Fanfiction - Your thoughts

[Entitled]

I personally think that it's shameful that fanfiction as a concept even needs to exist as a separate thing from "proper writing".

Basing your art on that of others before you, is normal. This is how creativity works. And this is still how it is being done today, except that now we have this huge mess called "IP", so it has to happen through corporate-sanctioned franchise-building (Star Wars, The Avengers), through public domain (Wicked, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Litle Mermaid), and through imitating plots and styles instead of character names (the zombie genre, the modern military shooter genre).

It's already pretty disgusting how you can put a new spin on zombies, you can become a billionaire and praised as the successor of Romero, yet if you would go and try to put a new spin on hobbits, you would be treated as if you just tried to rob ideas from Tolkien's grave, and persecuted by law, just because "hobbit" just happens to be a copyrightable word.

This is the reason why art can't evolve naturally, as we criminalize certain brands of creativity while grant others the monopoly over them.

 

[Entitled]

I stand by my statement. I read a lot of fanfiction, and I have found some decent self-insert ones. But then, for every one good self-insert I see, I see nine... terrible, horrible things that will never be scrubbed from my memory.
Bloody hell, I love fanfiction. I'm a fanfic fanatic. I've read more fanfics in words total than books in the last two years I'd say. Speaking of, I should check to see if I have any new chapter update alerts...

I'm not really questioning your accuracy, just the reason behind the need to bring attention to that particular fact.

My point was exactly that while the ratio is likely (by Sturegon's law), it's strange that the only people who would truly have experience with it are so busy confirming that. It's just weird, how I could look at the title of the thread, and already predict that it will be full of people describing exactly how much fanfiction is crap (either defensively or hostilely).

I'm a pretty big anime fan, I watch ractically every show in the season, yet I never feel the urge to talk to non-fans about exactly how many shows are worthless trash. And based on anime threads around here, neither do most other fans.

This seems to be backwards with fanfic fandoms, for some reason.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

-Snip-

Well, the thread is titled "Fanfiction - Your thoughts". I stated my thoughts and experiences. I love fanfiction. I have no life, so I can practically read it every day, and proofread every day (Today is meant to be an art practice day, so I don't need to, but I could still proofread a couple of chapters). However, I do see a lot of bad fanfiction swamping the good stuff. Of course, it's normally easy to avoid the bad stuff, if you know what to look out for.
As much as I'd love to come into the thread to do nothing but praise fanficion in totality, I can't do so, because I know it has a lot of, as I said in my first post, "less than sterling" stuff. Like pretty much every form of media.
Maybe we go off about how much bad stuff there is in fanfiction, because we're proud of ourselves when we do manage to find something really good, despite what, shall we say, society, tells us about that particular area of media.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Eh, I like reading fan fiction, as long as the story is good. There's too much crappy stories out there, it's just a matter of sorting though it all... or by just going to TV Tropes fan fiction recommendation page.

 

[porous_shield]

I read quite a bit of fanfiction and anime fanfiction at that. I've found some great stories at are way better than the original both in terms of story and characters and I reread them from time to time and I mean giant novel sized fanfictions with dozens of chapters.

Most of it is suprisingly well written in terms of grammar and spelling but not in other aspects; too many mary sues, author inserts, and horrible characterization. Some of the little stylistic, I guess you would call it, things that authors that read a lot of fanfiction get also annoy me greatly.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I think it's hard to grade fanfiction as writing by itself, there is no problem with taking an existing setting and using it (I mean as long as credit is given of course)

But fanfiction as a label exists as a stigma, because the grand majority of it as seen as "what the fans want" rather than competent writing. Which isn't to say those two things are mutually exclusive.

I mean even pornographic scenarios can be granted an art to them. It's just for the sake of porn.

I was kind of into fanfiction when I was much younger. But I was kind of uncomfortable with the following:

1. Original (ie. fanmade) characters
2. Retcons to existing plots ("X didn't actually happen, you were just brainwashed")
3. Crossovers

Which I guess is arguably a double standard on my part.

 

[Blaze the Dragon]

I will say It simply.

95% is complete worthless crap stupid or just plain weird.
2% is pandering that everyone will praise.
and only about 3% of it is actually good.

This, which is part of the reason why I don't usually bother with Fanfiction. I think the problem is that it takes virtually no effort to sit at your computer and type words for an hour, especially compared to something like drawing fanart. So naturally people who aren't good at writing can easily write something and believe it's good. I recognize that there are people who actually know how to write that write fanfiction, and that there are good reads out there, however the other reason I usually don't like fan content like that is that I prefer things that could actually happen on the show. What I mean is, if someone wrote a fanfiction where 2 of the characters had a relationship, and it was extremely well written and everything, then sure it might be "good," but if it's between 2 characters that we know will never hook up on the show, then I see no merit to entertaining the idea of it happening. I'm fine with discussing possibilities, like what characters might do in the future, like if the show (or other source material) were to make an episode that took place 20 years from now, what would it be like? Or maybe just ideas on how the current villain will be taken down, or whatever. But the thing about that is that if we're just going to write about fan theories and things that might happen on the show, I'd rather discuss them in person or on a forum, rather than read someone else's thoughts on it in a fanfiction. Even if we came to a conclusion, I'd maybe want to post our results on another forum to see if I can get more opinions on it.

Strangely though, if the fanfiction is reworked to another medium, like an animation or comic, then I'll watch/read it. I think that part of it is that doing something like that requires a lot more effort, which means more time spent working on it, and more revisions to refine it into a better result. Plus most comics and animations are really short, just for a quick laugh, but there are a few longer comics that I follow.

 

[spartan231490]

Fan-fiction is fine. Most of it is pretty shite, but so are most novels, that's just because writing well is very hard, and writing both well and interesting is even harder, writing well and interesting without being cliche is almost impossible.

 

[BlazeRaider]

I use fanfiction as a means of finding stories on background characters that the official stuff doesn't delve into much, really well developed main characters are usually explored enough that most fanfics will seem out of character.

 

[Entitled]

This, which is part of the reason why I don't usually bother with Fanfiction. I think the problem is that it takes virtually no effort to sit at your computer and type words for an hour, especially compared to something like drawing fanart. So naturally people who aren't good at writing can easily write something and believe it's good.

Well, this is pretty easily balanced out by only looking for the heavily recommended stuff instead of randomly dipping into the default fanfic lists.

If you would walk into a bookstore and entirely randomly pick one book from the shelves, it would likely be crap, but just a basic amount of attention to bestsellers, to popular books in your social circle, to books from your favorite author, etc, is likely to drastically increase you chances of finding something likeable.

I'm not saying that you should actively start looking for such fanfiction, just that likely you have never got deep into the kind of fandom where you would be almost automatically directed to some good fanfiction.

The thing about fanfiction is that it's not just another medium that you "get into" in general, but a thing that you meet when you are spending a lot of time with the fans of something, and you start to notice that they are praising some non-canon writing as much as the original story.

What I mean is, if someone wrote a fanfiction where 2 of the characters had a relationship, and it was extremely well written and everything, then sure it might be "good," but if it's between 2 characters that we know will never hook up on the show, then I see no merit to entertaining the idea of it happening.

While shipping fics have a likelyhood of beeing crap that way, some of the most meritorious fanfics out there are also explicitly Alternate Universe or Crossover stories, or at least heavily shifting the genre of the original.

I think there is a difference to be made between fanfics that are trying to be show-accurate and failing at it, and the ones that are only fanfictions in the technical sense, but really, only using the fandom's setting as a launching pad for a story that intentionally also tries to be it's own unique thing. (such as Fallout: Equestria)

The former is just failed copying. The latter is just literature, that's existence happens to be illegal due to shitty copyright laws.

 

[Entitled]

OT: Personally I'm of two minds. Why not just come up with your own characters and write something original? But on the other hand, most of the comic book industry could be compared to fanfiction. What's the difference between me writing about Jayne's adventures pre-Firefly and Patton Oswalt doing the same with Wash?

If you think about it, it's not even just the comic book industry, but also pretty much every other medium.

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ninja Theory's Devil May Cry, and HBO's Game of Thrones, are all producing creative work while in one way or another, leaning on someone else's earlier work, except that they are conforming to the demands of the current copyright system, (like waiting for public domain, or buying the rights), instead of just writing about whatever they want.

The definition of fanfic is not "a type of literature that uses someone else's characters", but "a type of literature that is deemed illegal by IP law".

It's not so much a genre designation, as a legal judgement.

 

[Jadak]

Good or bad, no interest in it.

When I'm a fan of something, "what actually happened" is what matters to me. I become invested in the characters, in the stories. With that, canon material is the only acceptable stories, anything else, no matter how good, is as irrelevant as as a dream sequence, and like dream sequences, I'd rather not be exposed to storylines that didn't happen.

 

[RADIALTHRONE1]

Snip

We're getting awfully liberal with our use of the word biggot aren't we? How about we keep that word for people who want to oppress minorities rather than diluting it by slapping it on people who don't care about the time Cloud Strife took on the armies of Sauron.

OT: Personally I'm of two minds. Why not just come up with your own characters and write something original? But on the other hand, most of the comic book industry could be compared to fanfiction. What's the difference between me writing about Jayne's adventures pre-Firefly and Patton Oswalt doing the same with Wash?

Well, I couldn't think of an alternative word for bigot.

And also, I'm surprised nobody has made this joke yet:
I used to read FanFiction, but then I took an arrow in the knee.

[sub]Sorry couldn't help myself once I thought of it[/sub]

 

[Lionsfan]

I used to read it a ton, but kinda stopped for whatever reason.

I'm just really bummed, because there was a great Redwall story I was reading, called The Third Star, but it's off FanFiction for some reason.

I was so close to the ending too.....

 

[William Dickbringer]

Sturgeon's Law on crack. Ninety-nine per cent of it is shit, and the other one per cent has spelling errors.

Special note goes out to the MLP fanfiction community, which is . . . well, they have some interesting ideas of how fiction works, let's just say.

I can do into more detail if people want, but I'll leave it at that for now.

does it beat the anon in equestria fics I found on /mlp/? or the trixie falling in love with pinecone? or the one where a guy inserted his sonic OC? oh oh oh or are you talking about them troll fics that try to follow in cupcakes foot steps?
O.T. I like to read them myself (or hear dramatic readings cause I'm a lazy bastard and don't feel like hurting my brain from bad grammer or bad sex scenes) honestly I don't hold them high on level even for the good ones they're more on the level of guilty pleasure besides it's funny to read a truely terrible one

 

[Raikas]

Meh.

On one hand, some people sincerely enjoying writing fanfiction and I can't blame them for doing something that they like which also happens to be completely harmless. On the other hand, there is some creepy stuff that comes from the fanfiction community. But on the previous hand, the community usually stays to itself and is easily avoidable.

That sums it up for me as well. If people want to get those "what if/what happens next" thoughts out of their system, good for them.

I've occasionally been bored enough that I went off and read some, and a disproportionate amount struck me as creepy - but it was my own fault for looking at it. My main takeaway in terms of content was that if I was going to look at it, I needed to stick to stories about minor characters in new franchises since there's more character flexibility at that point.

It also taught me is that the value in published work is not that the authors are professionals; it's that the editors are. Most of the stories that I read that had eye-rollingly bad spelling and grammar had supposed been proofread, but obviously most those proofreaders weren't doing a very good job (and I get it, they're just doing it for fun, but still).

I guess it's because fanfics are already so fandom-specific, they don't really have a chance to be respected outside of the fandom to begin with. Fallout Equestria is absolutely amazing, but only assuming that you can take ponies seriously. Even plenty of shipping fics are well-written, but only interesting if you happen to care about that particular relationship.

This is what makes it hard to judge them . A self-selecting audience who searches for character/fandom keywords will be reading and then reviewing the stories, so something can be mediocre and still get a misleadingly high rating.

And fanfiction that's based off of currently ongoing shows/games/comics/books tends to age poorly - I've seen some decently written fanfiction based off of then-current material that ages well because the character backgrounds were eventually more fleshed-out in the source medium and so the fanfiction stopped being plausible.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

There are good ones, there are bad ones... and then there are ones that make you wanna go "UUUUGGHHHWHYWOULDYOUWRITETHAT?!".

An example of a great one is a "A home for Fear", which is a Rise of the guardians fic that delves into Pitch Black's role in the world, and has zany antics. My GF is a HUUUGE Rise of the Guardians fan, and pointed me to that fic. It's fantastic.

 

[Whitbane]

It's alright. I've always enjoyed decent fanfiction, not that shipping bullshit, but actual planned out stories with evolving characters and everything. Even if it's all pointless fanon, at least you feel like you're exploring the universe more. Used to be Teen Titans, then it was Mass Effect, and then Fallout and then Warcraft.

Now it's pones. It's not often you sit down for three days and burn through a million words of pastel coloured mini-horse fanfiction. Where the hell did it all go wrong...

 

[Creator002]

My cousin and I take a "meh" to "dear God this is awful" approach to fan fiction. We read a lot if "clop" fiction (pony porn) because we find it absolutely hilarious. We read it to each other over TeamSpeak, putting on silly voices.
I currently following a total of one fan fiction writers on fimfiction.com which is a MLP/Doctor Who cross over which is actually really good. Otherwise, I haven't found much else that I like.