How I feel about fan fiction. - Comments

I can remember when I first started posting fanfiction on Quizilla.com. I don’t think I was that horrible of a writer, but the method in which we had to post stories was definitely suckish. Anywho, I had kids aged 15-18 (I was 20ish) sending me stories to insert sex scenes into because they were either too embarrassed to do so themselves or felt like they didn’t have enough experience to know what they writing about. I was glad when they started to explore their own writing boundaries and started writing these scenes out themselves.

I wrote quite a bit of smut back then (and still do when the mood hits) and even had arguments with girls who read my slash smut and said it made them ill because it was too graphic. Oh, well . . . they were always warned. Anyway, I viewed writing pure smut one-shots as a way to write out scenes that I wanted to put in a story but felt it would distract from the plotline if I had.
Through the three websites I originally posted in, I have over 100 stories, give or take a couple. At least 90 percent of them are fanfiction. I regret none of them no matter how poorly they were presented at the time.

@ katze
Fair enough. I personally find a lot of fanfics are cringeworthy, but for every ten that's bad there is that one gem that makes me think, wow. This is amazing. But, each to their own.

I don't think fanfiction needs to be limited to young teenage girls though.

I love you for writing this! I'm not going to say any names, but one time I posted a blog about writing a new story but I had two currently active fan fictions and I had a commenter comment and say that I was writing about my celebrity crushes and basically had no chance on the market. It hurt, and this blog just gave me hope. Thank you <3

@katze Well, typically when you state an opinion, people want to know why you think that way. Stating it just because and being sarcastic when people ask you to elaborate is pretty pointless.

@ The Pies Endure
Just because they make me cringe? It's like asking why someone cracking their neck makes you cringe, it just does end of hahaha

@ katze
I said I respected your views and you didn't answer my question? I wasn't attacking your views.

I think if someone just said they respect your view they're not telling you to f-off and that they don't care about your opinion.

I'm not sure about the sexuality part but I definitely think it helps us develop because it's like a starter program almost. It helps prepare us for the stage when we write up our own plot lines and develop our own characters.

@ The Pies Endure
Soz forgot you weren't allowed to have an opinion because its different to everyone else's.

Ridic.

This.

This blog post had me nodding and agreeing to all of it, especially about girls' sexuality. If anyone is making fun of fanfiction, just a polite reminder that 50 Shades Of Gray started as a Twilight fanfic and that is one of the best-selling novels~

This blog is just amazing. You are completely right.

There is a lot of truth in this blog. I've been writing for about 10 years, and I still have some of the first stories I've written saved in notebooks in my nightstand. I go back and read them sometimes and I just laugh at how horrible they're written. In my honest opinion, the only difference between fanfiction and original fiction is the use of characters. I can take one of my fanfictions, change the names of whatever celebrity(ies) to something different and call it original fiction. At least that's how I think of it.

I read/write fanfiction more because to me it's easier to picture characters, especially if they're a famous person like say: the band Avenged Sevenfold. Being a huge fan about them, watching interviews and their DVD, it gives you an insight to how they are as people so when you read about them in stories, it's a little bit easier to read/write. I know some people might think differently than I do, but this is how I feel about fanfiction, and I actually do agree a lot with this blog.

@ katze
How so? I think that's a little insulting to published fanfiction. [and a little insulting personally...] Though I do respect your view. But, if you don't mind me asking, why do you think it's cringey?

@ The Pies Endure
No, to me, it is ALL cringey.

You mean, like, how young female authors make their main male character look the way they want their boyfriend to look like and have the personality traits they like in a man?

@ katze
Not all fanfiction is cringeworthy. I have read some fanfic that put original fiction to shame. And think about it, a lot of the official Star Trek and Star Wars novels are published fanfiction.

@ Ned Flanders
Sexuality isn't just about sex though, it's about how people are portrayed. It's not necessarily anything to do with writing sex scenes, I think it's more about image.

About the sexual part, I must say that I never thought of fan fiction as a way to explore my sexuality. I started writing fan fiction when I was fifteen and, back then, as a virgin, I shied away from sex scenes as I felt I couldn't write them. I would have some references to intercourse but never anything explicit. Now I write explicit scenes, but only when I feel the need for it, not for the sake of a sex scene (like a commenter mentioned previously). The sex scene should obviously be in character and written accordingly to the set and situation, if I make myself clear. You wouldn't have a couple of catholic teenagers having crazy wild sex in a public place just out of the blue. I think you need to set the mood and make sure there aren't plot holes (no pun intended).

When I was in senior year high school, on my oral presentation for Portuguese, I talked about fan fiction. Nobody knew what it was and, after I was done presenting the result of my research, while some of my classmates seemed disgusted with the idea of teenagers writing fictional stories about their idols, I was surprised to see that a lot of my classmates and even my teacher, seemed to be curious in a good way about fan fiction. I told them my own experience as a fan fiction writer ans emphasized that, while there are horribly written stories out there, there are also amazing works of art written by great amateur authors who use fan fition to improve their writing and, in some cases (like my own) improve the usage of English as a non-mother tongue.