Fan fiction and You.

[Albertosaurus Rex]

I suggest we keep discussion to this thread and keep the old thread as archive material.

Ah, fanfiction. With recent blogposts by figures such as Diana Gabaldon and George R. R. Martin, I've been thinking about it too. I apologize in advance for what will probably be a long post.

Nearly ten years ago, I wrote a little fanfiction. One long fic (well, in comparison to my other fics) and a few short ones. They were based on the videogame series Oddworld. I recently read the long fic again and let me tell you, it is unspeakably awful. We're talking about a story written by a fourteen year old Dutch boy whose grasp of English grammar and spelling was... not perfect. It was written on the fly, without a spellchecker and contained bizarre (as in: failed) attempts at humour. Some people at the forum where I posted it at the time claimed to like it, which I do not pretend to understand. After writing a few chapters of the sequel, I gave up and never tried to write fanfic again.

So that's the writing side of the story. Do I ever read fan fiction? Very rarely. I don't really see the point. Most of the fics I have read weren't all that well written, but I glossed over that because I liked the idea at the heart of the fic.

And that, to me, is the point. To paraphrase that infamous rant by an author we all love, fanfic is not good practice. Characters and universe are already established and bad writing often gets excused because people just like to read about character X and Y hooking up.

The most fun, for me, lies in those fics that are so bad that they become hilarious, which tend to get dramatic readings. Who can possibly come up with stuff like My Immortal, soulless shell, Lisa is pregnant, Olimar f*cks a pikmin, etc, etc...? (Tv Tropes has information on all of those, in case you're curious. Or google them, if you dare.)

But to be serous, I think I do understand a little why people do it. I recently watched all of Avatar: The Last Airbender in a single week. (I had only seen some fragments before, so most of it was new to me.) The whole week, basically every minute that wasn't devoted to my studies or eating, I watched Avatar. It was the most epic week of my life, but when it was done, I got into a slump that lasted a few DAYS. (Edit: I accidentally typed years originally.) I had come to love the characters so much and now it was all over. I imagine other people have had similar experiences and fanfiction might be a way to get it out of one's system. Not for me, though. Not anymore, in any case...