Fan Fiction: Is it a problem?

[Twilight_guy]

I don't have a problem with it. I'd like to see more authors invent original settings as I think that encourages more growth of writing skill by forcing them to come up with settings and characters but I don't think its anything negative. Some fanfic is bad yes, but honestly most of the stuff writing on the internet is bad, don't blame fanfic for allowing poor writers to post there stupid ideas online.

 

[nightwolf667]

Fanfiction is a place where young writers can go to experiment with story building and already established characters, it's less intimidating than going out and writing original fiction. Of course it's going to be bad, 98% of published fiction is bad and those writers had to go through the publishing process. Mary Sues are probably more common in fanfiction because the authors are young. Everyone who starts writing writes Mary Sues, so I don't particularly care about it. I will say that readers and writers in general have gotten worse about being able to identify them. Still, there are also a great many published authors who never get past writing Mary Sue, they just get better at hiding her/him.

For example: Twilight, the Hunger Games, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer all have Mary Sue protagonists. All with varying degrees of stupidity attached.

It's also a way for fans to connect to the series and express their love for it. It may be a little weird and creepy sometimes (most of the time), but it's an expression of how much the setting and characters fascinate their imaginations. There's nothing wrong with that.

Wincest is still gross though.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

As the occasional fan fiction writer (under a different name) I cannot say I have a problem with most fan fictions. Yes, a lot are romances but some create very interesting stories within the universe. There's always the option to stop reading.

 

[Agent Larkin]

Fan Fiction isn't a problem.

The deal with Fan Fictiion is is that it is like a lot of things in life. You get a lot more crap then gold for example my favourite fanfic is Lelouch of Britannia which is a Code Geass fanfic (that apart from updating about as frequently as VG Cats) is a brilliant telling of a fanfic and in some cases I feel it's better then the source. However there is a lot of terrible ones out there and to find the good you have to keep looking.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

i said it before and I'll say it again, fan fiction scares me. I'm sure that there is good fan fiction somewhere in the cesspool of the internet... I just really don't feel like looking.

If you don't feel like looking you should check out the Fanfic Recommendations pages on TvTropes. They usually are a cut above the rest, and they have categories so you don't accidentally get stuck with a snuff or smut fic.

 

[Charli]

There's some Gems in there, but you've go to be willing to dig for them, and I am TOTALLY understanding if you're put off by the scary hormone driven writers that lurk in there. Truly. Some things are not worth that time and effort... Some of us just like to read and have run out of books/articles/magazines and are poor.

The problem is that those resources could be easily used in original stories.

They could, and they do, writing teams handling the production for shows, games and the like are in a very purest essence professional fan-fiction writers. Someone writes the story, premise and characters and in all likelihood these folks flesh it out further.

And I don't think there's necessarily anything WRONG with developing that ability. I wasn't undermining the talent of people who can spin and write a story from scratch I just don't think writers who spend their time developing stories for another world are really doing any harm to themselves initially. And if they're doing it for fun, and having fun, and entertaining others at the same time, there is DEFINITELY nothing wrong with it.

There is plenty of quality reading material out there, most of which being poor and student like I have to sit in Waterstones and read little snippets here and there and navigate the suspicious store clerks glaring at me, to allow those who indulge in others fantasies and do with some decorum, and surprising results some credit where it's due.

They're not going to be winning any prizes nor making any money, but I certainly don't begrudge nor discourage it. I think that was the intent of the topic and I think you're generalizing in your mind a tiny bit, which is why I responded in the first place.

...Twilight is not a section anyone over the age of 15 and SANE, dares to wander. That actual book series is far worse than some AVERAGE fan fiction I've read. Easily. Hell the framework of a very bad self insert is present in that first book (my sister and mother are easily led in the literary department, so I read the first book just to justify my argument of why it smells so putrid)

So... there's a case for original tales to be shittier than those writing with constraints of an established setting... And if you screw up writing in a fan fiction. No one's judging. It's okay to practice.

I practice with fan art quite frequently. There's a technique for lines? Or perspective I haven't quite mastered? Well sod it, who's on my list of characters I haven't drawn... Freakazoid! He's goofy and bendy, lets give it a whirl. And then I do apply the things I've learned to my (as of yet Deviantart and the world has not seen and I do not intend to show until I have gotten a solid development and professional look applied to it) Original Chess themed character cast and story.

 

[AstylahAthrys]

If you can find good ones, Fanfiction can be great. Writing it can be fun, too, but I never publish mine. It's personal silliness for me, a way to have fun. It just stems from having a creative mind while playing games or reading a book.

 

[El Luck]

Fanfiction is fine by me, I mean hell it gave us this!


Seriously any time I watch it, it brings a smile to my face.

 

[II Scarecrow II]

I tend to really hate romance/sex fanfics as they usually tend to be poorly written and very disturbing fantasies that the author is making tangible. The fanfics I do like expand on the world and characters already present in a well established universe, such as the Halo or Mass Effect universes.

One thing I cannot stand in fanfics or official releases is a break in cannon. Perhaps the most egregious break that comes to mind is between the Battlefield 3 book and game.

SPOILER ALERT!!









In the game, a nuclear bomb goes off in Paris, killing 80 000 people. As you might imagine, this is a fairly major turning point in what limited plot the game has.
However, in the book, which is based off the SAME material from the perspective of a second main character, the nuke is disarmed and nothing happens. I was willing to put up with the extra details here and there for the sake of a good story, but something as huge as that is just... How can... Just no.

 

[Folji]

Betcha several great fiction writers in either a couple of years or a couple of decades will be people who started out with fanfics. Got at least a handful of people on the list of people I talk to on a semi-regular basis who did fanfics a few years back and now spend their spare time cooking up some pretty interesting stuff, ranging all the way from charming short stories to entire fictional settings that just keep growing.

At the same time, there's something about certain types of fanfics that just rubs me the wrong way. Same setting but different places and people, fair eough. Exploring existing material is fun. But the more key moments of a story that are reused, the more fan insertions into these moments there are and the more key characters there are with intimate relations to fan insertions, the sooner I'm just gonna say screw it and leave. There's something about fan inserted material that just instantly makes it feel awkward to read.

 

[Atmos Duality]

There are fanfics so horrid, so absolutely wretchedly written, that simply reading them would be a hate crime.

And really; there are FAR more of those fanfics out there than there are GOOD ones, mostly because the primary fanfic demographic cannot write fiction worth a damn. Not one bit.

 

[JayElleBee]

I don't read fanfiction very often... or at all, really. I'm very picky about the fanfiction I read and it's rare to find the kind of stuff that interests me.

For example, I hate reading fanfiction about pre-defined characters. It's very rare for the author to ever get the characters perfectly in-character. If I read fanfiction it has to have an entirely original cast.

That's the only kind of fanfiction I'll write, too. I enjoy writing but sometimes the world building and all that crap I have to do before I can just sit down and write gets too much. When that happens I like to take a ready made world, such as Albion from the Fable series, and just write something for my own entertainment.

All in all, I don't see much of an issue with fanfiction... I just wish more people would put the effort in to write original stuff from time to time.

 

[Hasido]

Its basically a problem of Sturgeon's Law [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SturgeonsLaw] and not fan-fiction in general.

 

[Laser Priest]

Nope. There are plenty of awful fanfictions, sure.

But then there are some excellent gems.

And if you don't want to read them, ignoring them is pretty easy. Hell, it usually takes a conscious effort to find them.

 

[That_Sneaky_Camper]

What I like about Fanfiction is that it gives the work in question new life. It speaks of the artistic value of the story when it lives on in the mind of the viewer and the adventure can always continue in one's imagination. In this sense I believe the world of Fanfiction enhances story-telling, the way that you interpret it, the way that the vision, themes, and beauty affected you can all come out for everyone to see. That is when great fanfiction comes out, not some story that someone decides to create from a day-dream.

As for the overall quality of fanfiction I believe that it subscribes to Sturgeon's Law which says that 90% of everything is crap and only 10% is any good. So I have seen fanfiction that not only seemed to fit well within the continuity of the story but in some ways even enhanced and surpassed the original, but other fanfictions are dribble that are only worth laughing at or getting frustrated at how bad they are.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Love the concept, hate the execution. In theory, it's a never ending library of our favorite characters that can do just about anything due to no form of content restriction. In realityk, that lack of restrictions leads to self inserts (without the self awareness) gratitious sex, and an overall sense of an extreme lack of effort. I'm not sure what I liked less, the accidental mary sue, the crossover that existed for a couple of lame jokes, or the 5 megabyte disortation about everything in the original work the fanfic author hated, particularly the main love interest and how this other character is soooooooo much more deserving that that [rhymes with witch].

Is it a problem? No, rather a representation of one. I've responded to many a fanfic writer with a puzzled "you could write anything you dreamed of,and THAT's what you wrote?" It's a hobby wrapped up in our narcisism and desire for praise with little effort. It's usually purely about the writer's enjoyment with little thought to readership. Granted, there's plenty of that around the internet and beyond, but with creative works I can never help but wonder how many Harry Potter's or Lord of the Rings' weren't written in lieu of Evangelion lemons.

If you can write anything about a world and all you think about is characters having sex, you may have a problem.

 

[Infernai]

There are three types of Fanfiction:

The Good, well written fanfiction that takes time and effort to be true to the source material while also offering something fresh and overall is enjoyable

The Bad but outright hilarious Fanfiction that deviates so freaking much from source material, is nothing short of canon rape BUT.....is just so wrong and bad that, by some strange cosmic coincidence it actually becomes laughably and hilarious great again.

Eg. 30 H (HOW has nobody mentioned this Hilariously flawed Gem yet?)


And Finally, the....MY EYES! MY EYES! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!

 

[The Pinray]

I see no problem with it. I encourage it. But I'll never read any. It's not worth it. I'll have to end up wading through the self-insert love interests and disgustingly bad romances just to find a decent story.

99% of fan fiction is just pairing nonsense. Little plot. Just whack-off material. Sorta sad.

 

[Caligulove]

On principal, I don't have a problem with fanfiction. I mean, any kind of sequel or continuation of a series that is written by someone other than the original author is technically fan-fiction. Albeit sanctioned/canon.

Any attempt to read things of fanfiction.net (or another site like that) never usually goes well. I always seem to find something bad and it turns me off to the whole concept. Too much projection of the author, it seems. Have had some pretty good fanfics sent my way. I think its nearly over-saturated with beginning level authors or just generally bad authors. Dialogue usually being the weakest link.