Promote your fanfic

I can't see a thread like this on the first page so here I go.

I thought we could do with a thread for promoting your own fanfic. Probably the largest bane of fanfic writers is no one noticing it. It could because because you're an awful writer, to having a poor blurb and not knowing so, a bad title, a unusual or 'out there' topic that people don't search for etc.

So here I guess we can publicise our own fanfics. I also figure it would be a good idea if we stuck to the format - or something similar - used when recommending fanfics over on the wiki. Maybe we should also limit it to 1-3 per week/month or something so we don't have people spaming this topic with hundred of shitty fics?

The Venerable House of Le-Fay

• Fandom: Harry Potter
• Description: Athena Potter (Fem!Harry) enters Gringotts on her eleventh birthday and is given the chance to take an inheritance test leading to her being proclaimed the Lady Le-Fay. From here she delves into the murky waters of British Wizarding politics and does not like what she sees; creating the third side to the war.
• Notes: Slytherin!Fem!HP/Slytherin!GW Femslash, MOB!Dumbledore, and some non-flanderization MW and RW bashing. I am trying my best to avoid clichés with these tropes and even ran Athena through several Mary Sue tests just in case which she passed.

If your account is brand new, the forum will not let you post external links. Wait a few days and hang out in the other threads and the wiki.

Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 11th 2023 at 11:27:20 AM

MOB!Dumbledore?

edited 16th May '14 8:52:59 AM by EvaUnit01

Manipulative old bastard

<interest killed even harder>

Heh, someone who thinks Mary Sue tests are a useful diagnostic tool. (Not least because of self-reporting bias, but also because there's no way they can properly assess just what makes a character hax.) Also, you can't bash without flanderizing. Troo fax.

edited 16th May '14 11:16:02 AM by Night

Meh, I find that litmus tests are useful for determining if you're doing something horrendously wrong.

Arctic Rim has a decent following (Frozen/Pacific Rim fusion fic in which the girls are princesses of Norway and pilot the Scandinavian Defense Union's collaborative Jaeger, Frozen Heart).

About time A Song of Ice got some love as well. Another crossover, this time between Frozen and A Song Of Ice And Fire, which has Frozen as a way-distant prequel and the cause of everything that leads to Westeros.

Harry Potter fic where Harry is handed a bunch of shit on a silver platter and proceeds to go "independent" and single-handedly try to "fix" the wizarding world, with Dumbledore as a villain and Weasley-bashing. And the protagonist's name is "Athena," rather than an actual name that people have in the real world.

You know what? I think I'll give your fic a shot and see if I can't give some honest feedback. I'll get back to you sometime late next week. At present I'm going on a camping trip and won't be back until next week. I'll see if I can read it and write my findings in a Word Document.

First note: Your AN says the story is rated M, but it's actually T.

edited 16th May '14 2:31:19 PM by Pannic

Okay, read the first chapter. This won't be too in-depth, but here are a few bullet-points:

• Athena is a pretty terrible name for the protagonist. Harry was a common, normal dude name, to compliment a protagonist who you could buy as a relatively average person, and therefore relate to and empathize with him. The name "Athena" just sounds like you're being pretentious. Why would Lily or James name their child that?
• She also has no personality. The only characteristics that I notice are that A. she's more academic-minded in regards to her deciding to buy books and an advanced potions kit that she has absolutely no need of at the moment (my protagonist is smarter than that stupid Harry! That means I've totally created a better character and not at all a dime-a-dozen Sue!) and B. she suspects that Hagrid is either a stupid buffoon or an actor playing a stupid buffoon. In contrast to Harry, who, when confronted with someone who called him a big buffoon, defended him as a friend. Not a good way to earn the audience's sympathy. Speaking of Hagrid:
• Borderline Hagrid-bashing. Not going to earn you any points.
• The number of times the story goes "Ooooh, Dumbledore is trying to keeeeeep Athena from her proper inheritance" is enough to make me go "I get it already, please just shut up and give me a reason to care." It's transparent and cliche.
• The whole "The Wizengamot is made up of hereditary seats from old and prominent wizard families" is a bafflingly popular piece of fanon that makes absolutely no sense given what we actually see of it in the books. In canon, we see that the membership is made up of various witches and wizards who hold political office. If this fanon is true, then where was the Malfoy representative? Is the Bones family "noble and ancient," too?
• And other fic where Harry gets a big "inheritance" of a ton of shit. Up to and including a private island. Because just having a bunch of money and an invisibility cloak just wasn't enough, I guess, he needs to have super-special properties and whatever.
• Your Goblin names are really silly. Goldhook and Bladeclaw?

All in all, this first chapter is tons of cliches, and it falls into the classic trap of being all about delivering exposition and not at all about building a character worth following or caring about.

I'll continue and do a more "in-depth" look later.

edited 16th May '14 7:27:03 PM by Pannic

To be fair Athena while rare is a name that is used in the present day by some parents. However it is a very odd name nonetheless.

@Night - I don't see how you can only have flanderization of a character while bashing. So I can't have reinterpretation of canon actions for which a canon character now gets criticised for?

@Pannic - Actually it was going to go: 'Athena thinks she can do everything by herself because she practically raised herself, fails and then realises she needs help to change the world.'

"Athena is a pretty terrible name for the protagonist." - Rare? Yes. Unheard of? No. People being named after antiquated gods and goddesses isn't all that odd. Hell, look at Mc Gonagall who is named Minerva. Though I must confess I didn't realise Athena and Minerva are the same goddess until someone pointed it out.

I honestly was writing for introverted and didn't realise she came off as flat. You are the first person to tell me this though. I shall go looking for some advice to writing introverted characters.

So because I slightly criticise a character you feel hurt? Can I never criticise a canon character?

"The number of times the story goes "Ooooh, Dumbledore is trying to keeeeeep Athena from her proper inheritance" is enough to make me go "I get it already, please just shut up and give me a reason to care." It's transparent and cliche. " - I guess if you feel it's cliché I can't do much to convince you otherwise.

"The whole "The Wizengamot is made up of hereditary seats from old and prominent wizard families" is a bafflingly popular piece of fanon that makes absolutely no sense given what we actually see of it in the books. In canon, we see that the membership is made up of various witches and wizards who hold political office. If this fanon is true, then where was the Malfoy representative? Is the Bones family "noble and ancient, " too?" - The Wizengamot being hereditary and (mostly) pureblood is based on the idea of how can the Ministry be horribly racist, anti-muggleborn, corrupt through and through and be so ineffective against a small insurgency (even if you have ten times more Deatheaters than who are present at Voldemort's resurrection they are still a tiny organisation) if it is democratically elected? Purebloods are supposed to be the minority yet they seem to be all pervasive in the Ministry. As for Wizengamot membership all we know is the Dumbledore, Fudge, Umbridge and Bones are on it - all of whom have special positions in the government. We know nothing of the other members bar that they exist. The Wizengamot being hereditary is simply fans felling in the gaping blanks JKR left based on their own interpretations.

"And other fic where Harry gets a big "inheritance" of a ton of shit." - um, ok? I can rewrite it so she has enough money to destroy the world's economy if it makes you feel better.

"Your Goblin names are really silly." - the canon names are silly to, your point? It pretty hard to write good 'foreign' names when you only have half a dozen canon examples on hand.

It seems this thread was derailed pretty fast.

edited 16th May '14 9:46:06 PM by Download

That's the nature of the internet my friend. Flame Wars are inevitable.

It's quite simple.

To bash, one must, in turn, create something to bash about. Canon will not suffice for this purpose, for canon characters are multidimensional well-developed beings for the most part and have comprehensible reasonings behind their actions. Similarly, those who will do the bashing are typically also multidimensional well-developed beings who have no reason to pursue a mindless hatred of another character.

Someone must behave in a one-dimensional fashion to allow bashing to proceed. If not the victim being flanderized, then the attacker.

Assuming, of course, that the attacker is someone who ever had more than one dimension. You appear to believe your OC does, and I don't think reading your story to check would be anything more than petty of me at this point since I have no real other interest in it, so I will take your word for it.

Irish Republican Army. The Troubles. It's a fairly direct parallel, one that while I suspect may not be conscious would have undoubtedly informed any citizen of Great Britain's attempts to portray a violent antigovernment group. Or you could compare the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam instead if you prefer? They actually got to the stage of directly contesting the government by force of arms.

Democracy does not have magic powers to control internal dissent and terrorism. The Ministry and the Wizarding World are fighting a group modeled after arguably the most professional and successful western terrorists in history with the tools of the 19th century. That they fail is no great surprise.

Also, the part about the Ministry being anti-Muggleborn is not only fanon, but poorly sourced and essentially unsupportable from a reading of the canon material. At best, you can construct an argument for Umbridge and Umbridge alone. Even that is something of a stretch, considering she very obviously expended most of her energies on Harry rather than any Muggleborn student.

Are we still allowed to use this topic for what it was originally created for? If so...

Strategic Cyborg Evangelion

• Fandom: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Half-Life, quite a few Shout Outs to Mobile Suit Gundam
• Description: There is a theory about the existence of an infinite number of universes, born out of infinite permutations of chance and choice. We all know about the universe where humanity battled the Angels - the natural against the unnatural. But where does natural end and where does unnatural begin? And just who is the unnatural to begin with?
• Notes: Under complete rewrite; currently working on chapter 15, stalled for more than seven months now for lack of will to finish it. Pairings are Kaworu/Asuka, Shinji/Rei, Toji/Hikari, Kensuke/OC (Rei clone), implied Hyuga/Maya, teased Yui/Shephard.

The main problem with this one is, as far as I can tell, is that it's not anywhere near far enough into the story to determine whether it's worth reading or if it's just a waste of time. The direction I intend to take it towards is a Deconstruction of the Fix Fic trope, showing that turning the entire cast into a World of Badass sometimes doesn't solve things at all, showcased through the progressive degeneration of OOC!Kaworu from Hot-Blooded McCoy into Stepford Smiler Shell-Shocked Veteran and eventually Hurting Hero Zen Survivor. I'm willing to reveal spoilers if asked.

edited 18th May '14 7:00:18 AM by amitakartok

I was going to post something here, but now I don't know.

I wanted to try to advertise a universe I'm currently working on for the sake of it's being WEIRD and wanting to see how many people baffled at the desc. It's also something I've contemplated making a Tropes page for just for fun. However, it's NOT a story/story set that I actually want to receive heavy criticism on. I'm in a stage where I'm writing it for "the small audience that is reading it" and it's pretty much something I've started and continued as a lark, a weird thing for personal fun.

Seeing this thread makes met think I might be run away with my tail between my legs and quit something I've started and wanted to do at least a few more stories for.

How are you all set for "I'll share this for people who are interested in weird things but light-criticism / spoonful of sugar criticism only because this fic *isn't* my magnum opus?"

I mostly just want to know if it's worth farting around making a page for.

I've made tropes pages for two of my projects, which i'm convinced are puerile, badly-written things, entirely for my own amusement. So...

As they say, there's no such thing as notoriety here.

Because I really want some criticism and there's really no other place to promote this without seeming kind of annoying, here's this.

Total Drama Charity

• Fandom: Total Drama
• Description: With Camp Wawanakwa sunken and the budget for the next season gone, there's only one thing for our favorite host to do; host a mid-season season where eleven new contestants suffer through torture on a boat, all while raising money from the fans. This is Total Drama Charity!
• Notes: An OC fic. It's only three chapters in (though episode one is split into two chapters, so it's two episodes in) and due to technical difficulties, I haven't been able to write the rest of episode three. But anyway, the description pretty much says it all.

Give me the full brunt of it. Seriously. My only reviewer for it, while he's been really supportive of the fic, doesn't give any hard criticism, and I need both types to properly make my work better.

edited 18th May '14 12:48:38 PM by PikaScootaloo

Alright. Here's my current fic.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10168453/1/The-Arkham-Monologues

. Fandom Batman, more specifically the Arkham Games.

. Description A series of short one shots, told from the eyes of Batman's rouges.

. Notes Rated T. I've got an idea for the next section, but I feel I've used all the villains I can work well with. I'm yet to start writing the next chapter.

edited 18th May '14 12:50:57 PM by Squeakythemaster

Currently working on:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3322840/1/New-Perspective-Evangelion

New Perspective Evangelion. Or something that started as an answer to the usual Gender Bender Self-Insert where everything is 'easy'. Takes for fucking ever to update.

http://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/yours-truly-2032-bgc-si.312/

Yours Truly, 2032. An ongoing rewrite to try and improve on the original - by not spamming a thousand words a day and calling it 'fic' for a start. Will probably meet up with the existing part's 6 and 7 when done. (And because I wanted a boomer character, to do a few motivational things I didn't like about previous BGC fics)

I'd make the argument that the Death Eaters were closer in analogy to the UVF/UDA than the IRA, as while they were terrorists, they were also very much a part of the existing establishment in many ways, with enough friends in high places and within the security services to 'get things done' and get other things brushed under the carper.

A minor point of order, perhaps, but an important one.

The IRA were a very different creature.

Alright, here goes.

Note: I DON'T actually want heavy criticism on this. A little, gentle nudging is okay, but no tearing apart. Unlike the more serious writing work I try to put out in the world, I rarely ever re-tool fanfictions, and this fanfic / series is a lark. It's something I started because whenever I'd stumbled upon this specific kind of crossover, I was seeing annoying/boring stories that were simple re-tellings of one canon with the names filed off and replaced with names from the other canon. I wanted to see if I could do better, working with the weirdness of one kind of canon smacked with the premise of the other.

I'm posting it here on the thought that someone might be interested in it, and, as mentioned above, I've thought of making a Tropes page for this universe for fun and want to know if it's even worth it, being such a strange thing.

"'National Anthem'" and it's side-story series "'A Gathering of Sacrifices'" http://archiveofourown.org/series/95621 (Link goes to the Archive of Our Own posting, which has both the completed base-fic and the ongoing side-series. Also, the first is illustrated there. The story is also on Fanfiction.net).

Summary: Super Smash Brothers - Hunger Games style.

" The Super Smash Brothers annual tournament used to be a fun affair - combat without murder or lasting pain in which warriors from many worlds could test their skills, gaining friendships and glory. It was also wonderfully silly. That was before Ganondorf took over.

Sometime after the Melee' Tournament and before the upcomming Brawl, Ganondorf used unknown sorceries to seize control and rule the nation of Ninten. He turned the tournaments into cruel games of survival filled with death in which only one chosen fighter comes out alive.

Link Kokirin, the once Hero of Time, is a haunted veteran of the first "Brawl of Honor." This year, he finds himself the mentor of his young successor, an innocent boy from New Hyrule. How can he teach an idealistic young Hero how to give up his life - or his soul?"

- The first fanfic is told from the first-person perspective from Link of Melee' / Ocarnia of Time, who has become this universe's version of Haymitch Abernathy. He mentors Toon Link and eventually gets caught up in the resistance that's been building in the shadows. After a point, the storyline deviants from the THG-plot, going its own way, which was the bent all along.

- The second fic ("A Gathering of Sacrifices") is made up of individual fics, side-stories centering on various characters and little behind-the-scenes bits. It'll be ongoing until I get tired of it / until I run out of story ideas to write. I might actually surpass the original fic in length in the end. A Go S is told in third-person.

There are several tropes I can think of off-hand for a page for these. For one, they're a Crossover. Two different characters try to pull Cruel to be Kind combined with Heroic Sacrifice. There's at least one, possibly two Tragic Keepsakes. Someone deliberately Goes Out with a Smile. Of course, there's the Darker and Edgier / Dark Fic and a Cynical Mentor who Drowns his Sorrows.

I don't know if there's a trope for it... is there a trope for when an author, in researching their work, discovers something they get really into? That happened to me for a game series. In researching a character I had to work with to make the first fic work, I wound up discovering said character's games and becoming a full-fledged member of his fandom.

Anyway, all I really want to know is "Worth a silly page or no?"

Well, here goes.

X-Men: ReEvolved

• Fandom: X-Men.
• Description: It is said (if not scientifically accurate,) that humanity evolved from the apes and chimpanzees long ago, to better adapt to their environment. But what if the environment is not yet ready for the evolution to come? What if the 'old model' - humans - feared that the next possible stage of humanity - mutants - would overtake them all? This then, is the world... of the X-Men.
• Notes: This fanfic does not use any previous existing X-Men continuity. Instead, this is a complete and total Continuity Reboot. It also just started relatively recently; only 3 chapters are currently out, though a 4th should be up within a day at the time of this writing. (Also, thanks to Vampire Bhudda and Anteres for ideas.)

This is a story I decided to write for a few reasons. One is that there are other stories that use my own original characters and ideas that I wish to write some day, but that this is a good place to start to better hone my writing skills. Aside from that, I'm not that really satisfied with the X-Men comics as they're being written nowadays. The X-Men are split into two, and worse still, most of them are closed off from the world rather than choosing to go out into it. Instead of actively trying to improve the image of mutants, they're instead hiding away in their fancy mission, and doing not much else other than occasional standard Superhero work. This is an attempt to change that. Instead of being closeted away, this irritation of the X-Men will instead be getting out into the world, making their presence known and actively attempting to change the perception of mutants. Of course, this being the X-Men, they'll still have a load of trouble getting to their goal of peaceful co-exsistance, if they'll get there at all. There are other more subtle changes as well. Mutants are divided into three groups; the majority fall into either the 'Mostly Normals', which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, mutants that look a lot like humans other than an extra hand, a spare eye, another arm, etc., or the Morlocks, who are the mutants who look anything but human. Then you have the the third type, which is where the X-Men reside; some of them still look like normal mutants, but many of them look perfectly human, but what they all have in common is that they all have Superpowers of some sort or another. So on top of bridging the gap between mutants and humans, the X-Men will also be attempting to bridge the gap between the Mostly-Normals and the Morlocks. There will also be a large cast, but some of that case will be delegated to supporting roles. Professor X, Banshee, Forge, Sage, Laurie Collins, Karma, Cecelia Reyes, and even Angel at first all their roles to play, but usually won't go on any field missions, instead fulfilling various roles back at the Mansion. (Which also hosts a few human students and human teachers, to prove that the School truly stands for co-existence; this will also include Jean Grey's dad, who was a teacher as I understand it.) There will be other changes as well, but I plan on still sticking true to the spirit of the X-Men, as well as it's characters. Most importantly, I plan on having a beginning, middle, and an end, with the series eventually going to places that the 616 books would never go; not permanently, anyway. I love X-Men, and this is just what I think X-Men can be.

'''Saga one: Jinchuriki (REMASTERED)'''

• Fandom: Minecraft / Naruto
• Description: People believe that the universe is a bubble, or a sphere, or a single plane of existence.; That universes are all separate from each other, and that crossing in-between universes is only possible through transcendental beings. They're wrong. It's more like a sponge, and it doesn't take much for someone to lose their way.
• Notes: An idea that's simmered in my noggin for about a year. Minecraft, at least to me, stuck out with the fact that you could literally make a portal to the Nether at any given location and have it zip you into another dimension just like that. Well, just have a Herobrine portal malfunction and zip him into another world and see what happens.

Although, if you think it's too easy, stupid, and lazy to just have a portal malfunction, you're right. There will be blood, there will be actual drama, and there will be adventure.

This is not a humor fic.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10232443/1/A-Merging-Dream (Sorry, my computer is on the fritz, and won't make hyperlinks.)

Fandom: FF Tactics Advance

Description: The Gran Grimoire grants it's readers the dreams they seek, something Mewt is glad to see, and even his friends can come along for the ride. Each one quickly finds themselves living their wildest dreams, but as Marche finds out, this paradise may not be what it appears...

Notes: Something I quickly realized after reading pokemon mystery dungeon fanfics is that the Tactics Advance games have the same premise, if not quite the same execution. A kid (or kids) find themselves in a magical land, and crazy hijinks happen. So, why not novelize it? Icey the Fox did an astounding job with his version, "Casualties," but I had some different ideas on how to present Marche and co.'s adventures through Ivalice. However, while I have two people who actually followed, and almost 100 views, no one has critiqued, which worries me. I don't want to write a mediocre or worse story, so any ideas would be welcome.

edited 25th May '14 12:23:05 PM by darrelodin

Alright. To get my mind off of... events in my life... tonight, I worked up a page for the fan fic mentioned.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/NationalAnthem

Does it look alright? Feel free to edit where needed if it needs cleaning up. I can't figure out how to get the "Music" and "Trivia" pages to go away (they are for *actual national anthems* while this is a fic page). Also, indexing. I looked over "How Indexing Works" several times and went back to re-edit to try to figure out where I'm supposed to go to put something on an index, and that bit of instruction was apparently written in a way my brain is not wired to understand. Or maybe it's too late at night and I'm too grief-fried for my brain to understand much.

Well, sure; why not.

Maybe I'm A Lion

• Crossover: Kara no Kyoukai/Prototype
• Lio Shirazumi, questionably sane and terminally self-destructive drug dealer and serial killer, is caught by chance at ground zero of the release of the BLACKLIGHT virus in central Tokyo, courtesy of a certain Dr. Mercer putting his grudge against Gentek into a more nuanced form prior to dying. The result? A Runner is born, in madness, destruction, and the unquenchable desire for blood and vengeance. Blackwatch arrive in Japan in force, backed by a CIA unit out of Hong Kong tasked with preventing them from causing too many international incidents. Souren Araya, the mastermind behind Kara no Kyoukai, finds himself to be Shirazumi's target, and begins adapting his own plans to the new circumstances. The Ryougi family, brought into the loop through various circumstances, begin moving to protect their own interests, and their daughter. A pair of elite (well, not that elite) Japanese intelligence agents work to understand what the hell is going on. And behind all of this, a shadowy group of conspirators known only as the Three Kings - led by the being known as PARIAH, both more and less than human - manipulate events toward their own ineffable goals.
• Genre is hard to define, and to be honest I'm not really sure what to call it. It's been described as a supernatural spy thriller, so let's go with that.
• This is an ongoing fic, being published in serial form on the Beast's Lair Type-Moon forums. A warning must be given in that it is extremely long for the amount of time that has passed; due to the large cast of factions and the interplay of their respective high-speed machinations, it has taken ~450,000 words to cover less than 24 hours. I would also like to say that a lot of the earlier chapters - everything up to C11, basically - are much less stylistically developed than what comes later, and frankly they make me cringe to read them. I feel I've improved since then.

edited 3rd Jun '14 4:39:06 AM by RiotousRascal