I like fanfiction. Most of it is fun, and it's great when you get a really good author. I am okay if the canon characters are changed slightly, but if it's too much, it's not really fanfiction anymore and would be better if the author just started his/ her own original story.

Of course, bad grammar and spelling irk me too. If you're going to take the time to write a story, you should take the time to do a spellcheck and learn some basic English!

Originally Posted by toxicsugar

EDIT: @ Ladytruth--- I don't mean to one up you, but I don't think anybody writes fanfiction with the sole intent to "stick one" to the original author. And I don't really think the authors care about what some kids are writing about their stories. With some rather... er, how do I put it...? With a few "below average" fics in mind, I can see why some fics might appear to smear characters and the show/book/whatever, but think of it this way--- chances are it's just some kid who's writing for fun. The content may be less than spectacular, but they're (hopefully) learning from their mistakes in order to better their own writing. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

I heartily agree with your sentiments. As a fan fiction author I rarely think about trying to "rewrite" or "stick it to" the original canon. My usual MO is to either take an idea and create a new twist on it or to explore something from the story more fully. Mostly it's for fun or to get my fellow fans to have fun.

As for learning from my mistakes, I've done plenty of that! My earliest stuff makes me cringe to think about, but I learned what not to do. I've made a Mary-Sue (actually a few of them *sweatdrop*), I've slaughtered characterizations, created pairings that wouldn't work AT ALL, and a whole host of other "transgressions". That's why when I see a bad fic I try to point out all the things an author could do better in the hopes of helping them improve.

Originally Posted by LadyTruth

i just dont like fanfiction. i think its an insult to the authors, and sometimes, the characters. i think the author ended the story there for a reason,and its wrong to continue it because we dont like the ending. i think its like saying you think you could do better. 99.9% of the time, nobody writes it better than the author.

That's not the point in fanfiction at all.
Fanfiction is a chance to write out your day dreams and wonders of how you think things could turn out if something happened. At least, these are what I write. Little silly side stories that are no longer than a one shot.

Really though, the ideas people have for making a new adventure for the canons to go on are no different than role plays with plots they came up with for the canons to go about with.

You know how many Kingdom Hearts RPs I've seen where Sora's going on yet another adventure? I've seen a few like them in fanfiction form as well. People just have ideas and want to write them out. They're not trying to insult the author because they didn't like how something happened.

@toxicsugar:
Actually there are some authors who don't like fanfiction and are always ordering websites to delete fanfics of their books. Harry Potter and Twilight are two examples. Though anime / manga creators love fanfiction because they see it as free publicity.

Fanfiction is my addiction. Seriously. I don't know how i'd pass my days if i never discovered it xD (yes, i do realize how sad that sounds) I have read a lot of off-putting ones though :rawrmayor: I especially hate it when a writer has a fantastic idea, but can't write to save their lives :O Spelling mistakes annoy me the most :feesh:

Hehe.

Originally Posted by snowmousey

Fanfiction is my addiction. Seriously. I don't know how i'd pass my days if i never discovered it xD (yes, i do realize how sad that sounds) I have read a lot of off-putting ones though :rawrmayor: I especially hate it when a writer has a fantastic idea, but can't write to save their lives :O Spelling mistakes annoy me the most :feesh:

Hehe.

Those fanfics make me very sad.
It's such a wonderful idea but they do it all wrong.

It's really annoying too when the writer gets mad at reviews they don't like to see and just claim that you're flaming them.

Originally Posted by Sora`

Those fanfics make me very sad.
It's such a wonderful idea but they do it all wrong.

It's really annoying too when the writer gets mad at reviews they don't like to see and just claim that you're flaming them.

It drives me crazy when you offer advice and the author ignores it or gets angry because you are pointing out grammar or spelling errors. Now I can understand if it is someone telling the author what direction to take a story or what characters should be together. Flamers drive me crazy. If you do not like a particular pairings or a particular type of story, don't read it and get angry at the author for writing it. Helpful criticism is great. But also saying there is nothing wrong with a story when there are so many glaringly obvious spelling or grammar mistakes drives me crazy. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect the author to f=go back and fix the problems already in the story, but I do expect them to at least work on becoming a better writer.
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY to you all. Hope your day is full of love, laughter and warmth.

@Darrigan: Flamers are annoying aren't they? I actually remember a friend of mine was the victim of a serial flamer over on FFN. This person would go to random fan fictions and give them horrifyingly rude (there was a LOT of profanity and generally degrading language) reviews. This person apparently made it their mission in life to bring down other authors.

Flamers don't deserve to stay on my reviews and I just delete them. I know the difference between a flamer and someone actually giving good criticism.

I've deleted flames and had to disable anonymous reviews because I'd get flames from people saying, "Are you retarded" and stuff like that for original fics that had a dialect of English in it, as well as fanfics.

@ Medu: What do you mean by a "dialect of English", if I may ask?

@LadyKnightSkye: The Scottish dialect. Technically, it's a dialect of English. Here's the story I was referencing: The Lionel Cronicals, a Mystery fanfic - FictionPress.com

@ Medu: Ah, I see. Dialects are hard to write. >.> But to call you retarded? That's simply too far.

It is. I deleted the review. The worst thing, though, is that the idiot that left the review left a fake email address.

I actually really like fanfiction! I mean, yeah, alot of it really IS bad, but when you find that one story or author, and you follow it from start to finish because it's so good, you feel like you're reading a really good book in real life. As writer of both regular and fanfiction, I know the feeling when someone who likes your story so genuinely tells you they do. Just gotta sift through all the crap to find the good stuff.

I'm very picky about my fanfiction especially when it is based off of something I happen to like alot. The author of said fanfiction has to write the characters as they are portrayed in the original series. For instance if Jack is a stoic, but honourable warrior and in the fanfiction he's overly emotional and impulsive...then the story is an automatic turn off. And unfortunately, alot of fanfictions I come across do that..and with characters I happen to be fond of! So....I don't read fanfictions that often because I never find ones that please me. I'm too picky, I guess.

I am a huge fan of fanfictions, but I agree with PrincessBane, I really want the characters to be in character personality wise. It can also be extremely distracting to find a fic with a good storyline, but if the author fails at writing to the point that it is distracting; constant misspellings, tense changes everywhere, extremely poor grammar, missing words, then I just cant read it. I'm pretty picky, I want the stories I read to be well written and to have interesting plots =3 I can't stop looking for good ones though because I tend to favor alternate pairings to what exists in whatever series its from, so its nice to see those.

I tend to agree with both of you. The characters should be as close to the original personalities as possible. If not, then the author should have a pretty good reason-for example, if the character had a completely different upbringing or reacted differently to their upbringing.

The Birds. the book and movie are not the same. the only thing that is the same is birds are attacking people. It was horrible.

I have gotten considerably picky with my fanfiction over the years. When I first started out I read just about anything. I was heavy in the yaoi scene back then. But as I matured, so did my tastes. I find that I want the situations to be believable and well written. It can be far fetched but done so in a manner that makes it possible. I look back at the stuff I had first written, and I can't believe people ever read my crap. I don't write to much anymore, and when I do its to humor friends, but I just find that I have a hard to time writing characters that are already existing.

I have been reading Fanfiction for about 2 years now. Sometimes I like the endings better than the actual stories written by the original author. The only bad thing about Fanfiction is weeding out the hundreds of bad stories from the good. Also, sometimes many of the stories use to many of the same plot lines. Once you do find the good stories you can't stop reading. I love reading fanfiction about Harry Potter, Twilight and Naruto. Can't really tell you why I just do.

There is a lot of very good Axis Powers: Hetalia fanfiction on FF.net. I enjoy reading it time to time and I think I like it more than the actual series, if that's humanly possible. It's always fun looking for new fanfiction to read in the Hetalia section because there are so many characters there are even more pairings. Some of the pairings are a bit weird though, like England x Sealand. What the hell. D8

I only read fanfiction if it's gay and hardcore. XP

I like well written fanfiction that makes reasonable sense and keeps the original characters in characters... nothing as bad a super lovey dovey Hiei dancing in field of flowers when he's sober and not possessed. Some of the people who write fanfiction could be really good writers in my opinion if they had original stories but technically that's impossible because everything that is ever written has been thought of before.

Fanfictions are sort of controversal. It's cool to read what other people-fans-of a novel think what should happen at a point, and sometimes its actually pretty good. But you have to imagine how that makes the writer looks-not very good. There's a website (Unleash Your Imagination - FanFiction.Net) that has a lot of good writers writing side stories, and a whole different plot for certain books/anime/moves etc which doesn't really use the writer's plot or anything.
I've been writing fanfictions for an anime called Vampire Knight fot about..6 months, and its pretty fun (:

Yes, some books I never everrr want to end, but they have to. And yes, fanfiction is awesome. But some of it rewens the story and some don't stick to the stories (brb gatta come back to this, im leaving work now lmao)