the trick is to keep breathing

Hence why I just sit around and geek lots and wear costumes and make shinies and stick to writing what I do know. XD

I tend to agree there. As puffed up as we get about good fanfic, you can't hide the fact that a very large portion of it is just really badly written porn, self-insertion, and general wank.

It does tend to make me sad when franchises expand and it's at that level. But I've been surprised in the good way (for instance, I couldn't stand the Batman movies until Batman Begins came out, but then, it can be argued it went back to the comic book source more).

And I really think the only thing that separates "bad fanfic quality" and "good stuff" is intent. Like how it's obvious they're making movies from video games just for money, or the phenomenon that happened with the first Star Trek movie; they figured they could slap anything together and the fans would eat it up, thus starting the odd chain of the odd numbered movies having lots of suck (though I did like Star Trek V if only for the line "what would God want with a spaceship?").

So if the intent is money? Suck. If the intent is the love of the source, or wanting to write something good, it tends to be better. The best fanfic I've read toes the line between universality in theme and love of source material to produce something that could stand on its own.

I mean, I know someone that adding a description of the background to a story once submitted fanfic for a creative writing class and didn't get marked down (they also changed the names, hence the need for the background).

...I'm babbling. In the middle of writing a geeky essay, so, brain's fixated on certain things.

~Cendri