Is internet fan fiction doomed?

[printz]

Dunno if I should post this here or in "Creative Works" as a meta thread. That forum used to be called something like "Fan Fic and Fan Art". I have a feeling that only the "art" part caught on, because people on the internet are too busy and don't want to spend time reading amateur (free) fiction/stories. In general I hardly ever bother reading blogs, threads and articles if they're fictional. Commercial books are another matter but for them I reserve time. Internet on the other hand is not for "wasting" time on one thing. Is this true for anyone else?

I mean if it's true, it's kinda sad, because then it means that imagination will only ever be written if it gets published to houses, otherwise ignored (unless it's short poems fitting in some Facebook post)...

[Captain Red]

I can't say I read the stuff but I'd be very sad if it does. Who was it that said something along the lines of "Every writer has 100s of bad stories in them. The trick is to write them down and get out of you so you can start writing the good stuff". Anything that will get the terribleness out of your system so you can express yourself better, ya know?

[Mr. Freeze]

A lot of published fiction reads like or IS fan-fiction though.

[june gloom]

Not in the slightest. It's just moved to a different part of the internet.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

I don't think a Doom interest forum is the best place to be thinking a lack of fanfiction = no fanfiction anywhere. I mean, we get lots of silly lore speculation threads and such but I don't think Doom lends itself much to fanfic what with the lack of distinctive characters to (ab)use. If I try to remember any Doom fics, all that come to my mind are Imp Encounter and Repercussions of Evil both of which are more joke/troll fics, and the After Keep 'n' Doom comic that crosses over with Sonic and is a little more focused on the Sonic characters (and, at least in the English narration, is also pretty jokey/trolly)

Edit: This is probably a pretty good place to aside that I find it pretty funny that "John Stalvern" routinely appears on "Doomguy's name" polls despite, if I'm not grossly mistaken, having been coined in Repercussions of Evil.

[dew]

Was there ever much fanfictioning going on there though? I wasn't following it, but I always thought the story posts were somewhat far inbetween. People interested in that particular hobby tend to congregate elsewhere. I mean, Repercussions of Evil come from fanfiction.net, not Doomworld and Scouting the Baron's Bedroom was posted on ethh's doom2.net page. If anything, I'd say the Creative Works label encouraged more people to peek into the subforum, so even if the amount of fanfics remained the same, it'd be more diluted in other content.

[Clonehunter]

Some fanfiction sites still exist, and they get updated with regularity. So there is still something of a scene.

I actually used to write a bunch, and even I published a few.... Er... Admittedly bad pony fanfics back when that was the popular thing to do. Ultimately, though, I think that the process of playing with such things serves as a strong exercise in creative writing. Playing in one universe can be the precursor to making your own universe to tell stories in, if writing happens to be something you would want to expand upon as something more than a creative hobby. I think a lot of fanfiction writers are even somewhat close to that, as they fill their stories with plenty of their own characters and often add elements to the lore their borrowing that it may as well be their own.

I hate to bring it up again, but a pony site called FiM Fiction has some sort of weird Fallout inspired odyssey that's like four times as long as the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy combined. In some ways, though, seeing such dedication to a project is almost something of a waste, since they can never really publish it our push their expansive work past the whole "Familiarity to this and/or this is Required" and it just remains an underground thing.

But then, I suppose that's almost an equivalent to watching Youtube video series with similar concepts. I haven't worked on fanfiction for years, but I feel that the process of plotting story lines and planning character arcs ended up being pretty educational as far as further literary efforts are concerned.

[40oz]

I had a funny fiction series in the making about Doom 2 through the perspective of the Spider Mastermind, an edition for each of its appearances in the game as a return for revenge. If you're interested I could try and churn out the rest for you.

[Sharpie]

40oz said:

I had a funny fiction series in the making about Doom 2 through the perspective of the Spider Mastermind, an edition for each of its appearances in the game as a return for revenge. If you're interested I could try and churn out the rest for you.

To be honest, I'd be interested in seeing how that works, considering it completely explodes when it dies. Plus if we're going with the idea that "Ultra-Violence is canon", there are two ways for it to die in The Crusher.
The first way is through the eponymous crusher, while the second is actually an easy telefrag. Which are you gonna write?

Also first post woo

[geo]

I used to write fan fiction. Now I'm too old. People write me up and tell me to finish a specific fan fiction from a decade ago. Maybe I'll waste an hour just to write some more Doom fan fiction for the laughs.

Somewhere on Doomworld is old fan fiction of mine and Contra fan fiction that I wrote on the fly in the forum for the heck of it.