced perhaps wour third original character, Lord Kylar Daas, galactic warlord, who was out to conquer Earth primarly because it was in his arc of advance. Daas was actually competant, and, although we didn't actually have any art of him, I imagined him as looking like Cats from Zero Wing without the cybernetics (that would wait for season 3). This season moved the Anime Club's base of operation from the school's theater to one of the school's modular buildings (as it did in real life), and added an vast under-ground base of operations, which housed all of our mechs and space craft. This season also had the anime club actually nearing defeat, and culumnated to the club being "publically outed", and a vast assault on Daas's hidden base on the moon (a slight nod to the one of the few bits I actually liked about the original Power Ranger - Rita's base on, presumably, the moon), with forces from all the across the world, in Battlemechs and with an infantry assault of the main base (in a nod to "Space: Above and Beyond", the infantry were carried into the base in the semi-drop ships from that series).
Season 3: Never really happened, but would have involved the formation of SG-42, which the Anime Club would have been placed in charge of, based out of Daas's old moon base, using a Stargate which he had in his control, which seemingly connected to an enterly different network. Would have included crossovers to The Slayers, Record of Lodoss War, and further crossovers to Saber Marionette J. The original characters for this season would have included three SAS squads attached lead by Sergents (sp) Winkyn, Blinkyn and Nod.
And the point of this is - over the three years of writing that series (and trying to put out one "issue" per month for the Anime Club), I would like to think my prose writing style improved greatly. While I haven't written any more fanfic quite yet (though I have a few ideas bounsing around in my head), I think I am a better writer, and better at plotting out, well, plot lines, because of it.