Editing revision 31 of FanFic

Editing old revision 31. Saving this page will replace the latest revision with this text.

(shortened name for FanFiction)

A work of fiction written by a fan about or taking place in the setting of whatever they're a fan of.  For example: a fan of Star Trek could write a Star Trek FanFic, in which perhaps Kirk is stranded on a deserted planet and someone comes to rescue him.  Or something.  Or he rescues someone.  Or he's stranded with Spock and they fall in love.

Q:  Suppose someone who is not a fan of something writes a work of fiction taking place in its setting.  What would that be?

A:  I'd say it should still be called a FanFic; even if the author deliberately horribly mutilates the setting and characters ''(making it indistinguishable from much existing fanfic, except by the author)'', the only people who will end up reading it are fans anyways.

I've seen FanFic""s written about TV series, movies, books, music groups . . . um . . . People.  But when someone's writing a fanfic about *you,* that person probably needs some serious help.

''That is highly dependent on your identity, however. For example, if you're a popular culture icon, figment of a fantasy writer's imagination or lesser-known deity, it's much more plausible that a writer might want to include you in his/her work.''

Some common words found when examining FanFic :

*Slash -- same-sex pairing.  For example, Kirk/Spock.  Mulder/Krycek.  Xena/Gabrielle.
*Self-insert -- rather self-explanatory.  A fanfic in which the author inserts him/herself as a character.  As below, usually the main character.
*Mary Sue -- a fanfic that the author inserts him/herself into as a character.  Usually the main character.  Usually with great beauty and charm and supernatural godlike powers, and usually ends up having the other main character fall in love with him/her.  Origin: apparently someone wrote something in which Ensign Mary Sue was a character . . . And Kirk was in love with her?  I have no idea.  Feel free to correct me.  I'd have to say the worst of these I've ever seen was a SailorMoon fanfic that was MSTed in which some guy wrote himself in having sex with Artemis.  The cat.  That was scary.  ''Not that!!  Since it's one of canonical examples of bad fanfiction, I tried reading it to see if the rumors were true.  Suffice it to say that when something gets a reputation for being extremely bad, it's generally for a reason.''  Usage on the term seems to vary; sometimes it refers to the actual character with phenomenal powers/stats, sometimes to the whole piece of fiction.
: Just a fun Mary Sue in LOTR fic I found... [http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=536905 Nine Men and a Little Lady] 
*Yaoi -- male/male slash in anime fandom. (Also used in referring to some American cartoons, like JonnyQuest)
*Yuri -- female/female slash in anime fandom. (See above)  ''Best definition of the two I've seen: [http://strangefour.keenspace.com/d/20020122.html Strip from Beta]''
*NC-17 -- I think that's self-explanatory.
*Lemon -- NC-17 in the anime community.  Typically for lots of sex.  There are varying degrees of "Lemon", however; some authors use the tag when any explicit content is present, whether or not it qualifies as "lots" of sex.
**Lime is sometimes used to denote some sexual content/overtones/themes, but less graphic than lemon.
*PWP (or Plot? What Plot?) -- a fanfic that consists entirely of a plotless sex scene.
*OOC (Out of Character) -- used to describe poorly written characters or characters whose personalities and usual courses of action are changed in order to match the plot or situation based on the author's discretion.  
*Fandom -- the universe the FanFic takes place in.  Don't ask why I put this last because I don't know.
*AU (Alternate Universe) -- when characters from a series are placed in another setting.
*Crossover (also X-Over) -- also fairly self-explanatory; in such !FanFics characters from two (or more) separate universes/series meet and interact.  Can be good if done well; can be apallingly bad if done poorly (having characters from universe B fall through a one-shot dimensional rift into universe A is generally frowned upon as a way of getting the characters from the two series together), though different people have different levels of tolerance for this sort of nonsense.
*MegaCrossover (c.f.) -- a crossover with *lots* of series.
*Fusion -- sort of like a crossover; characters from one series get mapped (more or less well; if the mapping is a bit rough it makes for more amusing situations) into the roles of characters from another.  Typically, the characters from universe A then at least start acting out the plot from universe B.  How far they get depends on the series involved and the author.  I have yet to read one of these that was both completed and done well.

Has this page been sufficiently filled in?  If you need more information, feel free to contact JessicaFisher or anyone who has at any time been an avid FanFic reader or writer (PamelaRettig?).
''I probably fit in this category -- AlexWilkins''

*Just a note... a collection of fanfic-related links is available at [http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Trailer/3858/index.html Tuesday's Fanfiction Page]. Though the page itself is dead in the water, some of the references are invaluable. --PamelaRettig

-----

Hey, now I'm curious.  Just how many people are there who have read/do read FanFic?

* JessicaFisher - am I supposed to describe my fanfic experience?  I've read way too much StarTrek fanfic, and ridiculously large amounts of slash and yaoi fanfics for pretty much everything you can think of.  I've also (probably unfortunately) written a good deal of StarTrek fiction and some anime fanfic, and some jrock fanfic, mostly yaoi and lemon (not the StarTrek fics, those were pretty tame -- and pretty stupid).  If anyone's interested in reading an ''original'' fic that someone wrote, this woman who goes by Janette has this very interesting yaoi vampire universe (very bloody, gorey, greusome, and has lots and lots of sex) that I can give you a link to.  I think posting it here might offend some people's delicate sensibilities.
* AlexBobbs (haven't read much, but I've seen almost every Star Wars FanFilm out there)
* AndrewSchoonmaker - I've read some of the Star Wars novels, most of which read like bad FanFic; also [FunWiki:UndocumentedFeatures UF] (though not much), [FunWiki:NeonExodusEvangelion NXE], and a bunch of random Bubblegum Crisis stuff.  A lot of the stuff I've read has been pretty good (guess I'm lucky).  I've thought about writing... but will more than likely never get around to it.  Probably a GoodThing.
* CurtisVinson (I have a little experience reading it, most of it to my sorrow, and I have never and hopefully will never write any)
* SeemaPatel - I read a bunch of God awful StarTrek fanfic that was about the Enterprise going back in time.  WesleyCrusher ended up falling in love with Chelsea Clinton.  It was promptly MSTed (by the actual MST people, I think) and was hilarious. 
* JustinPava - I've read some with mixed reviews. My favorite is NeonExodusEvangelion, which in some ways does more justice to NeonGenesisEvangelion then the show does to itself. I strongly recommend checking it out if you have seen NGE and have quite a bit of time to kill. 
* JoeFrosh - I read UndocumentedFeatures, or at least most of it. Looking back, the beginning stuff was pretty dumb, but it got good later. In any event, it was a good time suck at work :-)
* PamelaRettig - I've read and written more random fic than anyone should have a right to. Much along the same vein as JessicaFisher's fic, actually. Also more general (ok, ok... by general I mean hetero... ) fic. Multiple fandoms, though mostly scifi series lately.
* AlexWilkins - I've read way too much over the last four years; mainly anme and/or manga-based.  My current favorite is just about anything by StefanGagne [http://pixelscapes.com/twoflower/ The Ultimate Codex of Twoflowerian Fiction], especially his recent work, SailorNothing.  I even own the T-Shirt.  Also most anything by AlanHarnum [http://www.thekeep.org/~mike/transp.html Transpacific Fanfiction]. (Unfortunately, he has retired from writing FanFiction.  GrrrrrrRrrrrrr...).  His WatersUnderEarth currently stands as TheFanFicIWishMostIHadWritten.  If you've got a day to spare, read it -- it's fourty chapters plus an epilogue of what I feel is professional-quality writing.  I'm also writing some fanfiction reviews over at AlexsFanficReviews (I will resume sometime soon.  Honest.).

:I'm also subscribed to the FFML (FanFictionMailingList), which is basically the central mailing list for anime and manga-based fanfiction at this time.  It's undergone some troubles, but seems to be fully operational again.  I urge you to go [http://www.anifics.com/ here] and subscribe, if you're prepared to deal with the volume.
* WillShipley - I have read / written some fan-fiction, usually pertaining to TV shows and games.  I wrote a StarCraft short story a couple years ago, and I have a Sacrifice novella in the works . . . of course, since it's been a year since I even ''touched'' that game, I think the story's dead.  I am ''intensely'' fond of the cross-over genre (when done well), due to the propensity for main characters from both series to have interesting meetings.  Someone should push me to finish my Babylon 5 / Highlander crossover--I've hit a rut about halfway through.  Oh yes, my mother is also a lot more prevalent with fan fiction than I.

* MarissaAnderson has too short of an attention span to read most fanfics, but just wanted to point out that there is [http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Studio/9132/fanfic.html Mathnet fanfic]. It's awful, but I have to give the author credit for trying to recreate the inane dialogue of the show.

''Okay, what's MST??''

MST is an abbreviation for MST3K, which is an abbreviation for MysteryScienceTheaterThreeThousand, which deserves its own node.  The brief version: it was a TV show with a long and varied history, now sadly canceled., which involved a human and some puppets watching horrible sci-fi movies and making sarcastic commments about them at the same time.  The concept extends very naturally to bad fanfiction, and all sorts of sites which MST3K fanfiction have popped up on the web.

Websites at which good FanFic can be found:
* [http://www.firecat.net/fanfics/] -- NatalieBaan's yaoi fanfics.  Highly recommended by JessicaFisher.  She write for series by CLAMP mostly: TokyoBabylon and X.  Also has works on PleaseSaveMyEarth, WeissKreuz, GundamWing, CardCaptorSakura, FushigiYuugi, and ManyOthers.  Most popular work in progress: SakuraAndSnow.
* [http://www.eyrie.net Eyrie Productions] -- Home to UndocumentedFeatures, NeonExodusEvangelion, and a few other series (since I'm partial to BGC I'll mention Hopelessly Lost).  Recommended by AndrewSchoonmaker.  A fair bit of the stuff here is self-insert, but fun reading nonetheless.  YMMV.
* [http://www.fanfiction.net fanfiction.net] -- Major fanfiction repository.  Many left/hate/revile it when they redid their terms to disallow anything over 'R' rating, but has a bunch of stuff (something like over 2 million fics ''much of poor quality, but that goes without saying'' and at least 700,000 members).  Has a related site at [http://www.fictionpress.com/ fictionpress.com] that has original stuff (not FanFic) that used to be on the site.
* [https://www.cs.hmc.edu/~adunlap/funwiki/index.cgi?TimeSuckXVIIIVsEvilDrSTEMS] --TimeSuckXVIIIVsEvilDrSTEMS -- blatant, knowing example of a Gary Stu

Summary:
This change is a minor edit.
(Visit Preferences to set your user name.)

View other revisions
FunWiki | RecentChanges | Preferences