Fanfic Follies, or Watch Alanna Whap Me For Nicking Her Title

by TSG

A/N: The views contained herein are solely the views of Alan Knight, also known as TSG, and are not affiliated with the RPGamer fanfiction section in the slightest. Whatever I may say, no disrespect is intended toward fanfiction.net either: despite the large amount of bad fic there, there are some absolute gems. I've worked with fanfiction for over two years now, so I like to think I know my stuff. I don't know whether I actually do or not - so a great big "In My Opinion" hangs over this document. You have been warned. This might be a little long. Live with it.

There have been quite a few problems with fanfic lately as opposed to older times - I certainly don't wish to drag this down into yet another schools discussion, but it is kinda true. The main problem here is probably that RPGs are becoming more and more mainstream. While this is in and of itself a good thing, it does mean that the cross-section of the populace that plays the games has changed.

Previously, the people who would play RPGs would generally be the type who were either a) very much into the games in question, and would thus pay more attention to plot or characterization, or b) the 'writer' type: a long, story based game would appeal to story-enjoying people who were more likely to have an affinity for writing. Thus, we got works generally of a high quality. Nowadays, though, it's rather different. The FF7 effect (I'll come back to this), combined with the effects of a number of sites online (likewise), have led to a bout of writing fanfiction being 'cool', and thus lots of rushed, half-cocked, or just plain bad fanfiction being written.

The FF7 effect is simple: every man, woman, child and dog (possibly cats, too, but they're omniscient anyway) knows about FF7. Your grandmother probably knows about it. C'mon, your grandmother can probably kick your ass on it at Snowboarding. A quick statistic for you: before I came to RPGamer, I worked at another site, now defunct. I managed fanfiction there, too. Out of about 600 stories on the site, fully 500 were FF7 fanfiction. All but about 15 of the rest were other Final Fantasy games, the biggest offender being FF8.

I'm hoping the problem here is obvious, but I'll explain anyway: with that many fics, the amount of bad fics is greatly increased (thus they're far more apparent), it gets harder to sift through the bad fics for the good, and it's extremely difficult to get any sense of originality - everything's been done before in some form or another. In addition, the chances of the writer being one of the two 'categories' cited above gets substantially lower.

Secondly, the proliferation of large-scale sites that put up any fanfiction means that there's very few standards to speak of - people put up their work, which may be terrible; and people reading it, some of whom are new to the fanfic thing and are still thinking it's all cool, compliment it. They like it because it's 'cool', not because of the merit of the writing or how accurate the characterization is. On fanfiction.net (drum-roll please, my scapegoat for the night!) it is entirely possible to find fanfiction that is less than 1k long, possessing no punctuation or capital letters, which has received good reviews because, as stated, fanfiction is 'cool'. In addition, there's a startling amount of fanfiction by people who cheerfully inform you they've never actually played the game, which has always seemed vaguely wrong to me - without seeing the characterization first hand, how can you write it well?

That said, however, there are good points. For one, the FF7 effect is good - RPGs are becoming mainstream, always a plus. Secondly, if you /like/ an affected game, you'll always have fanfic to read in it - fanfiction.net cites about 2,500 FF7 and FF8 fics, 650 FF9 fics - an amazing amount given how recently it came out - 400 other assorted FF fics, 2000 Zelda fics, and a total of 300 Chrono series fics. There's a /lot/ of fanfiction out there for the right game, and while the majority /may/ be bad, there will be plenty of good fics there.

A little side discussion on this effect: many people out there have beef with RPGamer's policy of looking over and either accepting or rejecting fanfiction. At one point, so did I: when I worked on the site mentioned earlier, I did once have a long discussion with Amber Michelle and Alanna on this subject. Somehow, though I entered with several thought-out arguments, we finished early and ended up chatting aimlessly for a couple hours. The site I worked at back then accepted any and all fics, no matter how bad, and I was getting so severely disheartened with the amount of bad FF7 fanfiction coming in that I ended up 'losing' more than one piece. When I came to work at RPGamer, being able to accept or reject fics was an utter breath of fresh air. Trust me, folks, there are reasons for the system being there.

Correspondingly, the sites have a good effect too. Many people out there are writers who've played an RPG but have never thought about writing a fic for it, or people who've never thought themselves writers but have been bitten by the bug after playing a game and have then turned out an incredible piece of literature. In addition, it's helping to increase awareness of fanfiction and hopefully spread the good fanfiction - under the correct name, of course. Otherwise fanfic maintainers get awfully upset.

Generally speaking, the fanfic scene isn't really in that bad a shape. While the major games do have an incredibly large slew of bad fanfiction for them, writing fanfiction for the lesser known games can both be original and very good. In addition, there have been many new and good fics recently - a goodly number on the more common games. I certainly don't mean to imply that all fanfiction is becoming bad - far from it. Some of the fics we've rejected have also been extremely good in certain people's opinions, but not overall - there's always a case of opinion here, and that's the final problem. Overall, fanfiction is whatever you want to make of it - harmless diversion or elaborate, worthy pastime. Many people nowadays see it as the first, but there are still many that consider it the second. Don't give up hope, and keep writing fanfiction: you might come up with an absolute winner.

Original Editorial: Fanfics and the General Census