Things Fanfic Must Stop Doing - A series of arrogant rants and grumpy mutterings. - Rant #6
Things Fanfic Must Stop Doing - A series of arrogant rants and grumpy mutterings. - Rant #6
Before I start on today's rant, I have this to say:
Fanfiction, stop using ellipses until you learn how to use them properly.
I just thought it bore repeating/slightly-altering/stressing. I stand firm by my stance that fanfiction abuses ellipses and doesn't understand how to use them, and so should stop using them until they figure out how.
Today I present two more things Fanfiction must stop doing.
All Human AU.
Okay, so in this story Harry's living in New York and he's a jazz pianist, and Hermione's his waitress girlfriend who's studying to become a doctor. Draco's Harry's band leader and he's addicted to heroine, and Ron is a gay prostitute who's in love with him.
Just stop it.
You're not writing fanfiction. You're writing an original story with the faces of actors on your characters heads in your imagination.
Go write the original story you have and just pretend that the characters look like Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Marsters. All Human AU or any other AU in which every character is in a completely different set of circumstances in a completely different world is a waste of time - as fanfiction. As an original story I'm all for it, and there are communities for amateur fiction on the web that would happily give you feedback for such a story.
If it makes you happy you can even write the story using all those names and then just do a Find>Replace with original names afterwards. I guarantee no one will notice you were basing the characters off of whatever fandom you were writing it.
The only time this is acceptable is when you're writing an all-human AU as the mysterious prologue to a story. Our heroes have no powers and they don't know who they are: what sinister force could have accomplished this? DUN DUN DUN!
That's fine. Anything else is not fanfiction, and I don't care how many rave reviews you got, it's stupid as hell and you need to suck up the courage to just post that as an original story.
Crossover for the hell of it.
Xander vs Dracula, anyone? Yes I've got my own dark crossover mark, but I still never came close to the psychosis that exists out there. Obscure anime crossovers in particular make me sick to my stomach, mostly for the reasons I will now outline.
Let's say you're going to write a crossover and you're going to fill it with every obscure universe that pops into your head: YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN THOSE UNIVERSES. I DON'T WATCH EVERY GODDAMN TV SHOW UNDER THE SUN AND I HAVE NOT SEEN EVERY MOVIE IN THE WORLD A THOUSAND TIMES TO THE POINT WHERE I REMEMBER SOME OBSCURE CHARACTER'S NAME AND CAN RECOGNIZE IT AT ONCE.
Whatever your "base" fandom is for that story, you can assume you have a gimme when it comes to explaining that, but for everything else you need to give at least a modicum of explanation.
When you write a crossover you need to be explaining the basics of the crossed-over universe to people who've never read it. You have a gimme with the main universe, but the other one needs explanation. When your Super-Animefied-Xander uses the BlahBlahBlah technique on the bad guy, I have no clue what the hell that is. You have to explain it to me and you actually have to show me who these other characters are.
"But M. McGregor," you say, flailing your arms wildly in muppet-like fashion. "The reason I'm reading this crossover is because I already know the world it's crossed over with!"
Two points: First, if it's a mega-crossover, no you don't, because I cannot imagine that the majority of readers have ever read, watched, played, or otherwise experienced the exact same combination of things that the author does in their crossorgy. The implication in any story with more than three crossovers to it must be that the readers will likely not have read every bit of source material, and even when they have they might not remember it.
Second: When it's an obscure anime crossover from a show that only exists in Japan that eleven people have seen, then yes, you have to explain it. Otherwise you're just being an asshole.
There are people who'll disagree with that. The biggest crutch of all in fanfiction is that 99% of the time you don't have to develop a character for the reader. It's already there for you to take. When you're doing a crossover though, that no longer counts. I don't know who this new character is or why the hell they have a talking miniature rhinoceros that floats beside them and seems to love cheese, and I sure as hell don't get the references you keep making to it.
Crossovers are an easy way to get people squealing with delight. You don't tend to have to do much of anything. Just have character X from show Y appear, and readers are dancing around in excitement, apparently. Just remember that if you're trying to write an actual story then you need to explain these people at some point.
Especially if you're going to insist on crossing over with awful shows from the WB's action pack hour or whatever the hell that was. If you have Cleopatra 2525 show up in my Buffy fic, then you've got some 'splainin' to do.
Before I start on today's rant, I have this to say:
Fanfiction, stop using ellipses until you learn how to use them properly.
I just thought it bore repeating/slightly-altering/stressing. I stand firm by my stance that fanfiction abuses ellipses and doesn't understand how to use them, and so should stop using them until they figure out how.
Today I present two more things Fanfiction must stop doing.
All Human AU.
Okay, so in this story Harry's living in New York and he's a jazz pianist, and Hermione's his waitress girlfriend who's studying to become a doctor. Draco's Harry's band leader and he's addicted to heroine, and Ron is a gay prostitute who's in love with him.
Just stop it.
You're not writing fanfiction. You're writing an original story with the faces of actors on your characters heads in your imagination.
Go write the original story you have and just pretend that the characters look like Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Marsters. All Human AU or any other AU in which every character is in a completely different set of circumstances in a completely different world is a waste of time - as fanfiction. As an original story I'm all for it, and there are communities for amateur fiction on the web that would happily give you feedback for such a story.
If it makes you happy you can even write the story using all those names and then just do a Find>Replace with original names afterwards. I guarantee no one will notice you were basing the characters off of whatever fandom you were writing it.
The only time this is acceptable is when you're writing an all-human AU as the mysterious prologue to a story. Our heroes have no powers and they don't know who they are: what sinister force could have accomplished this? DUN DUN DUN!
That's fine. Anything else is not fanfiction, and I don't care how many rave reviews you got, it's stupid as hell and you need to suck up the courage to just post that as an original story.
Crossover for the hell of it.
Xander vs Dracula, anyone? Yes I've got my own dark crossover mark, but I still never came close to the psychosis that exists out there. Obscure anime crossovers in particular make me sick to my stomach, mostly for the reasons I will now outline.
Let's say you're going to write a crossover and you're going to fill it with every obscure universe that pops into your head: YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN THOSE UNIVERSES. I DON'T WATCH EVERY GODDAMN TV SHOW UNDER THE SUN AND I HAVE NOT SEEN EVERY MOVIE IN THE WORLD A THOUSAND TIMES TO THE POINT WHERE I REMEMBER SOME OBSCURE CHARACTER'S NAME AND CAN RECOGNIZE IT AT ONCE.
Whatever your "base" fandom is for that story, you can assume you have a gimme when it comes to explaining that, but for everything else you need to give at least a modicum of explanation.
When you write a crossover you need to be explaining the basics of the crossed-over universe to people who've never read it. You have a gimme with the main universe, but the other one needs explanation. When your Super-Animefied-Xander uses the BlahBlahBlah technique on the bad guy, I have no clue what the hell that is. You have to explain it to me and you actually have to show me who these other characters are.
"But M. McGregor," you say, flailing your arms wildly in muppet-like fashion. "The reason I'm reading this crossover is because I already know the world it's crossed over with!"
Two points: First, if it's a mega-crossover, no you don't, because I cannot imagine that the majority of readers have ever read, watched, played, or otherwise experienced the exact same combination of things that the author does in their crossorgy. The implication in any story with more than three crossovers to it must be that the readers will likely not have read every bit of source material, and even when they have they might not remember it.
Second: When it's an obscure anime crossover from a show that only exists in Japan that eleven people have seen, then yes, you have to explain it. Otherwise you're just being an asshole.
There are people who'll disagree with that. The biggest crutch of all in fanfiction is that 99% of the time you don't have to develop a character for the reader. It's already there for you to take. When you're doing a crossover though, that no longer counts. I don't know who this new character is or why the hell they have a talking miniature rhinoceros that floats beside them and seems to love cheese, and I sure as hell don't get the references you keep making to it.
Crossovers are an easy way to get people squealing with delight. You don't tend to have to do much of anything. Just have character X from show Y appear, and readers are dancing around in excitement, apparently. Just remember that if you're trying to write an actual story then you need to explain these people at some point.
Especially if you're going to insist on crossing over with awful shows from the WB's action pack hour or whatever the hell that was. If you have Cleopatra 2525 show up in my Buffy fic, then you've got some 'splainin' to do.