{"id":143,"date":"2014-09-13T02:39:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T02:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/?page_id=143"},"modified":"2014-09-13T02:39:38","modified_gmt":"2014-09-13T02:39:38","slug":"thoughts-on-fanfiction-and-ff-net","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/?page_id=143","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Fanfiction, and FF.net"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ON FAN FICTION IN GENERAL<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been said a thousand times that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. There is most likely a certain truth to that, but I prefer to think of imitation as the lazy bastard child of invention and frustration.<\/p>\n<p>There has never, ever been a fan fiction written that didn&#8217;t pursue one of three goals<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To correct something in the canon work<\/li>\n<li>To explore a scenario the canon work did not cover<\/li>\n<li>To build upon a canon world or canon characters beyond the scope of canon<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All of these are, yes, imitation &#8212; but they also require creativity. A large failing of many fan fictions is that they cleave too closely to the first idea while not incorporating the second or third. This is not a criticism in terms of talent or skill &#8212; I am sure many such works surpass my own by a large margin. Rather, it&#8217;s a failing of vista, of purpose. The &#8216;fix-fic&#8217; is so uqibitious\u00a0 that it literally becomes unambitious.<\/p>\n<p>As an example, take two scenarios from my favorite fandoms : Mass Effect and Naruto. The primary perceived &#8216;problem&#8217; with ME is that the ending sucked. People had certain expectations that were not met. You take a character, make them a Mary\/Gary Sue through three games, have them shrug off being blown up by everything from rocket launchers to falling through an atmosphere, to get up stronger than ever, overcome stupid odds, take out a power and intelligence broker who has been untouchable for years, blow up Reapers on foot, solve everyone&#8217;s problems &#8230; then have him die in a philsophical no-choice dilemma revolving around the nature of synthetics and organics using a completely unannounced and unshadowed deus ex machina that was badly written.<\/p>\n<p>People want to fix the ending without realizing the <em>ending <\/em>isn&#8217;t the problem. If Shepard had not always won outright and conquered everything through all three games, if Shepard had been dealing with the clash of synthetic and organic REPEATEDLY and as a CORE ELEMENT through all three games, if Shepard had to make HARD choices with actual effects visible through all three games along this line &#8230; then the ending would have been sublime. Alternatively, if Shepard had not been such a fucking Mary\/Gary Sue through all three games, and if the Rule of Cool could have taken a backseat to actual development of the world around them, it wouldn&#8217;t seem as if Shepard had to do everything and be stuck with All I Do is Win syndrome, and the failure to come to some level of closure with ending would have been okay. Most importantly however, the ultimate villians were an always moving, never defined and blurry target that Shepard never got to face directly, instead literally always fighting a proxy.<\/p>\n<p>Fixing this is not merely replacing the ending with some other deus ex machina. Based on the technology and what has happened, there is no way organic life can win against the Reapers. And the Catalyst allowing Shepard to shut them down without providing an actual answer to his programming imperative simply because he was able to talk to him also does not make sense. People hate the ending because it doesn&#8217;t follow the narrative without realizing that a flawed narrative CANNOT have anything but flawed endings.<\/p>\n<p>To &#8220;correct&#8221; this actually requires delving into the world and answering all the questions the game raises in a non-bullshit manner. Doing anything else ends up with merely ignoring the problems and providing an ending that is as unrealistic as everything else in ME.<\/p>\n<p>Which works for some, for ME is a Heroic Space Opera Fantasy with Rule of Cool writ large. Many of the most successful fictions in ME follow this slavishly. But it tells me something when, out of the top five ME stories, one is all about OC&#8217;s, one is a SI, one has pretty much completely ignored the canon story for a completely new one, and the other two are pretty much wish-fullfillment romance-kink stories with no real challenges to canon.<\/p>\n<p>I am not bashing any of these stories. I certainly do not think mine is any better, although I can say with some pride that having a story in the top 25 out of 15,000 stories allows me to say I&#8217;m\u00a0 a fuck of a lot better than some people. I am going to go out on a limb and say that too many ME stories cripple themselves thematically by clinging to the frameworks of a canon that contradicts itself, ignores it&#8217;s own lore, counters it&#8217;s own themes, and champions blatant unrealism rather than solving it&#8217;s own issues.<\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t fix that without investing deeply in making the universe actually work instead of being a shiny backdrop. You can&#8217;t fix it without taking the shitty canon story and beating it into something where, when you pull something out in the third arc, people can go back to your VERY FIRST story and go &#8216;oh shiat he had that planned from then&#8217; and see all along the way how it came to be. Most of all, you cannot &#8216;fix&#8217; ME by keeping mostly canon and changing the ending because we know full well the ending written and much of ME 3 was cut and replaced and whatever themes were being built up were simply ignored past that point, and there is a razor sharp disconnect there.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s visible in the Haestrom mission most clearly, but you can see it elsewhere, in the asari who are supposedly strong and yet can&#8217;t even defend their own planet when the turians did and salarians did. You can see it in the scene where admirals are asking Shepard what to do now when Reapers are landing instead of debriefing him like any actual military would do long before that point. You can see it in the psychotic nature of the quarian fleet politics that are 180 from ME2.<\/p>\n<p>Next, take Naruto. People try to fix Naruto in a large array of violently stupid ways. They add ridiculous bloodlines, or make him a hanyou, or give him some dojutsu, or change his father to Madara, or some other crazy shit. Or to make up for his lonliness, give him a huge harem of girls who are all fine sharing a 13 or 15 year old boy even though some are older.<\/p>\n<p>We see lots of fixes to alter the shape of world without thinking, where somehow despite his early isolation and shunning and cruel treatment, Naruto is smooth and able to conduct diplomacy and be this super badass. There&#8217;s a story where Naruto actually fights a demon god in low orbit. Seriously.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t even mention the slashfics that make no sense, Naru\/Sasu or worse, Kaka\/Naru.<\/p>\n<p>The fundamental missing piece in the picture, of course, is that at some point Kishamoto lost his own vision and turned the entire thing into a weird, ninjabased parody of TTGL , with so many super powered characters pulling out super powered mega attacks that blow up entire mountain ranges that one has to wonder how the planet has survived thus far. I honestly think the ending to the series should have been Sasuke defeating Itachi, Naruto defeating Pain, and then Sasuke turning his back on the Uchiha hatred and returning home.<\/p>\n<p>Literally everything past that point is such complete bullshit it&#8217;s not even worth talking about, and when it&#8217;s CANON, you cannot really blame fan fic writers for doing the same thing to Naruto except at an earlier age. And I don&#8217;t blame them.<\/p>\n<p>The very, very best Naruto fan fics change canon and cling to what made the series a hit in the first place, while making you think about the nature of the Narutoverse. My own fumblings in this area are not worth reading, but there are many such as S&#8217;Tar&#8217;Kan who are masters at redefining the venue and canon without altering it into a shape no one can recognize. Lucilla&#8217;s masterful <em>Without Naruto <\/em>is another simple effort that shows just how powerful simple changes can be.<\/p>\n<p>Saying all of the above to say the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is simple to suggest that fan fiction is merely imitation, but the best fan fiction actually moves beyond the limits of canon to improve the work it imitates. That is creativity, not slavish imitation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure there are those who feel otherwise&#8230;but one cannot argue that there isn&#8217;t a single &#8216;top fic&#8217; for any genre that limits itself to a fix-fic format.<\/p>\n<p><strong>On Fanfiction.net and Idiots <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am beginning to wonder about the very nature of FF.net, enough so that I&#8217;ve backed up all my works offline in case any of them are deleted. I do not believe I have violate any TOS or guidelines, and the few times I&#8217;ve been notified that I had I immediately addressed the issue.<\/p>\n<p>However, there is an alarming number of groups and people on FF.net who appearantly solely exist to police others rather than generate content. I dealt with people of this nature when I was on Wikipedia, and I quickly grew to dislike them, as this kind of person switfly evolves from trying to be helpful to believing they worthy to talk down to or insult others.<\/p>\n<p>The most benign of these types, the ones like the Copyright Infringment people, Eliminator, and Critics United, are often seen as harmless by those who are not immature 11-year olds with the vocabulary of a IM chat system and the writing ability of a wet sock. With clearly defined rules and member systems, they feel they provide valuable services and clean up FF.net to make it better for everyone. However, the number of malicious copy cats, trolls, hangers-on, drama mongers, and flame warriors attracted to such activity has merely worsened the site rather than improved it.<\/p>\n<p>More aggressive types like the Fox Familiar are also likely telling themselves they are improving the site. Unfortunately, no matter how polite or impolite a review is, ultimately there will be people who post things someone doesn&#8217;t like. The problem here is, again, drama that does not solve the core problems nor reduces larger issues in the actual creation of ff.net content are addressed, instead being reduced to personal conflicts which rapidly devolve into childish insults.<\/p>\n<p>Neither of these type of groups considers (or, I suspect, cares) about the larger impact their acts have on both FF.net writers and those who see their actions. It&#8217;s not that the copy-vio groups don&#8217;t do good work, it&#8217;s that ultimately their work is <em>futile. <\/em>If the FF.net admins only go by submissions, then they have to either trust the submitters or review every submission, and the more groups that are doing this for the right reasons, the more groups that are submitting things just to get back at people for bad reviews or personal issues or just to be trolls.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, even if the Fox Familiar (who I still have problems believing is female, given the writing style and psychological approaches used) was 100% correct on what they were saying &#8230; the very nature of the approach only ensure that the very weakest, shyest and timid people would stop posting. In other words, instead of being able to converse and convince people to write something else besides {insert whatever pissed TFF off this week}, you&#8217;ve driven them off to write it elsewhere. Meanwhile, the people you can&#8217;t intimidate blow you off as a clown and a troll, even <em>if <\/em>you were right, and when other people see your profile they won&#8217;t bother to ask &#8220;Well, is this story actually that bad&#8221;, but rather &#8220;oh this guy is a troll ignore him&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Counterproductive actions on the part of those claiming to improve FF.net are only part of the problem. The biggest concern is that as time goes forward and more and more people post, the percentage of works that are garbage rises.<\/p>\n<p>There are 15,500 or so ME stories and 1200 crossover stories. There are 367,000 Naruto stories and over 12,000 crossovers.<\/p>\n<p>Over 250,000 of these stories have less than 5k words, and over 50,000 have 3 or less reviews. That is a <em><strong>staggering<\/strong> <\/em>amount of absolute garbage. I call it garbage because the one story I consider a failure was 9k words and only 2 reviews. If it can&#8217;t attract any interest, it&#8217;s a failure.<\/p>\n<p>Go do a filter on stories and pick out the ones at the bottom of the barrel and see what you find. Then look at the middle of the pack ones.<\/p>\n<p>What you eventually come to is that most of the stories with less than 10,000 words and 20 reviews just aren&#8217;t good, period. I&#8217;ve written a story with less than 2,000 words and it has 15 reviews. And yet when I see a story with ten times the word count and barely the same number (or even less) reviews, I don&#8217;t sit here and tell myself to &#8220;give it a chance, it might be good&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, the site will be swamped with the aftereffects of Poe&#8217;s Law. And that is a sad thing, for there are probably a lot of good short fics out there lost in the static-tides of badfic, shitfic, and crapfic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ON FAN FICTION IN GENERAL It&#8217;s been said a thousand times that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. There is most likely a certain truth to that, but I prefer to think of imitation as the lazy bastard child of invention and frustration. There has never, ever been a fan fiction written that &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/?page_id=143\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Thoughts on Fanfiction, and FF.net<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-143","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2ZibE-2j","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/logicalpremise.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}