timepiececlock | Fanfic writers - SHORT POLL QUESTION

Entry tags:

Fanfic writers - SHORT POLL QUESTION

I've been reading some interesting stuff about fanfiction today. I read a great deal of stuff about the "Cassie Claire Is A Plaigarist" wank, and had to quit at part VIII of the timeline archive because it was just that long and messy. Right now I'm reading this article and its predecessor, and for the most part I'm finding them fair and enjoyable, if a bit on the shallow side information-wise.

In reading some of the CC wank stuff, which featured quotes about fanfic from various authors (particularly fantasy), I was left wondering if there was a giant list somewhere that maybe showed how a lot of the more famous authors feel about fanfic. I know the obvious ones like Anne Rice and JKR, but if the article I linked above is true and some professional authors are/have been fanfic writers themselves, I'd love to read various opinions present by them with regards to the issue.

The article I linked also says this about fanfic, which I admit applies to me as well:

"I was fifteen years old when I invented the genre of fan fiction, a form of writing where the author takes characters or universes created by someone else and writes stories about them. ... ... ... Fifteen was also the year I attended my first convention, where I learned that fan fiction had thrived for years before me."

Although for me it was more like 14 and I discovered fanfic through a Sailor Moon fan website and not a convention, the experience was basically identical: when I wrote my first fanfic I didn't even realize I was entering myself into a long-standing fandom tradition. I just had this mental image that I *had* to write down. That urge to write the next step after the credits closed. It wasn't until a while later that I stumbled upon internet fanfic and it clicked in my brain. In many ways I've never felt guilt about the "allure" of the internet and fandom because for me, fandom and fanfic was something, first and foremost, my own individual invention. Learning that there were thousands of others out there who made that same leap was, if anything, a massive rush.

So, I have a poll for you guys on my flist who write fanfic. And I'd like to ask you to link this poll to others if you want to, because I'd really love to see what a large sample will respond with. Most of my flist I've known originally from Jossverse fandom or anime fandom, so I'm sure it will be a far from legitimate sample of LJ fic writers. But I'd love to see, anyway.

[Poll #788168]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Here's the skinny on my introduction into the fan fiction world:

It was 1994, the Internet was fairly new, and Prodigy's service was the MUST HAVE for everyone. I found the Bulletin Boards for shows I was "into" at the time. The series I was insanely involved with at that point in the 90s was seaQuest DSV.

As I scrolled through the board topics, I noticed a lot of subject heading prefaced with the word "FIC: insert title of story here". Took me a couple of days to realize these were stories people on the boards had written. At this point in my "writing career", I was still doing original works. In fact, I had this idea in my head I was gonna write young adult thrillers and be famous, Christopher Pike or Ritchie Tankersley-Cusick style. I read a series of stories by an author who'd fused the ideas of The Chronicles of Narnia with sQDSV. My first exposure to fanfic and, a sub-genre I'd become deeply involved with later, the crossover fic.

After reading her series, I thought if someone who's fourteen years old could write stories with someone else's characters, I could too. Came up with an idea, wrote the story and posted it at the Board. Not only was this my first introduction to fan fiction, it was my intro to fandom and all of the trappings which go along with it. Due to my involvement and general popularity in the fandom, I'd become one of those people - the BNF.

We were a pretty closeknit group on that site, too. We encouraged each other's work. Commented on each other's stories. I wish I could find that kind of support and general helpfulness in a fandom AGAIN. Because I sure as hell haven't run across it since. (I mean that in a broad sense, not a more localized sense, such as my Friends List here.)

I find that fascinating, to know that for you it was sort of an experiment that became a passion.

I also discovered fandom in conjunction with fanfic. It was practically the same week, I think. I started exploring "fan sites" for the first time and immediately was introduced to fanfic, and realized I'd already done something like that already. I actually was strictly fanfiction-oriented in all my fanfic activities for several years. I didn't even talk on forums (or know how) or understand what a "shipper debate" or "kerfluffle" was until around 2001, when I discovered BTVS and started posting at messageboards (and eventually LJ.)

Due to my involvement and general popularity in the fandom, I'd become one of those people - the BNF.

That happened to me to a small degree with the Harry/Luna shippers in HP fandom (before book 6, which kinda killed my fanfic urges), but happened pretty suddenly for Avatar fandom. Because I came from Jossverse fandom and some very focused anime fandoms (Trigun, CB) I was used to being really active and talkative in fandom, and I could spell. The sudden attention was flattering and frustrating, and unfortunately compounded by the fact that since joining the fandom I've resolved to create LJ communities like

avatar_vids simply because no one else had gotten around to doing so yet.

I wish I could find that kind of support and general helpfulness in a fandom AGAIN.

I've found it in individual writers/fans across fandoms, rather than with groups. For example, I feel very comfortable ranting to/with you about general fandom, though we don't often discuss fanfic. As I've gone through fandoms I've bonded with particular authors and spent a lot of time talking with them via email or MSN messenger (or my recent discovery-- Gmail chat thingy.) BTVS fandom was so large that I actually got less personal support there, though I did enjoy the benefits of a massive fandom.

I actually was strictly fanfiction-oriented in all my fanfic activities for several years. I didn't even talk on forums (or know how)

I was the exact opposite. First, I was happy to find people who wanted to talk about a show I loved in the depth and manner I wanted to. Sure, my older sister liked it, but she didn't want to wax philosophical about the characters/storylines/relationships with me. On the Internet, I could do that.

or understand what a "shipper debate" or "kerfluffle" was until around 2001, when I discovered BTVS and started posting at messageboards (and eventually LJ.)

I found people who didn't like the same characters I did or vice versa. Except, in the DSV fandom, we didn't fight about faves. Not until the show changed drastically and Roy Scheider left then Michael Ironside took over the lead role. That was the first experience with inter-fan fighting I'd ever had. (I missed the whole Joel Vs. Mike War in the MST3K fandom, because by the the time I found those boards, the dust had settled from it.) Even then, the in-fighting was pretty tame (compared to the stuff I've seen since) and no one was hurt. We were all too busy complaining about the series as a whole sucking. NBC was our collective enemy.

I didn't know what a "shipper" was or get reeled into any of those battles until I moved on to the X-Files fandom in '96/'97. It was a much larger fandom, the people there were a bit meaner but it didn't diminish my need to ~~talk shit~~ speak my mind. At that point, I was on AOL and the battleground was chat rooms. We had specific times and days set up for "NoRomo Chat" or "Shipper Chat". I was NoRomo, a good deal of my friends were, too, so we'd "crash" the "shipper chat" from time to time. In fact, it became so bad, several of us were banned and the Chat Host's feelings were "really hurt" by some of the things we'd said and did.

Eventually, that garbage passed and I became pretty close to the Host in question. She ended up doing a sample script for Homicide: Life on the Street. She knew I was into the series so we bonded and became friends over me dispelling my knowledge of that show.

Seriously, I could go on and on about the shit I've said and done in my fandoms of choice over the years. I was alternating between XF, Xena and H LOTS during my heyday. And, yeah, I was fairly well known through out all of them. Especially ANY series in the Chris Carter universe. Moreso Millennium (and even the short-lived Harsh Realm) than The X-Files.

About the Claire wank thing, several on my flist have mentioned about it. I looked at the plagiarism comparisons and basically thought - isn't it kind of harder to do all that rather than writing your own story from scratch?

No kidding. I looked at a multi-page break down of the stuff she lifted from lines to entire passages, and it was really a big complicated mess. I'd rather write my own dialogue than try to synthesize so much disparate stuff into a coherent whole. But I guess in this case it seems the author knew what would make her popular and went to great effort to incorporate into her stuff, which I would normally assume was accidental/subconscious until I saw the degree of effort. But this is apparently all old news for fandom. I had heard of her from reading the Very Secret Diaries and the computer-buying charity incident via fandom_wank, but most of this happened either before my time or while I wasn't active in HP fandom. When I was reading I was more interested in the account of plaigarism and how it was handled by the various fandom sites and groups than in the actual fanwank.

Big complicated mess = good analogy. It must have been like putting together a puzzle. Since I write from scratch, I don't approve of what she did though I have to admit that THAT takes some skill too.

I heard of CC when I read about that ?MsScribe? mess. I also learned what a BNF was and what a sockpuppet is. Lol.

I'm not certain how polls work in LJ, but I voted no - I did not know what fanfiction was when I started writing fics. I think I was about ten (maybe younger). I think it was about Rainbow Brite. Either that or Disney's Robin Hood.

(was very very very young)

For some reason... I want to see an AtLA quote archive all of a sudden.

A quote archive? Hm. I actually don't find the dialogue of A:TLAB to be all terribly inspiring out of context. Most of the humor of the show works for me because its in tandem with the animation, and usually the characters' expressions or gestures add physical comedy that makes it funny, more than the dialogue. Like Sokka's ~~watertribe~~ thing; that was my favorite joke in the whole show and it's completely unfunny as a quote.

But I'm sure you could get some good stuff. And there's plenty of nice dramatic dialogue to quote too, I suppose. Part of me just invariably associates quote archives with humor.

Here's the thing - my first fanfiction? My mom reminded me that at nine, I began an epic tale based on The Dragon and the George. And I had no idea, then. :D

But as an adult, yes, I totally knew it existed. Reading it is what incited me to write it again.

I was going to say my first forays into fanfic was with the Redwall series of books, but then I realized that my mom still has that My Little Pony fanfic I wrote when I was like eight or nine.

Holy crap, I wrote My Little Pony fanfic.

...holy crap...

::resists urge to giggle in your direction::

Hey, speaking of fic... you ever write more of your FMA movie crossover?

I'm actually working on that right now. I got my plotlines twisted and had to straighten everything out. Got attacked by a killer plotbunny while reading the Corpus Hermeticum so it's definitely getting the ball rolling for me again.

Which is good because I want this damn thing out of my head. XDD

I was left wondering if there was a giant list somewhere that maybe showed how a lot of the more famous authors feel about fanfic.

Why yes (http://www.fanworks.org/writersresource/?tool=fanpolicy), yes there is :-).

Interesting poll, too. I suspect that most people would have written 'fanfic' as kids without knowing the meaning of the word. I know I did (http://www.livejournal.com/users/blinkytreefrog/24536.html) :-).

Huh. I see that while J.K. Rowling is okay with it, "Harry Potter" is not. Hahaha.

I guess you can't write movie fic for HP, then. :)

I was just browsing it: Good Charlotte the band tolerates RPS. That does surprise me, I admit.

This is sort of long and rambly. Sorry!
The seeds of my fanfic writing were planted early on. In the 60's, paper and pencils being beyond my dime allowance, I did it in my head. I had 'Kimba the White Lion' fanfic. I told myself new stories in my head with the characters I loved so much on tv. When I love any kind of work, I tend to process it through a fanfic kind of consciousness, where I add original characters or crossover characters to a scenario because I wish I could see the interaction. I wrote original fiction, but in the late 80s I got into roleplaying, and one of the worst offenses in roleplaying was to steal a commercial character concept wholesale. You were supposed to make your own original characters. A lot of the animus lay with the people who tended to make a copycat character and did it both badly and with the apparent attitude that they were 'special'. To this day I really can't enjoy rpgs where people play the characters from tv or movies.
Fanfiction is different. With the Rise Of The Internet, I found archives of fan stories. I could enjoy these much more, even when they were pretty bad, because they seemed to lack the aura of 'I own this character and have a special relationship that you don't' that roleplaying the character feels like. I liked seeing that other people wanted to read stories that the canon never tells. I have a special love of crossover fanfiction. One of my favorite crossover stories ever is Hellblazer X Oh My Goddess! (It worked surprisingly well. :) )
In the 90s, I became a Buffy fan and started cruising Buffy fanfic. Then the Lord of the Rings movies came out. Tolkien's writing is one of my deep, great loves in literature. Yet that didn't stop me from having a strange love for Buffy/LOTR crossover fanfic. Finally, I wrote one of my own. No, it was not a 'ship fic. I can enjoy it in others, but couldn't do it myself, though Buffy does feel a certain attraction to Eomer. Maybe it's that horsey smell.
Then the new Doctor Who series came out. I have enjoyed Doctor Who since I saw it in the 80s, but the new series sparked my true fan love, and it extended to the entire series, not only the new. I watched 'Parting of the Ways' and immediately went looking for fanfic because I had to have MORE. I read nearly the entire archive at Teaspoon. Finally, I had to start writing. Fanfiction began clawing its way out of my brain and it hasn't stopped. I have written more than 100K words of fanfic since November '05. Still, my need to have more Who has not abated. The only way to stop the flood may be to send Christopher Eccleston to my house to physically prevent me from reaching the keyboard. Feel free to do this.

My first fanfic was written when I was about 5, and it was a self-insertion Mary Sue featuring the Muppet Babies. But I guess everyone's first fic sucks XD

I think my second fic had a Mary Sue. And a few more fics after that which never got typed up, thankfully. My first fic was to write a "pretty ending" for whatever episode I was watching.

Five? Wow. I barely could write sentences at 5.

I was a nerd and didn't have many friends. ^_^; Hence, adventures with the Muppet Babies.

My first foray into the world of Fanfiction was when I was eight or nine and freshly into the fandom Harry Potter.

I never posted that fanfic, and all I have to say about it is that my inevitable OC was a FLAMING MARY SUE.

This from the author who is known in the Fire Emblem fandom for a oneshot and a multichapter study of the most widely rendered OOC character in the history of Fire Emblem--the tactician--and making both of them unlike every other tacticianfic in the fandom simply because the tactician is kept in character and has a completely mundane past.

...But anyway, since I'm probably spouting off stuff you might not know unless you play Fire Emblem (playitplayitplayit), here's a list of all the fandoms I've written for, in a roughly chronological order.

Harry Potter. Roughly, five. None of which I can remember.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Never published, but I thought about it a lot to remember that I wrote two Sues into that fic, and even if you put their litmus scores together and timesed the sum by two, they STILL wouldn't be half as bad as my first one.

Fullmetal Alchemist. Just one.

Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken. Two.

Fire Emblem: Seima no Kouseki (Sacred Stones). Four, one was never published.

Teen Titans. One, still being written.

Avatar. Two roughly plotted out, but still unwritten.

...I just realised I don't write that many fics.

... my first-ever encounter with Fanfiction. Now those are some interesting memories. Quite honestly, though, my love for writing didn't really start with fanfiction. It started with third grade, when we were learning about (not-single-paragraph) essays for the first time, and I was fortunate enough to encounter Betsy Byars ((who I still love, children's writer and all))...

... and then unfortunate enough to encounter Little House on the Prairie. Oooh, good God. *lmao* Well, I was young ((nine, I think)) and still a very impressionable tool, so I began with writing "realistic fiction", and my first story *ever* was about a little girl named Penny who ditched her friends at a pizza store and bought a puppy instead. ((The moral was something along the lines of "what you want > friends.")) And all I can remember is this huge paragraph depicting the cabin-like pet store, a description inspired by Laura Ingall's own cabin-y homes. So after that, I went on to write my own OC prairie girl named Minnie Driver - she was a Mary Sue, yes - and I was (and still am) pretty ambitious; it was supposed to be novel material. I was deluded, and I reached 90 pages before I woke up and realized it was some pretty horrible stuff.

Then I deleted it ((but I had printed the first 11 pages before then, and I recently FOUND them!!! *will type them up on LJ to FLAUNT*)), and sort of gave up on writing for a while... until I met Harry Potter ((this was at the age of 10, I think)).

By the time I was already head-over-heels for the series, I knew about the Internet ((Neopets eventually led me to Google, in some obscure way)) and I started reading the fanfiction. The urges to write some weren't strong then, but with aid from Lord of the Rings (movie and book 2) and the inevitable desire to marry Legolas, I began again; and my first fic was for LotR, I think, not HP. Odd. It was an OC Mary Sue, yeah, and she was Legolas's sweetheart for some 500 years until he had to leave and join the Fellowship. Oh; and she had the power of Foresight. ((which I just called 'psychic powers' back then))

*sigh* Yeah, I deleted that too. ((and unfortunately, none of it remains... though it wasn't as badly written as it could've been; I was an aspiring grammar-and-spelling nerd by then.))

So I just stuck around HP after that failure, writing but never uploading anything until I became somewhat decent. And I think some of that 'somewhat decent' stuff is on my FFnet profile.

Fandom, though ((message boards, LJ, and whatnot)), was something I discovered nearly a year ago through Xanga. Xanga led me to LJ, which led me to fandom; and now I'm fourteen, and hopefully a little wiser.

[/rambling -- sorry about having to spam your LJ with this... got carried away. I think I'll end up as one of those memoir-writing old people one day; you know, the ones who do it even when they aren't famous and no one knows their name. Hmmm.]

Oh my God. I just remembered there's an actress named Minnie Driver. The funny thing is... I didn't discover that woman until the movie 'Ella Enchanted', which isn't as old as that fic. WOAH.

Okay, okay, I just pulled out those 11 pages and I made a mistake. Her name was NOT Minnie Driver - her name was Minnie Goodwill *SUE SUE SUE*, and her best friend's name was Amelia Driver.

OOOH HAHAHA. I just remembered that I killed off Amelia Driver in the fic (she was sick). HOT DAMN.

How old was I?

I had just got into the HP thing, sometime in 1999 - I was 12, I think. Anywho, I shipped H/Hr back then *cringe* and so wrote fanciful fluffy tales in my notebook during maths lessons. Had no idea what fanfiction was or anything.

I wrote my first fanfic.... well, I'm tempted to say that my first fanfic was a Harry Potter songfic set to Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls (I was around 14 years old) but I am quite haunted by memories of my REAL first fanfic ever.

Lord of the Rings. Being a 11/12-year-old girl at the time, you can guess what it was about: Legolas. BEFORE the Fellowship.

And for some reason I remember something about Galadriel...

...I used Galadriel's mirror AS A PLOT DEVICE. What was I thinking?! And was my OC Galadriel's *daughter*?! *HEADDESKHEADDESKHEADDESK* ELLADAN, ELROHIR, ARWEN, I HAVE TAINTED YOUR BLOODLINE!!! GAAAAAAAAAH!!!! *headdesk, skull cracks* (As you may be able to tell, I did NOT know about Celebrian back then.)

...And she had "unusual" purple eyes. MORE TAINTING!!! (I also did not know what a Mary Sue was. It took me like, three years to even BEGIN to figure out what a Mary Sue was.)

OC/Legolas. I didn't describe my OC in that much detail, surprisingly, but I was constantly describing her FEELINGS [/end biting sarcasm]. ...For Legolas.

Thankfully, I never published it, it never saw any but my eyes (I was and am still a very private person when it comes to writing), and with all the bugs that wreaked havoc on my computer, it got wiped out with only vague, but disturbing, memories of cliched poetry-prose and.... something about a poem--oh wait no, that was Harry Potter.

Speaking of my REAL first Potter fanfic, it was something about Harry's *choke* young female guardian--aka BODYGUARD--who had the power to... tobringbackthedeadandshebroughtbackLilybecauseHarrydecidedhewantedhismothersinceshecouldonlybringbackONEpersonandtherewassomesortofdramaticentranceandIdon'tknowwhatIwasthinkingbutgoodGODS, it was cliched and soppy and I never want to think about it again!

Ironically, I'm playing with the idea of an Abhorsen/HP crossover. I even wrote one (it wasn't the songfic I mentioned) when I was fourteen. It wasn't that good, but it wasn't a lost cause either. Just a bit farfetched, now that I remember it.

...And she had "unusual" purple eyes. MORE TAINTING!!!

::pats your shoulder in sympathy:: My youthful and misguidedly written OC/original rpg character was a Sailor Scout who was both a magical master/goddess of wind and the human-reborn incarnation of a chaos demon. This allowed her to be angsty and removed from normal society, but also just slightly amoral enough that she didn't particularly care enough to angst, only to be tragic in the abstract.

*cries* I'd completely forgotten about my first ever fanfiction, but now I remember it. "The Only One Allowed to Call Him Tom". (I'd deliberately forgotten Dumbledore for the sake of the fic, which is BAAAD.) You can tell how bad it was by reading the title, can't you? Her name was Ebony/Bonnie and she was so TRAGIC because she was a black girl in the Blitzed 1940s London and her white mum hated her and she lived in the orphanage with Tom Riddle Jr (Boo hoo). She was Tom's true love and they went around Little Hangleton having lots of sex and she was mugged and murdered before his very eyes and he held her body in the rain and raised his head to the sky and swore never to love again DUN DUN DUN!!!!

And then there was my second one, an affront to the name of the Phantom of the Opera, "Gypsy Girl". She was from the Circus too, DUN DUN DUN HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF SHE MUST BE MEANT TO BE ERIK'S TWU WUV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! First she was a spunky, nasty, angry, half-starved dancer kidnapped from her home, then later in the story I changed her into a frail, sweet, naturally skinny girl who just sat in a cage while THE CRUEL OUTSIDE WORLD THREW RUBBISH AT HER FOR THEIR OWN SICK AMUSEMENT OMGAAAAAAAWD.

Why didn't any of my 70-odd reviewers tell me she was a Sue, whyyyyyy?!

I knew. As a matter of fact I happily read fanfic archives for five years before even considering the possibility of writing anything of my own.

I did work out a lot of crossovers in my head though.

If you want to define fanfiction loosely, I wrote and illustrated a book called "Molly and Polly's Birthday Party" when I was six, based on bedtime stories my mom used to tell me. Molly and Polly were dinosaurs (Molly was pink, and Polly was purple).

I believe my fanfiction career started when I was about 12 years old. Unfortunately, being as embaressing and as shameful as it was, one of the first ones I remember was a Digimon one-shot fanfic that reiterated another's in terms of plot, only I included my own (now completely forgotten/banished) Mary Sue.

However, one before that is not as embaressing or as shameful. It was a fanfic series based of the video game Jet Force Gemini, crossing over to other fandoms including Dragonball Z, The Legend of Zelda: OoT (and eventually an original concept and Yu-Gi-Oh).

It still exists however, but the original version (two sagas of 10-5 short chapters) is long forgotten/deleted and a rewrite is on fanfiction.net (one incomplete saga). However, the first two chapters of the rewrite(aside from suffering Fanfiction.net's odd punctuation mark treatments) are completley below the standards of the following chapters today. This is simply because I posted the first two chapters in 2002, got a Writer's Block for 3 years, and then began writing the third and following chapters, dismissing the idea of rewriting the 1st and 2nd for their third rewrite and contuining on with the series (at this moment, it stands at 16 chapters (of the first saga of about 5).

At this point, I am still writing that series. I am also in the midst of planning my own original series, and I am also planning (in terms of fanfic-related ideas) the possibility of a Zutara doujinshi (since I also draw as well).

However, I'm in a bit of an overall Writer's Block right now, so I haven't been able to think of a plot for the doujin yet, as you can probably remember from my post (http://community.livejournal.com/katara_zuko/234963.html) on the Zutara community a while back.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Fanfic writers - SHORT POLL QUESTION

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

The Birth Of A Fanfic Writer

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

THE EPIC STORY OF

Re: THE EPIC STORY OF

Re: THE EPIC STORY OF

Re: THE EPIC STORY OF

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject