Hello everyone! Today I'm here to discuss a topic that many people have likely encountered as they explore the various seedy underbellies of the internet fandoms: fanfiction. Now sit down class it's time for me to enlighten the primitive minds of those who haven't the faintest clue what I'm talking about! Fanfiction is basically a fictional story written by someone who is a fan of something. Now, no that doesn't mean everything is fanfiction, a fanfiction takes place specifically in the world or universe of that thing they are a fan of. For instance a Star Trek fanfic would be a fictional story written by someone who is a fan of Star Trek and takes place in the universe of Star Trek.
Unfortunately, while some fanfics can be truly excellent, such as Fallout Equestria, there are far, far more that simply suck. They can suck for many reasons, a common one is the grammar, I don't know why but countless fanfic writers seem to lack even the most basic understanding of English grammar. Now, I know I have problems with commas, semi-colons, and actual colons, but those are minor things that don't really detract from the reading. Then there are people who completely mispell common words, who misspell the names of the characters they're writing about! (Spok, spoc, Kik, etc.) This part baffles me, because it's pretty easy to spell check.
However, even worse than bad grammar, as atrocious and insulting as something like that is, even worse than that is bad character design. The more common method is people just not being able to grasp how the characters of the universe they're writing in act. You have the original characters like Q, or Frodo, or Rainbow Dash acting in ways that they never would in the actual shows, movies, books, etc. However, the writers don't realize that because they don't know how that character acts. Which makes me wonder, why they'd bother including them in a story!
Yet, there is something worse than making characters act against their nature, the inserting of OCs, or Original Characters. These are characters the author of the fanfic came up with themself and have never been in the actual show, movie, etc. Sometimes these aren't so bad, they can be well characterized and imagined. They have traits, quirks, flaws and the like. They can actually contribute to the story without overshadowing the actual main characters of the show. However, once again these kinds of well developed characters are sadly in the minority. More common are Mary Sue's or Gary Stu's.
For those that don't know a Mary Sue is the same as a Gary Stu, only a Mary is a female version and Gary is male. Now, the actual names of the Mary/Gary varies with the author. However, it refers not to the character name but the character traits. It's a term used for OC's that are just horribly made. A good example is Lord of the Rings fanfic. There was a reason the fellowship was only nine, it had symbolism with the story. However, very few fanfic writers realized that and shoehorned there own character into the story, and made the fellowship ten, crushing the symbolism!
A few more examples from Lord of the Rings fanfiction: the daugher of Galadriel who was sent to the future to work at a K-mart and walks through the forests singing Nickelback...WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?! How does that make ANY sense? She was the daughter of one of the biggest elves and was somehow sent to OUR future and worked at K-mart. You can see how it just goes absolutely nuts, they didn't even bother trying to follow the rules of Lord of the Rings, they just added whatever kind of insane magic they wanted to have whatever character they wanted.
Alright...for those still reading, thank you. I know this has been one of my more rantier rants, and hasn't had much of a point so far. In fact, it could be used as a perfect example of preaching to the choir. However, now I'm going to bring in my point and hammer it into the corpses of all Mary/Gary Sue/Stu's. I'm going to make a list that EVERY fanfic writer needs to follow to make everything better.
First off, use fucking spell check. It's not that hard, most computers have a word program and pretty much all those word programs let you...can you guess...SPELL CHECK!! Second, research the universe you're writing in. If you want to have something interesting about your OC fine, but make sure it would actually work in that universe! Third, step back and take a good look at your OC, do they overshadow the main characters? If yes, FUCKING FIX IT! If no, then carry on. That's it, three simple steps that will make your fanfiction easier on the eyes, brain, and sensibilities. That's all you have to do, so please just do it.
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