This is more a judgment statement than anything, but it seems that whenever I see fan fiction, it's always really bad (that includes anything I do, so I've stopped writing the stuff). What do the rest of you think about fan fiction? Am I missing the good stuff, or does it just tend to be bad?
Personally I think it's a combination of the really, really bad fanfic getting noticed a lot more because it develops notoriety, the slush-pile nature of fanfic sites and the reasons why people write fanfic. For myself, I've written a bit of Doctor Who fic, and only one of those has been a true self-contained story. The others were re-writes of stories that suffered from great-idea-terrible-execution syndrome and a short story that set out to deal with a bucketload of continuity errors and nothing else. I think some series lend themselves better to the format than others.
When I surfed LotR fic, for example, I learnt soon that there wasn't that much ground to be covered - material from the appendices concerned characters that authors didn't know enough about to write for, and the main characters have their lives mapped out to the point where it was difficult to shoe-horn extra episodes in realistically. So the community was almost all slash- or parody-fics, with the occassional stories about a single guy in the battle (most of which can safely be labeled as Mary-Sues)
I've pretty limited fic experience, but Doctor Who definitely has the highest proportion of writers who aspire to pro standards that I've seen. Which isn't to say there aren't stories where all the characters are Anime for some reason and Adric is cursed to turn into a woman every time his body touches water..
When I was a kid I used to read a series of books called The Three Investigators. It was initially done with the backing of Alfred Hitchcock, and was sort of a competitor for the Hardy Boys series of books. I LOVED those books as a kid (I still have a copy of every book in the series in my storage shed as a matter of fact), and I was really overjoyed about a year ago when I found that there was actually fan fiction for this stuff. It is different in that it is just kid stories and the quality doesn't have to be as high as if it were a Dr. Who or LOTR or something of that stature. Knowing the characters, storylines and feel of the original is a must. If someone doesn't have that, they shouldn't do fan fiction.
-Bill
As much as I loathe the subject matter, Ghost wrote a fanfic a while back that was actually pretty decent. ::)
I imagine most people have heard of 'My Immortal'. It's done the rounds and is quite old now, but for anyone who hasn't read (or better still, heard) it yet, should click below:
Read 'My Immortal' (http://myimmortalrehost.webs.com/chapters122.htm)
Hear 'My Immortal' (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=409C3FA908AF88D8&search_query=my+immortal)
I'm not sure if it was a joke or not, but whatever, it's hilarious.
Think, Harry Potter meets My Chemical Romance and Evanescence.
Bearing in mind that My Immortal has become famous for being almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Harry Potter, and apparently written entirely on a mobile phone by a hormonally-unbalanced female with potatos for hands.
Quote from: monkey_05_06 on Fri 19/02/2010 23:45:56
As much as I loathe the subject matter, Ghost wrote a fanfic a while back that was actually pretty decent. ::)
Indeed. Let me find that link.... found!
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=38904.0
Quote from: Jared on Sat 20/02/2010 05:46:55
Bearing in mind that My Immortal has become famous for being almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Harry Potter, and apparently written entirely on a mobile phone by a hormonally-unbalanced female with potatos for hands.
That's precisely why it is internet gold. And listening to it being read out loud by people who are just taking the piss makes it even better.
I don't read much fanfiction, and mostly you find stuff of the "so bad it's terrible" or, when you're lucky, "so bad it's fun" sort. Still I like the main principle- borrowinf an established world and injecting your own ideas into it. When done well, fanfic really can be good. You can find the occasional gem, too; I really enjoyed Morphic and Odysseus 34 (the latter no longer available, but heck it was great!).
And this. Yes, THIS. Careful, it's got VIOLENCE in it.
http://doomcomicdrama.ytmnd.com/ (http://doomcomicdrama.ytmnd.com/)
I'm slowly but surely working on my own effed up Fan Fic to the Harry Potter series. Basically it's a sort of "What if" in which Harry died, the Order of the Pheonix lost out, and Muggles live in bunkers trying to hide from Death Eaters. It's stupid, but a lot of fun to write.
A bit of a taste here: http://kjmanson.deviantart.com/art/HP-Fanfic-Introduction-149124289
Fanfiction is rarely worth getting into (what would be the reason to, anyway?), but pastiches of older fiction are often very entertaining, especially those that twist some of the source material a bit.
Quote from: Ascovel on Sun 21/02/2010 19:42:34
Fanfiction is rarely worth getting into (what would be the reason to, anyway?)
The reason *could* be to find new perspectives of old material- not a bad prospect. I understand that few fanficcers (*shudders*) manage to reach that point and instead do the old "I be teh hero/mary sue/marty stue of teh universe" thing, but fanfic, to me, is that nice middle ground where an author can skip on the "create a background" part and instead concentrate on the "have a nice idea with established material" part.
When all's said and done, most indie game designers do the same... :P
Fanfiction can be lots of fun, as long as you don't take it too seriously. It helps a lot though if you're familiar with the source material.
I've written two fan fiction stories; one in 2005 and one in 2009. Both aren't 'great' or even 'good' in any sense of the word. But, I had fun writing the latter, because it was based off a game series that I'm still a huge fan of. It captures the details of how the gameplay is like too. It's a lot less of a story, and more like a game level being described in words with characters performing their signature/trademark actions/behaviour. As for reading any fan fics? I haven't finished reading one, ever. I just hate the idea that fan fics involve characters from TV shows or movies of any genre being placed in real-life situations (ex. Frodo in New York City? WTF?). Mine always stayed in context like an extra episode or level of whatever medium it was based on.
Fan fiction?
I can't believe this hasn't been brought up yet....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxyZaZlaOs
Note that the video's maker is simply telling the story that some other fan faction writer had written.
I got into adventure game making via fan games. Fan games lead me to the amateur adventure game community, which I then joined and started trying to make my own fan games. I learnt a lot during this time, and now I'm writing an original game.
Nobody ever made a poor quality fan game, right guys?
I see your My Immortal and you raise you a Christian Humber Reloaded (http://christianhumberreloaded.thecomicseries.com/comics/first)!
I've written fanfics before, some of them intentionally terrible (http://shadejackrabbit.deviantart.com/art/the-most-crazy-fanfic-ever-131268791). That being said, there are some really good or at least decent fanfics in the Myst community. Although, what really counts as a "fanfic" is a good question. (Is this (http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php3155&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=96ab5070fab1d436914d5d8f42bc1bce) a fanfic, for example? It's more like a fan age, as the forum leads it.)
Quote from: ShadeJackrabbit on Wed 24/02/2010 05:43:05Although, what really counts as a "fanfic" is a good question. (Is this (http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php3155&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=96ab5070fab1d436914d5d8f42bc1bce) a fanfic, for example? It's more like a fan age, as the forum leads it.)
Well it would be cool if content like that could be added. The Uru Live would be huuuge (provided there is some judging/grading as to what is put into the game, so there are no too bad ages/areas. Let's face it 90% and more is crap or not up to par.
Any mods (like stuff that you can download from Steam, if you buy HL2 you get like 10 more games that were made with Source and all free new gameplay, new story, new worlds content) and similar is fanfic but with games it's much more fun, cause even if your story sucks, it's extra gameplay time. While books/stories need to be really good to be interesting (at least to me).
Fanfic is good for people to practice their writing, it's not all in creating characters and sourroundings, but when you have fleshed out and good basics it can be clearly seen what is your part and on what level is your skill.