Things that annoy you in fanfiction discussion

[Bugs]

OC Servants. Let's face it, there's plenty of actual ones to use. Unless that was already sort of covered last page.

Also, Zero fix-it fics annoy me a little.

If Spoony's Beowulf fic is proof enough that you can turn a Tyler Durden meme into something meaningful, I don't see why the same couldn't be possible with a character created from scratch.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

TBH, I mostly don't like them because there's always the chance canon will develop a completely different version that makes yours not canon, and besides, I generally lack faith in OCs no matter what, even (actually especially) if I create them.

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That, and OC Servants generally display how little the author actually understands the mechanics and lore (usually).

[RoydGolden]

TBH, I mostly don't like them because there's always the chance canon will develop a completely different version that makes yours not canon, and besides, I generally lack faith in OCs no matter what, even (actually especially) if I create them.

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That, and OC Servants generally display how little the author actually understands the mechanics and lore (usually).

I don't see why you'd care if an original Servant ended up different from canon. That's just part of the whole idea of writing fanfic after all, exploring possibilities that canon hasn't filled in yet. The same issue could happen if you wrote a story about, say, a department in the Mage's Association that hasn't been fleshed out in canon, and would you have a problem with that too?

[Nobody]

OC servants can be cool.

I still prefer Five's version of servants over the ones canon gave us, even if they're not Fate-like.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

I don't see why you'd care if an original Servant ended up different from canon. That's just part of the whole idea of writing fanfic after all, exploring possibilities that canon hasn't filled in yet. The same issue could happen if you wrote a story about, say, a department in the Mage's Association that hasn't been fleshed out in canon, and would you have a problem with that too?

I kind of do, that's the thing.

[Mattias]

OC servants can be cool.

I still prefer Five's version of servants over the ones canon gave us, even if they're not Fate-like.

Manhattan Project II was soooo good.


Also if anyone's down on OC's go read Bloble's Tomb of the Sun God. It will change your mind.

[RoydGolden]

I kind of do, that's the thing.

Then, no offense but I feel you kind of have a problem with fanfic in general.

Just read canon if you want something that absolutely can't be contradicted by canon. (Well, assuming it doesn't contradict itself, but that's another issue entirely).

[Imperial]

TBH, I mostly don't like them because there's always the chance canon will develop a completely different version that makes yours not canon, and besides, I generally lack faith in OCs no matter what, even (actually especially) if I create them.

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That, and OC Servants generally display how little the author actually understands the mechanics and lore (usually).

You do you, but my heart breaks a little every time I hear a new face shows up in FGO because it is almost always worse than some incredibly creative thing I saw a fan do. It's the difference between commodities designed to bring in more fanboys thirsty for big anime tiddies and labors of love spun up free of charge.

[Rafflesiac]

On the flip side, at least Bedivere isn't rocking Nine Lives Sandanzuki Blade Works.

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Anyways OCs, like most parts of writing, are good when you're a good writer and bad when you're a bad writer.

Servants being the living plot points that they are make them more suited to OCs than most characters.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Then, no offense but I feel you kind of have a problem with fanfic in general.

Just read canon if you want something that absolutely can't be contradicted by canon. (Well, assuming it doesn't contradict itself, but that's another issue entirely).

This is mostly a TM issue for me, not with other properties as much. In any case, I mostly say this as an avid consumer of fanfic.

[Leftovers]

As time goes on and my compulsion to browse fanfiction archives persists it only drives home what I can only perceive as the stultifying effect of nu-TM on the fandom's willingness to imagine stories in that setting, a phenomenon You described well in their afterword to the first volume of Fate/Mythologie:

“To the next ten years…”

What did those words promise? What did those words actually bring?

Fate/Mythologie came about in an attempt to fill an empty niche. The romance fiction of Kinoko Nasu has exploded almost a decade ago into multiple spin-offs, the most popular of which is Fate/Grand Order. Yet, at least in the English speaking community, fanfiction consists of the same plots with the same ideas and the same characters. That is to say, in the decade so much has happened, yet so little of it has been used. A lot of this is due to the language barrier which is very understandable. But a lot of it has to do with finding satisfaction in the familiar. I hope you found something thrilling into stepping into Tolosa, a world beyond Chaldea, Fuyuki, and medieval Camelot.

Reproduction of the familiar with only token variations has always been the prevalent impetus of fanfiction, to be sure. Chaldea self-insert rehashes are the Grail Wars with OC Servants and Masters of yesteryear. Camelot fics have only expanded their casts from the days of time-travelling Shirou/Saber. Shipping has diminished, but it's still there. What isn't found in TM fanfiction anymore is innovation beyond this narrow scope - fanfiction that aims to feature, if not expand on, more of the Nasuverse than the select portions that TM shovels in the fandom's face, in genres that no light novel spinoff has trodden. That is, chiefly but not solely, because nu-TM validates the worse aspects of fanfiction writing: the lowest common denominator of a premise, the formulaic storytelling, the refuge in an intrinsic appeal of what is familiar and entrenched in fandom consciousness - a character, a setting, a trope - that is reproduced with a veneer of originality that satisfies both the part of the brain that says "I've enjoyed this before" and the one that asks "what makes this different from what I've read before".

Now as it happens, fandom reproduces the material it consumes. A scarce few works which hold the promise of stories yet to be told, the blank spaces and the loose ends hinting at an expansive world, invited people to imagine what new things could exist in these lacunas, and even beyond the end of the text. It suffices to say that modern TM experience is more aggregative towards single narratives, where the unknown has value in its relation to what is already known, and loose ends loop back to the main body of the text - planned all along. Holy Grail Wars, Fuyuki, Chaldea, hubs of all that exists and matters when contextualised within the modularising logic of familiar rules, Servants and Grails and Singularities. It's no surprise that the mode of gratification lying at the core of fanfic writing has shifted accordingly towards the uniform and the familiar.

Which is all to say that, thank god, BL still produces fanfics that write something different, about something different, than what we get on the daily from TM anyway, diminished as the fanfic section is; but there used to be a time when something worth reading occasionally cropped up offsite, which makes the endless wasteland of garbage that is the TM fanfiction scene highly irregular and lamentable. At this point a novelty crossover with some LN garbage is more worth checking out than literally anything under the Fate tag. Write something different, what the hell.

That's right, you thought this was going to be another FGO rant, but it turned out to be a rant about how I haven't read a good offsite TM fanfic that wasn't porn in like three years instead.

[Nobody]

worm crossovers

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that's it

nothing else to say about that, really

[You]

first volume of Fate/Mythologie:.

A little birdie with no relation to me told me that this was err pretty good and people should check this out.

[Leo Novum]

What grinds my gears? When an awesome fanfic is left unfinished. "Maybe I'm a lion" is well written enough for me to consider it a wholly separate beast to be consumed. And it remains in Purgatory. Although I secretly wish dullahan begins writing his/her/their own novels. And if they have then I hope they'll shamelessly promote them here.

[Prix with a Silent X]

I want to read "Maybe I'm a Lion" in a complete state, too, but just gotta remember that fanfic is free labor and that sometimes when people have different life phases they just run out of juice.

[Leftovers]

With how small a portion of its readership followed into the post-MIAL era of boundary-pushing fanfickery, it's probably the aptest case of Smile Because It Happened in TM FF that I can think of.

[Leo Novum]

You can say that again. MIAL was the fanfic that made me sit up and read as thoroughly as I can. Only Gabriel Blessing's crossover with Sekirei has been able to make me do that and that was a different period of my life. It is a fanfic that made me want to write boundary pushing fiction as well.

Oh well, more power to Dulls and here's to hoping that our prayers for a fully realized MIAL will be answered. Here's to us all being lions.

[Prix with a Silent X]

Dullahan being the sage, poet laureate of forums.nrvnqsr.com

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With how small a portion of its readership followed into the post-MIAL era of boundary-pushing fanfickery

What does this mean, Left?

[Prix with a Silent X]

[This post.]

Caught my eye scrolling back up the page, and I wanted to respond to it even though it's been quite some time.

Disclaimer: This is a discussion-prompting or argument-making post and not directed as a Wall of Text laid at Leftovers's feet as if he's somehow personally responsible for it. Just... directed at this post because he seems to be a person who has a fellow vested interest in the artifice and culture of fanfiction.

I would say that I think you're generally right about fanfiction in Type Moon probably does tend toward this lowest common denominator thing, but I think that maybe this is overshooting the reason for that. Often, the reason for that is that fanfiction is not terribly respected as a craft. Visual fanartists can make a career of what they do, if meager and of dubious legality, but the culture around fanfic based on older fandom says that making money on fanfic is something one must take a solemn, ascetic sort of vow never to do. Then the youngers who do not know Fandom History in general at all try to take commissions an AO3, an actual non-profit that could get in trouble for those ko-fi links just BEING there if anyone took note.

The history of fanfic and Fandom As a Culture's fight to make it something that didn't get a cease and desist thrown at some western fan for writing fanfic on a self-hosted website in the 90s has made it so the medium is not really viewed as something one can "make a living" by doing, and if people are to be good at anything, surely they must figure out how to make a living with it. This prompts a lot of fanfic writers and fanfic apologists to value fanfiction only for the proving ground and "practice" that it can be, always with a mind toward eventually making the leap of maturity to writing a "real" book which one can sell and put one's real name on.

This process of evolution can be a seen in a lot of the AU-heavy fandoms out there, where it isn't just E.L. James taking a completed and edited and re-edited fanfic and using their fandom-fans as an initial fan-base for launching the same "AU fic" as its own book with character names discreetly swapped out before self-publishing or something.

Most people doing this are in their upper 20s or beyond, but it doesn't change the fact that this tends to perpetuate a stereotype and correlated reality that one's best fanfic writing years are about 13-24.

Of course the vast majority of fanfic is going to have some really rough edges when most people are writing it as high school students.

Your post actually taught me a word I hadn't heard before: "stultifying".

Defined as: "tending to stifle enthusiasm, initiative, or freedom of action"

This is an excellent word, and I'm glad you gave me cause to learn it. And I would say that Type Moon fandom as a whole may suffer from this but nowhere greater than on this forum. Granted, a lot of the people I would say have a "stultifying" effect have since moved on from looking at the forum or at least commenting on it, but from my personal experience this very forum changed the way I write and the frequency and passion with which I do it. One could say that the ways in which I learned from some good-faith criticism or arguments against silly ideas in discussion threads have improved my overall product when I do come up with anything, but it still feels like it left hot oil-burns here and there on my muse, as it were.

One of my very first posts here was of my first Fate fic with a very silly, long name: The Story of How Waver Velvet Came to Compile Lord Kayneth's Encyclopedia of Arcane Secrets.

Linked here to illustrate that one of my very first posts has 19 further replies (some of them me, granted) on a one-shot that was my first whack at writing something for a then new-to-me fandom.

Again, bearing in mind that:

1) I was a newbie and certain people hadn't formed negative opinions of me

and

2) certain people have since left

the fic I just updated hasn't really gotten any kind of responsive traffic. Which is fine, I'll keep working on it, because I want to tell the story if my brain keeps cooperating with me.

But it doesn't change the fact that I think that this idea that every fic needs to push a boundary or to be about an original cast of characters exploring a brand-new corner of an imaginary Extended Universe or something is itself paralyzing. Not everyone has the ability or the interest to do that.

I disagree with SirGauoftheSquareTable's complaints about OC Servants or Masters outright, but you yourself complained about the formulaic nature of Baby's First Type Moon Fanfic in the context of Shirou/Saber time travel fic or OC Grail War or Brand New Singularity or whatever. I think that fics like those have a place, maybe hypocritically, as a sort of practice and proving ground for very new and/or young authors and that disparaging them too much even these many years in is likely to stifle the creativity of people who could become substantive contributors to the fandom.

While I know that not everyone likes to read fic about canon characters, whether interstitial or canon-divergent or "shipping fics"/smut or whatever, I feel reasonably confident about my ability as a competent writer. But going through the process of feeling as though I had to vet and research every single possible shortcoming and snare before writing anything at all was something that has really slowed down my production across fandoms, of which I have participated in quite a few before and since getting into Type Moon.

And I remember talking to somebody years ago - probably Leo? - about wanting to write fic for KnK when I first took the leap into watching the movies, and his and the prevailing opinion at the time seemed to be that KnK was such a tight and "perfect" narrative that there was little "room" or "need" to write fanfic about it.

I think I've proven by writing at least four complete KnK fics that this isn't true, even if they were just porn-y or character study ventures.

Anyway, I think that while it can be annoying as a more mature reader to slog through all of the fluff that's written by a fourteen year old that it is necessary to have some compassion for where any fanfic writer is coming from. It is, arguably, a much more thankless "job" than being a fanartists who gets validation left and right if they're any good at all (even if the unwanted, piracy kind). Fic writers, on the other hand, face an ever-dwindling pool of people willing to take the time to read their work, let alone leave any sign that they read it if they did. And really, especially for written fic, that's the only "currency" of thanks or benefit there is: feedback that isn't just "oh you made a typo here." And feedback on BL often takes the form, in recent years when I've gotten any, of unsanctioned beta-reading suggesting what you could have done better rather than saying anything encouraging or even neutral.

Type Moon fic writers that dare to post here unless they're absolute newbies have likely been through this crucible of trying to make everything perfectly aligned before they dare to post it. And I think that means that a lot of your great writers like - as seems undisputed - Dullahan in a position where I cannot even imagine the stage fright he would face if he were to seriously pick back up his mantle as undisputed King of Fanfic.

I may be far less-praised, but I'm at least a competent writer, and I know that this attitude of "everything must be boundary-pushing or damn near lore-perfect" has bled into my ability to just churn out fic for whatever CW-tier thing I was into over the past five years. I think it's almost a culture of fretting?

So I think that you see the Fanfic board being basically dead for a number of reasons, including attrition and the fact that new fans' attention spans are likely even more deeply "endless scrolling"-ified than those of use around age 30, but that one could encourage achieving better things through fanfic as a medium if it was just... respected more at all levels?

And, like, there being a community support aspect to it, because in the end it's just stories around campfires, and there's no joy in that if everyone else is asleep.

[Leo Novum]

Your comment about how people who write fanfiction are just green horns of literature, powered by passion, reminds me why I gave up commenting on fanfics: turns out, I am too much of a sour prune to appreciate the starry-eyed wonder of people.

Maybe I should get back to writing fanfic just so that I can feel some empathy for them.