There are many fandoms out there to write fanfiction. And yet beyond a few there are no fanfictions written in these. I would like to point out a few of the very richly developed canon worlds to write in. People are more than welcome to put posts or links to forgotten stories of mentioned fandoms. Please do not post stories of the most common Naruto or harry potter or FireFly or Dresden files or Fate Series Fanfiction links or discussion here.

On that note I must start with Fairy tail. There is not a richer anime universe built than this one. Even the history is nicely developed. The only gripe is the anime cannot handle negative responses to negative emotions. Which I personally think is a treasure trove for fanfiction writers. There is not one fanfiction that reads like canon(well I haven't found one). There are some well written stories, but no stories that make you go utterly gaga as there are in the commonly used fandoms.
One story worth mentioning (the gaga types) is

The tale of the utterly gutsy Shinobi By FoxboroSalts

Another fandom that must make this list is Hunter x Hunter. The author of this series writes a varied and detailed world and yet never reveals the whole story. Every facet of the canon while developed has room to accommodate more stories. Plus humanity is living on one small splotch of land around one specific tree. Imagine the endless possibilities. Whole other worlds on the same earth with no interaction. Whole new possiblities of powers. Fights with undiscoved other such splotches... The most cross overable fandom there is. You can literally crossover with any other fandom.

I have not found a good story here.

 

General Discussion is for hp-related stuff. This thread belongs in other fandoms discussion or whatever.

BUT I'LL HIJACK YOUR GET-IN-THE-WBA-SHITPOST SO I CAN MAKE COMMENTARY ABOUT WHY THERE'S NO GOOD FICS IN A LOT OF "GOOD" FANDOMS.

There's a reason why good Fairy Tail fics are fairy tales and the onepiece (anything from the op fandom that doesn't make you want to shoot yourself) still hasn't been found.

Worlds like those are written in a certain way that's very conducive to an audience getting over its silliness because it's lighthearted and animated.

Speaking as a writer, that's why it's much much easier to write for anime fandoms than it is to write for, say, HP. There's already a native suspension of disbelief which the audience has already imbibed - that is to say, they've drunk the sweatdrop kool-aid straight from the pores of their cool senpais and are perfectly happy with facefaulting cutely for their onii-samas or whatever the fuck.

There's also another factor at play here that you've probably missed. Works which have really tight, logically planned stories (some of the better work in literature/anime/movies/etc) - are conducive to artistic (or possibly autistic) oneshots that develop side characters, show us what we really love about the main character, work in a surprising side to people that we've got nailed down in our heads. If you asked me to write fic for Kara no Kyoukai, I would come up pretty fucking empty.

Works which have a sprawling worlds which are developed shallowly or even not developed at all, but are hinted at (hp, naruto) leave a whole lot of room for interpretation and AU. Especially if they have correlations to open-source ideas (magic, ninjas, etc). This is why you see so much fucking fanfiction for these fandoms. You also see emotional depth (or attempts at that) - which have huge bearings on the world building itself. That's why we have so many of these fics - some of which are actually library worthy and shit.

There's a reason why those fandoms (random anime, basically) have a bigger following in their crossover sections. Because there needs to be something which breaks the well-crafted logic of the universe - and people are desperate for their reader-insert to do so (whether it's hp, naruto or shiro). Also why peggy-sue stuff is most commonly well-received compared to other stuff.

I think what I'm trying to get across is that a world you find mesmerizing usually fails to produce a good fandom because it might not be malleable.

 

First apologies for posting in the wrong section. I misinterpreted general discussion a bit.

As a response I would like to say, first off I am not much of a writer, jsut an aspiring one, so i do not very well understand troubles of writing in a particular fandom, so my resume ponse will be based on what you wrote.

I completely agree with you about fairy tail as a story, being written in a very silly light hearted manner, but as for the world built itself, it does have a lot of potential. The fact that the canon is mostly silly and lighthearted allows for more heavy and developed fics in its place I think. I myself am trying to write a more of a rewrite of fairy tail way more dark and yet very canon compliant and am finding plotting the story very easy. Even the characters can be rebuilt without much effort into slightly more real versions of themselves.
Also, wouldn't a well developed world with shallow story be better for writing upon? At least that was my presumption. Even fairy tail has many things hinted at, the divide between people and mages, the workings of magical council their position in relation to the kingdom. Mage guilds place in open conflicts between different kingdoms, and well other kingdoms.

Hunter x hunter follows all the rules of a good fandom you mentioned. A very ambiguous world to build upon. While the characters do have certain depth missing in Naruto or hp. It is still very open ended and only hints are provided about many aspects of the story.

I completely agree on the one piece being very non writable as a fanfictions. And Kara no Kyoukai too. The two worlds I did mention seem to follow the reasons you mentioned why hp or Naruto have so many fanfictions.

On a side note can anyone tell me how to move a thread? I would like to put it in the appropriate section

 

How do you misinterpret that, OP?

Anyway, I'll follow in Lungs' footsteps, because the question has some interesting answers.

Quickly, what's the biggest fantasy video game franchise you can think of, outside of Final Fantasy?

Well, I don't know if it's the biggest out there, but Might and Magic is pretty fuckin' big. Specifically, I mean its most successful subseries, Heroes of Might and Magic.

The first three games take place on the planet Enroth, which is destroyed in the events of HOMM3 (the Reckoning) and HOMM4 takes place on Axeoth. You've got a ton of characters, both heroes and villains, to work with, plenty of international conflicts, even some world ending level stuff if you're into that. Personally, since of the first four games HOMM4 is my favorite, I tried my hand at some oneshots set post-Reckoning and those eventually evolved into original fiction.

This series has literally anything you want in a fantasy franchise. From dragons and magic to political backstabbing.

Varaug, does your name have anything to do with Shade Varaug from Inheritance Cycle? Just curious. And you can't move threads, but if you ask a mod nicely, maybe they'll move it for you.

 

Garth Nix.

All of his stories feature fantastic and interesting worldbuilding, that I'd love to see taken in a different direction. It was seeing it in the summary of Circular Reasoning that first got me reading it, even though the elements are very limited.

 

The lack of Kingkiller fanfic has always been curious. It's a very popular series, with a big, largely unexplored world, and an interesting magic system and magic school, again with plenty of room for fanfic writers to fill in details with their own ideas. It's also got a number of eligible women who could all potentially be paired with the protagonist which is enough to form the basis of shipping.

So why so little fanfic? I think two reasons: firstly, the plot is quite convoluted with few points of obvious divergence and, with so many mysterious elements left hanging, quite hard to take over; secondly, the protagonist is quite hard to write because of his character voice. Also contributory are probably the level of technical detail the magic system goes into, and the fact that Kvothe is already a genius so you don't have that level of frustration with him that you can have in protagonists like Harry. That leads to a much lesser desire to "fix" things. All of this adds up to mean you can't casually write Kingkiller fanfic. You have to plan carefully to manage the complexity of the various mysteries and the detail of the magic system.

The obvious solution is to write an OC completely disconnected to Kvothe's story, but that in itself carries a host of problems.

 

Moved thread to Other Fandoms Discussion.

The fastest way to get a mod's attention is to report a post. For future reference, if you have made a mistake while posting don't be afraid to click the red 'report post' icon to the right of the online status indicator:

 

ScottPress don't forget that the original games in that universe were RPGs. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic was one of my favourite games ever at the time, and the plot was actually good, and something I'd be interested in continuing in the same universe.

 

Bless you, but that story is terrible. And FT is just about as high as shit's creek you can get. Source material going off the rails and introducing utterly random and convoluted plot twists for the sake of it tend to create the "fix-it" situations, like Taure said, but there are some that are just hopeless that you just don't bother.

To borrow a video game example, Metal Gear Solid is a very popular franchise with an interesting world where PMCs have taken over as a nation's standing army, IIRC. You could argue that it's a good, modern sandbox that can be expanded in the right hands. Yet it doesn't have a similarly popular fandom or a stand-out story. It's what Kojima introduced--e.g. too many clones, attaching someone's arm and having his conscience transplanted as a result, etc.

This relates to the malleability of the plot point you have and the starting point of divergence. For MGS, it's not feasible to go "what if Ocelot didn't transplant that hand?" I'm guessing it might not turn out so well story-wise.

That's why there's so many fanfiction on Worm or even Familiar of Zero.

The starting point is fixed--the locker or summoning circle. The plot point is malleable--a different power or a different summon. So it's easy to jump off and start (and subsequently abandon) a story, or continue until it loses coherency.

But hey, odds are that the right author will come with perfect writing chops you so crave and will blow the whole fandom out of the water with his/her story.

Million to one shot, doc.

(There's probably a shit-ton of authors here who did that, but Lamora's Game of Champions all day, err day.)

 

STALKER has never had enough fanfic interest.

There is only maybe a hundred fics in the fandoms and only two or three are worth reading. I suspect it's because the game is very serious and strives for more hardcore realism when it comes to combat. I think that does not entice many fanfic authors to write for the fandom as you have to be very technically accurate when writing.

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Salts has a point too.

I also think STALKER is just too open-started and ended. Writing a STALKER fic means loads of OCs.

 

I'm certain I've read a crossover between STALKER and Familiar of Zero of all things. Damned if I can remember what it's called though. It was pretty damn good if I remember correctly.

 

Probably Stalker Zero.

It one of those two or three Stalker fics I thought were exceptional.

 

Download , PpJt

Here you go, it's truly excellent. Loved it, even though I know nothing about the Stalker stuff.

 

Combat system is friggin' awesome in Dark Messiah. I must've finished the game a dozen times messing around with stuff, no kidding. Making orcs slip on ledges never got old. However, DM is set in Ubisoft's universe, which I simply find less interesting than the original 3DO setting.

 

As someone who actually writes Fairy Tail fan fiction (thanks salts btw, defo taking it on-board) I'd argue that the reason why there's not much FT fan fiction and even less good fan fiction is because Fairy Tail (and it shares this with To Aru) when you get down to it is really, really dumb as a setting. If you want to make good fan fiction out of FT you need to rip out huge swathes of it and replace it with your FT inspired homebrew, and that homebrew has to not suck.

Which is hard.

 

What about Wheel of Time?

I know Robert Jordan didn't allow fanfiction to be written while he was alive, but what about now that he's dead?

 

Presumably that prohibition continues so long as the copyright remains valid (which for the U.S. is life of the author + 70 years).

 

The lack of Kingiller fanfic is rather disappointing but understandable I finished the second book only yesterday and was looking forward to a good "book 3" story. There was only one promising but abandoned by voice of nephilim and the predictable kvothe/bast slashfest.

 

I would think Sanderson's Stormlight Archive would have more fanfiction considering its relative popularity. Not to mention, the interesting world-building, and it's often frustrating protagonists.

 

How fond of guns would you say the author is? I'm not too enthused about gun wank.