Writing Fanfiction writers?

[MillieFan]

I don't know if this has been done before or if it is better suited for a different section, but are there any other fanfiction writers here? :)

If so, I'd really like it if we could share a little about ourselves. I'll start-and please don't consider this spam because I'm not using this post to promote *anything* just to state what I write and what I like in fanfiction, and I'd like other people to do the same so I could get to know them and they could get to know me. :)

As for me:

Usernames: So far, AnonymousTrigunOtaku and DancingTheEndlessWaltz at fanfiction.net and AnonymousTrigunOtaku at fosff.net. I will be registering a mediaminer account soon.

Fandoms: Guess ~.^. I write Trigun, Gundam Wing, and crossovers of other animes into those two predominantly (i.e. my current project is a Trigun fic, but there's a lot of Big O crossovers into it i.e. Rem's father is Roger Smith). I read Trigun, Gundam Wing, .hack//sign, Gravitation, Big O, Final Fantasy series games, and more. ^^

Favorite pairings: WolfwoodxMilly, MillyxVash, RemxVash, LinaxVash, Knives/Legato, Legato/Midvalley, Legato/Wolfwood, Midvalley/Wolfwood for Trigun. 1x2x1 and 4x5 for Gundam Wing. (Female)Tsukasa/Subaru or (Male)Tsukasa/Sora for .hack//sign. RogerxDorothy and DastunxAngel for Big O. Shuichi/Yuki for Gravitation. :)

Number one fanfiction pet peeve: Mary Sues.
Number two fanfiction pet peeve: Male yuri writers who have no idea what they're talking about and can only write PWP.
Number three fanfiction pet peeve: Writers who look like they failed third grade.

What I'd like to see more of in fanfiction: Alternate pairings in Trigun fics. Seriously, I see so few fics pairing Vash with anyone except Meryl, Wolfwood, or some half-baked Mary Sue.

So? Is there anyone else here that's a fanfiction obsessive?

[Thaylien]

Hi, I'm Thaylien, I'm registered on fanfiction.net as BlindThaylien.

My current fics are Ah! My Goddess ones, only two are currently up and running, but they're just for fun, and I've just finished one of them at the prelim stage so it's sub-standard.
I used to do Comics and I write a lot of poetry, I even have a novel that's supposed to be going to print at some point in 2006.

I'm also a Gundam fan, but I don't do fics for that very often and I don't have any running at the moment.

Pet Peeves:

Fics that scream 'this wouldn't happen!!!' in terms of what the characters do.
Writers that take no real interest in their work and expect big-time returns for it.
People who review work with a one-liner or even just two or three words. (I hate it when somebody comes on and reviews the introduction chapter with 'Oh, another -insert insulting reference here-')

Other than that, all I ask from fics I read are that they've at least passed it through a spell-checker, that they actually do something original, and that I can enjoy the read.

[Lady Asphyxia]

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=1][Hey Thaylien, and welcome to OB. ^_^" I hope you enjoy posting.][/size][/font][/color]

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=1]I'm actually a fanfiction writer in the Harry Potter fandom, and I'm known there by a couple of names, although I'm registered at Fiction Alley [Which is probably -- apart from fanfiction.net, of course -- the most known Harry Potter fanfiction site] as Arnica. [/size][/font][/color]

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=1]I prefer Harry Potter fanfiction because there's so much to do with it, in terms of character manipulation. I honestly don't think I would ever touch any other books [I don't watch enough television to write fanfiction for it] in fanfiction terms, because I like them just the way they are. The other reason is that I don't feel I know the books well enough.[/size][/font][/color]

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=1]I 'ship' quite a few pairings, predominantly anything with Ginny in it, heh. Lately I've also grown to like the Ron/Hermione relationships, because Ron is such a clueless fool, and Hermione's so shy. It makes for great fluff fics, heh.[/size][/font][/color]

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=1]Of course, having said that, I prefer to write angst, usually. I find it very hard to write fluff, because I often scoff at what I write.[/size][/font][/color]

[font=Verdana][size=1] [color=black]Isn't everyone's pet peeve Mary Sues? I came across a fic not long ago that involved an incredible self-insertion type fic [Which is how I define Mary Sue. The definition is often very slippery.] where the main character [an Original Character] was so perfect and [i]sweet[/i] [in a bad way, obviously] that I couldn't read more than a chapter.[/color][/size][/font]

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=1]I think my other pet peeve is formatting. I know that fanfiction.net can be hard to format, but I find it incredibly hard to read something that is just a huge [i]hunk[/i] of text, with no bold, italics, a header, footer, [i]anything[/i] which sort of just evens it out. I've recently read somewhere that it's also actually a reason for that, scientifically [or is it psychologically?]. The human eye [i]needs[/i] spaces to read, especially on the net, which is why I encourage everyone on this forum to space out their paragraphs, so that it's easier to read.[/size][/font][/color]

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=1]I'd like to see a lot more originality in fanfiction. People trying out new things -- not just plot wise, but also style wise. Perhaps doing something with grammar. I recently [Okay, in May last year, and I still haven't finished] started a 5 chapter story where I left out the quotation marks. I think now I'll add them back in when it goes up, but it actually altered my style a lot, because I had to accommodate for the fact that people would find it hard to distinguish between talking and description. It was a nice experiment.[/size][/font][/color]

[color=black][font=Verdana][size=1][Just for an interest point, how do you define Mary Sue?][/size][/font][/color]

[Thaylien]

Hmm... I define Mary Sue as a self-insert that makes the characters too good.

Anything that either has a 'perfect' character or has one that can solve everything without effort just isn't fun.

The fic I"ve just finished I was actually dissappointed in, it was called Haven for the Goddess and I had the concept of it from one of the comics I used to write called Haven. Anyway, it had one of the biggest faults in it that I can think of in my own writing:
The characters had no room for developement. I had finished all of their growth in their original completed series and when I brought them into that fic, it just lacked that little secret joy that people have of seeing the characters change in little ways.

But hey, I'll give you a link to my other fic, which I've been trying to get finished for a while, it's called Soul, Light and Leaves, and Oh! My Goddess fic. And I was hoping that in this one, I had created something that was entirely non-self-insert.

I think it's [url=http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1627708]Here[/url]

[MillieFan]

[quote name='Thaylien']Hmm... I define Mary Sue as a self-insert that makes the characters too good.[/quote]
Hmm. I personally define a Mary Sue as an original character, usually a self-insert but sometimes not one, who does any of the following things:

1: Falls in love with a canon bishounen no matter how out of character such a relationship would be. The Trigun fandom is plagued with these idiotic pieces of spam. I think if I see another fic with the summary of "Legato meets a mysterious girl that falls in love with him and heals the wounds of his heart," I will :sick:

LOL, once I saw a Sue that, to me, was the best example of OOC for which one could ask-it was in the Gravitation section of ff.net. Yes, some fangirl had actually paired *HERSELF* off with Shuichi. :laugh: I was like "Excuse me, do you happen to know that gay guys aren't interested in women? Not even [i]perfect, sweet[/i] *rolleyes* Sues like yours?"

2: Somehow trumps all of the canon characters in intellect, power, skill, and anything else that she/he possibly can. For example, a female sixth Gundam pilot from L2 who can beat both Heero and Duo in a fight in ten seconds, who is more persuasive in speaking than Trieze, who looks like a feminine Quatre, and who manages to get the characters out of every situation, blah, blah.

3: Totally hijacks the spotlight of the story from the canon characters. The point in writing fanfiction is to write the canon characters well. . .not to make them all constantly take backstage to your original character.

:)

[Solo Tremaine]

[color=#503f86]I wouldn't call myself a fanfic obsessive, but I am particular about what I like, heh.

As for posting my fanfics, I've only shown them on OB so far. I've signed up with fanfiction.net to put my Digimon story up there but I've not gotten round to it yet. The way it all goes up seems far too complicated for me. You upload the document to the site, and then put it up to be posted? The way the site explains it doesn't really help me much I just need plain, simple, easy-to-understand English instructions.

But anyway, so far I've only confidently written a Digimon fanfic (aside from Enter the Net, but that's not strictly a fanfic), although I wrote drafts and exerpts for Starfox and Pokemon ones as well. I've considered hundreds, though- Titan AE, Outlaw Star, Beast Machines, Smash Bros... you name it, I've probably tried to think of a fanfic for it.

I don't have any favourite pairings as such- out of the characters I take from the series I write about, I tend not to muck about with what's canon unless there's a specific reason to. In Digimon, I keep Matt with Sora, Ken with Yolei etc.

Pet peeves: Um... I don't tend to read many fanfics, because I find they interfere with my ideas and prevent me from writing things as I want them to happen- I'm always trying to take their ideas into account in case the audience might think theirs is better. Self-esteem problems there, I guess ^_^; But anyway, one of my pet peeves is when people write dialogue that characters would never ever say. If they are going to use series characters, they can at least try to make the dialogue accurate.

Another is when things happen for [i]no reason whatsoever[/i]. Like, this big baddie arrives, threatens to destroy the world and no explanation is given to it at all, other than the fact that he/she is evil. It might not even need to be that big a thing. I've read things where characters get angry without any decent build-up. I think the problem there lies in what the writer's thinking isn't quite brought to the forfront of the narrative- i.e. they know what's going on, so don't bother to explain it very well to everyone else. I used to do that.

I don't like fanfics in which the chapters are less than a page long, and the dialogue's all in script form. It just frustrates me. On average my chapters are about seven pages long with no double-spacing, and I don't see any problems with separation.

With regards to Mary-Sues, I don't think they're always the troll demon things they're made out to be. I don't always use series characters in my stories because I believe the series has already written for them everything that can develop their character. Trying to write more about Rika in Digimon Tamers might not be as good as writing about someone new because Rika's pretty much gone as far as she can go in terms of character development.

My favourite of my own pieces is Dark Conflict, which I guess you could consider a Mary-Sue in that it stars mostly my own characters in the backdrop of the series world and with some of the original characters. But if it's well-written and works well, what's the harm in it? After all, if no-one made up their own characters it'd get very boring. There are only so many couple combinations ^_~. And it's not as if I have any of my characters fall in love with series ones anyway *shrugs* They aren't immortal or infallible as far as I can see; at least, I try not to write them 'perfectly'. But since not many others have read DC I wouldn't know how much of a Mary-Sue it actually is.

But as with anything, if it's written badly, it won't be good. Simple as that.[/color]