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I'd like to underline I am A-OK with trying this plan. I will write all the gay bakery AU's anyone could want for enough dosh.
I'd like to underline I am A-OK with trying this plan. I will write all the gay bakery AU's anyone could want for enough dosh.
Well, like WhoAmEye will say, if you don't write for something popular, then no one will give you criticism and help you get better.
If you really want concrit and not likes, your better option is to ask an IRL friend to help out.
I like fanfiction overall. I don't agree with the consensus that some hold that it isn't real writing, or anything like that. But there is a big problem with the content thereof; an even problem.
I don't want to confuse you all; this could be in the fanfiction forum, but I think it needs to be here, as it could apply to other media, like quests, and think it's a valuable conversation to have.
Recently, I was reading a conversation about the importance of a characters costume. Now, this was related to a quest that I've barely frequented, and I'm not great at keeping up with thanks like that. But I did notice something.
The difference in, not to put too fine a point on it, but quality. I don't mean to impugn the technical writing of any writer. I know what you are thinking, @logiccosmic writes trash, and like trash, yo. Yup, agreed. And that's why I think that we should talk about this. Statisically, would you say that around, maybe, 75% of the content on the site feels almost... by the numbers? Our stories aren't even, smooth experiences. They feel kinda disjointed, and rushed almost?
Case in point, relying solely on one of my stories, the biggest one I did, you could expect there to be, well, interesting stuff in Fiend. However, it's mostly just escalation in featureless rooms. That may be an uncharitable viewing, but that's how it feels to me, looking back on it. I could expect that I wouldn't right something similar, perhaps slightly more detailed now, but I think I'd still have a hard time finding a good way to express myself. In Fiend, there isn't really any overarching goal, plot, or message. It's just fight mans.
So why is the quality difference so massive, between something like my fic, and something like @EarthScorpion 's? I think it's something that sounds painful, but perhaps we need to talk about it.
SV idolizes power. That's the simple truth. It's more complex than that; it's the easy resolution of problems, the veneer of competency, and much more. But, the issue is, what does the story become about? Is it just a series of punch the man downs? Or does it devolve into fluff with no purpose? (Not to say fluff is bad, or a story expressly going for fluff is bad either). Yes, this is an oversimplification of the topic, but that's why I want to have this discussion, so we can talk about it honestly. And I'm 100% guilty of it.
So, now that this is all out, what's the general consensus? Am I dumb, just imagining things, or is this something we can address?
And more so, how can we address this? To those of you who are the more, well, distinguished writers, how do you do what you do? I kinda want to have deep, rich stories not be novelties, and instead become more commonplace.
Sv can be a vehicle for good concrit, sure, but it's an iffy thing at best.
If you really want concrit and not likes, your better option is to ask an IRL friend to help out.
I write online, sure, but honestly if i want concrit, SV is not where i ask for it.
Baen's Bar is the layer of hell that spat out a certain space marine and his fanboys.There are places where you can get writing help anonymously from strangers.
Baen's Bar, for example.
There IS a floor to basic quality that you need to meet in order to get useful responses there, but even if you are woefully lacking in technicals, you might get a kick in the pants to help you find your way closer to better writing.
Edit: Tagging @WhoAmEye
Well, that really depends on how you look at things. See, the things you are describing are mostly a direct result of making it a power fantasy (or at least facilitate making it one). The lack of ripple effects is a lack of effort or skill, which if all it is the author is a power fantasy the lack of effort is unsurprising while if they are a newer author the lack of skill is unsurprising. Ditto for the preceding point.Since we're on constructive criticism, what problems are common to power fantasies and what's the best way to address them?
From what I've seen the problems include:
Feel free to add more.
- The main character being the only competent one.
- The lack of agency by other characters, and a general lowering of their abilities to make the main character look better.
- As I already mentioned, it being a crossover or adding elements to make the main character more powerful.
- A lack of worldbuilding and acting like the only thing that exists is the area the main character is in at any given time.
- No ripple effects for the character's actions.
Quotes and tags do not create alerts for the user if edited in.
Baen's Bar is the layer of hell that spat out a certain space marine and his fanboys.
Considering what I've seen of Baen writing(missile spreadsheets ahoy!) I'd probably writing advice from anyone who holds their output in high esteem.
Quotes and tags do not create alerts for the user if edited in.
Reminds me of Bad Mondays over at FiMFiction. They subverted the HIE power fantasy tropes by making every crazy thing the SI beats lose because of dumb luck. He then uses this to gain reputation as a great warrior from a warrior race. He accidentally kills a Deathwing size undead dragon by getting mad and hitting a wall with his hammer, causing the room he's in to drop from the top of the cave they're in to fall down, crushing it. He's basically a bard that's convinced everyone he's a high level fighter. His strongest piece of gear, his magic-resistant armor, was created on total accident, and sparkles and shines harder than a twilight vampire, which makes it a lot harder to see how shit his technique is.Like, I usually don't like most power fantasies, and that's not because they are power fantasies, but rather because... Well, points like other characters being less competent, less active, and weaker makes it harder for me to enjoy the power fantasy elements, because the protagonist is winning not by being powerful, but rather by everyone else being weak, stupid, and rolling over for him. At that point I'd rather be seeing the Story Of Some Guy, Completely Ordinary, Who Somehow Keeps Beating Gods And Demons, because then at least there is a comedy element. That's an example of the first; badly written for the goal of being a power fantasy (from my subjective framework, at the least).
I infer that the alerts are only checked for new posts and not edits, and thus to fix the issue (assuming you consider it one, which you personally at least clear do) would require altering the system to do alerts on edits.
This would, among other things, probably cause you to receive multiple tags per post that got edited while having your name in it the whole time.
It's completely possible to have a power fantasy without those problems. I just finished watching Persona 4 the Animation and it was a power fantasy without those problems.Well, that really depends on how you look at things. See, the things you are describing are mostly a direct result of making it a power fantasy (or at least facilitate making it one). The lack of ripple effects is a lack of effort or skill, which if all it is the author is a power fantasy the lack of effort is unsurprising while if they are a newer author the lack of skill is unsurprising. Ditto for the preceding point.
It's completely possible to have a power fantasy without those problems. I just finished watching Persona 4 the Animation and it was a power fantasy without those problems.
I've talked about this extensively. SB and SV are very worldbuilding or setup oriented when it comes to premises. Look at our ideas threads. 'What if X had Y power?'As an incredibly pretentious and self-indulgent individual, I reccommend we write more metafiction about the nature of power fantasies.
I think part of what leads to bland power fantasies is that the idea of the story doesn't extend beyond the power fantasy. In the most literal sense, there's building your story off of "wouldn't it be cool if character x had the powers of this other character?" but there's a pretty wide range of conceptual starting points that, if relied upon alone, will rarely produce interesting stories whether fanfiction or original. It's easy to fall into the trap of relying on in-universe logic to dictate your story and filling out the rest with tropes you enjoy.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but if you don't consider the themes of your story at all you're simply leaving the quality of your work up to chance. Maybe you'll happen across a combination of events and tropes that creates a thematically resonant story, but most of the time you'll just get a work that's the sum of its parts. It'll only be there to serve up tropes and ideas to people who want them, and thus you'll only really get attention if you're serving up popular tropes and ideas. Power fantasies are just the formula that makes it easiest to pander to SV's majority.
That's not to say you can't start with an idea, just that an idea is not a story. Instead, when you come up with an idea that's interesting ask yourself why it interests you, and write a story about that. If that theme can be expressed through escalation and ridiculous power levels easily, then do it! Or you might find yourself moving away from your original idea entirely because you find a better option.
Power fantasies are intrinsic to quests. Even the basic total agency afforded to voters over the main character or mechanism of movement is a power fantasy, leaving aside it being a power fantasy in the quest. That's fine because quests could not function without that agency. But it also obviously lends itself to power fantasies and rejects loss of agency much louder than even popular fanfiction. It has to, because to do otherwise would make it a terrible quest. Even the most railroady quests give the illusion of choice and don't explicitly take it away from the player, or constrain those choices within specific turns on the railway.
It has this in common with video games. Bioshock took narrative control away from the player, but its genius in the central conceit of agency was that the player did everything freely following the instructions of Atlas, and that became the basis of their mind control. It wasn't "built into" the mechanics. You weren't literally forced to do what Atlas said by the game taking control of your character from you until the actual cinematics about it. A game where you actually had no control in the broadest sense of actually being able to play it wouldn't be a game at all, because the whole point is that one way or another it's interactive. That, again, lends itself to power fantasies, but it's obvious games are a very big medium and there are many games that despite giving control to you don't 'feel' like a power fantasy at all.
It's just that games are big and have been around a long time, quests have not, and there are very few metaquests that explore questing as a medium, because it's so small.
I fully agree. For the first part, Persona 4 the Animation had the main character actually have flaws that held him back (including at least one case where it took other characters to keep him from making a huge mistake), was only more powerful than the others on his team because of his abilities and them backing him uo (which each of them getting their own time to shine), the villains were not only competent, they were able to score victories over the course of the story that had lasting repercussions, the writers did a great job making it so that world-building was either just a case of filling in the blanks with the real world or had an in-universe explanation (the story taking place in a town in the middle of nowhere and the events of the story further isolating it without raising any alarms). Furthermore every action taken had consequences that extended farther than their immediate effect.Most writers do not understand fiction writing well enough to 'break the rules.' I am not familiar with your stated example, but it may be another example of a good creative team breaking the rules. One Punch Man is another example. Typically, other fiction elements are expanded to fill the holes in experimental fiction. If you don't know all the parts, you might not even recognize what is missing, and not compensate for the absent pieces.
YES! Thank you. The lack of ripple effects is a major problem in these kinds of fanfics. One of the points I made in the aforementioned thread was how there weren't ripple effects from the SI's actions and the author was just cut and pasting his SI into numerous other works without considering how they'd fit together.I've talked about this extensively. SB and SV are very worldbuilding or setup oriented when it comes to premises. Look at our ideas threads. 'What if X had Y power?'
let's use Worm as anscapegoatexample. Let's say we want Taylor to have Superman's power. The mistake most authors make is simple: they simply go through the moments of Worm, scene by scene, and say 'what would go differently if Taylor had Superman's power?' The massive change to the plot her getting different powers is not actually the focus, but the effect on individual scenes. The Lung fight, meeting the Undersiders, the Bank Heist. The author is not actually changing Worm's structure, just the outcomes of scenes they daydreamt.
Like in a RPG, you have a storyteller (or storyguide, as @horngeek's favorite RPG System Right Now, Storypath, uses)
The thread is now uneven. Quick, someone else burst through the opposite window!Bursts in through window
HELLO YES DID I HEAR STORYPATH MENTIONED
The thread is now uneven. Quick, someone else burst through the opposite window!
Does that even count as a power fantasy? I mean, special powers alone are hardly what makes a power fantasy. The other stuff that you describe, IMO, defines the power fantasy in its absence. Giving badass moments to other characters? Letting the villains make concrete gains that aren't immediately reversed? Character flaws that actually cause problems?I fully agree. For the first part, Persona 4 the Animation had the main character actually have flaws that held him back
You need to tag someone firstThe thread is now uneven. Quick, someone else burst through the opposite window!
Getting powers almost nobody else does, stopping murders that have the police stumped, getting friends who like and respect you,Does that even count as a power fantasy? I mean, special powers alone are hardly what makes a power fantasy. The other stuff that you describe, IMO, defines the power fantasy in its absence. Giving badass moments to other characters? Letting the villains make concrete gains that aren't immediately reversed? Character flaws that actually cause problems?
Does that even count as a power fantasy? I mean, special powers alone are hardly what makes a power fantasy. The other stuff that you describe, IMO, defines the power fantasy in its absence. Giving badass moments to other characters? Letting the villains make concrete gains that aren't immediately reversed? Character flaws that actually cause problems?
You need to tag someone first