Mythril Moth's Pet Peeves of Fanfiction, Issue #3 · 12:09am Dec 16th, 2014
It's been a while...
Today's issue concerns something that completely defies explanation:
FAKE FAN FANFIC
This is an issue that used to crop up in the Ranma 1/2 fandom a lot, and now I'm starting to see it in the MLP community:
People who read and write fanfiction when they haven't seen a SINGLE FUCKING EPISODE OF THE SHOW.
Or maybe they've seen like, one or two episodes and that's it Everything else they know about it is from TVTropes and reading fanfiction.
The problem is...unlike back in the Ranma days, when it was at least halfway understandable (the tapes were EXPENSIVE, no downloads/torrents), with today's readily available streams, Netflix, et. al., it's simply inexcusable.
If you have not watched at least one full season of MLP, you don't really belong here.
I'm sure I'm going to catch a LOT of hell for that statement, but it's true. How can you call yourself a fan and sit reading fanfic if you aren't even bothering to watch the damn show?
And what ESPECIALLY annoys me is when people try to write fanfiction when the majority of their exposure to the series IS fanfiction. This is what led to the millions of "psychotic Akane" fics back in the Ranma days. It's just...stupid.
If you're gonna read and write fanfics, you should at least watch the show you're reading and writing fanfics about.
Is it okay if you haven't finished a season, but are slowly and steadily watching it? (Maybe, two a week?)
I know someone in that situation.
I completely agree with you. Those kinds of people really shouldn't be writing fanfiction, acting like they know everything about the show, and they get on my nerves.
2655959 Objectively, I'd say "don't touch fanfiction until you've watched at least 20 episodes".
Agreed!
I see no issue with reading it, but don't write it without a solid familiarity with the canon characters.
The lesson here is, don't write it unless you have a firm grasp and understanding on the characters and the show's universe.
I dedicate this blog post to all "fans" who spell "Pinkie Pie" "Pinky Pie."
If this were a more general interest site, I'd agree, but given the focus, you're right. There's really no reason to be on Fimfiction if you're unfamiliar with Friendship is Magic... with the possible exception of all-OC stories, since those lack characterization pitfalls by definition.
2655973 Hmm... Yeah, 20 seems fair.
Funny, the guy is actually able to write a good fanfiction without any trips on the canon side. I don't know how he does it!
Agreed.
Agreed.
Amusingly enough, it was fan fiction and art that got me to watch the show.
While I agree with what you say in general, there is one area where I disagree in specific.
A few overarching fanworks - especially those of novel length, whether stand alone or crossover - are so in depth and in detail that it is completely unnecessary to watch the original show to fully enjoy the story. It's also entirely possible to create a well made fan work based in the universe of said fanwork - an example being the plethora of works based in the Nyxverse - when your only exposure to the show is those fanworks. It's also possible to not be a fan of the original show, but a huge fan of the works created by fans.
While it is likely this will produce a large supply of badly written or characterized stories, it's just as possible it will produce good ones.
Another example:
When I wrote "Fortresshy: the Nine Fathers" - my MLP/TF2 crossover (not linking because this isn't meant to be advertisement) - many of my readers made comments referencing various things related to the gameplay and various game events...and I had no idea what they were talking about, as I'd never played the game or watched a single game play video. I'd seen adorable fanart crossing the two series over, and decided to write my own story crossing them over, my only research being the "Meet the" videos and the official comics to get a handle on the characters persona. I am not and likely never will be a fan of TF2 - it doesn't seem like my kind of game to play (unfond of PvP games, especially in the FPS genre) - but those who are tell me I captured the characters and world perfectly...despite misspelling the name of one of the minor characters consistently in the chapter she first appeared (I've left that in deliberately to remind me of how easy such mistakes are).
Just my two cents to share. I'm not disputing your view, just presenting my own contrasting viewpoint. I'd be happy to discuss the pros and cons of both views in a civilized manner, or to just leave this her for anyone else to see.
Personally, I agree with the first point but disagree with the second. I do read fanfiction in a number of fandoms where I haven't watched/read the source material, and I agree that the ideas one comes up with in that state tend to be pretty terrible. Tatsurou does have a point in that you can get a pretty good grasp of the source material from fanfiction, but in my opinion that is a decidedly suboptimal solution.
I don't agree with the second, though. Just because one hasn't read the source material doesn't mean they should be locked out of reading some objectively good stories, and besides, many bronies got into the fandom because they stumbled upon good pony fiction. I should know, I'm one of them.
All I have to say right there...
I completely agree, I for one am one of the few people I know that has watched every episode, along with both movies.
I see no reason why you would catch any hell for that statement. I for one never read a single piece of MLP fanfiction until I caught up with were the show was at, somewhere near the end of Season 4. Then again, it took me even longer to know this site existed in the first place...
2655973
I'm only asking because this is a fanfiction in general pet peeve blog of yours, but what about the shows that have only 13 episodes or so?
2656109
Because a majority of the site is comprised of overly-sensitive idiots who get mad at the littlest things.
2656132
I try not to think about those kind...
I proud to say that I have seen every episode.
2656109 Obvious exception, of course.
I feel bad now. I came to Friendship is Optimal from HPMOR, read it as a lurker, and then I basically forgot about ponies until my little sister made me watch the show. Are... are you mad at me?
2655999 Or Applejack as "Apple Jack" or "AppleJack." Or, to a lesser extent, Apple Bloom as "Applebloom." I've also seen "Sweety Belle," "Sweetie Bell," and the dreaded confluence of "Sweety Bell."
2656314 Yeah.
Personally, I had no interest in the show until I was introduced to the universe by fanfiction. By this point, I've seen a lot of the show itself, but I would have had no interest without the idea of the MLP universe having already been built upon by my exposure to fanfic. I believe it's perfectly reasonable to write and be inspired by fanon work and to only need the show itself for specific parts.
Sure, if you want to write about canon characters, you should probably try and absorb some of the show, but for others, background characters especially, the fanon is far more intricate and detailed than the canon; take Lyra/BonBon and Vinyl/Octavia, for example.
2655999 Lol!
2655994 I agree entirely.
2656596 Glad you agree!
Especially when we all know she was also misunderstood, prone to violence, held grudges, was unable to see reality or understand the concept of accidents and was too proud for her own good. Unlike Saint Ukyou. Amarite?
Wow. It seems everyone here was brought into the fandom by reading fanfics, and I was brought in by the fact that there was an entire section on Memebase devoted to pony memes.
2656650 There ARE no perfect characters in Ranma, and Akane has some pretty serious issues with her temper, but not to the extent the fandom made her out to be. By the waning years of the Ranma fanfic boom, an alarmingly large number of stories on the FFML, RAAC, and so forth featured an Akane who was based on Zen's "The Bitter End", which was an extremely grim caricature of canon Akane.
By the same token, the same branch of fanfiction tended to make Ranma out to be a misunderstood, unfortunate victim, when in fact, Ranma was a liar, a cheat, a thief, and a jerkass in general. Sure, he was good where and when it counted, and he was a LOT more tolerable in girl form for some reason, but he wasn't the noble soul a lot of fanfic made him out to be.
I pretty much blame Zen for every bad caricature of Ranma characters in the latter-day Ranma fic boom. Not that any of it was ever his intent--it's just that "The Bitter End" introduced a lot of negative fanon.
2655973
By "touch" you mean writing and posting, right?
I mean, I had story ideas three shows into the series, but I didn't write and post them until I was caught up on the episodes (which was up to the third season).
2656053 I'm going to agree with you there. I can imagine someone reading Fallout: Equestria, and writing a side-fic without watching FiM. If a story is expansive enough to create a stand alone universe, a writer might not need the base material (FiM and Fallout in this case) to write a good story. However, they still should be familiar with the source material (FO:E in this case).
As for reading, I don't see a problem with non-watchers being here. They probably just enjoy the characters and setting, but prefer a different story format. There are some episodes that even I could barely get through. Namely the ones that involve Rarity doing something stupid.
2656833 You know I'm just messing with you, right?
2657176 Yeah, I know, but it seemed like the right cue for a rant about TBE!Akane destroying the Ranma fanfic community.
2656437
Yeah, I'm with you. By the time I had watched all of Season 1 wayyyy back in 2011, I was already neck-deep in Fallout Equestria. I did it just so I could understand the references in fanfics....I was always "meh" about the show itself and S4 is my favorite by far.
2656696 lol, i came into the fandom officially just after Party of One.
There is a word for fan fiction written by people who haven't seen the show: fiction.
Okay, I call bullshit. That's overly judgmental, and deliberately exclusionist. It's not up to anyone in particular to decide who should or shouldn't belong here. This is all fanfiction and someone who writes based on E1 isn't much different from people excluding from their context S2, S3, etc. And to be literalist and annoying, I'm not sure I've completely seen all the episodes in any one season of the show.
Some of the fanfiction here can stand on it's own. Stuff like 'Starlight over Detrot' requires next to no MLP background at all. The show itself really isn't all that essential to it except as a starting point and inspiration and a fair amount of the works on here are almost exclusively original (in some sense) and/or changed from the canon. -- If you like the fanfiction, then to some degree you are as much a fan of the show as anyone else, since you're reading fics about the same characters and also about technicolor equines. Trying to break things into real and not real fans is questionable.
Not much different from those people who have watched the show and are writing fanfiction about fanfiction.
2658426
Technically I started watching back in 2010 (at least on occasion), but I've not seen everything and I'm particularly lacking in S4 (at least I have the dvds for S1,S3 so I can catch up on the handful of episodes I didn't watch in them). -- At what point anyone started watching is really not particularly important.
2662508
Dude. It's all fiction. Moot point.
Also, before you write fanfiction, if it's supposed to be set during a specific season or game in a franchise, WATCH THAT SEASON (or play that game/watch someone play that game)! Especially if you haven't seen that season or game in a while. You'd be surprised how much you've forgotten, or what you brain replaced with fanfiction.