My First Taste of the Fanfiction World [Post from My Personal Blog] - Also Fanfic Website Recommendations, Please?

Some of you might have already seen this post [Dated November 4, 2014] before from my personal blog. Now, I'm just reposting it here...perhaps as a "love-hate" tribute/rant to a, now, dead fanfic website called Winglin.net. I'm just wondering -- are there any fanfics writers/readers from the Winglin era currently here on AFF? And also, where can I find fanfics about Hong Kong celebrities nowadays? Better yet, please recommend me an Asian fanfic website that's not Kpop dominant, if any of you know any. ^^ Honestly, when it comes to some of my favourite celebrities (ie. from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan), I would rather read about them than write about them.

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I was pulled into the world of fanfiction for the very first time when I was in eighth grade and there was this angst/tragedy story about some South Korean actors that was passing around in my group of girlfriends. Now that I looked back, the story was not very logical and there were a tons of Mary-sues and Gary-stus (though, it was well-written in terms of grammar and spelling). However, at that time it moved me to tears...very embarrassing. Anyways, at that time I was still not aware of "Fanfiction" until I did a quick Google search to find similar stories and ended up on the Winglin.net website.

Nowadays, fanfic enthusiasts know that Winglin.net is as much dead as Internet Explorer. However, it was THE platform for all the "cool" high school writers out there. At the peak of its popularity, fanfics about Hong Kong celebrities dominated with some stories about Taiwanese & Japanese celebrities and a few about the South Korean celebrities. I remember the first ever fanfic that I wrote was about my first idol-bias, Benny Chan (from Hong Kong), and I wrote the story in script format like most beginners. I even made a gigantic poster with good, old paint (basically snapped some photos of the main characters of my story and sprayed around the hard edges to make a "smooth" blend). *sigh* I even remember the story title was Happiness (facepalm). Furthermore, I had set the background of the story to be pink just to complete the "romantic" atmosphere of the story. Finally, two of the biggest reasons for a love-hate relationship in that "faraway" story are coffee-spill and framing someone for cheating on a small pop quiz. Yes, very cringe-worthy. I am just gritting my teeth as I am typing out this horrifying memory.

: Goodbye Winglin, you're kinda won't be missed (because you have freakin' killed all of my earlier stories!!).

Anyways, when K-pop started to become popular and overthrew the Hong Kong celebrity fanfic era, I noticed there were groups of other expertises starting to join the fanfic community - the Reviewers and the Graphic Designers. From then on, there were rarely any genuine comments written just for the story. Advertisements from these review shops and graphic shops bombarded the comment section. It was a whole new era. Besides the annoying advertisements, the fanfic world has become a place where teenagers could practice and start building their own portfolio of graphic designs (for those into arts, web design, or even computer science, and etc.), reviews/criticisms (for the editor/critic wannabes), and of course, writing (for the writers).

I also noticed another change, and it was the writing quality of the fanfic authors. The "Hong Kong" celebrity-centric writers tend have the best writing (I would even dare to say better than some of the published books out there these days) and there was usually a level of maturity in the content that made readers think. Maybe the readers have simply matured. Or perhaps, it had to do with the influence of the TVB (a Hong Kong television broadcast station) series that these writers grew up with. I think it's both, but leaning more towards the latter because other fandoms (Taiwanese & Japanese celebrities) don't have nearly as much sophistication in their writing. Taiwanese or Japanese drama series tend to focus on teenage romance and comedy (a lot of exaggerations too) at that time (early 2000s). Therefore, the teenage romance and drama were, more often than not, apparent in the writing of those who grew up with these popular drama series. Meanwhile, TVB drama series tend to gear towards the housewives (and unfortunately many teenagers have to watch it with their moms during dinner time), so there's going to be level of sophistication in the drama plot. Again, influences of the TVB drama series were clearly evident in the writing of those who grew up with it.

The final change I have noticed, which is also painfully obvious to anyone who ever had a glimpse of the K-pop fanfic scene, is the preference for (boy-love, homoual) stories*. Unfortunately, sometimes the reason for such a trend is not simply because teenage girls like to explore the "forbidden" concept of two guys falling in love with each other or that they're trying to create something like Brokeback Mountain. Sometimes, the reason is far more sinister being that they simply can't accept seeing their beloved oppas falling in love with another GIRL. Okay, I'll stop here before the more obsessed fans somehow find their way to my house just to give me a warning.

Finally, even though Winglin.net has brought me much "happiness" (facepalm again) throughout part of my adolescent life, I'm glad it's dead now (the website always had glitch problems and disappearing stories) and that there are much more user-friendly plus social platforms for fanfic writers these days (Asianfanfics and Fanfiction.net).

*Er...based on the comments, I think people might have misunderstood my view with regards to /slash fics. I actually like it if it's well written like all stories (Ie. has a sense of realism. For example, I have read many that everyone is gay and honestly, that's not realistic. I mean, where are the struggles? And don't let me get started on the "arranged marriage of two guys because parents said so" thing.). In fact, I do have my fair share of love. I just don't like reading cringed-worthy ones, that's all. @___@

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You're one tough cookie if you've managed to read through all that. But sorry, no potato for you. ^^"

Comments

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shin-oppa #1 Jul 31, 2015 14:25:57

About ,
The correct term in fanfiction is "slash", not "". refers to manga/anime that deals with a male x male couple (or more) involved in a ual relationship. The softer genre, shonen-ai, is when the couple is in a romantic relationship. As e.g., TakuJae would be labeled as shonen-ai if there was a manga called The Lover since there had been no ual activity throughout it. As you've said, due to the Japanese influence, a vast amount of slash fanfiction happened because of , so people are more comfortable to use that term instead of slash. A few years back, 2005~2007, slash was still in general use more than :/ I'm not sure what happened there. I found myself using as a term for slash on AFF too, mainly because the slash tag isn't as active as the one.

I'm a little bummed you view slash fiction that way and I suppose you have only met the radical side of slash writers. Yes, it's true that there are authors out there who would rather see their favorite (he or a she, lesbian writers can be just as bad) in a homoual relationship than in a straight relationship because of the sense of safety it offers. It's common among young teenagers, else, I wouldn't understand the childish approach to something as gender. If I were a crazy fan, I'd be pissed no matter who the favorite dated haha. As with everything, there are different authors and different stories. If you're not a regular slash reader, then, sure, most of them seem childish as you do not dig deeper and it's understandable. I personally prefer a "no label" perspective. As in, you do not have to label a male gay for him to be in a homoual relationship, nor do you need to label him straight to be in a heteroual one. I'd rather see and write that kind of slash, but it's hard when the general public has been trained by /shonen-ai manga/anime and not by LGBTQ fiction. Unfortunately, that also brings a negative light on all slash writers, no matter how good they are :/

aihara_namika #2 Jul 31, 2015 11:40:54

wow, everyone comment a long one but mine is just short. i don't like too ^^ also, now there is a trending this-kind of advertisement shop lately where they didn't make advertisement or what. they provide upvotes and subscribers. it was a bit sad, the fact of them making some fake accounts and use it upvotes and subscribe but not read it and comment. at first, i think Blooming Advertisement is the one who start this but she advertises people's stories and for the upvotes, she tell the people in each batch to upvotes their batchmates stories. now, they helding shops that offer fake upvotes abd subacribers

reddishDaiSy_95 #3 Jul 31, 2015 05:00:05

I used to be in Winglin.net. Back then around 2009, me and my sister were so much into biasing Japanese groups. I'm not sure if you know groups like Arashi and Hey Say Jump? Yeah, we wrote about them in Winglin.net. Yet after this website is pretty much dead, I moved to Livejournal but I must admit LJ somehow suits more as one's personal blog rather than to be a huge community to gather stories and writers since the way it needs to be operated is somehow quite complicated? I don't know, maybe it's just me but after I finally found this site in 2013, I stick around writing in here since Asianfanfics accommodates writers just fine and everything is organized. Though I must say I agree with you about how this site is dominated with K-pop idols' stories and if you wrote about Taiwanese or Japanese in here, I think it's a bit hard to gain attention and readers. And yes, about the maturity value in the stories, I don't know about others but for me, I would say maybe half of the community in Asianfanfics are made up of teenagers as young as 12 to 15. Only some are above 18 and so. These kids just pretend they fit enough to even read rated M stories! (I know this since I befriend one of this kind of kids and she admitted to me of how she cheated on her real age). That's why, when writers wrote such a mellow, fluffy and flowery kind of plot story, nobody seems to care about the morals we could take from it except to just enjoy it! Lol. Anyway, I have no idea why I'm bothering you to read my own babbles here but in case you really need other writing platforms aside from here, I suggest you go for Asian Fan Fiction. Here's the link: http://www.asianfanfiction.com/. The link looks the same with Asianfanfics but it's really two different websites and I think you may find Hong Kong fanfics there. :) And yeah, if it's not working, try this: http://ebookfriendly.com/fan-fiction-websites/ (I haven't tried each one of them, but I hope it'll help you)

syqding #4 Jul 31, 2015 03:49:45

i found this post while searching for some fanfic site that has something other than kpop! even though most of my reading is kpop- namely teenage romance, comedy, fluff, cheesy plots, it's mostly because that's all that I can find to exist. I actually had no idea that Winglin.net doesn't exist anymore. It makes me so sad and nostalgic to think about. There were some really amazing stories on there. I found it pretty much right before it ended for good, so I can't consider myself someone from the Winglin era, but it's really the reason I got into kpop in the first place. I didn't even know any of the celebrities when I first started reading it. I just read it for the stories themselves, which led me to becoming fans of the people later. I think that's when you know the story is good. For most stories, it's impossible to read unless the celebrity in question is your bias.
Please let us know if you find a site that has fanfics of chinese/japanese/taiwanese other types of stories! Or is it just that they're not popular worldwide anymore....

Dragneel09 #5 Jul 30, 2015 18:30:39

I didn't read and i hate the concept of two guys falling with each other. :D
But i love the story about friendship, but I hate the friendship stories when it includes girl.
I mean I love guys friendship not relationship...haha..
Sorry for dropping random comment here...I hope you won't mind....
XD

peachywink #6 Jul 30, 2015 17:58:50

"Sometimes, the reason is far more sinister being that they simply can't accept seeing their beloved oppas falling in love with another GIRL."
Back before I started reading (last year) I didn't really get it and asked my friend about it's appeal since she did read it in the past. She explained the theory of women being drawn to it because of the fact there was no girl in the story for them to compete with. However, personally I really wouldn't care if the even the real people in these stories come out as dating girls tomorrow. Though I would be concerned it might harm the groups sales. I write because it's what I seem to prefer to read myself when HERE. Other sites I usually go for hetero pairings or OC, but the OC on this site are often fairly weak and to me it's awkward to add one into the group. I always feel like the character is in someways a girl or boy the author wants to be and there usually very much a "mold" character. But in the end I can't think of a clear reasons for why I write story lines other than I just like doing it that way. Probably the fandom passes the shipping images around so much I eventually got brainwashed into it.... but when two members talk on a show about how they took a shower together someone is bound to write a story about that. lol