What are you reading?

[Dracos]

The mouse of Konoha updated.  Amusing.  I should grab that link for here later.

I need to get some non-naruto stuff in the mix.  Maybe some of this SM stuff will do :P

[Anastasia]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5879429/1/Past_Lives

Sequel to Absence. Looks okay so far, though the sewer bits could stand to be trimmed down. Ewww.

[Anastasia]

Casual thought: If Ranma has a better than normal average of good fics to shit, Sailor Moon has a lower average than normal. It's way lower if you discount the Ranma/SM crossovers, too. It's a shame, there's a lot to play with in the series but not that many good fics working with it.

[Dracos]

And one piece has a positively terrible good fic to shit average.

[Anastasia]

Any idea why?

For Sailor Moon it's a lot of fangirls writing mediocre fics that come down to one of a few things:

1. Wish-fulfillment/projection Usagi/Mamoru romance.
2. Fics that don't really make sense or fit the series, but match a teenage trauma the author either dealt with, had a friend deal with or saw on TV. Usagi gets booted from the Senshi, one of them gets randomly knocked up, ectera.
3. Fics that use the names of the characters but really have nothing to do with Sailor Moon. You know, the sort of fics that have Usagi as a professional assassin, Minako as a hooker and Mamoru as the Devil? Yeah,  I read the first chapter of a fic like that. Besides the names it had no relation to Sailor Moon at all.

[Brian]

Is that that PoS that Lurker writes?  Moonshadow, I think?

He reliably posts a chapter on the FFML immediately after I post anything.  Kind of funny, really.

[Dracos]

Any idea why?

For Sailor Moon it's a lot of fangirls writing mediocre fics that come down to one of a few things:

1. Wish-fulfillment/projection Usagi/Mamoru romance.
2. Fics that don't really make sense or fit the series, but match a teenage trauma the author either dealt with, had a friend deal with or saw on TV. Usagi gets booted from the Senshi, one of them gets randomly knocked up, ectera.
3. Fics that use the names of the characters but really have nothing to do with Sailor Moon. You know, the sort of fics that have Usagi as a professional assassin, Minako as a hooker and Mamoru as the Devil? Yeah,  I read the first chapter of a fic like that. Besides the names it had no relation to Sailor Moon at all.

I've found one 'okay' fic in one piece land.  Zero good fics.  Scanned through several hundred fic summaries.  Problems common?

1)Wish romance fiction, hundreds of fics were 'authorname arrives somehow aboard relevant ship, romances favorite character' by 'authorname'.  Fangirls basically.

I think that one pretty much explains itself.  It's fine for folks to write that, but yea no interest in reading it.

2)The one piece crew failed/vanished.  1X years later, My crew tries the challenge, Accepting original Characters.

I kinda understand this as OP delivers a 'live the pirate fantasy' vibe, and the next step is to actually be the pirate crew yourselves, but yeah, starting with a basis that the main cast failed and died isn't very endearing really.  Strangely the one 'okay' fic had the main cast failing as a backdrop, but it still had luffy alive and trying to deal with it in close proximity to the event, rather than as a 20 years ago thing that's just meant to wash them out of the way.

3)Yaoi.  Lots of it.  Probably territory with an almost all male main cast, but yeah.  Unlike SM that flirts with the notion of love all the time, romance is generally rejected in the one piece universe.

4)"Welcome to One Piece High School".  Kind of a terrible cast set for highschool antics.  I think that One Piece has only ever introduced (Sans flashbacks) two characters that were under eighteen years old.  Coby the marine teenager luffy saves early on and the old train driver's grandaughter.  Neither main cast.

Eh, it's unfair of me.  A crows type setup could make it work, but beside from all that, all three of these involve either an SI or wiping either Cast or Setting away.  It's really rare to see any that even try at a story in the setting with the cast, even AU or Crossover or otherwise. 

[Anastasia]

http://www.thekeep.org/~wombat/Stories/Z/

Interesting ideas, but bogs down quickly with way too many OCs. I got to chapter 4 before I gave up, the writing isn't good enough to warrant continuing. It's a shame, some parts of it looked to have potential.  This should really be rule 1 of fanfiction: No one really wants to read about OCs 99.99% of the time. If we wanted that, we'd go read original fiction. I can count on two hands the number of OCs I've ever truly liked.

Spoiler: ShowHide

What OCs are good, anyway? Beneda from the Dark Lords of Nerima, Aktaya from Her War, Emerald from I'm here to Help (He counts, even though he's technically not one), um....wow, it's a damned small list. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but oh well.

[Anastasia]

http://addventure.bast-enterprises.de/224921.html

Follow the path of entries by Pusakuronu. This is absolutely incredible, there's no other words for it. Dungeon Keeper Ami, and no, it's not fetish porn despite the title.

[Jon]

If ff.net is the pit of voles, surely Addventure must be the pit of zombie catgirls.

[Dracos]

Heh I remember DK:Ami.  They really took that a loong way.

[Dracos]

http://www.thekeep.org/~wombat/Stories/Z/

Interesting ideas, but bogs down quickly with way too many OCs. I got to chapter 4 before I gave up, the writing isn't good enough to warrant continuing. It's a shame, some parts of it looked to have potential.  This should really be rule 1 of fanfiction: No one really wants to read about OCs 99.99% of the time. If we wanted that, we'd go read original fiction. I can count on two hands the number of OCs I've ever truly liked.

Spoiler: ShowHide

What OCs are good, anyway? Beneda from the Dark Lords of Nerima, Aktaya from Her War, Emerald from I'm here to Help (He counts, even though he's technically not one), um....wow, it's a damned small list. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but oh well.

I'll answer back.  OCs are often better than using personality flipped/massively changed characters to fulfill certain convenient roles in stories, and I know we've all seen that.  They're nice to fill out background casts sometimes (Like in Dungeon Keeper Ami, which you just linked).  Often, these characters aren't super memorable and the story is better for it, so they don't get brought up when folks think of OCs.  That random monk who's around for four pages of a Ranma fic to give sage advice during his training as a plot device for an AU is still an OC, even if he doesn't really stick around.

But...

  This should really be rule 1 of fanfiction: No one really wants to read about OCs 99.99% of the time. If we wanted that, we'd go read original fiction.

This is so true.  Sure, OCs are often important parts of telling a story but folks hunting fanfiction rarely want it to be 'about them'.  SI type stuff can sometimes get by a bit better...maybe?  Is it less obnoxious?  Sometimes.  But overall cast > ye.

Biggest turnoff in most fanfiction.

[Anastasia]

Yeah. OCs can be done right, and I think Dungeon Keeper Ami does them well, but most of the time it's a huge turnoff.

[Edward]

This should really be rule 1 of fanfiction: No one really wants to read about OCs 99.99% of the time. If we wanted that, we'd go read original fiction.

That should be Rule #2 of fanfiction.

Rule #1 should be: Read the original series!

This should be a no-brainer, but how many fics are there where the writer has obviously seen or read little or none of the original series? Or if they have seen it, they sure didn't pay attention.

Ignoring this rule is the leading cause of "character-shaped entities". (Term coined by Brian.)  For example, any fic where Ranma refuses to use weapons or looks down on those who do does not has a "Ranma-shaped entity".  When a character looks like Ranma, but does not talk, act, or think like Ranma it is clearly not Ranma.

This is so true.  Sure, OCs are often important parts of telling a story but folks hunting fanfiction rarely want it to be 'about them'.  SI type stuff can sometimes get by a bit better...maybe?  Is it less obnoxious?  Sometimes.  But overall cast > ye.

I'd rate SIs as an especially obnoxious type of OC.

One essay I like is How Not To Write An Annoying New Character
http://nekohanten.tripod.com/Fureimuzu/fr-alsw.htm
(scroll down a lot)

It's a bit rambling and I haven't read most of the fics mentioned as examples, but it does spell out a lot of what can make the OC annoying.

Summarizing, those points:
1) The OC should not be the center of the story.
2) Not all of the existing cast should like the OC.
3) The OC should have flaws.
4) The OC should have motives.
5) The OC should not be too powerful.
6) Relationships between the OC and the existing cast should take time to develop.

Actually, most these also explain why many fic writers' versions of existing characters are annoying.

[Dracos]

Heh.  I can see that and can not.

I suppose I've mentally accepted that an SI that is warped in for whatever reason to a universe they already know is less annoying than one where it's taken for granted by everyone that Cologne has a superpowerful niece that just happens to have always been there, even though they're both SIs.

I suspect it's the intrusiveness of it.  Neither is particularly a good read usually (Especially if it's a mary sue getting pulled in rather than an author), but the conceit of authorial canon knowledge possessed by an otherwise mundane and clashing individual within the setting is less of an obstruction than if an OC is woven of new cloth, sewn into the setting at an early (or pre-series) point, and simply taken for granted and yet is of great import.  Mmm.

Basically I think the conceit of 'knowing what is going on' and/or the conceit of 'knowing the tropes of the universe (and they work for you!)' can be fun as fic concept and is sometimes conveniently accessible by using an author narrative for it.  It's also almost always averted with 'So you know what's going on, but now that you've acted on it, everything you know is wrong' or 'You don't belong.  You really don't belong'.

This is a form of wish fiction, certainly, but I tend to find it less offensive than "OC is part of world and <Marysueisms>".