Fan fiction

[Marvelon]

I write games fan fiction. Besides horribly plugging myself (which I'm about to do) I am wondering what the people here at NTSC think about fan fiction in general? Is it just too geeky? Can it add to a game? Have you written some? Discuss.

Oh yeah - self-plug:

http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/crim...r/fiction.html - Phantasy Star Online stuff

http://ffvault.ign.com/?dir=story/rolf - Final Fantasy 11 story (soon to be stories)

[JRMacumber]

I used to do that, though at the time we didn't call it fan fiction. Heck, I don't think we really had a name for it, other than just calling it writing. It was an online club devoted to the Wing Commander series, and all of us had characters on a Confed carrier, the TCS Essex, and we all wrote stories that involved our characters, as well as each other, and also some of the characters from the games (most notably Blair and Eisen). Later we broadened the club to include a Privateer section, and we were going to bring in a Borderworlds group until we dropped the whole Wing Commander thing entirely and just go with our own universe.

I think in total I wrote around 600 - 700 pages worth of stories for them, as well as drawing up pictures of several of the ships we used (I'm pretty proud of them too). It was fun writing in that universe, but we were ready to move on.

[Garibaldi Biscuit]

I firmly believe that fan fiction can add to a game, either exploring aspects of characters which weren't touched upon in the original titles or creating entirely new situations based in the game world.

I wrote a kind of fan fiction for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R website, and was so heartened by the positive responses I got from that that mostly recently I've completed most of a story set after the conclusion of Hitman2.

The great part about fan fiction is you don't have to create a world from scratch, it's all there for you, all you need to do is peel away the layers and you can come up with ( within reason ) pretty much any new storyline.

It does have a pretty big geek label attached to it, but mostly that is because people only know the notoriously bad fan-fiction stories; such as a basement dwelling Star Trek fan describing Dr Crusher and Deanna Troi abruptly discovering a new side to their sexuality.

[tokyochojin]

Still attempting to finish a ff7 fan fiction with a "big Brother" Shinra feel. However my English is terrible as is my paitence!

[Couk]

I'm not bashing anybody here or anything, but I really hate fan-fiction. There is something about it that makes me want to punch someone. If it was the same story but without the characters being from games, I just.... echh. It's worse when someone uses fanfics as an excuse to write a story when they have no real literary skills at all (not necessarily anyone here, but theres some shifty people ot there on geocities... don't hit me). Maybe that's what put me off.

[JRMacumber]

Of course there's ****ty fan fiction. There's ****ty any fiction. It all comes down to how good the writer is and how the use the source material. But really, I can't fault anyone for attempting to use their imagination and write. I wish more people did it, no matter how good at it they are. Far too many people sit passively and let art come to them, never once trying to bring the art themselves. And so, when they actually do try, I applaud them, even if what inspired them is a game, or a movie, or a TV show.

[Garibaldi Biscuit]

Indeed Justin, even someone making messy, flailing attempts to tell a story is preferrable to another who bakes his brain in front of the t.v each and every night, we all have to start somewhere.

I appreciate your viewpoint Couk, after all there is a hell of a lot more bad fan-fiction out there than there is good - and often a blanket bombing of it too due to the accessibility of the Internet. I tend to go for game fiction in which the main character hasn't really been fleshed out at all, but is a potentially very interesting individual - such as Number 47 from the Hitman series. Does he feel any emotion at all? Or does he just seek revenge but he knows it's something he should want to do?

Those who use fan-fiction to drag the character through another level of mindless blasting, the only difference being that this level is written as opposed to played, don't really have much of a defence. Yet, seemingly everyone starts out this way, I know when I first started writing it was just action, action, action and zero characterisation, only after the initial enthusiasm has died down do you realise that's not the way to go - yet we get to see the whole process whether we like it or not, that's the best thing, and..well..worst thing about the Internet.

[PeteJ]

Slightly off topic, but it is interesting that you picked Hitman Gari. From what I've read in gamesTM, Hitman Contracts is told in flashback form so we learn more about Number 47 as a character.

May be interesting to see how your background matches up to IO's background.

Fan Fiction, as a whole, is dreadful. Some of it is pure gold however, and thus it should be supported on a more wider scale. I may give it a go one day, if a character comes along that I like enough.

[Marvelon]

Thanks for your comments all, appreciated.

As for the characterisation, In FFXI the character you play is basically an empty shell. Even though FFXI has a pretty strong storyline (for an MMORPG anyway) it still leaves lots of room for imagination. That's where I come in.

It was even worse in Phantasy Star Online where there was basically no storyline at all.

Couk, I can understand your viewpoint, some fanfiction is pretty dire. But my girlfriends brother, for example, is a really good writer. When he applied his imagination and his pen to Phantasy Star he nearly landed a novel-writing deal with Sega. (bounced at the last hurdle somehwre in Japan) The stories he did end up writing were very good, imho.

[DJ Sack]

I rewrote all of MGS into 30 pages for an english assignment, got me a B in GCSE's even though i hadnt even played the game !

[Crispin]

I've read some good DOAXBV fan fiction. Although, I'm not sure if it can be called fan fiction, more like fan fantasy...

I read some superb Half Life fan fiction recently, interestingly enough it focused on scientists from the Black Mesa's initial exploration into the new alien planet. Rather refreshingly, they weren't all killed and after one or two losses, developed strategies to counter bats, headcrabs and whatnot. It was written in the style of a Xenobiologist's diary, detailing research. Autopsy reports were appended. It really was good, for fan fiction.

Then again, the stuff for SSB:M really is dire, because there is no logical basis for the bloody thing. It is akin to trying to tell a story in Wario Ware, the characters do not gel well together.

So you have to pick the right universe/game. I hear good things about Fall of Reach and the other Halo books.

And RedvsBlue is superb fan fiction. Even if it isn't written, I consider it fan fiction as it tells a (humorous) story using an already created universe. They fall down a bit towards the end (with the introduction of the Black armoured chief (I don't want to give out spoilers), but for the first half of the series it really is superb.

Series 2, (judging from a few minutes of episode 1, which is sooooo the wrong way to review things) doesn't look as good.

I avoid the Pokemon fan fiction like the plague. For starters, the game is about you, really, and secondly the main character is fleshed out (albeit badly) in the animated series. So people writing about Ash don't really understand his motivation. He isn't a hero, he isn't even very good as a trainer, just an average lad really with empathy for Pokemon. We're told his goal is to be the best, but it isn't really. His goal is to haphazardly go about having Pokemon battles, without learning anything save some moral lessons.
And those who don't write about Ash, ugh they write about themselves, turning the whole thing into a subconscious ego trip.

Perhaps I'm hoping for too much from Pokemon Fan fiction. I am probably one of the best Gold players simply because of the age group Pokemon is targeted at, so the fan fiction is oh-so-many Yahoo groups is bound to reflect this.

Actually, I am now tempted to write about some fan fiction. Must resist urge.