Talk:Fan fiction/Archive 1

message: I have shortened the insane definition of OC. Not only is much of it pointless, but it saying that orginal character is "closely related" to a self-insert/Mary Sue is stupid. Pata Hikari
*Well, someone must have changed it again between you and I's edits, because I STILL had to re-edit it today for rather blatant bias (by the way, the OC is closely-related to a Mary Sue, in that most characters considered Mary Sues are in fact OCs. But I do get your meaning, because I had to edit a bit that sounded really biased and related to Mary Sues). It now reads: "An Original Character (OC) is a character originated by a fan author, as opposed to being a character who comes from the canon source. The label "OC" includes everything from bystanders, to minor characters, to major characters. Almost all characters in original fiction are OCs (save perhaps for historical figures), so the terms Original Character and OC have a completely different contextual meaning depending on whether one is speaking of original or fan fiction." ... which probably could still use a couple of tweaks, but is still less-biased than it was before. I also had to REALLY clean up the Mary Sue and Self-Insert sections, which instead of talking about facts about the concept, mostly just kept sounding defensive and in some places very biased (such as claiming that some people labeled characters that were't Mary Sues a Mary Sue. This is blatant bias; "Mary Sue" is a completely subjective term. I don't care how much consensus there is for a character being or not being a Sue, regardless of the character's characterization you SHOULD NOT state that a character is or is not something that is completely subjective for the reader). I fixed this as best I could while also elaborating on what is generally considered a "Mary Sue" by various groups. There is actually never complete consensus on any one character for the obvious reason that it's subjective, but those labeling a character a Mary Sue often do so for different reasons. And I have seen some people on Fanfiction.net especially who think it just meant the same thing as OC and that people who didn't like "Mary Sues" must just hate OCs or be really weird, which is why that portion was included in my edit. Mary Sue was probably the section most in need of editing and may still need a couple of tweaks here and there for it to be as good as it could be (I'm not sure if the final paragraph should be included in full or at all, or not - I leave that up to the Wikibeast to decide). I gave the following example: "Generally, if the character has a tragic-yet-romantic backstory, steals the heart of the hero who already had a canon paramour he was madly in love with, triumphs over (or redeems) the main villain, is exceptionally beautiful, and has many talents and skills at which she is exceptionally good, and is loved by all of the characters the reader is meant to find sympathetic, chances are extremely good that she'll be considered a Mary Sue." Which is a classic example that most people would agree is a "Mary Sue"... though I did note that it would be CONSIDERED one, most likely, not that it WAS one. Because again, one thing many people forget is that Mary Sue is a REALLY subjective term. One person's Mary Sue is another's "decent but underdeveloped" character. ;)  I also hope that somebody keeps this section, even if they tweak it in later edits: "A common mistake (or misnomer, rather) is that of saying that a Mary Sue "has no flaws"; most characters that are called Mary Sues actually do have flaws. The problem most readers have with such characters is that the flaws seem to them to be either cliche (eating disorders, cutting, depression), badly-researched (see previous), not "real" or sympathetic-seeming (being embarassed because she's so beautiful she can never go anywhere without being stared at, for instance), too minor to balance out the overachieving aspects, or else simply melodramatically handled." Because it's worth noting; many people who write stories that I commonly see labeled "Mary Sue stories" argue that "she isn't flawless! She has flaws!", which leads to many a long arguement over whether or not being depressed counts as "a flaw", or a cheap attempt at drama. It's worth noting WHY people see these "flaws" as being not well-executed enough to redeem the character from their current form being a "Mary Sue". Cutting, eating disorders, and depression were all listed because those are very common trends in fanfiction in general, especially with the kinds of OCs that get labeled "Mary Sues". If you searched any one of them on Fanfiction.net (the largest archive for fanfiction online now), you'd get a huge number of hits, especially if you totaled them up cross-fandom instead of just searching one (though eating disorder might be trickier to search for, what with there being multiple keywords possible, but I bet if you searched for "anorexia" you'd get quite a few, as it's the most popular one. Probably because it simply involves starvation, not binging. Less gross, you see, and easier to romanticize or at least more bearable to write about). I really think the songfic section needs a serious tweak. I do not believe individual authors were sued; I think, if I recall, that they originally just sent cease-and-desist letters to the archives. In fact, it may have been some groups' suing the sites which provide lyrics and also get money from advertizing that prompted sites such as fanfiction.net to preemptively ban songfic. I really hope someone with clearer, more specific knowledge of that subject will go in and clean it up! 4.235.6.19 09:06, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: OC's

message: I removed the legal bits about fan fiction.  That material is already covered in the article about FanFiction.Net and labelling something parody does not make it so.  Fan fiction has no real solid legal precedent, let alone songfic.  Claiming as true that which is unproven and legally dubious is not very credible.  --PurplePopple 22:48, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Songfics 

message: Anyone want to put in some disscusion on the psychology of fanfiction? With sources of course. Why it's done, how it can lead to Mary Sues etc.
*That really would constitute "original research" (albeit interesting OR). I did include a section in the Mary Sue edit about the claim I've seen many put out that every or nearly every writer starts out writing or wanting to write Mary Sues (every writer I've talked to has said they created at least one Sue during their childhood/early interest in writing), but it's merely a claim I've seen quite often, and is stated as such, as opposed to arguing for or against (though you may or may not want to tweak it). It would be interesting to note that mythology and folk tales are considered by some to be the early forms of "fan fiction", but that should be a side note in the History section, at best, IMO. 4.235.6.19 09:20, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Psychology 

message: Can someone explain to me how the Aenid is fanfic?  That makes no sense.  That would be like saying Oedipus is fanfic because it involves the Egyptian Sphinx.  Mythologies sometimes merge and overlap, esp those of two cultures where one assimilated the other (Rome doing so to Greece).  All he was showing was the lineage of the Roman empire. Sorry...but I think that section should be removed, unless someone can explain this theory better, and provide bibliographical text that agrees with it.
Text was (has been removed by 12.25.87.58 who documented it above).
:Some have argued that Virgil's epic poem, The Aeneid, was the first work of fan fiction, based on Homer's Odyssey. In it, a Trojan named Aeneas leads a group of Refugees after the fall of the city to find a new homeland, eventually founding Rome.
I remember reading that paragraph and viewing it more as amusing than historical.  It seems to say that Virgil took characters and settings from Homer's great works (which he did) and added on to them.  If this was done as homage to Homer then I suppose it would, by stretching the definition, count as fanfic, but it is really a stretch.  There are a number of problems with considering it fan fiction.  (The paragraph does sort of explain the concept of fan_fiction, but mainly if you already know what it means). RJFJR 17:38, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)  Hey, 12.25.87.58, have you considered getting a logon so we can refer to you by name instead of just number?
::After hearing your explanation, it could definitely be the first recorded instance of fanfic, in the very loosest sense. He used someone else's characters, and "added on to them", it sounds like fanfic. - "R" 4.235.6.19 09:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wha? 

message: [quote]
It seems to say that Virgil took characters and settings from Homer's great works (which he did) and added on to them. 
[/quote]
Since the Roman empire had a shared mythology with Greece, the heros mentioned in Homer's Iliad were probably also Roman hereos by a similiar name.  Besides, Homer didn't create the characters nor the story of the sacking of Troy.  He just wrote about it in a brilliant way.  That would be like saying the New Testmant is a work of Fanfic from the Torah.
::The Odyssey is fantasy-ified historical fiction (relgion-ified historical fiction?). ;) Considering even today, there is such a thing as RPF (Real Person Fic), which is fiction stories about real people, I think historical fiction that includes fictionalized versions of historical figures can count as a form of fanfiction in the strictest technical sense. 
::The New Testament... I thought that was the sequel, though? ;) - "R" 4.235.6.19 09:39, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not really- 

message: There's plenty of Star Wars, Gundam Wing, etc Role-playing sites out there.  Do you suppose we should mention role playing of copyrighted stuff in fan fiction?  It's sort of the same thing... -Cookiemobsta
*No, it's not really the same thing. It's related, in that it's usually done by fans, and involves creating a new story based on another story or setting... but roleplaying requires more than one person. Fan fiction does not. Additionally, fan fiction is closer to being pure literature; text-format roleplaying is more of a melding of literature and gaming. You might want to mention it in a brief aside, but I wouldn't elaborate too much on it in this article, as it's considered a different subject entirely by most people. Coincidetentally, please, people - sign your stuff with four tildes, so we know who posted what when! - R 63.21.2.196 02:27, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Role Playing 

message: Somebody recently added a bunch of timelines.  There's some interesting information there, but it's a bit repetitive; there are some repeated entries in the timelines, and in addition, the same person has posted some of them as independent pages as well, duplicating the same content.  Some trimming and consolidation would make sense. *Dan* 01:35, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Possibly we could put the major fandoms (Star Wars, Harry Potter...) in their own articles and put the appropriate timelines there. SujinYH 14:17, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Timelines 

message: I'm considering adding another type of fanfic: "conversion" fic, in which a religious OC (usually fairly Sue-ish) goes and converts all the characters (or all of the author's favorite characters) to his or her religious beliefs (usually some kind of literalist Protestantism) in order to save them (and/or the readers) from hell.  I know fics like this exist for Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but they certainly aren't as common as the other categories listed, and I don't know whether or not they exist in other fandoms.  I'd really appreciate others' comments!  -KKM 9:00 PM CST, May 28 '05
Never heard of them.  Haven't seen them really in Star Trek or other communities to have it really defined as its own genre...  --PurplePopple 21:46, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Mary Sues are a much more common phenomenon, but I will say that I HAVE seen quite a few Conversion Fics on Fanfiction.net. No, they're not as common as the massively-popular genres of Slash, Crossover, AU, Pairing, etc. (which by the way, are not as specific or limiting, which is probably part of why they happen more often in comparision), but there are quite a few around, especially on Fanfiction.net. All Christian, from what I've seen, though who knows, there could be one for Islam, Judaism, Wicca or Buddhism somewhere. Perhaps this very brief (for a small phenomenon, of course): "Conversion Fic refers to stories in which one character converts one or more other characters to a religion, usually a form of Christianity." Technically correct, short but sweet, wouldn't take up too much room on the page, and it covers that particular base, as it were. What do you think? I think it's a phenomenon I'm seeing more and more often, and that it's worth a mention, but, not a long one. That would fit the bill, IMO. -"R" 4.235.6.19 09:48, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another type of fanfic: conversion fic? 

message: Does "Real Person Fic" in general, and the rules conerning it at fanfiction.net in particular, include even the casual mention of real world people? Memenen 02:08, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Casual mention, or dropping real people's names in a story, is usually thought of as a cute joke or device (known in science fiction as Tuckerism) as opposed to an all-out story. Are the rules at fanfiction.net now assumed to apply across the board? RPFs, in my view, are things like the Brontë juvenilia (reams of RPF about the Duke of Wellington and his kids) or the stories that have come off of the actual historical events behind the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. --Bluejay Young 12:09, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Fanfiction.net forbids using real people (including oneself) as characters; the use of real people OTHER than oneself in a story counts as RPF. Mentioning JK Rowling does not count; writing a story in which she features as character, however, would. Hope that helps. -"R" 4.235.6.19 09:51, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Real Person Fic 

message: Does anyone else think there should a mentioning of MSTings or at least a link to the MSTing Wikipedia article?--68.228.190.177 04:02, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[MSTing]]s 

message: It really bothers me to see fanfiction.net get so much attention here.  The subject is fanfiction, not fanfiction.net.  All that garbage needs to be in a subject called fanfiction.net, not fanfiction.  Just because it's just one of the sites that hosts fanfiction does not mean it needs to be promoted here like it is. drmike
:I think the FFNet timeline belongs in the Fanfiction.net article, not here.  Its author actually posted it in two different places (neither of them really being the proper one), here and as its own article (which is currently facing vote for deletion, and seems to be headed for being merged with the FFNet article).  As for the other references to FFNet, it does deserve some mention in the general history of fan fiction, but it's debatable exactly how much. *Dan* 22:17, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
:: Anyone who has useful fanfic information that is being excluded from Wikipedia can post it at the Fiction wikicity. Memenen 22:24, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'm sorry but... 

message: "Slash was discussed at a panel at Media West." According to this webpage there was no MediaWest convention in 1980. Does "Media West" = MediaWest? --Memenen 23:10, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does "Media West" = MediaWest? 

message: Is fan fiction canonical when it comes to the original film, novel or whatever original work of fiction? Scorpionman 02:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Fan fiction is fan derived works and as a rule, noncanonical. There are rare exceptions. Kyaa the Catlord 14:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canon