Fork Eye Fanfiction Stabbing

WARNING, folks. This self-help advice rant thing is blunt. Really blunt. As in, blunt enough to be hurtful. If you get offended, don’t come crying to me. If you want to argue, fine. But don’t expect this to be subtle. Because I am just not in a subtle mood as I write this. So sit down and shut up and listen.

I begin:

Oh Light, kill it. Kill it now. OUCH! WINCE! Oh, man eek, ugh, blah…

I actually make these sounds sometimes. No, I’m not being held in a government facility, being pumped for information. No, I’m not having my tonsils torn out by electric wires.

I am browsing Fanfiction, usually on Fanfiction dot net.

Argh.

I know that certain things are just a phase, and kids can’t help sounding certain ways, but come on.

Stop, seriously.

I know I have no right to tell you how to write or what to think, and you’re free to protest. But don’t you want to know why people may flame your work? Don’t you want to know why you aren’t getting hits?

It’s not because people don’t recognize your genius. I hate to call you stupid, because you’re not. But you’re probably not a genius, not to start off. I can promise you that if you write a fanfiction that you get more than eight flames on, you probably have not written a absolutely genius piece of work. It’s all right. Everybody does it sometimes.

There are always exceptions. Maybe you ship a pairing that people don’t like, even if it’s not crack. Go ahead, write your pairing, I can’t say you’re wrong. But look at it from a different perspective: is there ANYBODY out there who would think that this is squicky? And would it, based on their experience with life, make sense? I’m talking to you, o-shippers-of-the-middle-aged-with-teenagers. You may like the pairing. But be prepared for people to skip over your stuff at best. Flames at worst.

I like some rare pairings. But there is a border between a ‘rare’ paring and one that is just asking for trouble. When you write ANY pairing, proceed with caution. If you need to talk to somebody who has trouble with people not liking her actually well-executed ship, talk to my friend Twili-Imp.

But I digress.

This rant isn’t to tell you what not to do. It’s to simply inform you that what you’re doing might get whacked for a reason.

And that reason is not ‘they don’t appreciate me.’ It’s that they’ve seen it all before.

Lesson one of ANY sort of writing: you are not special.

NOT.

SPECIAL.

Your ideas may be special. Your special ones, that is. But not everybody gets an original idea all the time. But what if somebody else has done it before? What if it’s a cliché? Vampires and werewolves? High school fics? Girl-falls-into-world?

NOT.

SPECIAL.

NOBODY CARES.

Unless you put some huge spin on it (THAT ALSO IS NOT A CLICHÉ OR A TROPE) or you execute it absolutely beautifully, your high school fic is not special. I don’t care if your writing sounds unique to you. All of them read the same eventually.

It’s a phase. I can’t say not to write high school fics, but realize that what you are writing, millions of people have done before. All of them have gone through the phase. Your phase is predictable. And it’s. Not. Special.

Have you seen this kind of thing before?

MAYBE I LOVE HIM
Summary: Kagome is the nicest girl in school and she has her cute boyfriend Inuyasha. But what happens when a bad boy comes into the picture?

That? The sight of that story makes me want to puke. I could barely make that up without my fingers seizing up on my keyboard. I hate to be a snob, but… ew.

Why? Why is it ‘ew’? I know what it is. Wish fulfillment, completely, utterly. It’s okay to fulfill your wishes; that’s pretty much what fanfiction is.

But you know when you go to a party and there’s always this dork that keeps talking about nothing about himself?

Yeah, that can be you.

If a piece is about you, reflects only what you feel, caters to you, is so broad or cliché-ridden as to relate to no one, has no message for others, and showcases primarily you (whether you are cloaked as an original or canon character or not), or if you are the only one can relate to it, then it is self-indulgence. Write it. It’s good practice. But keep it to yourself. In a few words,

GET OVER YOURSELF.

NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU OR YOUR WANTS.

IF THEY DID WOULDN’T THEY BE READING ABOUT YOU AND NOT THEIR FAVORITE TV SHOW/ANIME/GAME/WHATEVER?

YES. YES THEY WOULD.

THERE IS ALSO NO SANTA CLAUS OR EASTER BUNNY.

I know there are lots of young writers out there. But the first step to getting better is realizing that there is something that should improve.

So, because I am the horribly self-indulgent person I am, I’m going to separate it all out into topics I think people should stay the heck away from. These tropes appear so often, products of either immaturity or just plain inexperience.

And that is okay. Write what you want. But this is why they annoy me, personally.

High School Fics: I’ve already said why these, and all of their carbon copies, annoy me. Stop. Writing. Them. We know that you who write these probably go to school and we know that you have angst. We know how you wish your life was. Stop. Telling. Us.

Girl falls into fandom: Okay, I am guilty of this one. But when I do it, I try to make it realistic, rather than ‘develops magic powers, kicks butt.’ Because this trope goes Mary Sue so fast that even The Flash can’t catch it.

THEY ARE IN LOVE CAN’T YOU SEE YOU TARD?: No, they are not. You really can pair whomever you want, but please respect canon at least sometimes. Acknowledge it exists, at least. Don’t go around pretending that YOUR shipping is the ONLY shipping and that your work is how the story SHOULD have gone. And if people are only paired due to eye candy, with no any kind of excuse or any kind of canon-based fandom reason other than that you would like to have them kiss, then STOP.

HE IS A VAMPIRE SHUT UP HE IS: No, that character is not a vampire. I don’t care how cool he would be if he was a vampire. But he’s not. Get over it. You’re writing fanfiction for a reason, for a FANDOM. Breaking FANDOM so far that it’s own mother wouldn’t recognize the twisted corpse is NOT fanfiction. Just change the names and you can publish it and call yourself Stephanie Myer. (If I offend Twilight fans, that’s just too freaking bad. I’m not sorry. If you don’t like what I have to say, I warned you that I was blunt and I never said you had to like or read my crap. If you want a fight you can kiss my round, chair-hugging bum.)

I am ur true angle: Your fanfiction may be all right, but if you use chatspeak in the summary or misspell things, then NOBODY will read it. Ever. Please. It’s not difficult to spell things correctly in a twenty-word blurb. If you cannot do that, if you can’t be bothered to care, GTFO. NAO PLZ.

The Great Crossover: Crossovers can WIN THE INTARTOOBZ if done right. But how many of us wince at dumb crossovers, like CSI and Dragonball Z? Or Harry Potter and Sabrina the Teenage Witch? Or even worse, the omnicrossover. It’s as if someone couldn’t decide which fandom to write about and just picked a character for each of them. Kingdom Hearts pulled it off. You may have more difficulty. An exception is if it’s a silly fluffy or crackish crossover that doesn’t take itself seriously. But the moment it takes itself seriously… pow. No. Fail.

I’m his/her daughter/son/grandson/twin/sister/mother/brother/spawn/clone/ reincarnation/ancestor: No, you’re not. He/she didn’t have one, and most certainly not you. Kiss off, and stop biting people’s ankles. Nobody cares about your character if their only defining feature is their relation to a canon one. I’m looking at you, people who make female-or-male-clones-of-a-canon-character-with-only-maybe-a-pallete-swap-at-most. Don’t ever describe anybody as ‘Character x but…’ If you do, I’ll hunt you down. Make up a relative, sure. But don’t make it an obnoxious one. If you want to write Sora’s sister, fine. But give a real reason why she’s never mentioned. Remember, if someone is not mentioned, they probably aren’t important. Realize this.

HE'S ON CRACK: No. No he's not. You simply don't want to write the way he really acts in canon. Maybe you make him nicer. Maybe you make him meaner. Maybe you Bash him. But as soon as you do this, he stops being the character you started with. Just because someone is named the same name as a fantasy character, it doesn't mean the character is there. The personality, the characterization is the brunt of the package, and when you lose that you also lose the 'fanfiction' bit. Rename him and call it original fiction. And for the love of pie, stop bashing. How would you like it if someone bashed you?

Oops! Turned into babies!: This should never be. You know of what I speak.

M-Preg: This had better be for the Rule of Funny. If not, then... then... seek help.

All of these make me cringe. I want, deep down in my heart, to say that doing each of these things is wrong. Is evil, is bad. But that’s not true. I can’t be that shallow, to label things evil and use my own prejudice as a weapon. But I want to, deep down inside. Nobody’s perfect.

All of these things annoy me. Let’s leave it at that. But who am I to judge?

I’m somebody who has done all of these things at a point in time. I’ve been doing this since I was—count it!—twelve years old. I’m about 18 now. I’ve gone through these phases, came out the other side, and when I look back I have to restrain my gag reflex to keep from vomiting over my old work.

Maybe I’m not your English teacher, maybe I’m not old enough to give out advice. Maybe I’m not a good enough writer yet, haven’t seen enough of the world to be good.

But if you’re old or young, if you do these things, I can say that I feel that you are ‘wrong.’ It’s not right to say your ideas are wrong. But chances are a lot of people think that your ideas are ‘wrong,’ too.

And at the end of the day, what other people think is all that matters. You can’t change people, make them subvert the self-absorbed voice that doesn’t want to hear about you, you, you, all the time. All you can do is make a story that ropes people in, makes people forget that it’s your emotions and your experiences going into it. It should be about them. It should make them believe that you wrote this story just for them, that it was perfect for them. They should relate, they should be struck by it. Somehow.

I don’t know if I’ve quite managed that yet. But I try.

And, someday, if you can do what I just described then you will be a better writer than I could ever hope to be.

Here’s to looking at the crap we write. Here’s looking back to the junk and the baggage and the poo that you make on your journey to get better. Here’s to realizing that it was crap in the fist place. Here’s looking to the future, where others may pick up your story. And despite it being YOUR story, they’ll think ‘this is so completely me. This person knew me. This person knows my heart and she made this just for me.’

Here’s to the past and here’s to the future. Here’s to all the fork eye fanfiction stabbing in the world. Here’s to moving on and getting over yourself.

So cheers. Drink up.