What makes you write in some fandoms and not others?

[GeorgeGlass]

I find that there are a lot of fandoms that I enjoy, but only so many that I want to write in, porn-wise. My criteria are more or less these:

1. The fandom has to present a lot of opportunity for turning situations porny. Any show where there’s mad science, magic, or characters from other worlds with totally different cultures is good.
2. If it’s TV, it has to be animated. I feel weird writing about characters who are physically portrayed by real actors.
3. If the characters are young, they need to be precocious in some way.

I think this explains why I write lots of stories about fandoms like The Loud House and Phineas and Ferb but not, say, Milo Murphy’s law or Person of Interest.

How about y’all?

[JayDee]

For me it absolutely just depends on whatever idea something gives me and my ability to actually get it written down from my head. I’ve been happy to write in fandoms I know nothing about from requests because of that. My only real “won’t do” for a fandom now is real person fic.

I’ve was doing more original stuff when I was writing last because I kept having thoughts about the same characters.

 

[BronxWench]

I started writing fan fiction for the CRPGs I play, mostly because the writers for the games absolutely suck at writing relationships. (Yes, David Gaider, I am talking to you.) Honestly, even with a ratings-required fade to black, the older games managed a great deal of heavy innuendo that the later games lacked. Well, until Dragon Age, thank the Maker!

Then I sort of slipped into a bit of LotR fan fiction because I like elves, particularly Tolkien’s not-at-all-fluffy elves. But I will say, while I would never speak ill of Lee Pace’s portrayal of Thranduil Oropherion, I write based on the books and not the movies or actors.

I have to really geek about a fandom to want to write for it.

[GeorgeGlass]

On 8/9/2020 at 11:32 PM, BronxWench said:

I started writing fan fiction for the CRPGs I play, mostly because the writers for the games absolutely suck at writing relationships.

Compensating for what is lacking in a fandom seems to be a major source of inspiration for fanfic. 

[BronxWench]

Back in the day, on the old Bioware forums, there was a thread called “The Shirtless Saga.” It birthed many a fanfic.  

[Wilde_Guess]

What makes me write some fanfiction in some genres but not others?  In the end, whether the story I write is NC-17+ or SFW, I have to be able to find a story to tell in that genre.  But how do I get there?

I have to like the fandom(s) involved, and understand the canon of the fandom(s) enough so that my “changes” make some degree of sense in that universe.  Or, I need to loathe the fandom(s) so completely that I will gladly write a story to destroy it.  If I’m writing a crack/parody story, I need to understand the trope, genre, or fandom enough to lambaste it properly, and have fun while I’m doing it.  After all, you’re probably winning no friends writing Mickey Spillane’s Sponge Bob Square-Pants on the Docks or My Little Pony Vacation—All Knackered Out at Pete’s in Todmorden, so you’d better at least be having a good time with all the enemies you’ll make.

In some cases, you can write a “crack” fic, a porn-fest, and a true drama in the same fiction universe at the same time.  An example in the School Days fandom would be The Nice-Boating News, Yuuki Shows the Girls How, and Subete no Eikō wa Hakanai Mono.

Cheers!

[Desiderius Price]

For me, it was simply impatience… i was impatient for JKR to release book 5 (at the time), and impatience for a potter fanfic author to continue their story.  I had a list of ideas that brewed on how that fanfic should continue, and I decided to play with those ideas, a narrative formed, and I was hooked on creative writing.  I’m still working on my sequel (the million word one), one that’s so different from the above, that I’d have to rename one main character to bring it here to this archive (but alas, it felt wrong when I attempted that).

Otherwise, I prefer playing in my originals… so many things to play with. 

[BronxWench]

5 hours ago, Wilde_Guess said:

After all, you’re probably winning no friends writing Mickey Spillane’s Sponge Bob Square-Pants on the Docks or My Little Pony Vacation—All Knackered Out at Pete’s in Todmorden, so you’d better at least be having a good time with all the enemies you’ll make.

So, when you write these, you’ll let me know, yes? Because either of these might be the only way to get me to read anything in those fandoms.  

[Deadman]

I’ve generally felt the opposite.

I started writing fanfic because I read a fanfic that was AU to the canon. The only real criticism I had was that it wasn’t canon, so I wrote an in canon version of the story.

Also, I prefer live action stuff to animated stuff. I’m too emotionally detached from animated characters to really get into anything. Especially if it’s sexual in nature.

It helps to have a visual reference for the characters. Several of the actors involved in my fandoms (mainly Buffy, Riverdale, etc.) have done sexy photoshoots either with their fellow actors from the show or just generally. So that gets me thinking about stuff they could do together.

[Wilde_Guess]

Hi, Deadman and all.

4 hours ago, Deadman said:

I’ve generally felt the opposite.

I started writing fanfic because I read a fanfic that was AU to the canon….[chop!]

You aren’t feeling nearly as opposite as you might think.  Fanfiction by its very nature is the fanfic author telling a story the original author didn’t see fit to tell, however much of the original author’s universe you preserve in your own.  Likewise, if you read a fanfic where the author took too many liberties in their own storytelling, that can also inspire you to pick up the pen as you’ve done.  You’re not the only one to start writing fanfiction as a defense against fanfiction that didn’t quite do the job for you.

When specifically writing erotic or pornographic fanfic literature, you (or any author) needs to overcome their own internal limits in order to make their writing readable.  Your own personal “internal challenges” differ from others’ only in the details.  In order to write readable prose, you must be emotionally attached to your characters, and cannot write well if you are not; whether writing erotic literature, pornographic literature, or non-erotic literature.  If you’re connected with your characters and your story, you have a greater chance of connecting with the reader.  Likewise, if you’re already fully connected with your reader, such as Wilbert Audrey when he first started writing the Thomas the Tank Engine series, you will quickly connect with your characters if you’re any good at all.

If you imagination doesn’t go “far enough” to be able to form a “live” image from a manga, anime, or cartoon drawing of a character, that’s fine.  You still have plenty to write about.  Likewise, if you can’t figure out where all the “extra tentacles” go, that’s also fine.  Usagi-Chan is extremely grateful for that, even if some potential readers might be disappointed.  Your imagination for what you choose to imagine should be more than sufficient to entertain your readers.  If it isn’t, the “next” key works just as well for them as it does for you.  And if it really works for them, there is Patreon and Ko-fi, if you can’t quite go mainstream with your writing.

“Wilde Guess” isn’t even my “regular” nom de plume.  I use it mostly for any writing I do that is sexually explicit, erotic, homoerotic, etc.  As for your reason to start writing fanfiction, that’s really close to why I started Third Time’s A Soul Bond.  I was totally and thoroughly sick of poorly written, unexplainable-in-canon, and frankly insane slash pairings in HP fanfiction.  Seeing very few examples of “semi-logical” slash parings, I created this pen-name just to write that story.  On “St. Elsewhere.net,” it’s actually the longest story with that particular pairing.  I’ve received fewer reviews on the entire story than a single chapter of the “typical” SS/DM spit-roast of the Boy Who Lived.  Oh, well... 

Riding the Lincoln Way was originally a one shot to cleanse the mental palate from some “train-wreck-bad” “spank-kink” junk I’d encountered in passing.  But instead of just posting the junk, I started asking questions.  That’s never a smart thing when you expected less than five thousand words total, and thus have no outline to defend yourself from the plot bunnies putting on harness and towing your story out to places you never thought it would go.  Hey Joe was the continuation in both directions of two throw-away example scene snippets I wrote in a forum post.  Once again, no “outline shield.”

To answer @GeorgeGlass’s post directly:

On 8/4/2020 at 10:37 PM, GeorgeGlass said:

[chop!]

1. The fandom has to present a lot of opportunity for turning situations porny. Any show where there’s mad science, magic, or characters from other worlds with totally different cultures is good.
2. If it’s TV, it has to be animated. I feel weird writing about characters who are physically portrayed by real actors.
3. If the characters are young, they need to be precocious in some way.

[more chop!]

I agree with 1. and 3.  completely, except for if I’m writing a crack/bash/parody, then 1. will be broken by the very nature of what I’m writing.  2. doesn’t bother me so much.  When I’m writing fiction, I envision the fictional character exclusively, even if the character was portrayed in film or television.  In the Potterverse, I write about Ron Weasley, Harry Potter, Severus Snape, etc; not Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe, or Alan Rickman. 

Likewise if my original fiction has historical or modern real people characters, they will never be “main” characters, and anything they do do will either be their historical actions, or non-defamatory actions they would likely have logically taken had the entire story been real life.  So, if a group of musically talented kids get some help from a real-life rock star, that’s because had the kids existed in real life, the rock star in question would have helped them.  Of course, if I need a fictional character to hold a real-life position somewhere, “Mr. Real Life” never existed, and the fictional character will not resemble “Mr. Real Life” in any way at all whatsoever other than having turfed them out of their jobs and (fictional) existence.  This, of course, is just one of many challenges when you insert fictional characters into real-life locations and times, and why its done, but done very very sparingly on the commercial front.  But it can be done without legal or other life-changing adverse consequences, as can be witnessed to by Mario Puzo or Allen Drury.

Cheers!

[Deadman]

@Wilde_Guess

Oh I wasn’t necessarily saying that I am different from fanfiction writers in general. I was more responding to @GeorgeGlass’s comment about how they tend to focus on animated TV rather than live action.

I don’t do real people fanfic at all. What I meant is that for instance, I’m a Beronica fan in the Riverdale fandom, and Lili Reinhart and Camila Mendes who play those characters in the TV show have done a few photo shoots together. Not to mention social media posts where they are doing behind the scenes stuff. Any time I see them together, I think about one of the plot bunnies or partial stories I plan on writing.

Like you, this isn’t my real name that I’m using, obviously. I use this one for my sexual stories and my real name for the more plot based stuff, not to mention my original content. I’m hopeful that my original content, both fiction and non-fiction, will be commercially successful. Though I have been thinking about the possibility of being discovered to have written stuff on here. Mostly because I used to use this name many years ago on a now defunct website and occasionally I did have my real name come up thanks to how the site worked.

[Sessakag]

Unless a fandom has a pairing that I have, or am currently obsessing over, I don’t have any interest in writing for other fandoms, generally or pornographic-wise. I’m tunnel vision locked on to the otp that’s staying rent free in my mind.

On 8/13/2020 at 7:57 AM, GeorgeGlass said:

Compensating for what is lacking in a fandom seems to be a major source of inspiration for fanfic. 

Not finding what I want really fuels my drive to write. If my fav fandom is not writing the things I want to read, I just go and write them myself. This is what really sparked me to write fanfiction to be honest, too many stories that wrote about the mechanics of sex but forgot the human aspect of it. I got tired of reading, rather than experiencing the story. Felt like robots inserting parts rather than living beings with feelings, intimacy and emotion based carnal hungers having sex, and there wasn’t much about the BDSM lifestyle outside exaggerated Fifty Shade of Grey nonsense, so I had to at least try and add my two cents 😁 and don’t even get me started on the lack of NaruHinaSasu content 😢

 

[Wilde_Guess]

Sessakag wrote:

17 minutes ago, Sessakag said:

 [chop!] ...and don’t even get me started on the lack of NaruHinaSasu content 😢

 

Furthest thing from my mind, trust me.  🙃

[Deadman]

@Sessakag@Wide Stance

Do you ever find yourself getting less interested in fanfic if you get what you want in the canon?

For instance, I find that because I tend to focus on femmeslash stories, if I’m watching a TV show that introduces an FF pairing of some kind, I have less interest in doing fanfic for that fandom. It’s not impossible, but I was recently watching a show where the main pairing is FF, which is cool, but it made me less interested in fanfic.

[Wilde_Guess]

Hi, Deadman and all.

23 minutes ago, Deadman said:

@Sessakag@Wide Stance

Do you ever find yourself getting less interested in fanfic if you get what you want in the canon?

[chop!]

Not really.  The better fanfics out there provide interesting counters to canon, and if the canon itself is good, allows for the better appreciation of both.

As for what I write beyond what’s posted here, I tend to write “slice-of-life,” “Peggy-Sue” (never to be confused with Mary Sue,) and crossovers.  By their very nature, those types of stories are not usually written by the “original” authors.  But, even in commercial-land; crossovers, and even character migration can and do happen.

And hopefully “Wide Stance” also enjoys this discussion, once they catch up with the tag.  😜  (I’ve done it too, and I’m laughing with you...)

Cheers!

[InvidiaRed]

It has to interest me for example one of my first fan fics.

Was a Skynet X John Connor. Alot of people tend to forget before everyone saw marvel bring multiverse to the public consciousness you need a really stacked out world built first and people use it very wrong. Just like that latest abomination of terminator. For John Connor is supposed to be a constant just as Skynet is inevitability bound intrinsically together. They are Judgement Day. Sarah Connor isn’t just John Connor’s mother. She’s also Mother of The Machines but I’ve gone on long enough on my tangent on the misuse of multiverse.

I do want to LOTR fic eventually finally getting comfortable with writing smut.

 

[Desiderius Price]

1 hour ago, Wilde_Guess said:

Hi, Deadman and all.

Not really.  The better fanfics out there provide interesting counters to canon, and if the canon itself is good, allows for the better appreciation of both.

As for what I write beyond what’s posted here, I tend to write “slice-of-life,” “Peggy-Sue” (never to be confused with Mary Sue,) and crossovers.  By their very nature, those types of stories are not usually written by the “original” authors.  But, even in commercial-land; crossovers, and even character migration can and do happen.

And hopefully “Wide Stance” also enjoys this discussion, once they catch up with the tag.  😜  (I’ve done it too, and I’m laughing with you...)

Cheers!

My potter fanfic makes Harry’s time in canon… a cakewalk.  I do stray a bit OOC because I do have the death eaters effective in their designs and plans.  I also let myself get bogged down in the details, but that captures the grind that Harry would experience in this, as he steadily becomes persona-non-grata throughout the wizarding world, unable to stop the slog of negative press slandering him.  It’s enjoyable to keep writing here, because the narrative is so addictive for what comes next; even on the rewrite, despite knowing, it’s still enjoyable.

For other fandoms, I occasionally do get thoughts, mostly of the mary/gary sue variety, nothing worth writing about TBH, because original works is where the rest of my fun writing is at.

[Sessakag]

On 1/27/2023 at 12:05 AM, Deadman said:

@Sessakag@Wide Stance

Do you ever find yourself getting less interested in fanfic if you get what you want in the canon?

For instance, I find that because I tend to focus on femmeslash stories, if I’m watching a TV show that introduces an FF pairing of some kind, I have less interest in doing fanfic for that fandom. It’s not impossible, but I was recently watching a show where the main pairing is FF, which is cool, but it made me less interested in fanfic.

Not even a tiny bit, if anything it adds fuel to the obsession 🤭 I end up thinking of different ways whatever I watched could go down, or add some component to it that I think would spice up the interactions. It’s like a bottomless pit for me, I hyper focus on that one pairing and am not ever satisfied no matter how many times I get what I want out of it.

 

On 1/26/2023 at 11:36 PM, Wilde_Guess said:

Sessakag wrote:

Furthest thing from my mind, trust me.  🙃

That’s a real shame, that throuple is quite a bit of fun 🤭

[GeorgeGlass]

On 1/26/2023 at 11:05 PM, Deadman said:

@Sessakag@Wide Stance

Do you ever find yourself getting less interested in fanfic if you get what you want in the canon?

For instance, I find that because I tend to focus on femmeslash stories, if I’m watching a TV show that introduces an FF pairing of some kind, I have less interest in doing fanfic for that fandom. It’s not impossible, but I was recently watching a show where the main pairing is FF, which is cool, but it made me less interested in fanfic.

I think I feel that way. Even though I like watching Big Mouth, I’ve never felt the urge to write fanfic about it, and I think a lot of that is because there’s no pervy thing I could do with those characters that hasn’t already been done in canon.

[Deadman]

22 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:

I think I feel that way. Even though I like watching Big Mouth, I’ve never felt the urge to write fanfic about it, and I think a lot of that is because there’s no pervy thing I could do with those characters that hasn’t already been done in canon.

Totally get that. I was watching a TV show, only ran for two seasons. The first season there was tension between the female lead and another woman in the main group. It was more implied. In season 2 however, they just went full into it and had the two women be very obviously love interests. So it completely took the wind out of my desire to write about them as a couple.

[Wilde_Guess]

Episode TV, or episodic fiction in general, is actually one of the few places where a fanfic author isn’t automatically writing “alternative universe.”  Before the Harry Potter series got big, and made fanfiction bigger, the two “biggies” were the Star Wars and Star Trek series.  With all the “extra” stories Lucas licensed pre-Disney, and with Star Trek being episode TV, you couldn’t tell a lot of the best “fanfiction” from authorized and truly canon stories. 

[Desiderius Price]

2 hours ago, Wilde_Guess said:

Episode TV, or episodic fiction in general, is actually one of the few places where a fanfic author isn’t automatically writing “alternative universe.”  Before the Harry Potter series got big, and made fanfiction bigger, the two “biggies” were the Star Wars and Star Trek series.  With all the “extra” stories Lucas licensed pre-Disney, and with Star Trek being episode TV, you couldn’t tell a lot of the best “fanfiction” from authorized and truly canon stories. 

And some fanfiction can be better written than canon.  Prior to HBP, the worst of the Harry/Ginny hookups read way, way, better than the “sudden urge” of the books… unless you think she used a love potion on Harry.

Also, prior to book 5, there was a lot of speculative/predictive fanfics that were taking a guess to where canon was headed, many got abandoned when they became “AU” with the book’s release.  (Ditto for books 6, likely 7 too)

[Wilde_Guess]

Hi, Desiderius Price and all.

27 minutes ago, Desiderius Price said:

And some fanfiction can be better written than canon.  Prior to HBP, the worst of the Harry/Ginny hookups read way, way, better than the “sudden urge” of the books… unless you think she used a love potion on Harry...[chop!]

Definitely so.  More than a few “Harry/Hermione shippers” believe that JKR had laid the groundwork out for that ship in canon.  I didn’t see it in the books, and the movie actually hinted at the Ron/Hermione dating relationship that ultimately took place.  And, like you said, we the reader never really saw that much of Ginny building a relationship with Harry until it showed up mostly formed. 

JKR gave us all a brilliant sandbox to play in, but she did leave a splinter or two in the edge boards.  And, don’t get me started about Hermione being white growing up and having kids, then suddenly turning Black because JKR liked Norma Dumezweni’s acting.  JKR never said what race Hermione was in the books.  But in the movies, which are also canon, and where JKR had veto power over all casting decisions, she chose the decidedly anglo Emma Watson to play Hermione.  I have a “two or three shot” I might post about Hermione turning herself Black a-la John Howard Griffin for semi-political purposes with a combination of potions and ritual without telling or asking anyone first, only to accidentally turn her children and parents Black too, and also get thoroughly lambasted by her sister-in-law Angelina, who actually was born Black before she sets things back to right with a lot of help from Ron.  It’s JKR’s sandbox, and she can do what she wants with it.  I, in turn, can politely express the opinion that she made a silly and needless blunder.

As for people speculating in error where the seven-book series was going to go, that was actually more or less good mystery writing, since part of the overall story type for the seven-book series was mystery.   She left the clues where she needed to leave them, and once you got to the point where “new revelations” happened, you could see her laying the groundwork.  And Alan Rickman deserves more than a little credit for not ‘blabbing’ where the story was going.  Remember, he insisted on knowing the entire series, “spoilers” and all, before agreeing to play Severus Snape.

Cheers!

[Desiderius Price]

10 hours ago, Wilde_Guess said:

Definitely so.  More than a few “Harry/Hermione shippers” believe that JKR had laid the groundwork out for that ship in canon.  I didn’t see it in the books, and the movie actually hinted at the Ron/Hermione dating relationship that ultimately took place.  And, like you said, we the reader never really saw that much of Ginny building a relationship with Harry until it showed up mostly formed.

Trouble with Harry pursuing Hermione (or Ron) is that it’d diminish the odd one out.  Prior to HBP, there was Ginny infatuated with Harry, but mostly “Ron’s sister” back to her.  Early in HBP, Ginny gave Harry cookies made “just for him”… rest of the book had poisonings due to bad batches of love potions to others, so yeah, IMO, Ginny drugged Harry up, and I’m guessing with Molly Weasley’s help. I even poke fun at Ginny’s infatuation in the explicit version of my fanfic

Speculating where the author will take the narrative in the next book is fun.  When I was working on my fifth year story, JKR was dropping hints to book five, and yeah, I made a guess, and TBH, I think mine’s better in some ways, more impactful.

[Wilde_Guess]

Hello, Desiderius Price, and all.

9 hours ago, Desiderius Price said:

Trouble with Harry pursuing Hermione (or Ron) is that it’d diminish the odd one out… [chop!] 

That’s the beauty of being “back-benchers” and pseudo-pornographers—we can fix that!

I decided not to post an example here.  Once the “unlock kerfuffle” has ended far enough, I might post a one-shot on why Hugo Weasley was born in February of 1994 with black hair and green eyes, and why James Arthur Potter was born at the same time with blue eyes to go with his mum’s red hair.

Cheers!

Edited February 1, 2023 by Wilde_Guess
spelling correction