I pretty much just talked to myself for three hours and wrote down the main ideas of it. This rant is less about what is wrong and more about how fanfiction of AFF is appealing. 

Part 21- Female OC vs. Male Bias

Essentially, fanfiction is two things, a fiction written by a fan, and fiction that is about what the fan is a fan of. If it is not both of these things, it’s a weird cross fiction of scary relatable references. All of you understand what I am saying, right? You are writing fanfics about these idols/actors/models/whatever their occupation is. And they are Asian.

This rant has two parts, the focus being the other characters versus the idol, and writing a fanfic about what users on AFF are generally not going to read.

I don’t know about you guys, but I read fanfics about my biases. The other characters, I don’t particularly care for other than how they affect the story and what their relationship with my bias is. This should be a truth for everyone. This is your bias; therefore, you care about this person more than some other random character, right? I’m not including the other members of the band in this case, because there are some groups where you just love all the members so much it’s almost like you don’t have a bias—but you do.

So people who write fics and focus on the female OC lead, on “you,” or on some strange made up person, you realize that these fics completely miss the point of fanfiction—being about what the fan is a fan of. When you’re a fan of a group and you keep writing about this girl, or group of girls, who is struggling through some trial and you keep only slightly mentioning the bias, you are not writing a good fanfiction. It might be a good story, but it is not a good fanfiction.

When you lose the essence of a fanfic you transform the story into a normal fiction with your bias’s name slapped in there. When you shift the focus from the bias to the other characters, you have basically lost your audience. Not really though, because there are a lot of people here who don’t understand what fanfiction is, as in almost everyone who likes “you” fics. “You” fics focus on you and how you feel and how you react to things and not the bias and how the bias feels.

Let’s make this clear –I tolerate crappy writing only for characters (and plots) I like.

As a reader, I automatically read fics that focus on my bias. If the fic does not, I get bored fairly quickly and want to stop reading. A fanfic not about the person I am a fan for is not appealing.

I’m going to use Fifty Shades of Grey as an example. There are a lot of people who like to read the novel because of the , the underlying psychological problem with Mr. Grey, the romance, the numerous bits of illogical cheesiness. It is in every way possible, a halfhearted fanfic written just to be popular. I cannot stomach the story. I tried to read one page of it and I could not get through it.

Fifty Shades of Grey is an adult romance novel. I do not particularly care for romance novels. I read romances (novel and fic) because I like to read about conflicted emotions, and love is the most easily conflicted and by definition can lead to romance. I cannot stomach the story.

However, I can read a fanfic based off of the novel. , cheesy romance, cliché plot, all of it. When the main characters are my biases, I can trudge through the words like a great fanfic trooper. Without my bias, I cannot read it.

Here is the connection; fanfics are appealing as fanfics but not as normal fiction. With normal fiction the author has to take the added step to make the character appealing in order for the reader to get emotionally attached and willing to continue the story. Why would you want to continue reading a story about a person who makes you want to punch the living daylights out of them? You don’t. As I mentioned in a previous rant, you would stop reading that book because it probably makes absolutely no sense.

With fanfics, you can make the main character the most retarded douche and people will still read the fic. They already like the person in real life, now you’re just twisting the person and letting them see them in a new light, which is gleefully exciting. People who really can make you hate the person, that’s great, they’re a good writer. It’s actually harder to do that because we have those predisposed feelings.

When creating the extra OCs or making the “you” fics, you are giving the reader absolutely nothing for them to latch onto and like when the going gets tough. When the character get’s super y, they’re not going to be able to look at a picture or listen to a song and think “ah, it’s okay, this person isn’t actually like this in real life.” They’re just going to continue hating the person. What is the point of reading a fic about a person we hate?

So why isn’t Fifty Shades of Grey more pleasing when the main characters should be more developed to keep that attachment? It probably has some level of it, but not the level that professional fictional should.

Did you know that, according to Maria, Fifty Shades of Grey was actually a Twilight fanfic?

In fanfics you don’t have to develop the bias characters as much to make them appealing because people already know and like them enough, so people don’t. There is the connection. When the author made it a real novel, she destroyed the emotional appeal she had created without her trying, leaving the characters as empty shells without that final level of allure.

That is why fanfics have to focus on the bias. I recommend to all readers that they stop reading fics about people they don’t care about. Just tell the author, “I stopped giving s about this person and cannot continue.” Maybe they will change the errors of their ways.

I remember right after I gave up on the book, I gave it to my mother for her to read. She had nothing to read at the time so she accepted it. “It’s not great, but it isn’t awful. I want to continue reading and find out what made Mr. Grey this way.” At that point I couldn’t help but think that I did not care about what made Mr. Grey have sadistic habits. I literally thought, “So what, this person doesn’t even matter.”

The last rant I did for Why People Hate Your Story as a blog was about the use of female characters and embellishing them too much. What I said was that when people look for a fanfic they are looking for a fic about their bias and the other character just happens to be this girl. The description with the I’m Kim Eunhye, 18 years old, orphan, bullied by ____ does not fulfill the needs of the reader. The reader needs to know more about the bias, not the girl.

When you search for a fic, you look for a band/idol/actor, you do not look up a “you” fic and find a fic where you happen to recognize the name of the other character. That’s like picking up any old novel and realizing the other character’s name is the same as a classmate’s or something. You are better off reading a normal fictional novel if the romantic plot surrounding the girl is what appeals to you. Remember, fanfiction is about what you are a fan of.

Honestly, you can write about whomever because people on AFF will read. There is such a wide range of readers here that even stories that are barely fanfics can attract attention. There was a fic that I jokingly applied for that did not mention any idols (even though there was going to be future romance with them), it was just about four girls who worked under a certain company as a group. It is without a doubt that the main focus of the fic would have been on the idol girls and not the real people they would have gone out with. The fic was never actually made. People read and write fics like that all the time, but you know that those fics aren’t actually fanfics; they just have idols’ names in them.

What doesn’t make sense is writing a fic which appeals to almost no one.

It seems like AFF is geared mostly towards Kpop as most of the fics here are Korean based. That is the case, but I am not going to say if it is not Korean don’t write it because that is bull. The original featured fics on AFF were about Arron Yan and other people who I think are Taiwanese. AFF’s creator, nichi, made this place for his girlfriend, and I’m pretty sure she wrote Taiwanese fics.

Even if it is not a Korean fic, it will still have readers. The issue does not lie here.

The problem lies when you write things that really shouldn’t be on AFF in general. This is not fanfiction.net or livejournal where all the fandoms come together on one site. AFF is for the ASIAN fandom. Fanfics about Justin Bieber, One Direction, Sherlock, or Supernatural are not Asian. Other than the fact that someone might like these things as well, why would they want to read the fic? The audience of AFF clearly desires fanfictions about Asians.

And while anime might be Japanese, it is not the type of Asian fanfiction people are looking for on AFF. They are looking for a celebrity and/or a character they have portrayed as an actor. They also might like to read about their bias in the same situation that takes place in an anime, but they do not want to read a fanfic about an anime. People might take an interest in it because they like anime, or the anime the fic is about, but they will probably look down it and ignore it.

Your fic is basically doomed to fail if it is not the right type of Asian fanfic.

Readers don’t want to read fics that aren’t about their bias, and those that do are better off reading normal books instead of fanfics. Just write about the bias so there aren’t any problems with attracting the right audience.

There is an extended version for Janie if she so chooses to comment and ask for it. She has clearly been missing my harassment for the past few days since she finished her fic, so this should be nice.

Not that the problems with OCs lie entirely with romance fics. The other genres have the same problems as well.