Fanfics are like AMVs...

BishounenStalker · Post by **BishounenStalker** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 7:05 pm

99 out of every 100 suck hard enough to put Hoover out of business.

Anyone who's into the fanfic scene, feel free to post.

I used to be a lot more into fanfic than I am now. I recently stopped reading it and just stuck to writing because it's been pissing me off. All of my favorite fandoms have been infested with character-assassinating, prepubescent yaoi/slash fangirls who can't spell, can't use a grammar check, and couldn't capture a plot if it frolicked naked in their living living room.

Ok, I'll admit het fans do tend to write lots of OOC sap with bad grammar and spelling, but from what I've been skimming (not really reading because there isn't anything to pay attention to), the yaoi writers tend to do it a LOT more often. Not to mention that the way the characters are written in most yaoi (and a lot of shounen-ai), they might as well be writing het. And BAD het at that.

Or alternately, they go to the other extreme and portray the characters so bitter, angry, and angst-ridden that I feel like I'm reading hate-porn (I don't know what the hell people find sexy about characters who really do hate each other in the purest sense of the word screwing their brains out). Even if the parties involved aren't bitter and angry people. I have yet to see an in-character shounen-ai or yaoi fic, while I've seen plenty of in-character het.

Really, there are two major types of fanfics out there that I've found: the generally bad, and the nice-try-but-no-cigar. Generally bad ones are the majority. Badly written OOC fluff, or stuff that has a plot as thin as a used dryer sheet.

The nice-try-but-no-cigar type are the decent reads, and sadly much smaller in number. They're well-written with on-target characterizations, but just don't go anywhere. There's no plot. And by "no plot" I mean no setup, no conflict, no climax, no resolution. Just a series of good conversations, with nothing holding them together.

The swelling numbers of both are irritating, but I can actually read the latter on occasion. Yet after a while, those tend to bore me and I just stop caring. Then I run off to ponder this disturbing trend and try to rationalize just what the hell's going on.

And I think I've finally figured out the problem.

Fanfic isn't about writing anymore. It's become an outlet for out-of-control hormones. It isn't about telling a great story with pre-existing characters in a pre-existing universe. It's about making the most visually appealing characters in any given fandom screw like proverbial coneys. And it's getting damned irritating.

And it gets even worse with the influx of newbies to any particular fandom. Since most new authors tend to parrot what they read, they contribute to a lot of the bad fic. I know there are exceptions who can actually spin a good plot along with great characterization and a neat writing style, but I just don't have the energy to go wading through all the dren for them.

So I take the admittedly lazy way out because I have neither the time nor the patience to find good fics anymore: I write my own and stop reading others altogether (unless someone who knows what I like gives me a reccommendation). But hardly anyone reads my stuff anyway. C'es la vie.

Thoughts?

WholeLottaChoas · Post by **WholeLottaChoas** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 7:25 pm

Hmmm I kind of understand what you say but I dont try and read much yaoi or those other types of fanfics.

To me the only problem I have with fanfics today is they are all the same.
Maybe differnt plot twist but outcome= same as the other 600000 fanfic authors. For examlpe Final Fantasy 7. How many Aeris ressurection stories do we need, and beacuse of this it has saturated the fun in writing one.(Not that any one really should of wanted Aeris ressurected)

Also wondering do you go to FanFiction.net youll see everything you hated and much more there

SarahtheBoring · Post by **SarahtheBoring** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 7:27 pm

[used to write FF7 fanfic with a little bit of other stuff, back in the day; you can see my train wrecks here.]

Word. That's my thought. And you know, I've heard variations on the same themes from people in lots of different fan pursuits - AMVs, fics, fanart, you name it. Everywhere, human nature is the same, people get whiny about nothing, and there is a lot of utter crap.

And the phenomenon of getting sick of wading through junk and just writing and reading ones by people you know or stuff that's recommended to you by people you know? Also common. I did it the same way, and I'm still in that holding pattern, more or less. There are only a few people that I bother reading with any regularity, even though I don't think EVERYONE sucks and I still wish them well and encourage people to improve in general. I just...got tired of a lot of it.

As for het vs. yaoi, I actually try to level the field and see it as good vs. bad writing. Because you're never going to come to a consensus any other way. Everybody has different buttons to be pushed.

And yeah, you have a definite point about it not being about writing. For a lot of people, it's about ego and getting attention. You also get this in AMVing, actually. A lot of people come in to both fields not thinking, "I really like this series and I want to do something creative with it." They come in thinking "What's going to make me popular?" It's really kind of sad.

So yeah, although I could argue reasons for the het/slash thing, it's not really important and that argument always goes on forever and never gets solved - you have a lot of good points that I think are everywhere.

"Collecting" common things among different fandoms/genres/etc. is kind of a side-hobby of mine, stuff a lot like this.

MistyCaldwell · Post by **MistyCaldwell** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 7:31 pm

Thank fully, amv's are a lot harder to perverse than fan fiction. By this I mean the horrible fics that are self insertion tripe.

I would say it's much harder to animate yourself into an anime music vidoe. Successfully manipulating a character into doing anything different than what they do onscreen (aside from adding subtitles and foward-reverse edits *cough cough*) is beyond what many people would be willing to go through to see their personal day dream come to life.

Sadly for fan fiction, it's much easier. I wrote my sappy fan fics (all 2) a couple years before I was even in a relationship. They were fluff at best. I would say that the majority of the girls don't know what they are talking about but it's their prerogative to write whatever they want to. It would be nice if they had a little more humility and didn't air their delicates all over the fan fiction sites.

But I gave up on that stuff more than 3 years ago. I would imagine with the plethora of anime available on network and cable, it only gets worse.

My kingdom for a search engine with AI enough to know a bad story when it sees one.

SarahtheBoring · Post by **SarahtheBoring** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 7:42 pm

You'd be surprised. Videos that are like "My life is just like [character]'s" and/or "this is dedicated to my girlfriend who is just like [character]" are, for all intents and purposes, self-insertion videos in my opinion.

My kingdom for a search engine with AI enough to know a bad story when it sees one.

...absolutely. You could get rich on that. 8)

Dannywilson · Post by **Dannywilson** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 7:53 pm

If anyone is a Ranma fanfic fan (I still like the occasional Eva or other fic, but mostly Ranma because it's so versatile), You may wanna try The Rakhal Index. They have a synopsis for every fic along with a grammar and spelling index, a notation of whether a series is complete, Number of pages, and even a great list of about 200 fanfic's called "Rakhal Likes". Oh, their database numbers in the thousands of achived fics. Check it out!

WholeLottaChoas · Post by **WholeLottaChoas** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 8:14 pm

The kindof Fanfic I just cant get into are the the series meets this series kind of story. Some are preety good but others are just one word. Horrible (hope I spelled it right). Most of them combine seris that just dont have any mixture (AAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH this is hard to explain)

BrahRizor · Post by **BrahRizor** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 8:23 pm

bah most fanfics are just like the stories in penthouse redone with anime characters, sex sex and more sex...or where animes crossover, nothing like how many characters suddenly go "supersayian" and start killing stuff in some of these fanfics...im done

MistyCaldwell · Post by **MistyCaldwell** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 8:26 pm

SarahtheBoring wrote:You'd be surprised. Videos that are like "My life is just like [character]'s" and/or "this is dedicated to my girlfriend who is just like [character]" are, for all intents and purposes, self-insertion videos in my opinion.

True. But I have yet to see an amv that goes like this:

Hi, my name is Brittany this is my webpage. I love Heero. Here is my fanfic.

Hiro "Nani? Ohio Brittany."

Brittany "Heero I am being attcked"

Hiro "Aboonai!"

Brittany "Oh Heero, my hero."

Hiro "We must make out now, because I Die Ski for you"

All mistakes were intentional and now I feel like I need a shower or something....

Dannywilson · Post by **Dannywilson** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 8:31 pm

I urge anyone that wants to read a good fic, read The Saotome Gambit. No not X-men's Gambit! Gambit as in a bet. The premise sounded hokey to me at first, but as I read it, I realized that J. Austin Wilde could be a published author if he wanted to. His ability to spin a tale and keep the reader interested is unsurpaased in my opinion.