Real life fan fics

TheWebbuilder · Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 7:53 am Post subject: Real life fan fics

On an off-topic note, today's festivities is totally righteous! XD

Now for the real point of this post. While driving down the interstate today, I got to musing over how much my fanfics/writing is influenced by my real life. And some of the influences are pointedly obvious while others are more obscure if not totally random.

Case in point: My frequent uses of characters with handicaps or disabilities probably stems from a close relative who's deaf. Likewise I suppose that my use of wonky relationships is directly related to my work among foster kids... and that other issue...

And getting to those random influences, During my drive, I realized that Melody Makoto looks exactly the same as a girl who sat across from me in fifth grade. And her first name came from a student in my seventh grade class that I had forgotten about. XD A few of my OCs have had obsessions or character quirks that I now realize belong to a few of my relatives; and Will Yuu Be Mine's ending probably stemmed from a story my uncle told in which security mistook him for someone else and jumped him in the terminal building. XD

So my question/discussion topic is this: How does your life influence your writing?

JH24 · Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 10:29 am Post subject:

My apologies for my English, I feel I messed it up more then usual this time.

I am not an experienced fanficwriter, after working 8 months on a large Danny Phantom fanfic I felt I really messed up and I disbanded it. But after reading your topic I did remember one thing in particular that most likely influenced the way I wrote the story.

- Friendship: I don't really like to look back on my younger years as I never had any real friends, partly because I didn't want to do the things my classmates did in order to belong with the group. (beating other kids, starting a fire, destroying stuff, violent after-school games)

And when I did get a friend I betrayed him because I was afraid my classmates would make me a target because I was hanging out with a strange kid from another town. I still feel terrible about this but I have no way to contact him anymore. I'll never forgive myself for that, I was such a coward. This experience alone has most likely caused me to add the theme of betrayal in my story as well, although I only start thinking about it recently. On high school I didn't have friends either and that I feel was because the way how I looked. (My head is deformed since birth and I have a very long neck) I really tried to but it was often made clear to me that I just didn't look good or cool enough. Sorry, I digress, what I mean to say is that I never had any real friends during school and that feeling has played an important part while I was writing.

In such a way I made a character in the DP story which was in a somewhat similar position like I was and many others I know, my intention was to show what it means and can do to people who are friendless, ignored or bullied. I wanted to emphasize that and to show that we are all people and that appearance shouldn't matter. This was only a small part of the total story but I spend in comparison with other parts a very long time on it.

I guess my experience also made me symphatetic with characters who are unpopular or disliked. For people who know the Danny Phantom series I would take Tucker as an example (Danny is not popular either but at least he has ghost powers which definitely has made him more confident, even arrogant sometimes but I digress) Often Tucker is used in the series as the victim of many jokes. Therefore, I had planned in my story a bigger role for him in which he got a chance to shine without ingnoring his flaws.

The biggest part of the fanfic was about true friendship. It is strange, I have some very good friends in my life now for which I am really grateful, but all those years I experienced (and I am sure I am not the only one) really motivated me to make friendship a central theme. The theme doesn't really let me go anymore. I look at the Danny Phantom series, and automatically I find myself balancing the characters of the series in my story. Another reason could be that I was disappointed with the lack of episodes which for example highlighted the many years of friendship Tucker and Danny had for example.

So, in a way you can say that my experience during the school years has heavily influenced my view on fanfics and the way how I handled the storyline, even though I never finished it. (I have started working on a DP one-shot now which has friendship as a central theme as well)

This is an interesting topic, I'll see if I can think of more examples.

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EDIT:

- Maybe not a valid example, but I did use the industrial area close to were I live as a setting for a large battle. It made it a to easier for me describing the action scenes.

- I am a big fan of villains or antagonists in series who despite acting evil have a good side within them as well (for example Prince Zuko from Avatar) I can't indentify myself with characters who are truly evil with no chance of redemption. (for example Dr. Regal) For my Danny Phantom fanfic I created a new ghost who fits the first mentioned profile.

- I introduced a ghost dog in the fanfic, which I named and made him resemble a very kind and loyal dog (A german Shepard) who lived in our street and who died a few years ago. After I wrote down his character and appearance I realized I made he beared a lot of resemblance. So I decided to name him Asta, the same name as the dog in our street.

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EDIT2: Made a few small changes/additions to the text.
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**Mari** · Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 2:13 pm Post subject:

You know, for a moment I thought you meant fanfics written about real people. I had to reread the topic so I could figure out what you truly meant. XD

When I write fanfics (the correct term would be "when I used to write fanfics") my life is the first part I look at in order to get some inspiration. A psychiatrist once told me that what you write reflects what's happening on your mind and your life. While that doesn't mean you're living the adventures you write in your stories down to the letter (I mean unless you actually believe you're a navi or something XD), it does mean that part of what you write reflects the way you're feeling right now - for example, if you were feeling anxious, you end up writing an angsty vignette which somehow reflects what you're currently feeling. So I guess what the psychiatrist told me has some truth in it.
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