When I was younger, I had a friend who loved to read fan-fictions. She never wrote any of her own but would talk repeatedly about fan-fictions of her favourite anime “Inu-yasha.” I was one of those skeptics who thought nothing could beat the original series, and would dismiss her encouragement to read fan-fictions.
About three years ago, I had just finished the manga (japanese graphic novels) +Anima (about people who would inherit animal genes from a near-death experience) but I couldn’t believe it was finished I felt there should have been more to the story and so I looked up fan-fictions of +Anima. I found a fan-fiction whose summary compelled me to read and I have been hooked ever since.
Perhaps if I had not clicked on such a well-written fan-fiction I would have turned away, but that one was amazing. I love reading other people’s interpretations of original work and even reading about pairings I like.
It took me awhile before I felt comfortable uploading my own works of fan-fiction. My main reason for uploading them wasn’t even about it being a fan-fiction; it was actually because I wanted to know if people would like my own writing. Also, I could hide behind a username and no one would know it was me.
It turned out a lot of people did like my writing and the fan-fiction I started. It felt good to get encouraging and constructive feedback. But I also got flamed for missing minor details about a certain character’s appearance. It is very discouraging to get an anonymous review of how awful of a writer you are putting you down in every sense. But I continued to write, because the good reviews far outweighed the one bad review I got. Most fan-fiction writers' responses to flames about how their story doesn’t match to the original are: “It’s a fan-fiction, and I am God and can change anything I want.”
I don’t write nearly as much fan-fiction as I did when I first started. I would update a new chapter once a week. I have been focusing on my own original work more, especially now that I am in college, but I still roam the fan-fictions to find good ones to read.
One thing about online fan-fiction that used to bother me is that many users don’t do active updates. That is one thing to remember, sometimes it's months before an author will update a 1000-word chapter. If this really bothers you, look under complete stories to avoid waiting for updates.
Overal,l I love fan-fictions and will probably continue to read them for a long time. My personal favourite website for fanfictions is, fanfiction.net.
My fan-fiction account is something private that I keep just for myself and no one knows who I am. I remain anonymous.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 at 11:36PM