I hate fanfiction sometimes (rant)

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by ZXu2002, Feb 18, 2020.

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  1. ZXu2002

    ZXu2002 I am a idiot

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    Not sure if this should go here but it is writing related. I read a lot of fanfiction, and while sometimes the stories are pretty good, a few things always jarred me out of the plot and made me think “why did they put that there?” I understand fanfiction writers are usually not professionals, nor are they writing professionally, but some of their decisions are just so questionable that I don’t understand why they did it.
    The most obvious problem is harems. Harems are fine, but what the heck, I remember I found one where the MC ends up with like 60-80 girls, and the author thought that that was too little. I get that most time’s fanfiction is a power fantasy writing style but still, who in their right mind thinks like that?
    And second, the typecasting (or whatever the word is) of characters. Again, I get that fanfiction isn’t professionally written in most cases, but I would like to think that any fan with knowledge of canon extensive enough to write a 50k AU of a popular work will have the ability to not denigrate certain characters to Beverly specific aspects of their personality. The most notable example off the top of my head is the BNHA fandom, which appears to make Izuku this one brand of cute weakling Mary Sue ish character despite that never being the case in the canon outside of flashbacks to his childhood afaik, and even then it was to show how pitiful or sympathetic he was.
    Third, the random gay shipping. Shipping in general is a touchy subject imo, but I could still understand when a fanfiction makes the effort to either use a ship that is strongly hinted at in canon which suites their defined characters (such as, idk the doctor and rose or something) as opposed to completely rewriting their preferences to suit a strange fantasy narrative. I could understand this kind of shipping maybe in shows which, as I said before, hint heavily towards this, such as Hunter x Hunter (first thought that came to mind) or something, but then you get the surprisingly numerous iron man x captain america stories with Spider-Man being adopted added into the mix for good measure and then it becomes a wtf moment. Like, again, when there is tension in the shows to begin with, it makes sort of sense, but then when you have people like captain America and iron man, who are clearly defined as just good friends, and have them marry for some odd reason, I just need to ask why?
    And fourthly, and for some reason this bothers me the most, why is it that when writing fanfiction for a translated story (I.e manga), why must the author insist on using language specific quirks as opposed to the perfectly fine englishized translations? For example, katakana, which are afaik used to denote loan words, words from other languages, which are just used to fit, say English words, into the Japanese syllable pronunciations. This had bothered me for quite some time. I read a one piece fanfiction, where Smoker lists all his attacks in the romaji readings of the original katakana. The problem is, the words are clearly meant to be English words, which just so happened to be read that way because it was an English word written in another language. Anyone looking at the wiki or reading the manga will know that Smoker says “white out”. It is only written in brackets, that the Japanese katakana for it is read howaito auto, which again, is the transliteration of “white out” into Japanese. So why, when given the option to use the literal intended word for the thing, would an author, writing in English, use the Japanese reading of it? It makes no sense. And this goes further. Why would you, in a dialogue between an English speaker and another English speaker, have one of them suddenly say nouns in the original language before offering a translation instead of just them using the translation originally? It doesn’t suit the flow of the dialogue, and only shows how smart the author thinks he is by using another language. And also, why would you assume that a person from a fictional world speaks Japanese just because the source material is Japanese? Sure it’s a nod to the source, but it feels jarring in the text as it leaves a massive plot hole that would probably never be filled. Just why can’t you write like you would some other essay and use logic and normal English?
    As you can see, my biggest rant is about translations and the one piece fandom. Because I hate myself for happily reading all that garbage for an entire year.

    Tl:dr, fanfictions suck
     
  2. Anra7777

    Anra7777 All powerful magic grammar hamster queen pirate.

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    You lost me once you started ranting about BL.
    (A BL fanfic writer.)
     
  3. Sabruness

    Sabruness Cultured Yuri Connoisseur

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    i have no problem with slash fics because their very purpose is lewding ships on any kind.

    It's the regular fanfics that are just.... ugh. If you know that much to write an extensive fanfic, dont bodge it for ridiculous reasons.
     
  4. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    While sometimes fanfictions are meant to just try putting a fan's take on the author's work, often times it is there just to fulfill the wishes of the fans.

    This means obviously non-canon ships should be expected, not a surprise.

    In a similar vein, only the most dedicated fans that absolutely love the series will be the ones to actually put their hard work into writing a fanfiction, which means they probably want to resemble the original in any way that they can (except the parts they want to change, obviously), which means borrowing words and stuff even if they have official translations and what not.

    Fanfictions are made from fans to fans in order to show their love for the series... What you should expect, is to see that love emanating, nothing more~
     
  5. chamchaworld

    chamchaworld Lazy Chibi

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    And that's why I didn't read any BNHA fanfic with romance tag, because sometimes the harem ship get ridiculous. Same with marvel's fanfic. Just filter the fanfic that you want to read, because personally I just can't stop reading fanfic to run away from canon story (ex: Iron man's death)
     
  6. Darkcrow.

    Darkcrow. Foul Tarnished

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    then you haven't read the better once,
    I know 80% of the fanfics are ton of shit
    but there are so many hidden gems that are waiting to be found.
    take Too young to die for instance ,Its no way near the top ,but it deserves to be at the top.
     
  7. Vincent1873

    Vincent1873 Well-Known Member

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    It's the same thing as them calling Luffy, Ruffie, or Killer B as Kirabi, Might Guy as Maito Gai, and A as Ai. I don't know if they realize how ridiculous it is until you point it out.
     
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  8. Beer_Kitty

    Beer_Kitty Just a very very drunk kitty that likes beer

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    Well im in support for the stupid ships.
    I can agree on something like Harry Potter and Hermione fanfic ships but manly characters that theres no fucking way would go BL/Yaoi is just plain stupid.

    Seriously, as your example, Why the hell would a ladies man like Tony Stark would fall inlove with the straight guy Captain America.
     
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  9. chamchaworld

    chamchaworld Lazy Chibi

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    I click the close button as soon as I saw those names, lol. Maybe I just didn't read enough, but nothing good come from story with 'Kirabi' or 'Ruffy' name. Still wondering why they use that kind of name since I am pretty sure they read the english translation of the manga.
     
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  10. ZXu2002

    ZXu2002 I am a idiot

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    I might be reading it wrong but I think you missed the point of that rant. I focused mainly on the use of words that are literally just English words written in another language, I.e white being written as howaito even though that is literally just how japanese pronounces the word white.
    Yeah, I may have exaggerated. Keep in mind, for an entire year last year I basically only read fanfiction. I’m kind of sick of them by now. I know there are some legit good fanfics, but as you said most of them suck and will have at least one of the four problems I listed
     
  11. Ghost_of_a_Witch

    Ghost_of_a_Witch Well-Known Member

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    As I'm writing a fanfic for an original work of a friend of mine, I'd lie if I said your end note wasn't at least a bit hurtful. Making a generalisation based on a relatively small amount of samples usually isn't a good thing... I'm not saying all fics are good, but like with original stories, you need to discover the better ones hidden in the dirt.

    You made some valid points, but fanfiction is called that for a reason. Their creators can keep with the boundaries of their original media, but in most cases they are just the wish-fulfillment fantasies of their authors. You really are better off just filtering what you don't want to read, and who knows, maybe in a 100 years that triangle will be the canon line in the marvel universe when everything else got retconned out of existence ;)
     
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  12. Bias

    Bias Well-Known Member

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    While your points are good, you are missing the greatest most important number one of all time :

    Most fanfiction never finish properly or abandoned abruptly. :D
     
  13. Amaruna Myu

    Amaruna Myu ugly squid dokja (●´∀`●)

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    tl;dr
    but welcome to the squad, where plotholes and bad grammar are hated
     
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  14. ZXu2002

    ZXu2002 I am a idiot

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    I tried to make a point of acknowledging that most fanfics are wish fulfilment. Again, I’m generalising like this cause I sort of got sick of wadding through the first five pages of most liked avengers fanfics only to find ship after ship after ship, or going though the one piece fanfics to find a few good ones amongst repetitive asl trash and then finding them marred by some glaring imperfection. So yeah, I like fanfics, but like junk food, they are literal trash. Tasty trash, but still, not something to recommend reading for a long time
     
  15. Reindeer

    Reindeer RynDeeVuo

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    The closest thing to fanfiction that I've ever read is doujin. I still don't get why people read/write fanfic tbh, I mean even when reading a good work, aren't you just setting yourself up for disappointment from the fact that it's not canon? Just my thought on it tho.
     
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  16. Westeller

    Westeller Smokin' Sexy Style!! Staff Member

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    Idk. Iron Man x Cap could work fairly well? They clearly have some chemistry.

    And the new Spiderman really was kind of adopted by Iron Man.

    Damn, are you sure you read a fanfic and didn't just watch an official MCU movie?

    You should read some. At least the better fanfics. They don't just copy the regular story word for word and change five lines. They borrow the characters and world to tell a completely different story from the ground up. So it doesn't matter that it's not "canon", because it's not the same story to begin with. It has its own canon. ... Just.. idk.. Think of it as a parallel universe or something if that makes you happy.
     
  17. Red.Gamer

    Red.Gamer A foolish fool

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    1) I agree that many authors (including Chinese, Korean and Japanese light novel authors) overuse the harem trend. In my opinion, one or two are enough but more than that, the story feels very unrealistic in terms of human relationships and I feel detached to the story since the authors tend to use harem situations/scenes as filler. Maybe because I'm in my mid twenties, but I know that love relationships takes time to be molded, not instant. I believe that most of these writers are just too young/immature to understand or that they just want a power fantasy shoehorn story.

    2) I have a friend who wrote a fanfiction because she really loves the story. She started writing when there was a big flashback of the MC's childhood thus explaining that she was timid. As such, my friend wrote the middle school MC as timid with her self-insert character as a new friend. As the manga progress tho, there was another flashback of her childhood on how she grew confident due to her grandfather. My friend who already wrote a giga ton of her fic said that she will stay committed to her fic where the middle school student MC is timid. Maybe some of the fic you read also experienced such things. Maybe they didn't.

    3) There are authors who write for the readers and there are those who write for their own satisfaction. Many fanfic writers started writing their fanfics in order to satisfy the things that the original story can't satisfy, the other readers are just there to enjoy fanfic. You are either in with their fanfic or you are not.

    4) About the english translation rant you have, I completely agree and I cringe HARD when authors use a direct romanization(?) of some words when they are intended to be english words.
     
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  18. ExcitableFoci

    ExcitableFoci Well-Known Member

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    I feel ya brotha, the only reason someone would write a harem fanfic is to make it a wish fulfillment, which makes me want to bleach my eyes. I started reading fanfics at a pace of 2-3 fics a week since 2018 and I've only read like 3-5 'good' romances and not a single one of them are harems.

    I don't find people adding a -san here and there bothersome at all but then there are fics that are so cringey that I feel physical pain from it, I only found this problem in the Naruto fandom so far tho, and most of them were from the 2000s.

    As for authors trying to use different languages, I found a surprising amount of people trying to use spanish in their fics. Using cool sounding words to name their techniques like 'El murcielago' y 'PATADA POTENTE' which made me choke on air more than once.
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2020
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  19. Reindeer

    Reindeer RynDeeVuo

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    To be fair, I don't really have any series I'm invested enough to read fanfics of. Not a fan of Harry Potter, Naruto, BNHA, or anything like that. And I'm the type of guy who'd take just what the creator had to offer, I'm more interested in how other viewers (mainly anime) interpreted it (analysis videos on YouTube).
     
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  20. pass1478

    pass1478 I'm in Despair!

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    I don't read stories that aren't canon or coming from the original. Why? It's cause of NTR. A lot of the fanfics i've read back then contained a lot of NTR (wtf was I reading back then) that made me really uncomfortable, so to get used to it, I adapated a mentality when it comes to litereture: If it's not canon then it doesn't matter. Sadly, after solidifying that mentality, I never really was able to properly enjoy fanfics anymore.
     
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