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[SirAaronIII]

I'm guessing "better than the original".

[Frumple]

So I've decided FSoG scores a solid 8/10 on the fanficometer. A 10/10 is defined as "exactly like My Immortal".

... your meter is either broken or reversed. Well, or you're using a rather unusual rating system

Which, judging by that last line, is probably what's happening.

Also, I totally misread the sole female pronoun in that nothing rhymes thing as a male pronoun. Mostly because I've seen like that exact goddamn summary several dozen times trying to find something that wasn't a poorly written slash fanfic. Seriously, browse, ferex, the 100k+ Naruto section on ff.n. I'd give 50/50 odds you find that summary verbatim.

I'm guessing "better than the original".

That's actually a pretty poor heuristic. Some pretty shitty -- or just fairly mediocre, ala Harry potter -- media has spawned great swathes of categorically superior fan fiction... that still weren't particularly impressive

[penguinofhonor]

A 1/10 on the fanficometer includes such qualities as "entirely devoid of references to the author's favorite punk bands", "characters are more than anthropomorphized personality disorders", "nobody has a ridiculous name", and "characters have basic and intelligent standards of hygiene".

Things FSoG could have done better to get a 10: have the characters sing your favorite punk bands' songs to each other before they have sex, fail to describe sex in any detail despite your characters having loads of it (FSoG partially succeeds with flowery tiptoed steps around any explicit sex), move more of the purple prose into the fashion details and out of that dumb plot stuff.

So I've decided FSoG scores a solid 8/10 on the fanficometer. A 10/10 is defined as "exactly like My Immortal".

... your meter is either broken or reversed. Well, or you're using a rather unusual rating system

The system does not exist to describe how good a fanfic is, but rather to describe how "fanfic" a fanfic is.

[Leafsnail]

The "self insert" element is hard to measure though considering that the source material contains a pretty blatant self insert.

[Darvi]

Self-insertness isn't even necessarily a bad trai.

Suedom, on the other hand...

[Josephus]

Self-insertness isn't even necessarily a bad trai.

Suedom, on the other hand...

Suedom is very difficult to define.

For example, I'm now going to describe a typical fan-fiction Mary Sue

14 year old Princess who is one of the last heirs of an ancient bloodline that was nearly ended by an usurper. Has silver hair and purple eyes and is so beautiful men throw themselves at her feet. Has three pet dragons that love her like she's their mother and she can't be burned by their fire. Her boyfriend is twice her age and has blue hair. Her family was all killed by the usurper and she wants revenge.

[Putnam]

Ooh, now I get to define a completely different sue:

An entirely plain man of 40 years of age who nobody really likes and has anger issues. As the story progresses, nothing ever happens that doesn't involve him.


That last sentence is my main mary sue identifier.

[Scelly9]

14 year old Princess who is one of the last heirs of an ancient bloodline that was nearly ended by an usurper. Has silver hair and purple eyes and is so beautiful men throw themselves at her feet. Has three pet dragons that love her like she's their mother and she can't be burned by their fire. Her boyfriend is twice her age and has blue hair. Her family was all killed by the usurper and she wants revenge.

Her only weakness is that she's so beautiful that everyone wants to have sex with her.

[penguinofhonor]

I'm convinced that no matter how much I try to parody this book, the result will be a superior work.

[Leafsnail]

I don't like the term "Mary Sue" since it's managed to become completely meaningless through overuse.  "nothing ever happens that doesn't involve him" could be said about a lot of good characters if the story is, say, told from their perspective.

But you get the idea.  What I'm saying is that Bella was pretty self-inserty and therefore not!Bella will be too.

[penguinofhonor]

sign #46 you are in fanfictiontopia: all orgasms are simultaneous

[Leafsnail]

To be fair that happens in a hell of a lot of non-fanfic TV shows, movies and books.

[Frumple]

Yeah, was about to snipe that wouldn't that render most of the romance genre fanfiction?

I'm... actually not sure which of the two literary (ha) fields would be worsened by that.

[Josephus]

Her only weakness is that she's so beautiful that everyone wants to have sex with her.

Actually, I think her main weakness is that there's a clause in her contract that requires her to show a minimum of 70% of her body at any given time.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I just noticed that the TV miniseries doesn't actually do the 'purple eyes' bit. Only book Targaryens have those.

[kaijyuu]

People who whine about all these problems fanfiction supposedly intrinsically has apparently hasn't seen much professional media either. Every single complaint levied at fanfiction exists in published books, movies, games, etc. The only difference is fanfiction has a high number of amateur writers; they make the same mistakes, just more of them due to inexperience.