I've never made a file_id.diz for the group called CLASS before, I wouldn't
even know who they are. But let's just suppose for a minute I was going to
do one. It might look a little like this:
A simple and straight-forward example of a style of mine everyone became
familiar with in my ascii collections 'In the Mouth of Madness' (R-ITMOM.TXT)
and 'To Serve Man' (R-TSM.TXT). Now consider the following if you would,
"made" by Feral of NoName (F3-CLASS.ASC - NoName pack #10):
Forgoing the fact that it's too wide for a file_id.diz (it's 48 columns), uses
control characters ("" and "�" both of which could cause strange results if
they were fed through a bbs's internal file_id scanner), take a long hard look
at it. Or better yet, look at this simplified version:
Of particular interest for us in this case is Whodini's use of "l" and "J",
which if you go back to Feral's "original" you'll see running rampant in
style.. if not specific character (for you amiga peeps, he's using an IBM
high-bit character that looks like a J without the line on the top).
So all this sparks the question of where does style influence become style
ripping? Personally, I'ld say Feral's "original" outlined here clearly
crosses the line.
I'ld never claim to have invented the ":" vertical line shading technique,
that credit goes to Piromaniak and/or Tinyz (they were the first I ever saw
use it), but since we know so few of today's newbies have any idea who either
either PMK or TZ is, it's clear where that came from. Feral's font also just
happens to bear a striking resemblance to that old style of mine, and it's
quite easy to see he ripped my "_\" and "/_" point shading for the top ends
of the C and S (for examples of this look in R-TSM.TXT - it's everywhere in
that particular colly).
It's not often that I feel motivated to do one of these files, despite the
fact I see alot of rips floating around out there (especially those of old
Lord Nitrogen styles and Megga Hertz's style), but this little disection
was prompted by the fact that I had already caught Feral in a small rip
(which he didn't release as far as I know) to which he replied he'd be
keeping his shit more original in the future. So much for that...
I'm more than willing to hear any explaination Feral might have for this,
although I honestly believe he can provide no rational explaination for
the proof I've presented here.
