The different style by different group of fans

[ray245]

As the title suggest, I am asking which group of fans can write good fanfiction...Generally speaking?

Most forum members have a distinct style in terms of writing fanfiction...

Stardestroyer.net fanfiction consist mostly on stories that are much serious and darker in tone. Just look at Chris derelict, Stravo starcrossed
and Darth Wong's conquest. There is careful detail in military aspect of the stories and the battles written are often in depth. A few of the fanfiction are generally darker, with the 'bad guys' winning over the 'good guys'. There is also a heavy focus on the grey side, with each side not being totally 'good'.

Spacebattles.com got another style. Their stories are often more stylish, involving massive curbstorm and chaos in battles. Their stories are also more varied, but it has a good number of fanfiction center on B5, or being part of the crossover. Their stories also tend to be not as serious in tone as stardestoryer.net , but offers a lighter tone...and a bit more PG friendly, but still takes the stories seriously enough


theforce.net generally has a very light tone, the stories often have the 'bad guys' on the path to redemption very easily, and becoming 'good guys' later. There is a very clear distinct between the forces of light and Dark, with little or no grey sides in the stories. That forum stories are also a bit more leaning towards romance...well more than here anyway (although I prefer not to have those in fanfiction if possible)

Note...this is a very general statement about the style of writing in different groups. I am not saying that all stories written in those sites have that style, and many stories here are posted on other site and vice versa.


So, how many other style of writing are there? At the least on different forums. I do not really know what style does different groups have...like on star trek forums and stargate forums, so can every post a general style of writing other site have?

[Redleader34]

If you want them all fanfiction.net is a great place to find the good, the bad, and the Mary Sue/Wanky works

[Shroom Man 777]

One thing though, in SDnet's fics, its not really that the badguy wins. Its more like they know that the badguys, i.e. the Empire, has better guns and this fact forces them to write the goodguys into harder positions.

Look at Starcrossed, the Empire's controlling the STverse but that doesn't mean Kirk's given up the fight, hell no. It just means that the fight is harder, grittier, bloodier, not sugary and semen-coated.

And in Conquest, wasn't Picard become a good guy and didn't the combined ST and Imperial forces destroy the Deathstar of the Sith Lord?

[Darth Wong]

Simplistic good/evil stories tend to come from a very childish mindset, or a very religious one (those two mindsets being almost identical anyway). People often think of Star Wars as a simplistic good/evil story but it only looks that way on the surface.

[The Grim Squeaker]

If you want them all fanfiction.net is a great place to find the good, the bad, and the Mary Sue/Wanky works

The problem (In my opinion) is that FF.net lacks any sort of "Hard" reviewing system.
Even a stars rating system (Possibly limited only to people with accounts which would make this method far more useful) would make a massive help in weeding out the chaff when browsing.
True, there is a review system but that requires checking the over-all reviews, hardly practical when you're talking about many reviews (And going by reviews count is impossible in the search system, never mind the fact that they could be mostly bad reviews)

[ray245]

One thing though, in SDnet's fics, its not really that the badguy wins. Its more like they know that the badguys, i.e. the Empire, has better guns and this fact forces them to write the goodguys into harder positions.

Look at Starcrossed, the Empire's controlling the STverse but that doesn't mean Kirk's given up the fight, hell no. It just means that the fight is harder, grittier, bloodier, not sugary and semen-coated.

And in Conquest, wasn't Picard become a good guy and didn't the combined ST and Imperial forces destroy the Deathstar of the Sith Lord?

I did not really meant there is a very clear differences between the protagonist and agonists. What I mean is the 'good guys' aren't exactly 100% good. The Rebels make have really committed some act of crimes in the war against Empire, and the Empire does not mean every one in the Imperial force are evil.

Now try reading some stories on theforce.net . Those stories seem much more simple, and more lightsaber fights than Capital ships verse Rebel warships.

[Edward Yee]

The TFN stories emphasizing simplicity and lightsaber fights doesn't surprise me; that's tended to be the definining image that apparently quite a few have gotten of Wars (regardless of legitimacy).

Although, maybe instead of being Wars-specific it sounds like a manifestation of "drop the guns, go to fists" (making a fight personal and between the primary protagonist and antagonist) I've seen in flicks. Guess that's what the writers who write these sort of stories are going for, or (either) see most distinctively or actually look for when going over Wars?

[Pelranius]

A lot of TFN stories are focused more on the psychological workings of characters and assorted development, or lack of. Or about the astropolitical setup of the GFFA.

Though there are stories like FTeik's stuff which is tech heavy.

[NecronLord]

Derelict is dark?

Odd. I've never gotten that impression. Then again, given how my last completed fanfic here ended...

[RedImperator]

If you want them all fanfiction.net is a great place to find the good, the bad, and the Mary Sue/Wanky works

The problem (In my opinion) is that FF.net lacks any sort of "Hard" reviewing system.

The problem with FF.net is that it's stuffed to the gills with garbage. There are a lot more people who think they can write than there are people who actually can, and FF.net has no editorial control whatsoever. I have no doubt there's good fiction available if you're willing to look, but in my mind, if someone says, "Oh, the story is on FF.net," that's an automatic, "It probably sucks, then."

[Feil]

As the title suggest, I am asking which group of fans can write good fanfiction...Generally speaking?

Smart ones who have read extensively and written a great deal, and care about doing things well. Temperment has very little to do with quality, only on style.

Put another way, those who can write good essays and read good books can write good stories.

Offhand, I would pose the tentative hypothesis that the darkness of fanfiction is roughly directly proportional to the percent of 40k fans on that forum, for some reason or another...

[ray245]

Derelict is dark?

Odd. I've never gotten that impression. Then again, given how my last completed fanfic here ended...

I did not say derelict is dark, but written with a serious military tone. NecronLord, on the other hand...well I guess 'dark' can fit your story tone.

[Sean Mulligan]

If you want them all fanfiction.net is a great place to find the good, the bad, and the Mary Sue/Wanky works

The problem (In my opinion) is that FF.net lacks any sort of "Hard" reviewing system.

The problem with FF.net is that it's stuffed to the gills with garbage. There are a lot more people who think they can write than there are people who actually can, and FF.net has no editorial control whatsoever. I have no doubt there's good fiction available if you're willing to look, but in my mind, if someone says, "Oh, the story is on FF.net," that's an automatic, "It probably sucks, then."

FFN does have C2 groups which help you to find fics that you are most likely to enjoy. Many of the fics that are here and on spacebattles are also on FFN. It is the most extensive fanfiction depository in the world and if it was gone then I would miss it greatly.

[The Grim Squeaker]

If you want them all fanfiction.net is a great place to find the good, the bad, and the Mary Sue/Wanky works

The problem (In my opinion) is that FF.net lacks any sort of "Hard" reviewing system.

The problem with FF.net is that it's stuffed to the gills with garbage.

So is the internet, thats what good filtering and search systems are for .

There are a lot more people who think they can write than there are people who actually can, and FF.net has no editorial control whatsoever.

Yup, but marking good/bad by the other "Authors" (As bad as most are) would allow filtering of a sort, due to the fact that the better fics will start getting the lion's share of "views" (Rather like web-pages in that respect).

I have no doubt there's good fiction available if you're willing to look, but in my mind, if someone says, "Oh, the story is on FF.net," that's an automatic, "It probably sucks, then."

Mine is "So its good? Awesome finally a decent ff fic" (I can think of maybe 3-4 good fics that I know of there that aren't also posted over here, I simply don't bother with checking the large amount of 99% crap stories)

FFN does have C2 groups which help you to find fics that you are most likely to enjoy.

Great, got any C23 groups to reccomend
(I.E the problem of filtering still applies, just because there is a filter group doesn't mean that its a good one )

[Sean Mulligan]

Great, got any C23 groups to reccomend
(I.E the problem of filtering still applies, just because there is a filter group doesn't mean that its a good one )[/quote

There are many good ones in different categories. Just look under the category that you are looking for such as Harry Potter or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Many authors have recommended C2's.

[Singular Quartet]

The problem (In my opinion) is that FF.net lacks any sort of "Hard" reviewing system.

The problem with FF.net is that it's stuffed to the gills with garbage.

So is the internet, thats what good filtering and search systems are for .

If you weren't paying attention, FFN lacks both of those.

[pieman3141]

A tip I've found useful when browsing FF.net: Good authors read good stories. If you find a good author, chances are, that 'Favourite Stories/Authors' link will link to other good stuff. Doesn't always work, but... it's something.

[The Grim Squeaker]

The problem with FF.net is that it's stuffed to the gills with garbage.

So is the internet, thats what good filtering and search systems are for .

If you weren't paying attention, FFN lacks both of those.

I was comparing filtering systems that do exist in the Internet (Google for example, since popularity doesn't always mislead) to those lacking in FF.net.

Good authors read good stories. If you find a good author, chances are, that 'Favourite Stories/Authors' link will link to other good stuff.

Yup, I think I found sd.net after checking JME2's profile or some such years back (Or through a search for crossovers, I can't remember)

[NecronLord]

I did not say derelict is dark, but written with a serious military tone. NecronLord, on the other hand...well I guess 'dark' can fit your story tone.

Heh. Serious Military tone is what nBSG is about, man!

[ray245]

That's why most of nBSG stories on fanfiction.net are excellent and well written. It is the one caterogy where you could be safe from and garbage fanfic.

Mostly, the tone of the show set a example for the fans to follow.

Stargate does not take itself as a show very seriously, thats why many like it. However, it also account for many shippers and lack of military understanding. With the exception of a few authors on fanfiction.net, most of spacebattles.com and here, the rest of stargate fics on fanfiction.net sucks. Reason...they seems to have absoultly zero understanding on any military related matter and constantly makes up facts about it.

Many people still thought SGC command structure and Strageties employed would be the same after it was revealed to public, with a much higher budget. Hell...some stories have SGC figthing a full scale war using covert operations solely.

Overall...I doubt any other francise have a better good fanfic to bad ratio than nBSG. The star wars stories here are nice, but there's tons of star wars fanfic garbage on fanfiction.net that pulls the ratio down for star wars.

By the way, any other site have a high percentage of stories which is not crap? Other than here and spacebattles...

[Falkenhorst]

Shit, don't get me started on all the times female characters have cropped up in combat roles in "Band of Brothers" and "Pearl Harbor" stories over there. It's sickeningly embarrasing.

[Feil]

Which brings us to another answer to the OP: those writers who take the time and effort needed to do their research write good stories. (Which, of course, are the same ones who are intelligent and hard-working.) Some of the more knoweldgeable fans, I'm sure, could write a story without touching a reference book, but the less-knowledgeable among us are constantly bouncing between Wikipedia, the official literature, and our storyboards.

And then we still miss something and have lieutenenants for squad leaders, even if it's pardonable from an in-universe standpoint, and make ourselves look like idiots even though we went to all that trouble to write convincingly about small-unit-tactics...

[ray245]

Hey...some fanfiction are light-years ahead of some published works...though those who have military experience certainly held a strong advanatage in writing battle sequence and war stories. And those people can certainly affect the community writing like stardestroyer.net

It can set a standard for others to follow and try to improve. Damn...I may really need to rewrite my crap fiction soon...

[Edward Yee]

To be fair, lieutenants're only one rank/unit off, Feil... but agreed as to the oopsie of it. (Albeit if it's that way in-setting, then *shrug* I don't complain.)

[Knife]

To be fair, lieutenants're only one rank/unit off, Feil... but agreed as to the oopsie of it. (Albeit if it's that way in-setting, then *shrug* I don't complain.)

One rank off?



BTW, there is a dedicated military sub forum here, don't be too afraid to ask.