Yaoi Fan Fiction And Artful Evolution

[Heart of the Fallen Angel]

Pandora Box

Quote:

Psychologically, I can understand why a heterosexual person would like to see two members of the opposite sex in sexual situations at once, but why must they be torn out of their original characters?

I'm a lesbian who reads male/male (as well as female/female and male/female). I know this isn't a major aspect of your argument but I just wanted to point that out. wink

A woman after my own heart. Actually, Myself, and several of my friends (many of whom are also lesbian like myself) Enjoy reading a good Yaoi manga, Doujin, or fanfic. Keep in mind, I said good.

That said, fanfiction is generally not well-recieved outside a few people who feel that the fanfiction (often the slash pairings and whatnot) is how it should have been. As for Pandora's comment on fanfiction.net, it's not necesarily true. You can find plenty of good stories on FF.net, but you have to wade through endless amounts of drivel, crap, and poor grammar to find them.

Most GOOD fanfiction, is actually one of three categories.

1: a retelling of the story with either a minor change that can completely alter the plot, or a major change that makes the story completely different. In most cases of a good retelling, the change in character or events has to happen to the Primary, or secondary character in the story, or else, it really doesn't matter. For example, I have 2 retelling fanfics that I'm working on for the series Ranma½.

In Scenario A, only a minor change has occured. Ranma, the epitomy of manliness cherishes a Victorian style dolly that he was given before his training mission to China. The result, he grew up more sensitive, and wanted little to do with martial arts until he was the target of much bullying in Middle school. At that point, he focused more effort on his training then he had in the canon.

In Scenario B, a major event took place prior to the events of the series, Ranma, after being cursed, killed his own father after falling into a spring that split his personality among his male and female halfs. Part of the curse is that each form is a different person. Now, in this case, Ranma prefers to remain female and is completely terrified of her male side.

In each case, the storyline has changed completely, and it borders on origional work while maintaining canon characters who are now reacting to a different person who's not quite the same main character.

2: A continuation of the story. Many good fanfics take events after the fact, and continue a story that had run it's course and either had no real conclusion, or had a few loose ends. A good scenario in this case would be Cowboy Bebop, where we know that Spike died at the end, but whatever happened to Ed, Jet, or Faye? There's nothing about them after the events that ended the series. A good writer can develop the plot and show you thier interpretation of what happened next

3: Developing minor characters. We all know of and love the minor characters, the ones of the supporting cast, but who is that person really. In many stories, the minor cast appears dry, cliche, and one or two dimensional. This is one of my favorite types of fanfiction, as it gives a writer's interpretation on the insights into the minor character's mind. For example, in Naruto you have a huge cast of characters, many fairly well developed, and more then a few who are simply filler. For example, take TenTen. The only thing we know about her is that she's on Gai's team, she seems close to Neji, she's a weapons expert, but what of her past, her history, her feelings? The only information we have about her aside from her affiliation and fighting style is that she looks up to Tsunade. She's almost the epitome of the two dimensional character in need of developement. A good fic surrounding her might develop her character more.


Anyways, I've lost how I was gonna wrap my post up, but fanfiction can be a good thing, you just have to wade through a bunch of crap to find the gems.

[Pandora Box]

Macai

I'm aware that fan fiction isn't intrinsically bad, but it has so much potential to be bad. Way more potential, say, than writing your own novel.

I don't think so. It really depends on the writer. A 13-year-old writing a "novel" has just as much of a chance to make it awful as s/he would if s/he was writing fanfiction.

Quote:

I'm also saying that these things exist outside of fan fiction, but are incredibly common, and recurring themes of fan fiction, and if you'd like me to substantiate this with examples, I can.

I could counter with examples of long-running, complex, creative, interesting, etc. fanfiction, so I don't really see the point to presenting examples.

Heart of the Fallen Angel

A woman after my own heart. Actually, Myself, and several of my friends (many of whom are also lesbian like myself) Enjoy reading a good Yaoi manga, Doujin, or fanfic. Keep in mind, I said good.

"Good" is definitely key. And I actually don't think it's that hard to find very good slash fanfiction -- or fanfiction in general -- if you know where to look. 3nodding

Quote:

As for Pandora's comment on fanfiction.net, it's not necesarily true. You can find plenty of good stories on FF.net, but you have to wade through endless amounts of drivel, crap, and poor grammar to find them.

True; I have found good stuff on Fanfiction.net. It's like a needle in a haystack these days, though.

Quote:

3: Developing minor characters. We all know of and love the minor characters, the ones of the supporting cast, but who is that person really. In many stories, the minor cast appears dry, cliche, and one or two dimensional. This is one of my favorite types of fanfiction, as it gives a writer's interpretation on the insights into the minor character's mind.

This is a very good point that I can't believe I forgot I left out. Most books/movies/etc have at least a few minor characters, and some long-running series have so many to choose from -- all characters that were never developed beyond a few characteristics, appearances, and lines. Fanfiction that deals with minor characters -- even if it's completely generic, or more of a character study -- are some of my favorites.

[KaijutheGreat]

It's because all fan fiction writers, by definition, are sad, broken people with nothing interesting to say. Yaoi fan fiction writers are simply sad, broken, LONELY people with nothing interesting to say- the lonely makes them fantasize about cartoon men instead of finding real ones, and the sad/ broken/ uninteresting turns it into the steaming pile of dog turds you see before you. Now, you can take it a few steps further:

Why gay men, instead of hetero relationships? Well, because the author's sexual insecurities lead her to feel threatened by m/f intimacy, so she turns to two men in order to head off any lingering anxiety and self-doubt caused by viewing another female achieving intimacy with a male. Or because the author is a gay dude and he likes his men to be cissies.

Why cissies? Because the sort of women who write these things harbor latent bisexual urges. They like their men to be soft, effeminite, nonthreatening, rather than big, brutal, and hairy. In short, they wish their men were women. Or because the author is a gay dude and he's scared a powerful gay figure might threaten his gender role and/or turn straight and beat him up.

...and so on and so forth. But do we really need to go into all of that? No. The short answer: because they're fan fiction writers, why else?

Simple as that. Subject closed.

[BadLuckNovelist]

Heart of the Fallen Angel

That said, fanfiction is generally not well-recieved outside a few people who feel that the fanfiction (often the slash pairings and whatnot) is how it should have been. As for Pandora's comment on fanfiction.net, it's not necesarily true. You can find plenty of good stories on FF.net, but you have to wade through endless amounts of drivel, crap, and poor grammar to find them.

It is well received in general. I even remember being on this one writing forum, and one of the girls made her utter hatred of fanfiction known, and how she would OMGSUETHEMALL if they dared touch her novel. neutral I just laughed at her.

I don't know, regardless of how bad a lot of fanfiction can be, I don't think fan fiction in and of itself deserves the bad rep. The current writers should, maybe, but not the idea of fan fiction. A story cannot create itself with the writer.

I agree about FFN. I'm a member that, and I tend to stick to only certain writers, ones I know that churn out good stories. Then again, no matter what site you go on you'll find s**t, so blasting on FFN for having s**t...yeah, no. Now if you want to talk about the attitude of people there, then we'll talk.

[Macai]

BadLuckNovelist

Quote:

The fable model of storytelling begins by providing a message, idea or thought, which is to be substantiated throughout or at the end of the story. Examples might include, "Paranoia is a synonym for longevity," "Compromise leads to self loathing," and "The hero is always seen as the villain."

I'm surprised I've never actually heard of the fable model...

Quote:

The metaphor model of storytelling is a little more difficult. You take another piece of literature (or something of the sort), and break it down into key plot events. Then, you write a story that parallels those key plot events, and make clear and tastefully placed references to the original work, either by quoting it at the beginning of chapters or finding clues about it in the book, or whatever.

This one interests me. I think I might try my hand at using it, see where it goes.

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Finally, I am heavy into the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror.

Ah, another one. smile I'm also into those, though I'm less into horror and sci-fi, and more into fantasy.

Forgive me for not quoting your entire post, but I only copied the parts of your post that I'm really replying to: the pertinent parts.

Alright, I agree that I like those two models of storytelling, and I'm going to give you an example of each. Unfortunately, however, they're both horror works, and both are quite morbid.

I'm going to present to you the fable novella "The Hellbound Heart." It is all about the underlying theme of humanity being intrinsically evil, and substantiates it with the literal selling of one's soul to "come back." It also makes a point of saying that the demons (the Cenobites) who play an important role in the novella are not in all actuality evil, and in fact are more like twisted bringers of justice. You can find it on Amazon here.

The metaphor example I'd like to present to you is Baltimore, or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire. I'm not going to get too into the plot of Baltimore, but the entire novel is a huge metaphor to another work, the Steadfast Tin Soldier. It can also be found on Amazon here.

(some other people responded, so to prevent myself from double-posting, I will be editing this post to get a response in for them as well)

[Heart of the Fallen Angel]

KaijutheGreat

It's because all fan fiction writers, by definition, are sad, broken people with nothing interesting to say. Yaoi fan fiction writers are simply sad, broken, LONELY people with nothing interesting to say- the lonely makes them fantasize about cartoon men instead of finding real ones, and the sad/ broken/ uninteresting turns it into the steaming pile of dog turds you see before you. Now, you can take it a few steps further:

Why gay men, instead of hetero relationships? Well, because the author's sexual insecurities lead her to feel threatened by m/f intimacy, so she turns to two men in order to head off any lingering anxiety and self-doubt caused by viewing another female achieving intimacy with a male. Or because the author is a gay dude and he likes his men to be cissies.

Why cissies? Because the sort of women who write these things harbor latent bisexual urges. They like their men to be soft, effeminite, nonthreatening, rather than big, brutal, and hairy. In short, they wish their men were women. Or because the author is a gay dude and he's scared a powerful gay figure might threaten his gender role and/or turn straight and beat him up.

...and so on and so forth. But do we really need to go into all of that? No. The short answer: because they're fan fiction writers, why else?

Simple as that. Subject closed.

Wow, the over-generalization of your post completely destroys any point you may have had, which, as I can see, was none to begin with.

[KaijutheGreat]

Heart of the Fallen Angel

KaijutheGreat

It's because all fan fiction writers, by definition, are sad, broken people with nothing interesting to say. Yaoi fan fiction writers are simply sad, broken, LONELY people with nothing interesting to say- the lonely makes them fantasize about cartoon men instead of finding real ones, and the sad/ broken/ uninteresting turns it into the steaming pile of dog turds you see before you. Now, you can take it a few steps further:

Why gay men, instead of hetero relationships? Well, because the author's sexual insecurities lead her to feel threatened by m/f intimacy, so she turns to two men in order to head off any lingering anxiety and self-doubt caused by viewing another female achieving intimacy with a male. Or because the author is a gay dude and he likes his men to be cissies.

Why cissies? Because the sort of women who write these things harbor latent bisexual urges. They like their men to be soft, effeminite, nonthreatening, rather than big, brutal, and hairy. In short, they wish their men were women. Or because the author is a gay dude and he's scared a powerful gay figure might threaten his gender role and/or turn straight and beat him up.

...and so on and so forth. But do we really need to go into all of that? No. The short answer: because they're fan fiction writers, why else?

Simple as that. Subject closed.

Wow, the over-generalization of your post completely destroys any point you may have had, which, as I can see, was none to begin with.

There wasn't a single "over-generalization" in it, so unless you're willing to expound upon your crass one-liner, any point you might have had is moot.

Next.

[Heart of the Fallen Angel]

KaijutheGreat

Heart of the Fallen Angel

KaijutheGreat

It's because all fan fiction writers, by definition, are sad, broken people with nothing interesting to say. Yaoi fan fiction writers are simply sad, broken, LONELY people with nothing interesting to say- the lonely makes them fantasize about cartoon men instead of finding real ones, and the sad/ broken/ uninteresting turns it into the steaming pile of dog turds you see before you. Now, you can take it a few steps further:

Why gay men, instead of hetero relationships? Well, because the author's sexual insecurities lead her to feel threatened by m/f intimacy, so she turns to two men in order to head off any lingering anxiety and self-doubt caused by viewing another female achieving intimacy with a male. Or because the author is a gay dude and he likes his men to be cissies.

Why cissies? Because the sort of women who write these things harbor latent bisexual urges. They like their men to be soft, effeminite, nonthreatening, rather than big, brutal, and hairy. In short, they wish their men were women. Or because the author is a gay dude and he's scared a powerful gay figure might threaten his gender role and/or turn straight and beat him up.

...and so on and so forth. But do we really need to go into all of that? No. The short answer: because they're fan fiction writers, why else?

Simple as that. Subject closed.

Wow, the over-generalization of your post completely destroys any point you may have had, which, as I can see, was none to begin with.

There wasn't a single "over-generalization" in it, so unless you're willing to expound upon your crass one-liner, any point you might have had is moot.

Next.

It's simply due to your use of the word all, Let me completely disprove your entire point now.

I am a fanfic writer. I am neither broken, nor sad, and the fact that I work on-air for a radio show (though I can't exactly prove that online, so take it as you will on that one) says that I do indeed have something interesting to say. Need I expand any further, because as I see it, I've already countered your point.

[Macai]

Heart of the Fallen Angel

Pandora Box

Quote:

Psychologically, I can understand why a heterosexual person would like to see two members of the opposite sex in sexual situations at once, but why must they be torn out of their original characters?

I'm a lesbian who reads male/male (as well as female/female and male/female). I know this isn't a major aspect of your argument but I just wanted to point that out. wink

A woman after my own heart. Actually, Myself, and several of my friends (many of whom are also lesbian like myself) Enjoy reading a good Yaoi manga, Doujin, or fanfic. Keep in mind, I said good.

That said, fanfiction is generally not well-recieved outside a few people who feel that the fanfiction (often the slash pairings and whatnot) is how it should have been. As for Pandora's comment on fanfiction.net, it's not necesarily true. You can find plenty of good stories on FF.net, but you have to wade through endless amounts of drivel, crap, and poor grammar to find them.

Most GOOD fanfiction, is actually one of three categories.

1: a retelling of the story with either a minor change that can completely alter the plot, or a major change that makes the story completely different. In most cases of a good retelling, the change in character or events has to happen to the Primary, or secondary character in the story, or else, it really doesn't matter. For example, I have 2 retelling fanfics that I'm working on for the series Ranma½.

In Scenario A, only a minor change has occured. Ranma, the epitomy of manliness cherishes a Victorian style dolly that he was given before his training mission to China. The result, he grew up more sensitive, and wanted little to do with martial arts until he was the target of much bullying in Middle school. At that point, he focused more effort on his training then he had in the canon.

In Scenario B, a major event took place prior to the events of the series, Ranma, after being cursed, killed his own father after falling into a spring that split his personality among his male and female halfs. Part of the curse is that each form is a different person. Now, in this case, Ranma prefers to remain female and is completely terrified of her male side.

In each case, the storyline has changed completely, and it borders on origional work while maintaining canon characters who are now reacting to a different person who's not quite the same main character.

2: A continuation of the story. Many good fanfics take events after the fact, and continue a story that had run it's course and either had no real conclusion, or had a few loose ends. A good scenario in this case would be Cowboy Bebop, where we know that Spike died at the end, but whatever happened to Ed, Jet, or Faye? There's nothing about them after the events that ended the series. A good writer can develop the plot and show you thier interpretation of what happened next

3: Developing minor characters. We all know of and love the minor characters, the ones of the supporting cast, but who is that person really. In many stories, the minor cast appears dry, cliche, and one or two dimensional. This is one of my favorite types of fanfiction, as it gives a writer's interpretation on the insights into the minor character's mind. For example, in Naruto you have a huge cast of characters, many fairly well developed, and more then a few who are simply filler. For example, take TenTen. The only thing we know about her is that she's on Gai's team, she seems close to Neji, she's a weapons expert, but what of her past, her history, her feelings? The only information we have about her aside from her affiliation and fighting style is that she looks up to Tsunade. She's almost the epitome of the two dimensional character in need of developement. A good fic surrounding her might develop her character more.


Anyways, I've lost how I was gonna wrap my post up, but fanfiction can be a good thing, you just have to wade through a bunch of crap to find the gems.

I don't find any of those three "good," though, as the creativity involved in them is essentially nil. "Lets make the masculine character effeminate by a conveniently placed plot mechanic." "Even though we've found conclusion in our story, lets go and meander on about it more into oblivion." And lets not forget your final idea. "Lets make an unimportant twit important on some level for the sake of it."

The storytelling involved in all three of those things is third grade.

[Kemeoth_Othyre]

I do not believe that one can be 100% canon while removing the stagnation of canon.

[Macai]

Othyre

I do not believe that one can be 100% canon while removing the stagnation of canon.

Why can't you just write your own novel, series, or short story?

[Kemeoth_Othyre]

Macai

Othyre

I do not believe that one can be 100% canon while removing the stagnation of canon.

Why can't you just write your own novel, series, or short story?

I do (notice how anti-fan fiction people always assume people that write fan fiction do not write their own--laughable). All my characters are happily based on themselves in universes based on their own universes.

But to explore what another author only hinted at or rationalize what concepts they never fully illustrated is a mental exercise just the same as doing that to original stories, but I stress, one is work and the other is fun.

[Kemeoth_Othyre]

Heart of the Fallen Angel

3: Developing minor characters. We all know of and love the minor characters, the ones of the supporting cast, but who is that person really. In many stories, the minor cast appears dry, cliche, and one or two dimensional. This is one of my favorite types of fanfiction, as it gives a writer's interpretation on the insights into the minor character's mind. For example, in Naruto you have a huge cast of characters, many fairly well developed, and more then a few who are simply filler. For example, take TenTen. The only thing we know about her is that she's on Gai's team, she seems close to Neji, she's a weapons expert, but what of her past, her history, her feelings? The only information we have about her aside from her affiliation and fighting style is that she looks up to Tsunade. She's almost the epitome of the two dimensional character in need of developement. A good fic surrounding her might develop her character more.

Ah yes, Tenten. I am ashamed to hear that Kishimoto loves her as a favourite character, but he never really defined her. It is pathetic!

And to add point three, characters that were once part of the main cast, but by the near-end of the series became minor characters! emo It is usually the character that the majority audience cares little of and thus would not mind seeing him or her pushed aside.

[Macai]

Othyre

Heart of the Fallen Angel

3: Developing minor characters. We all know of and love the minor characters, the ones of the supporting cast, but who is that person really. In many stories, the minor cast appears dry, cliche, and one or two dimensional. This is one of my favorite types of fanfiction, as it gives a writer's interpretation on the insights into the minor character's mind. For example, in Naruto you have a huge cast of characters, many fairly well developed, and more then a few who are simply filler. For example, take TenTen. The only thing we know about her is that she's on Gai's team, she seems close to Neji, she's a weapons expert, but what of her past, her history, her feelings? The only information we have about her aside from her affiliation and fighting style is that she looks up to Tsunade. She's almost the epitome of the two dimensional character in need of developement. A good fic surrounding her might develop her character more.

Ah yes, Tenten. I am ashamed to hear that Kishimoto loves her as a favourite character, but he never really defined her. It is pathetic!

And to add point three, characters that were once part of the main cast, but by the near-end of the series became minor characters! emo It is usually the character that the majority audience cares little of and thus would not mind seeing him or her pushed aside.

So if you're writing bad fanfics just for fun, why do you feel the need to publish them on the Internet?

[Kemeoth_Othyre]

Macai

Othyre

Heart of the Fallen Angel

3: Developing minor characters. We all know of and love the minor characters, the ones of the supporting cast, but who is that person really. In many stories, the minor cast appears dry, cliche, and one or two dimensional. This is one of my favorite types of fanfiction, as it gives a writer's interpretation on the insights into the minor character's mind. For example, in Naruto you have a huge cast of characters, many fairly well developed, and more then a few who are simply filler. For example, take TenTen. The only thing we know about her is that she's on Gai's team, she seems close to Neji, she's a weapons expert, but what of her past, her history, her feelings? The only information we have about her aside from her affiliation and fighting style is that she looks up to Tsunade. She's almost the epitome of the two dimensional character in need of developement. A good fic surrounding her might develop her character more.

Ah yes, Tenten. I am ashamed to hear that Kishimoto loves her as a favourite character, but he never really defined her. It is pathetic!

And to add point three, characters that were once part of the main cast, but by the near-end of the series became minor characters! emo It is usually the character that the majority audience cares little of and thus would not mind seeing him or her pushed aside.

So if you're writing bad fanfics just for fun, why do you feel the need to publish them on the Internet?

I think that your definition of bad is anything that is a fan fiction; therefore, there is no room for discussion.