All Purpose General Fanfiction Posting Thread

Sad to say you might need to watch Alien vs. Predator for research. One of the humans does prove herself to the Predator as a warrior. Don't think there's a huge amount of communication going on there.

Would she need to trick the Predator into killing Weyland-Yuntani security. It's obvious they're competition for his kill (even if they are woefully under-armed).

I've seen the movie and remember a scene where, when the protag asked the Predator why was it fiddling with its wrist device with, the Predator silently gestured that it was going to blow up, indicating that it knew what she asked.

Then there was that time in P2 when a Predator interrupted a human's swearing and promptly completed the phrase for him, showing that it understood, if not the meaning, then at the very least the spirit of it as an insult/challenge.

So yeah, the Preds might very well understand English, even if we only go by canonical sources.

Hell, that just gave me an idea...

Would a Predator relish the chance to hunt one of the extra-intelligent xenomorphs from Alien Resurrection? Not any stronger or tougher, but much more resourceful. Like, dropping loot in a trail to lure prey into a dead end. I absolutely love that scene in the novelization.

edited 18th Jun '15 6:29:29 PM by amitakartok

That probably comes as a natural consequence from being strongly implied to be keeping tabs on humanity on an on-and-off basis since ancient times. They probably found us humans to be quite impressive as a hunting challenge despite our relative fragility and lack of raw physical prowess, possibly due to our resourcefulness and sheer stubbornness.

A random thought while watching RWBY.

In fiction, monsters are always attracted to 'negative' emotion. Fear, anger, hate, suffering, panic, the usual dark side stuff. The only times I recall monsters being attracted to 'positive' emotions like happiness, hope, etc, it's in a Magical Girl show where the bad guys steal it as a source of power, in Sailor Moon where it's for some reason as a sign the person is hiding the McGuffin of the season, or in Super Sentai, where more of same. And the bad guys usually do it for the sake of making people sad, because they get power from negative emotions or similar.

What if you play it straight?

Let's say in your setting (I'm thinking RWBY-esque, although standard magical girl settings would work too), random wandering monsters are attracted to positive emotions and utterly ignore you when you have negative emotions. That means parties are essentially giant bonfires announcing 'eat me', hope is literally suicidal, and happiness is jus asking to die. If you're at least apathetic or sad though, monsters literally can't see you. What kind of hero would you get? Wandering vigilantes who go around making people sad or angry, because they're endangering themselves and those around them? "Beware, happy ones. I am Magical Girl Grimm Despair, and I will plunge you into darkness!"

Plus you can't have happy sex ever, because that's insta-death. Procreation via artificial insemination? Or such a businesslike mindset that both of you just blank out or talk about the weather while you're waiting for stupid biology to have the right reaction? Or rape, rape everywhere...

edited 8th Jul '15 5:02:10 PM by SCMof2814

I think the world you're looking for might be Berserk.

The monsters would have to work fast, otherwise they'd lose you the moment you realize they're on to you. I could see them acting a bit like crocodiles, floating around through the ether until they sense emotion and then LUNGING.

Or maybe they could stick you with something that lets them track you.

edited 9th Jul '15 6:55:12 AM by Durazno

Been updating an Neon Genesis Evangelion and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha crossover here (link is to the latest chapter).

Rebuild of Korra

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/wiki/other/fvcsmb#wiki_rebuild_of_korra

I wouldn't say I was ever in the Legend of Korra hatedom, but I did openly dislike some of the sloppy storytelling and dropped plotlines that littered the series. A fanfic "contest" started a few weeks after the finale, so to put my money where my mouth is I decided to jump in and write a fanfic that could "improve" everything that went wrong from season 2 on without ditching anything major. The plan was for it to be modeled on Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and Dragon Ball Multiverse.

Cut to me realizing that my attempt to add nuance to the series had devolved into making things seem weary and grim, mainly in order to skip any teen love triangle bullshit. I went back and edited a few scenes once I realized what had happened. With some of the humor that makes Avatar what it is restored, I came to realize that no matter how cool my conflict was, those who'd read it weren't interested in what I was going for.

Taking the theme of balance more seriously than Bryke did wouldn't win me any fans if I ignored Korrasami in the process. Deemphasizing Korra's friends for a time so I could focus on the spirits' role in the Antarctican war of independence or Jinora soaking in the fundamentalist culture of the Northern Water Tribe while Vaatu whispered in her head wouldn't win me any friendships among the shippers. Add to that how "ambitiously" outlined the Rebuild was coupled with how much time I'd need to write it, and you can see why I left it to sit.

I might come back to it. I might delete it altogether. Frankly writing it all out rather than getting it drawn was already a compromise on my part, and maybe Bryke were wise to abandon things like spirit possession and detailed military conflict. Who knows though, I may return to the Rebuild occassionally whenever I need to distract myself, but for now it'll stay dormant.

Not cool dude.

....ok, it is kinda humorous, but I'm assuming they are both a little older than usual...

Right?

Something that came to me yesterday, for those who are familiar with Half-Life.

What if the plot (and game engine limitations) didn't conspire against Gordon to force him to leave fellow Black Mesa survivors behind as he went on ahead by himself? What if they all went No One Gets Left Behind and tried to survive together?

This time, Gordon isn't a last One-Man Army standing, but the de facto leader of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits working together to get out of Black Mesa alive. And on the other side of the coin, Shephard and his fellow Marines are doing the same thing.

edited 18th Apr '16 12:49:28 PM by amitakartok

...wow. I mean, WOW.

Did I just seriously read about a Japanese shrine maiden getting violated by a tentacle monster in a Stargate fic?

WHAT. THE. HELL.

What?

Nani?!

I'm not kidding, I really did read that.

Ectoplasmic blob entity exits the Portal Network it was mapping at the shrine. Shrine maiden promptly bashes the entity flat. Entity regenerates, slips under her skirt and rather violently probes her into submission until she's of no further threat. Compounding it all is that when the four year old protagonist and his similarly-aged friend pop out of the Portal Network moments later and see the shrine maiden lying on the ground, drooling, giggling and slightly delirious in afterglow, their reaction is more along the lines of "...oops, that wasn't supposed to happen. I mean, Anal Probing those rednecks was funny, but her? Eww."

And according to the narration, the entities adopted this as standard operating procedure to nonlethally subdue a hostile local after a few of them ported to an American cornfield, encountered some gun-toting rednecks and were forced to resort to this in self-defense (followed by hanging them up like hunting trophies and taking photographic evidence, which the protagonists thought was hysterically funny). In fact, that incident is where the urban legend of Anal Probing originated.

In any case, this is a crack fic the likes of which I've never read before, with its initial premise being that a four year old Australian boy, his cat and later on his grandfather, get infected with Alteran nanites. The aftermath of the above scene involve the Japanese police thinking that the various entities surrounding the protagonists are youkai, including the Pokémon-Speaking wombat whose mood changes visibly affect the weather; one of the policewomen somehow (offscreen) getting her clothes dissolved by a slime monster, replacing them with a Leia-esque skimpy magical girl outfit made out of solid gold and proceeding to battle building-sized youkai with a naginata before the protagonist's grandfather (and the rest of the police present) gets there and orders the youkai to clean up the mess the way a parent scolds a child, which actually causes some of the policemen present to think he's a kami and prostrate at him; said policewoman later getting quite rich from selling her golden outfit after having had to use an angle grinder to cut it off; and the shrine maiden herself getting interviewed by a stenographer who later married her and became a hentai artist who brought the tentacle rape trope into Japanese culture.

edited 30th Apr '16 4:25:16 AM by amitakartok

That just blew my mind with its absurdity.

Anyway, the real reason I'm posting is for an experience I had recently with the non-fanfic culture and those residing on Facebook. I was skimming through my FB feed when I spotted a nice piece of Legend of Zelda fanart regarding a fanfic it was based on. I thought it was nice and commented that I had read the fanfic and mentioned my own (shameless plugging of course). But the amount of vitriol and seething hatred for anything fanfic related was awful. Calling both mine and the fanfic that the fanart was based on as 'shitfics' and others saying there is no redeeming writing qualities to be had in fanfics, bunch of lame ass stories and more bile that can't be repeated here. So...yeah, wow, is that a common thing for fanfic culture? To experience this by people who don't understand or get it? I even asked a good friend online to proofread and review my fanfic and he adamantly said no, he doesn't read fanfics. He has no interest in such stupid things. They're all dumb. I stood looking at my phone dumbfounded at this friend of mine for 10+ years saying something like that. Anyone else experienced this?

I think that the majority of "mainstream" (or wanna-be mainstream, anyway) culture is probably like that, but I'm fortunate in that the vast bulk of my IRL associates are in the same near-otaku-ish subculture (meaning, loves a crapload of anime/videogames/etc., though I'm the biggest fanfic guy in the group), and my dad - while firmly enough in the "just doesn't get it" camp, is at least tolerant of it as a hobby.

.......no doubt in part because my years of experience in crafting fanfic have led to some killer essays/papers for college (relative to my peers, at any rate).

To make a long story short, I think the majority of people in the so-called "mainstream" are ignorant and/or haters (at least in places where their real names/faces are in play), and you're probably going to face more adversity than not whenever you try to bring up the topic.

But even so, that just makes it our job as creators to rise above the hate.

edited 2nd May '16 7:35:25 AM by EvaUnit01

That said, do remember that Sturgeon's Law applies to fanfics as it does to the other things it's typically applied to. I wouldn't be surprised if a considerable number of those "fanfic haters" have based their opinion on having never encountered a good fanfic in whatever limited forays they've made into the world of fanfics (an impression which can easily be adopted given Sturgeon's Law, even though it's actually flawed).

I didn't realize it applied to things other than fanfic.

It gets better. In the latest chapter, the adolescent protagonist realized that he can see the future - or rather, possible futures. Specifically, he found out about the Abydos mission that's going to happen about two decades down the line (the fic begins in the seventies) and that one of its possible outcomes is Earth getting glassed by pissed Goa'uld, so he and his grandfather decided to try and preempt this. How, you ask? The Stargate is currently collecting dust in a warehouse that's going to change hands in a few years, with everything inside being auctioned off. What happened in the canon timeline is that the new owner wanted to bulldoze the warehouse but didn't have the heavy lifting machinery to move the gate, so he passed it onto the only ones he could get on short notice: the government. What the protagonists are attempting to do is to get enough money to buy the gate at the auction before anyone realizes what it is.

And how they're trying to raise the money for that?

By meeting George Lucas and investing in the first Star Wars movie two years before the premier, at a time the man is having trouble securing funding because the major film studios all think it's a stupid idea for a movie.

edited 2nd May '16 10:07:40 AM by amitakartok

Well, the original formulation was applied to the science fiction genre. Wikipedia article link.

There's another layer to it too: It's not easy to show someone a good fanfic.

If you look at other media formats where Sturgeon's Law is commonly invoked, most of them are faster to process than text. You can show someone what you think a good piece of fanart, and they'll be able to tell you on the spot whether or not they think it's good. You can show someone what you think is a good vlog, let's play, or abridged series, and they'll be able to estimate whether it's worth watching based on things like production quality and similar factors within the first minute of the episode you show them.

With fanfiction, there are certainly some immediately obvious clues that a fic will be bad, but not so many that a fic will be good. The only way to know if a fic is good is to read a good enough chunk of it to see where it's going, and that takes time and attention that could be spent on ventures that carry less risk of disappointment.

So, not only is it hard to find a good fanfic due to Sturgeon's Law (which does hit fanfics even harder due to the low barrier of entry), but it's hard to show non-fanfic-afficionados examples of good fanfiction, which hurts it's reputation further.

IIRC, a considerable portion of early Star Trek fan fiction got official recognition and subsequently turned into part of the ST's Expanded Universe. How about citing that?

Anyone remember the old books series Animorphs? You know, the one about child soldiers, mental trauma and moral relativism? To this day I still hate Cassie's moralizing. It's part of why I loathe Egwene Alvere so.

Anyway, anyone know any good Animorphs crossover fics? Because this series, as much as I enjoyed it, is giving me squat for good fanfic ideas. Everyone is just too low-level, power-wise. It MIGHT work with Agents of Shield, on a purely power-to-power basis, but conceptually? No. Even if you do the 'sent to another universe' thing that all deadfics start out as, it doesn't really work not even for the initial misunderstandings.

Sigh, I just have to acknowledge that my reading preferences have gotten more high-power over the years. Maybe a medieval setting? The Animorphs might just be the right power level in, say, Golarion or Krynn (plus, Golden Dragon Morph! Silver Dragon nothlit is like still having the morphing power!), but... well, those kinds of plots can't really go anywhere.

Or.. Oooh! Kono Suba! Rachel dies, and after having to listen to the Ellimst Chronicles, suddenly finds herself in a heavenly waiting room with the option of killing the Demon Lord for the chance to get back to Earth. Alternately, Familiar of Zero? That... might just let morphing be strong enough for the setting. Rachel would absolutely murderize Louise though.

What if Louise summoned Tobias?