Poll: FanFiction, your opinion

[Sun Flash]

I have yet to see a Fan Fiction that does not involve a fuck ton of horrifically written sex scenes. Then again, I don't really look for fan fiction.

Honourable mention goes to My Immortal, the Harry Potter fanfic that is so terrible it is hilarious.

 

[Mark Hardigan]

I support fan fiction for a creative release when it is good. Unfortunately only a very small amount of it is good. The majority is mostly either some weird perversion of well written characters into poorly written freaks (or in some cases a perversion of poorly written freaks into other poorly written freaks) or just a jumbling together of tongue bathing strapped together and called writing.

 

[Vrex360]

Fan fiction can often be really, really bad. With terrible writing and crappy storylines and often eogtistical fan wishes that feel more like masturbation material then actual written work.

But on the other hand, if done right you can occassionally find some well written pieces out there. See the beauty is that it makes for very good writing excercises, making short stories within established canon so it's a great place for practicing authors.

Plus every now and then among the drivelous wankfests I will actually find a good one. I found a few on the Bioware Social Network that were alright, including 'things worth keeping' which is centered on the romantic relationship between Gabriel Shepard and Jack (Subject Zero) as well as quite a few stories called affectionatley 'Badpie's stories' which are about the relationship between Commander John Shepard and Ashley Williams.

But while those ones were okay they don't even compare to 'The Enemy of My Enemy' which is a Halo fan fic centered on a small planet that's being invaded by the Covenant and humans and the newly formed Covenant seperatists are forced to ally together to surive. It suffers from spelling errors from time to time but the characters are solid as is the description.
I've not yet gotten around to finishing it because it's so long but of what I've seen it's good enough to actually be published.

 

[Folksoul]

Sturgeons law-90% of everything is pure crap. The other 10% is AWESOME!
This is especially true of fan-fiction. The trick is trying to find said 10%.

 

[lord canti]

It depends honestly. There's a lot of really good ones out there that delve deeper into characters and the world that the series is from. That said as with everything there is a huge amount of crap that gets turned out.

 

[Branches]

If you're writing to dissolve the fantasy of adding your Mary Sue to the narrative and making it all about your character with the characters in the game/movie/TV shows, you're doing it wrong or the more extreme example of making it all about how much you LOVEEEEEEEEEEEE TIFA and want to make sweet sweet musical love to her, you're doing it wrong.

I remember a fanfic story where someone literally killed off an entire backlog of characters just to be able to say that his random Based-on-me character fulfilled his wish of being married to one of the characters in the story.

If you're basing it in the same universe with completely different characters but the same sort of technology or magic and or places. Or even doing an explicit examination of how the world revolves around a single character (example: Two Brotherhood of Steel East soldiers sitting around talking about how things seems to have sped up so completely since the unlocking of a single vault in FO3 and how unimaginable that is) or you're doing it just for the laughs, then yeah. Have a ball.

 

[JackKrauserFtw]

im reminded of the horribly offensive edition of majora's mask with the Freelance Astronauts when Taxidermistpasta began reading random fanfics he had bookmarked (oh god). I think if i read them in a old ladies voice they would be awesome.

But yeah many fanfics are just made by people who are either terrible with story and writing, or just Fujoshi in one way or another, If theres ever some that complimented the cannonical story of a game, show, etc, i wouldnt say no to reading it though

The big problem with Fan Fiction is that people get into this thing where they can't take constructive criticism on it, saying "You don't understand" and the like. Fanfic needs to be a collaborative effort in order for it to truly manifest as something that can be considered readable. I'm currently working on Fanfic for LoL with a bunch of my mates, and it seems to be coming along nicely

 

[CosmicCommander]

What's sad is FF CAN be an engaging way for people to expand a IP's universe and make for great reading- but people who write it end up just adding clichés and horrible romance plots and scenes. And turning the protagonists into romanticised caricatures of the authors.

An example is EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF FAN FICTION EVER MADE FOR DRAGON AGE. EVER.

Dragon Age: Origin's FF revolved around Alistair and Zevran getting drunk and having passionate, anal, while Dragon Age 2's revolves around Ferris, Merrill, and Ander's happy adventures in sexland.

 

[CosmicCommander]

What's sad is FF CAN be an engaging way for people to expand a IP's universe and make for great reading- but people who write it end up just adding clichés and horrible romance plots and scenes. And turning the protagonists into romanticised caricatures of the authors.

An example is EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF FAN FICTION EVER MADE FOR DRAGON AGE. EVER.

Dragon Age: Origin's FF revolved around Alistair and Zevran getting drunk and having passionate, anal, while Dragon Age 2's revolves around Ferris, Merrill, and Ander's happy adventures in sexland.

 

[michiehoward]

michiehoward:
Hate it with a fucking passion, even well written fanfic screws with my fantasy of whatever book/game/movie I have made in my head.

Even if it's something like a Firefly continuation?

Yes even that, and to dive slightly further into my point. Some Harry Potter fans may remember the huge assault of fanfic that came between GoF and the final installation of the series. I was a huge mugglenet visitor, there is a section dedicated to Fanfic, I don't know if I suffered a minor stroke, or perhaps someone drugged me, but I regretfully swan into the black abyss that is the Harry Potter fanficdom.

I regret it to this day, even the stuff that was well written and edited. -shutter-
The Xena fanficdom is also scary.

I will say to all you people who do right amazing fanfic, thus showing a adeptness to writing in general, throw your creativity into writing your own stories, your own plots, places, and characters. That isn't such a waste of time and more importantly your talents.

 

[Joey245]

As a fanfiction writer myself, I try to give it a good name. I will say that there is a lot of it out there that is truly horrible, but I have yet to find one that completely destroys me.

Personally, I hold high standards for my own stories, and low standards for other people's stories. The high standards I put on myself let me write the best stories I can, and having low standards for other people's stories lets me enjoy even a mediocre fanfic.

It's a mixed bag really. For every person that carefully writes, carefully plans, and carefully proofreads, there's about ten people that write the first thing that comes to mind with no regards for grammar.

A little tip: I stay far the hell away from fanfiction.com. Unless someone links to a good story on there, I stay as far away as possible. Seriously, there's some horrible stuff there. I stick to DeviantART, where people at least have half a mind. (Mostly).

Fanfiction.net. Sorry, obsessive about urls. Anyways, you a Browncoat?

Sorry to ask, but what's a browncoat?

 

[Hoplon]

Fanfic is mental masturbation for the limited.

I don't know why I'm trying, but please, tell me what you're a fan of. I'm sure I can find a fic you'll like.

Oh I go look for things, but after reading the professional fan fic of things like Star wars and Star trek, the best is when they go off on a complete tangent, for example the Tales of the Jedi series. Kevin J. Anderson I think of as usually a hack but this was a brilliantly original idea so that the weight of the movies was off expectation for the series and his characters could stand on their own.

When people try to use the weight of some one else IP to convince me their hacky dross is something worth reading I have a hard time believing them.

 

[theamazingbean]

No one develops in a vacuum. Every writer has been influenced by the things around him/her. So the difference between fan fiction and any other kind of writing is not a clear black and white line but a matter of degrees. Internet fan fiction will always have a lower overall quality than professionally published fan fiction just because so much fewer resources are necessary for its reproduction. For good professional fan fiction, I might recommend Thirteenth Night [http://www.amazon.com/Thirteenth-Night-Fools-Guild-Mysteries/dp/1932325034] (What if the events of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" were entirely engineered by the fool, Feste, to secure the safety of Christian Europe), or Anno Dracula [http://www.amazon.com/Anno-Dracula-Kim-Newman/dp/038072345X] (What if Count Dracula had married Queen Victoria?).

 

[aether-x3]

Seeing as I have atleast 100 fanfics bookmarked, Id say that I like fanfiction alot.

[small]Though I mostly read stuff from Kink Meme's. >_> /innocent whistle[/small]

 

[Wintermoot]

I hate some of them (fics where characters are gay for the sake of satisfying the fantasies of a basement dwelling weeabo)
Some of them are so bad they are good (like thirty H,s where Harry Potter has a groin saw)
or fics that butt rape the canon in a way that you can,t look away (like My Immortal that is about a wannabe gothic that eats old cornflakes with blood and is killed by STEAK (not stake STEAK)

 

[captaincabbage]

Fanfiction is awesome. Nothing more hilarious than a good old fashioned, badly written fanfic. Example:

Now tell me, is that not one of the best things you have ever watched?

I was literally in the process of posting this video when I luckily scrolled up and saw.

You want the most bestest fight scene in forever? Check out Half-Life: Free Man.
It's a shameit geys kinda gay when he meets up with GLaDOS for no reason at all.

 

[Mechamorph]

Putting it succinctly Fanfiction, just like everything else, is subject to Sturgeon's Law (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitle3tinj4tz). 10% of it is good, the other 90% is... not very good to downright terrible. Its mainly an outlet for an author to give rise to his or her vision outside of the bounds to traditional media and their pesky copyright laws. Its just that sometimes those visions can cause one to reach for the brain bleach until it gets erased from one's memory.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

As this poll was missing the minor element of ...a poll, I'm going to just outright guess that I'm in the majority when I say it's all harmless enough, it's just a hobby, but just like the hobby of photographing electricity pylons, don't come to me with your collection and expect me to be interested in any way, never mind bother to rate them

 

[roastbeefy]

Double K [http://captainosaka.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=96#/d1d8b0r] is awesome enough to justify the existence of all the self-indulgent crap and insane sexual ventures that fill fanfiction. It's that good. Shinji and Warhammer 40K also sounds good, but I'd rather actually watch Evangelion and play Warhammer 40K before reading it.

 

[Raikazu]

Anyone who uses the 'prepubescent teen girl' clause to umbrella the term FanFiction is just as bad as the people who have a similar stereotyping of gamers.

Yes, some of the FanFiction is absolute tosh, but as a writer myself I'd like to believe than when I stray awake from my original writings into fan fiction I'm producing something of some worth.