Have you ever wrote a fanfic? And if yes, why (and for what)?

[Xpwn3ntial]

No, I haven't. I've had ideas float around in my head for a few, but they never went anywhere.

I probably should if for no other reason than to get closure and the ideas out of my head.

I might even be able to make money off of it like that hack Virgil.

Oh, I've made fan codexes of various races from games I like for Warhammer 40,000 and Fantasy. Does that count?

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

When I was 11, I wrote an erotic fanfic about Obi-Wan from The Phantom Menace and a Mary Sue character of mine who was a rogue Jedi with a turquoise lightsaber hiding out on a planet of unicorns.

Wait, this isn't the "shameful secrets" thread?

...I'll be showing myself to the door.

 

[jurnag12]

I started writing one a few years back for Gears of War, but I pretty much dropped it after 1 chapter because, while I had a decent idea of where I wanted to go with it and the course the plot would follow, I just couldn't get myself to actually put it down, which these days is still a rather consistent problem for me with my writing.

On a subject of writing besides fanfiction, does anyone know a good site or community for creative writing besides established universes? I've got a few settings/story ideas (admittedly rather cliché) that I wanna actually start writing and experimenting with, but I'm, to put it directly, too shy and unsure to actually show it to anyone face-to-face for fear of ridicule.

 

[A Satanic Panda]

Yup, just earlier this year. I crossed over Ponies and Ace Combat. I got 3 chapters in and decided I didn't like writing. It seemed to be well received, someone even based their story around my version of the pony universe which I may have over done a little. However I did post the outline of the whole story up so people knew how it would have ended.

What stuck out the most was the writer that got me into pony fiction in the first place liked it. That was an achievement.

 

[ImBigBob]

I've been writing an MLP/Slender Man story for the past two months. It's gonna wind up over 100 pages long, making it the longest story I've ever written. But screw the haters, because I'm enjoying it, and using it as practice for a real writing career.

 

[jdogtwodolla]

I've attempted it twice. I had a big epic in mind but its concept was dated and I didn't work on it enough for it to be relevant at release. Also, I had no concept of outlining so ideas kinda fizzled.

I had another one that was a satirical take on the context of an explicit strip but I didn't work on it because I was afraid of how bad I would feel about myself if I'd finished.

 

[EeveeElectro]

Years ago. I think I stopped writing in 09, but I gave it a bash again when Arkham City came out to write what happened to Harley after Joker's death.
I'd write about whatever interested me at the time, or whatever game I was playing.
Just lost interest in it really. Lost inspiration. It's a shame because it made me quite happy, getting lost in this fictional world.
Might have to try it again, but nothing really interests me to the point of wanting to write about it.
I'd usually write funny or cute funny or parody but I had a few bashes at serious and drama. I can't imagine how bad my writing has got now though.

 

[Radoh]

Well, I wrote half a fanfic on MLP:FiM, but ended up scrapping it since it was not as good as I wanted it to be.
I wrote it out because I figured that I might as well because I was sleepwalking and acting out portions of the story with people online.
Got to give them credit too, for not having any idea what the hell was going on they sure did keep up with it.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Sort of... It was a caffeine fuelled erotica about Halo I wrote at 3 in the morning while waiting for Serious Sam 3 to download. It only took me 3 hours and it was full of grammatical errors but it had 4 pages of sex and a 2 page long fight scene... I still have it somewhere but I don't know where...

 

[Alssadar]

I wrote a 23 (Or was it 32) page fanfic in the Warhammer 40k universe. I used the lore and logic as designated, but did make up my fair share of things (Chapters, Warbands, planets, et cetera) that gave me some intellectual breadth. My action scenes were a bit choppy, and the story got a little iffy, but the general feel and characters I set were fairly good.

I've received two responses: One was a review saying it was well written, and another asking me to do a 40k fanfic where there is no war and e'eryone's at peace.
I'm not joking.
It's called writing your own original fiction. Y'know, where you get to make up all the things.
You write fanfiction if you are staying in their universe, playing with the rules they created, and what has been established. If you want to take it, butcher it into your own form, and call it the same product, you're just being lazy to think of your own material. You can fill it with your Mary Sues (Cough Matt Ward cough) and anime-esque emo characters and have fun with that.

 

[IrenIvy]

And again thank you very much for replies! I'll try to read all links as well over weekend
I am surprised by diversity of reasons and universes used (some of them I've never heard before). Please, share more if you can, this thread has been very interesting for me to read.

On a subject of writing besides fanfiction, does anyone know a good site or community for creative writing besides established universes? I've got a few settings/story ideas (admittedly rather cliché) that I wanna actually start writing and experimenting with, but I'm, to put it directly, too shy and unsure to actually show it to anyone face-to-face for fear of ridicule.

The only place I know about is www.writing.com [www.writing.com] but I didn't have much interaction with community, mostly only reading.

You write fanfiction if you are staying in their universe, playing with the rules they created, and what has been established. If you want to take it, butcher it into your own form, and call it the same product, you're just being lazy to think of your own material. You can fill it with your Mary Sues (Cough Matt Ward cough) and anime-esque emo characters and have fun with that.

If I may ask, how do you define where imagination stops and butchery of universe begins?

 

[KingCrInuYasha]

I have been thinking about writing an Alice In Wonderland-style Pokémon fanfic where Mewtwo has a dream where he's turned into an action figure and trapped in a mansion occupied by a bumbling, selfish and very dumb upper class family. I got the idea from watching Code Geass: Nunnaly In Wonderland and hating it so much that I though "I could write a better story than that!"

 

[Vault101]

I have thought about doing a story based in a vault from Fallout (which is less bad than rgular fanfic in a way)

 

[vonmanstein]

I write mostly APH homoerotic fanfics on devart.

 

[Alssadar]

And again thank you very much for replies! I'll try to read all links as well over weekend
I am surprised by diversity of reasons and universes used (some of them I've never heard before). Please, share more if you can, this thread has been very interesting for me to read.

You write fan fiction if you are staying in their universe, playing with the rules they created, and what has been established. If you want to take it, butcher it into your own form, and call it the same product, you're just being lazy to think of your own material. You can fill it with your Mary Sues (Cough Matt Ward cough) and anime-esque emo characters and have fun with that.

If I may ask, how do you define where imagination stops and butchery of universe begins?

I believe the butchery begins when the universe is taken out of its premise. Take example, my Warhammer 40k request, where the writer asked me to write a story where all chaos had disappeared, the orks stopped fighting, the eldar had united and turned peaceful, and the tyranids developed personality.
This is the complete reversal of the given roles that have been developed in 40k as humans are corrupt assholes who love profits and killing others, Chaos is always present, even in its subtlest ways, since the beginning of time, the Orks' mind can only handle two things: killing and more dakka, the eldar are arrogant pricks who use humans as pawns, and the tyranids are a mindless hive mind that exists to consume everything.
If one seeks to write within the guidelines of the universe, they must follow the rules that have been established, and, if they allow slight variation, they are working their imagination into the universe. If their Astartes love all xenos and hate the Imperium, something's a tad bit wrong. But if a Chapter dislikes working with the Inquisition because they nearly ordered Exterminatus on a planet they had control of, it works into the setting.
Essentially, if they want to create something on their own, they need to properly justify their ideas in-universe. It'd be akin to someone writing a story about how Nazis had dinosaurs in WWII. It's extremely bizarre, and anyone reading it for historical context would find it greatly out of place with history. But if they were to write of some marine of the US 90th infantry division storming Utah Beach at D-Day as part of the first wave, it's rather reasonable and works in what has occurred. Historical fiction, I guess you could say, is like fan fiction of history (It's not real, but it fits the setting). The Nazis with dinosaurs is just butchering history, though they made a game out of that...

 

[Gatx]

I just started writing fanfiction recently. Currently working on an IGPX one, if only because it's one of the most fleshed out ideas for a story I have ever come up with. Before I actually ever wrote one though I did like to think about possible side stories for Star Wars and Kingdom Hearts.

 

[Idsertian]

Yarp, I just finished one myself the other day and published it to fimfiction.net. First one I've ever written.

My motivation was entirely shallow, however, as it was done for a contest. Wheeeee! Prizes!

You shouldn't let canon bother you too much, as that's what fanfiction is all about: Exploring the things that canon cannot, or will not, explore. If it's exactly the same as the show down to the slightest possible detail, then what's the point, exactly? Take advantage of your own creativity and go nuts with it...within reason, obviously. No one wants to read the adventures of Mary Sue being perfect in every possible way; all the while taking part in a disjointed tale of events that seem barely connected to one another, if at all.

In other words: Be sensible.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go cry in a corner having just finished The Walking Dead.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

A couple on ffnet. Most of them are pretty awful, but I consider it a good measure of my progress as a writer that I can look back on my work from 5 years ago and say 'man that's bad writing'.

I tend to write one story for franchises I like or used to like. I've written one for The Matrix, one for Castlevania, one for Bleach and one for Star Wars. My reason besides improving my craft is to develop and challenge characters in new ways or generating new relationships between characters. For example in my Matrix fanfic, among other things I had the normally emotionally stoic Trinity dealing with an extremely emotionally stressful situation. Being a 'potential' One, her limited powers go out of control while in the Matrix until she admits to her problem and deals with it. As for Neo, he has to cope with the hatred of society when he is fingered by their machine-controlled media as a terrorist leader responsible for 'kidnapping and brainwashing' all the other Zionites from an early age.

One of my favourite aspects I've found is creating brand new villains and moulding them to fit with the character flaws of the protagonists. They'll lose in the end, but not before bringing the hero over the brink both emotionally and physically. That said, I've recently realize my greatest weakness is doing good humour or anything that isn't super-serious.

 

[Dreadman75]

I've tried to write fanfics on two separate occasions.

One was for Fallout 3 titled "The DC Defenders", originally I wanted to write a story about what might happen if you could get Amata to leave the Vault with you.From there I evolved it in order to feature a small thread connecting it almost directly to Fallouts 1 & 2 and give a few characters an expanded role in the story. It's currently at five chapters.

My next one was a crossover between Mass Effect and Naruto...Don't look at me like that, it's actually pretty popular! The reason for me writing it? Well...after I was done playing Mass Effect 2 for the fourth or fifth time (I own a PS3, which only just got Mass Effect 1 a few days ago), I was in love with the story and decided to check out what fanfics people had written. From there I checked out the crossovers section and, since I'm a big fan of Naruto, decided to check out that category...

...I wasn't impressed, to say the least. Spelling and Grammar errors galore, over used plots, and just bad writing and pacing. I left that section feeling very underwhelmed. I decided to try my hand at writing a Mass Effect crossover with Naruto, if only just to see how it measured up. To my utmost surprise, it was a rousing success!

Here comes the kicker though. I began that fic, "Return of the Fallen", almost three years ago, but it only has two chapters. Lately, for multiple reasons (some I'm not very comfortable discussing), I just haven't been able to write for it. I feel like I'm letting my readers down, but I just can't seem to find the urge write.

*sigh* I don't know what to do...