Is Wattpad a good or bad thing? Are the people on here writers or do they just think they are? Whatever your answer to those questions there are a lot of mysteries surrounding Wattpad and the people that choose to write here. Every day thousands of...
I had never even heard the term fan-fiction until I landed on Wattpad. Nearly every where I clicked there were fan-fictions of this show or that guy or that girl. Writers would just pic some person and base a story around them and call it a fan-fiction. So I guess that is what it is. I haven't looked up the definition of fan-fiction (don't tell me I don't want to know) but I figure whatever the heck it really was, I am sure Wattpadders have morphed it into something else. Wattpadders have a tendency of making it up as they go along. Not always a bad thing. Not always a good thing either.
I had actually read fan-fiction prior to Wattpad without knowing that is what it was called. Someone gave me a set of "Monk" books and "Psyche" books written by free lance writers and based on the TV shows. Of course those are nothing like what I see on Wattpad. Wattpadders will fan-fic anything and anybody. A really cool writer I know fan-fics the old police show "Adam-12" from back in the day. The show aired a million years before she was born and she fan-fics it. She is so cool. Another writer I know always fan-fictualizes (yep, just made that up) various well known female actors adopting children. Another one fan-fics Miss Piggy. I'd read that. Miss Piggy is awesome.
And of course there are a million fan-fics of movie stars, band members, comic characters, and actors. It's nauseating really. Really.
A couple of days ago I ran across a fan-fic of Sherlock Holmes (the BBC show). Now there are hundreds of these things but this one caught my attention because it had almost a million reads and really awesome reviews. I looked at the comments and people had great praise for it. After getting past four chapters about how cool the author thought they were and how everything was copyrighted and nobody better steal anything I took on the first chapter (there were a bunch of chapters including several author's note chapters where the author interrupts your reading to make sure and tell you how wonderful they are) and it wasn't too bad.
I was about to start the second chapter when I realized I recognized everything in the first chapter. Every single scene was basically a scene taken directly from the TV show almost word for word. They weren't all taken from the same episode, but they were all things that happened in the show. The whole first chapter was basically stolen. I read the comments and there were hundreds of comments of how wonderful the writer was and how what they wrote was "just so much like the show". It was exactly like the show! Bloody hell Watson!
Anyway, I was just wondering where the lines are. Sorry, I can't back that up. I wasn't really wondering that. I mean, it's a good question for you fan-fickers (yep, did it again) but I won't die if I never know. Though, to be honest I had considered doing a fan-fic myself of the new Sherlock Holmes show (Elementary), but decided against it because I know I would just have Watson (Lucy Liu) uncharacteristically running around in lingerie cause, well, she's hot, and, I'm a guy.
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But, as Holmes would say, "You're over thinking this Watson. The answer is right in front of you." So there is a question to be answered me thinks (he would say that too). Where does the known story end and your fan-fic begin? If you are fan-ficking (yep, again) a show, for instance, I know you at least should expand upon already known characters and facts and just move them forward (or backward I guess). Or I guess they could just take the one main character and do whatever the hell (I said heck earlier, I must be hungry now) they want with it. But I am sure whatever you do you are not supposed to regurgitate the same scenes from a TV show and call them yours even if you are fan-ficking. My high school English teacher (who looked more like Ms. Piggy than Lucy Liu btw) called that plagiarism. But maybe none of the rules apply to fan-fickers? Who knows? It's a mystery.
I don't have any answers to the questions I raised. I'm sure some fan-ficker will educate me soon. Are you a fan-ficker? Is fan-ficking all you do? And if it is, why? Don't you want to create your own characters? Write a real book (lol)? Sorry, that was just to piss you off. I'm kidding (I'm not). I do read some fan-fics. There is some good Star Trek and Sherlock stuff on WP. I even read some good Star Wars stuff. And who the hell is Harry Stiles? Don't answer that I am sure the answer will make me roll my eyes. But I guess in some ways it might be harder to write fan-fiction because you are restrained by characters you didn't create. Maybe.
Recently there was a contest on Wattpad that offered 10k$ in prize money to write an episode of the show "The Magicians". I guess this is fan fiction writing. I considered entering it. I had never seen the show so I got on Netflix and watched the first 2 episodes. Most. Boring. Show. Ever. I'm not kidding. I feel asleep during the second episode. And that's because between the ages of 10 and 12 all I ever wanted to be was a magician! Don't get me wrong I should have entered anyway. Ten thousand is ten thousand. That could buy a lot of coffee. But boredom got the best of me and I didn't. By now one of you is 10k richer and I'm sitting here drinking water. I hope you at least spiced up the show a bit. I'm guessing they won't be on much longer.
Okay. I already forget where I was going with this. Probably because I was sidetracked looking through dozens of Lucy Liu gifs (still am). Yeah, I have the attention span of a high school senior at Spring Break. All you fan-fictionados (I'm good or what?) feel free to go on fan-ficking. You can even fan-fic me if you want. Well, that sounded wrong. Carry on.
