Question fan fiction characters that are really cool !!

I haven't read all of those to be able to go into perfect detail on the reasons why they are fan fic and not canon, but even from the one sentence summaries you've provided to expand on who the protagonists are... I can give you a quick list of likely problems.

1. Everyone wants to do Sidhe Court. Ultimately, however, we haven't released a LOT of the backstory on the Courts yet because of how that period of time influences the current plot line with the Bastard. The odds of people just stumbling on getting it right and not having to rework their entire usage of the Courts... are actually pretty slim.

2. Another reason to use Sidhe Court characters (elves, dragons, demons, etc) is that these characters are 'bigger' than life, even in a superhero genre. It's a bit like mixing Thor into the same world as the X-Men.... which, indeed, Marvel does... even if the X-Men have some powerful characters who can stand toe to toe/shoulder to shoulder with Thor, the latter is a god of Asgard. There's an implied complexity, history, power depth that a contemporary mutant teen cannot have. -- tied in with 3 --

3. Age regression is another way to get a 'bigger' depth of character than the average contemporary mutant teen. These two methods (2 and 3) disrupt the flow of the genre of Whateley Academy. It is meant to be a high school... not a powers school. Not a military training camp. The problems and conflicts at the core of the stories are supposed to be things that ALL human beings can sympathize with, because we were all teens struggling with those problems at one point. Yes, there are powers and differences caused by having powers, but the powers are part of the setting... not the defining element of the stories.

When we introduce these ancient beings, immortally long lived intelligences... or we age regress adults... into stories... they are really unlikely to be stories about teenagers any further. when you can apply adult experience and perspective to puberty, it changes things. Priorities shift to perfecting powers use... combat training... and the setting changes. Now... there is room for that within the scope of the universe (the WU)... but it is NOT on campus.

4. The author doesn't understand the scope and scale of the mutant powers in the Whateley Universe. Some things are simply off the scale for the WU power use. And some of the existing power traits, we don't use for protagonist characters. This problem can sometimes be reined back in with rewrites, but it depends on how central to the story the author has made power use. Again, we want stories that focus on the characters... not the powers. The powers are just a gimmick to take it into another universe and create a metaphor for another way people can be 'different' that can be good or bad for people around them, that can be visible or hidden, can be embraced or discriminated against... just like other things in our own universe.

5. The story doesn't have dynamics. Some people write character origins that are basically the revelation of a power set in a scene... there is no conflict to overcome, there is no character growth, no real 'story'.... it's more like a character sheet in prose form. Here's what powers X got and here's how X got to Whateley Academy. Not a story.

6. Integration - cameos are really common in fan fiction. There's a lot of fun in tying in moments of canon stories, seeing canon character do their normal bits (Jade being wacky, Ayla being a foodie or ogling girls in the showers, Sara seducing someone, etc)... but every such moment in a fan fiction makes it that much more difficult to make sure it ties into continuity because unless you did the research and each of those moments refers to a moment that is already in published canon... they have to be worked into that character's tracking info and made possible, somehow.

Similarly, cameos of other fan fic characters... is a nightmare. This is part of the cascade effect that Elrod is talking about. If a fan fiction story mentions other fan fic characters? We cannot canonize that story. Because doing so creates a canon version of those other fan fic characters. And if THOSE fan fic characters are to be canonized, we have to look at their stories and anyone THEY have cameo'd... and so forth. The same thing is true about supporting characters. If you've created fifty supporting characters who all work on campus at Whateley but have never been seen in canon stories? Do you think we have room for fifty staff members above and beyond those we've shown in stories to date? So such things have to be limited.

7. You use canon characters, plot elements, or events in ways that are clearly off the beaten path. With 9 million words of canon story content out there, most authors who have taken the time to read first will have a pretty good understanding of the universe, characters, powers, and political dynamics, etc... but not everyone reads all of the canon before writing fan fic. And some people just don't read it... well. Obviously, if you treat Mrs Carson like a teenager (or a young teacher just out of school) who can be tricked by any little scam... or... worse... your story isn't going to get much consideration. If you can't bother to understand existing details well enough to write them consistent to their presentation already... no one will trust anything you write to stay within the realm of canon.



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Now... those are the BIG hazards for fan fiction becoming canon. But that even assumes that we have an interest in making something that is fan fic into a canon story. Mostly, I don't like doing so. A story has to be very well written and very close to canon level of detail before I'll consider it. The main reason for this is because is accomplishes very little... and often involves quite a bit of work to do. Reworking a story to make it fit into canon (to fix all the dates, character mistakes, etc that lead to the problems above) takes a lot of editing time... sometimes even scrapping or rewriting entire sections. And yet, once released as canon; few readers will do more than just skim over it to see what's changed. And in the meantime, that author has been tied up working on rewrites of something everyone already read.

The only way we are willing to do this is if the Author tends to work at a pace that means the reworks aren't going to cripple their further output. AND. If the story is well written and doesn't require enormous amounts of reworking to bring it in line. AND. If elements of the story are valuable to the big picture... ie that the universe is improved by having that story in the canon.

We do NOT canonize a story just to acknowledge that an author has written a good story. People are perfectly capable of acknowledging a good story without it being canon. There are fan fics that are better than any canon story... there are canon stories that weren't up to par and the bulk of fan fic is better than. But the difference between canon and fan fic has NOTHING to do with quality. It simply has to do with which stories move the Universe clock... and which are simply told as if they were part of the universe.

A good fan fic author can write stories based on their knowledge of the universe from having read everything in the canon and doing their research to keep their story from conflicting. A GREAT fan fic author writes stories and communicates with canon authors on key details to make sure the story is always based on canon details. How do you think canon authors maintain continuity? We give each other feedback on the details. And as long as fan fic authors aren't jerks about it, we can and will answer canon detail questions in their forum section or via PM.

Less impressive fan fic authors post WU fan fic on other sites and then complain that we don't recognize them by making them canon. I don't spend any time at Fictionmania anymore. I check BCTS for stories once a week or so. And even when I do, I don't tend to read WU fan fiction because I don't want to get characters and events mixed up with my knowledge of canon characters and events - so I don't steal people's ideas or accidentally mess up continuity. I only read fan fic specifically to give feedback when asked to, or when someone highly recommends that I check something out.

I will say, that of the four presented above... I only know one. Atalanta's Story. I know this because Katie Lyn is one of our G2 authors and Atalanta was presented as her first choice PoV character. And we turned it down because the character is very clearly out of power scale balance with the team that was being put together for the G2 plot. Katie also wanted to do some things that simply don't work the way she wanted them to in the WU. But she also really wanted to tell the story... and that's good too. So Atalanta's Story is 'fan fic' and she developed a different character to use for the G2 canon plotlines. Knowing a number of the elements Katie really wanted to keep, I'd guess that she has no desire to rework the story to make it canon... the story she wanted to tell is the story she told. THAT story can't be canon. And there's no reason we should try to force the square peg into the round hole.

The other three? First I've seen seen the titles. Are they really stories that can/should be canon? Or is it more that you feel that they should be recognized for their quality?

Ya, I'm not sure who deleted the post.... whether it was the original poster or what. Possibly because it was in the new arrivals section... which is 'wrong'... but i'll fix that by moving the whole thread.

Yep, the issue is hardly new. We've talked about it on the forums a number of times though this is probably the first time on the new site. It is even an issue within the team ... some of our G2 authors wrote fan fiction before joining the team, some of them continued to write fan fiction while in the year period while we developed the core concepts, plotline, characters and so on for G2. And we have had to handle some 'inclusion' issues... characters they want to bring in that can't come in as originally mentioned without causing problems down the road.

But, as you say... one of the biggest 'errors' in perspective is the idea that fan fiction is "less" than canon. It isn't, by default. And we HAVE tried to make it clear that there are lots of really well written stories among the fan fiction collection. That is, after all, why we have tried to create a featured fan fiction section here on the new site and not just push it off into a dusty corner of the forums. And its why I want to step up fan fiction's visibility and inclusion on the site going forward. The goal is to say that there is plenty of good, well written Whateley Academy stories that aren't canon.

And maybe that's the distinction we need to make. There can be Whateley Academy stories that are neither canon OR fan fiction. If people feel that there is something inherently 'lesser' about fan fiction... then maybe we create the new section for Wildcat Whateley stories... unofficial, unapproved, unsanctioned? I don't know... anyone have a name suggestion?


Also... we DO bring new people into the canon group. But people have to realize that it is a LOT of work to be part of the group. The G2 are finding this out first hand. The readers are hard on them. We're hard on them. They're hard on each other. There is a LOT of background coordination and effort and sacrifice of personal ego necessary to work in a complex shared universe like this. You don't get the freedom to just sit down and write whatever you want. A BIG part of bring people into the group is ensuring that they are capable of working with the team. It's not enough for them to just be good creative writers. We have to want to work with them. After all, as you've seen... we're going to be doing it for MANY years.

I actually look forward with some sadistic pleasure to one day taking a fan fiction author's work in the G2 time frame and bringing it before our G2 author team and saying... your call. Can this story be raised to canon? Can we add this author to your G2 canon roster? Are you willing to integrate and educate someone new into something that has been only yours for all this time?

It'll happen. Sooner than later.

Naldru, most of them can be found at BCTS... or you might have to visit Fictionmania. The authors of said pieces did not choose to post them on our site... one or two of them actually don't even have the required disclaimer that allows them to post a non-canon Whateley story. Which is a pretty good sign of how little familiarity their authors have with the actual universe (ie... not a very good one).

That's not all that surprising when you consider that someone might read one or two fan fics from the WU, then look around to find a couple canon stories that have been posted off site (for example, Elrod cross-posts his stuff at BCTS... as does Morpheus... Bek and E.E. do with some things... I don't). With most canon authors, they will cross post the things that are all their own... and don't cross post things they collaborated on with others of the team. But no matter how you look at it... if you ONLY read the WU stuff available at BCTS or at Fictionmania or Sapphires Place.... you cannot possibly accurately reproduce the universe for your own stories.

And a lot of early stories were way overpowered, because everyone matched power levels with the main protagonist characters... the members of Team Kimba. But in universe, TK is a known 'extreme'. They not only aren't average but even untrained they can challenge and stop A list villains... which means, they're among the strongest in the WU. To write stories in the WU with a clear grasp of powers... you have to understand that most mutants don't exceed rank 3 or 4. Especially if they have more than one trait. And that means, mostly, that people aren't tossing cars around... they definitely aren't knocking down buildings.

That plays out with more realism in the social power dynamics, too. Think about mutant manifestations in Marvel. How quick to beat up a possible new mutant would high school kids be if the average mutant manifested at a power level like Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm or others? That would significantly raise the likelihood of a group like the MCO getting power but weaken one like H1 (because even in mob numbers, how much can you do against bullet proof tank throwing mutants?) There would be far greater numbers of kids being segregated to institutions for controlling them. After all, with that scale of power possible in every new mutant... no one would be trying to stay hidden in the population, going to school like normal.

And in a wider scope, we would have to change more of the universe in response to the impact of mutants. Response to crimes, fires, etc in the WU is much like our own... but in a DC power scale? Superman hears about a crime half the globe away and responds to it before the police can get there. One of the big differences between the comic universes and WU is that mutants tend to evolve smarts as well as brawn. As an outcome, far more mutants are not only innately better... but they understand and implement the advantages of skill and knowledge. In the 'big picture', that MAY be one of the biggest impacts on the way the stories are told, and what KIND of stories are told.