Fanfiction: Writings about existing franchises

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/10323811

Frickles talks Harry Potter fanfiction, writing it, and more!

(Author of A Malignant Ruse Harry/Daphne, A Discordant Pattern, etc)

This book was a bit of let-down for me. Yes, it is very nicely written, characters are well described, they have even some (slight) development to them (which is rather rare in all fanfiction stories), but it feels like painting by numbers. Elizabeth and Gardiners travel all the way to the Lake District, so there is never a meeting at Pemberley, and Lydia is ruined (for long time it seems irrecoverably, but it turns out better). Then Elizabeth meets Darcy when she hides in London with her uncle and aunt and everything proceeds as you expect. Lydia is sent to Canada to be married and saving the fame of the Bennet family, D&E have their happily ever-after, Jane finds some replacement for Bingley, who in the end (with many rounds around) marries Georgiana. Everything is very predictable and it takes extraordinary time to get there (59 chapters). If you read one of stories like this, you probably shouldn’t bother.

Pride & Prejudice meet Persuasion meet Horatio Hornblower, slightly too long and slightly failing on “Show, don’t tell” rule, but otherwise obviously professionally written thing and the tension is really high and adventure dramatic. Highly recommended.

It can be either ongoing, or completed.

I'll start: Zenith of Stars AO3, FFN by Yuesya/XxZuiliu.

This is a Jujutsu Kaisen fic, and the protagonist has the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception from the Nasuverse. I enjoyed it because it was incredibly well written, and has a good balance between character dynamics, action, and clan politics. Highly recommended.

I have heard about this story so many times, I have felt compelled to download it and read it. It is pleasantly written, I don’t have any serious complaints about it, but in the end it is just yet another indy!Harry mixed with (never explained) sudden whirlwind romance, where Harry and Daphne get from 0 (him not knowing her name) to marriage (and of course the married bed) in a week or so. If you read something like this, you've read it all, I am afraid. Interesting part is that the whole story is from Daphne’s point of view (that’s at least something different).

What in the world I have just read? It could be just one rather normal run-of-the-mill indy!Harry story with mildly evil Dumbledore where Harry will build his own base and defeats Voldemort, but the author for reasons I really cannot understand put whole story into Harry & Hermione’s third year (of course, it is a Harmony story, it is indy!Harry after all, isn’t it?).

Which again is nothing bad. There are really few stories in the Harry’s third year and there are many themes which could be fruitfully investigated. I would love to finally somebody utilized the best JKR sentence in whole heptalogy (“Lucky you,” said Ginny coolly.’ OotP), it is the year of Ginny’s and transition from freaked out little girl to the storm of energy she is later in the series, it is the most peaceful Harry’s year (whole year happens absolutely nothing, everything is in the end), so we could have more of non-Voldemort-happy-life-at-Hogwarts. Did author use anything of these?

No, she/he didn’t. I have absolutely no idea, why this is a thrid-year story at all, it could/should be just slightly AU fifth or sixth (even better) story as well (somehow saving Sirius is the only requirement), and even better because even with twenty+ minds in them, these are still thirteen/fourteen year old bodies going at it like rabbits. Ewww!

We all know what procrastination is so I'll speed through real quick:

1. It might not actually be laziness, you might be worried to much about it or if you work a physically intensive job it could simply be that your tired. Find the underlying reason and treat it basically.
2. Sometimes there's just no solution like going fuck it and just starting it with no plan. I know this won't work for some people but my very long droughts were stopped by me just starting it and letting what happens, happens.

What I really wanna talk about is the holding yourself accountable part:

It's very easy to just not do that and it's also very easy to over do it. The most important thing here is not only consistency but also the realization that you aren't going to be consistent.

Some day, something will break your streak.

Maybe someone in your family dies whether they be human or pet, friends schedule a get together during your writing time, you're moving or something else. Life happens, missing days should be allowed in your mind. It's when it's in your control and you're not chosing between it or something important is when missing days is bad.

This is tough to actually put into practice though, in fact I've actually been procrastinating. Moving my parents and their stuff to an apartment broke my initial momentum, and my mind immediately defaulted to, 'Fuck I broke it, I should continue again but it's already broken... why don't we do something else?'.

This is when it becomes easy to sell your time for the most mediocre shit ever. When the self doubts and the easy sources of dopamine hit hard. When you have to adult yourself back to your habit by thinking something similar to, 'I know it's broken, but having this reaction and not doing it when I want achieve something in this is ridiculous and more time consuming than my actual missed day.'

Either that or you think about it so much daily that you go, 'Fuck it, we're doing it now.' like I did to get this post out lol. Just remember to go easy on yourself and that a missed day or two is part of the plan and not the ruin of it.

I'm choosing to stay here for the long term whether or not people join in with my discussions. (Though I love it, if you do.) So if I don't make a post in a while, don't worry I check this instance near daily.

But that aside, I've been meaning to make a Google doc or just a document in general of all the advice I heard and incorporated as an accessible way to share with other people. Writing well is difficult and there's no need to add searching multiple sites for good advice on-top of that.

Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EOeUwpUoklG4zqzp5VCHrT8TYWPHtf0PV2KCjK6JqY4/edit?usp=drivesdk

(If anyone doesn't want to use Google doc can you suggest an alternative and I'll copy it over to that.)

The more I make/outline fanfiction the more I've come to realize the importance of canon and the expectations of it from the readers.

Now it seems like a no duh that canon is important without it you don't have your characters, setting, themes, and what abouts. But it is, it's a bit of revelation that I may have already instinctively known but didn't fully consciously realize.

Canon is a spectrum

Fanfiction is the act of taking established characters and making them into other characters, and the established plot into another one and (trying)making it believable.

The show or book or whatever gives us the beloved characters that we wanna play around with, we wanna see them grow outside the initial conditions the original maker has set, we want to seem them struggle, succeed, be funny, or whatever and because of that, we'll be willing to give a pass on the writer if the character is close enough and their vibe is the same.

And because quality isn't usually always available why don't we give them a pass on this weird detail and some other spots and give them a pass? And then give a little more and a little more. Until you don't even have the original characters, just an interpretation on the fandom interpretation of that character. It's how shy characters become beyond socially useless and embarassing, it's how reserve characters become barely talking characters. The best advice I got was someone telling me to review the source before writing another fanfic because it's so easy to forget the original or get the wrong idea from fandoms (did you know Naomasa isn't even fully confirmed to have a lie detector quirk? I didn't until I looked it up.)

Now I'm not saying that's bad actually, I've read my fair share of fanfics that are actually just completely different characters from the source and had a great time. It's just that when you're thinking about writing or reading a fanfic you have to signpost the canoniticy (? I dunno what to call it lol) of the story so that readers don't come in expecting the source characters when it's your interpretation of the fandom's one.

I don't go in expecting a story that has tags like, "trans x characters" to be a story that will be very worried about accurately capturing the source characters. And I don't go in expecting a story that seems like it's an exploration of the source characters in a scenario to be the fandom's interpretation of those characters.

This has been running around in my head as I've been outlining an series finale Azula time travel healing story, I've been playing with the skeleton trying to get the starting as close to that Azula and then trying to get to the Azula I want to have at the end of the story. It's been challenging (also fun) as I've realize some of what I want is literally not things that would ever change in the original Azula no matter what. It's just too drastic of changes. I've settled on the confident Azula from earlier but kinder (to friends), wiser, some I have no enemies but I'll put you into the ground type beat.

But yeah, I just wanted to talk about what's been going on in my head and this place seemed like the place to talk about. If you read all this, you're a trooper. And if you have any thoughts or stuff comment, this is just something I typed in like an hour and if you have something I didn't think about I love to hear it. Certainty is the death of improvement.

After reading an excellent “One Week Late” by Bethany Delleman, I hoped that this story might another (very rare) example of non-canonical pairing P&P story. I have always thought that the relationship between Colonel Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth could be very interesting to explore, and generally that a relationship with a solider (looking how well the relationship with a sailor worked in “Persuasion”) could be interesting as well. Except the story had did not much of that exploration. Since the first wedding, it was quite obvious how it will end and there were only two ways how to achieve that end, neither of one which I liked. In the end the author decided to follow both of them. Oh well.

I originally read this fanfic completely blind; I knew neither RWBY fanon or canon. This fic started during the show's first season and had to invent all kinds of stuff because of it, and canon is now forever disappointing to me.

This is a million word, quasi-completed gamer fic, with a sequel coming who-knows-when.

This fic really sucked me in every time I've read it....and I've re-read it at least 4 times at this point.

A very good short story about a scientific expedition.

This is a rather enjoyable (and long) fanfiction for Harry Potter. It's set in a somewhat similar world to canon, but is modified in various ways. Such as Peter Pettigrew not hiding out as a rat.
It is a Wrong Boy Who Lived story (this being a story where Harry has a sibling which is thought to be the Boy Who Lived), and it has loads of other common tropes but it applies various twists upon them that makes it a lovely experience.