Sta.sh
Delighted I was surprised that it actually worked. I was even more surprised by this fact:
Tale of the Valkyrie broke 4 million hits by the time it was removed!
In terms of Family Guy Fanfiction, that beats out the coveted Meg's Family by millions of hits (Meg's Family has a total of 100,000 last time I checked).
In fact, when you think about the most famous fanfics in the world that get talked about, Canon Adherence never seems to come up in them. And almost all of them are full to bursting with Mary Sues. So what is it that defines Mary Sue?
Simple. Mary Sue is a term that annoyed basement dwellers give to characters they don't like. Even if a character is a total Mary Sue, if a reader likes that character, they will never throw the label at them. It's only used to attempt to insult the author in lieu of real critisism. The problem with a lot of fanfiction readers is that they are severely locked in a bubble. They never want to admit that their coveted fandom could be improved upon.
You want some examples?
Star Wars: You can't walk five steps on the internet without coming across "WAAAH! The prequels sucked! Clone Wars sucks! Force Unleashed sucks!" News flash! Everything about Star Wars can be considered rather horrible. It's an annoying batch of films that plays on stupid Cold War cliches. The whole series is a metaphor for the Cold War. The Originals were swashbuckling space adventures. Like piracy in space. But the prequels are much different. They are more dramatic. They are actually considered a Space Opera by the general film public. They weren't supposed to be as simple as the Originals. Fanboys judge the whole series as if they are all the same. But Star Wars is just a generic title for a science fiction series that covers various brands and genres. Need proof? KOTOR.
Family Guy: There are lots of groups like
that constantly whine about how Family Guy is going downhill and isn't the show it used to be. It's actually rather pathetic. Sure, Family Guy was at it's funniest in the early days, but the same holds true for all shows of any genre. The first couple of years are always the best, but that doesn't mean the new ones aren't good. Sure Stewie had to change his personality. Eventually, you run out of situations to put a matricidal evil genius in, and you have to add new elements to the character. It's called Character Development. Sure Peter has degenerated from loveable oaf to collassal dick, but those characters are funny. You're not supposed to like him, he's just comic relief. The show centers more around Brian, really. He's the character that gets the most screentime.Malcolm Fox, also known as
acutally quit writing FG Fanfiction because he just didn't watch the show anymore. Which is a noble goal. He improved on the source material in amny aspects. His story was really funny.
took the same format and added magic to it. Turning a family dynamic into a cross of Full House and Sabrina the Teenage witch. And it's really entertaining. Sure, the author is a petty, whiny, childish douche, but there's no law that says you have to talk to him to read his story.And me? I took the source material and turned it into a campy biblical war fantasy. And it was as fun to write as it was to read for the 4 million people who read it. In fact, I even got to stretch my legs in the field of game design because of that story.
Creativity is the king of all things in the literary world. I asked a literary critic about Mary Sues, and he laughed. He said "Oh, that takes me back. Obsessing over OC's being Mary Sues. How stupid we were." Fanfiction is a great way to stretch your legs in writing, but if you blindly follow the rules set in place by people with no authority whatsoever, you will never break out of it into real writing. Your best bet is to take your source material and treat it like a Minecraft server. All the pieces are there, and you can build anything you want with it. You are only limited by your imagination.
