My Experience Writing Video Game Fan Fiction

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I never pictured myself writing fan fiction. It has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. You know, stuff that you indulge in secretly. There’s nothing bad about fan fiction. It’s just that people usually associate it with erotica in mainstream media. After all, isn’t that where 50 Shades of Grey was inspired from? It’s true there’s a lot of sexual themes in fan fiction, but there are also a lot of well-written ones that incorporate the characters and the universe they belong to quite adequately into a new story. Sometimes there’s not even a hint of sex in it. It just came down to good writing. I was inspired to write video game fan fiction right after Mass Effect 3 ended. I had a lot of ideas in my head about stuff that could happen after the ending so I decided to write about it in a non erotic way.

If you want to read my fan fiction, you can find it here. It’s a love triangle story that involves Shepard, Miranda, and Liara. I do warn you though that it is unfinished, but if you like it then maybe I’ll finish it. Read on, if you want to hear about my experiences writing fan fiction, putting it out there, and responding to my readers.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vozyHDONohU

Another piece of evidence that proves my obsession with Mass Effect

I actually did an extensive amount of research before writing my fan fiction. I wanted to make sure I got the lore and characters right. If there’s one thing I hate the most, it’s fan fiction that goes extremely out of character and consistently violates the lore in the most glaring way. I spent my time in the forums chatting with the regulars of each character thread and even befriended a couple of them. They were my constant beta readers who advised me on what they think Miranda or Liara would do in certain situations. I also consulted one of my good friends who was a big Mass Effect fan. She would criticize every little inconsistency that she found in my story. For example, in one scene I wrote that Miranda ripped off a part of her suit to cover her gunshot would. My friend then pointed out that Miranda’s suit is too strong to be ripped apart. I didn’t even know what Miranda’s suit was made of and I consider myself a die hard fan. She also noted things like the terms and jargon the Alliance military would use. In addition, she helped me figure out the plausibility of the plot I had in mind. Normally, fan fiction writers just don’t care about whether a plot is believable or not but I do.

Writing fan fiction is a lot easier though than doing your own thing. I’ve tried my hand at writing my own stories and I learned that I’m best at adaptations and a failure at creating my own fantasy world. The best part about writing fan fiction is that the characters and universe are set up for you. All you really need to do is expand on it instead of creating something from scratch. Aside of that, you have legions of fans to help you out because sometimes they have awesome interpretations of certain events and characters that are totally plausible.

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I was really afraid to put my writing out there because I know what the internet is like. If it’s ugly, they will tear you to pieces. Even if it’s nice, there will always be trolls out there. However, I turned out to be wrong. Feedback for my fan fiction has been nothing but positive. I do get some e-mails from time to time asking me to add some sex in my story. Yes, my story is kind of chaste if you are wondering. It’s not that there is no sex, but it’s just more of the PG-13 fade to black type. I don’t really have any experience writing erotica and besides I heard that sex stuff on most fan fiction are far from accurate to how a roll in the hay really is. It’s really nice to hear feedback from people who know Mass Effect really well. It means I’m doing something right. Positive comments in general though encourage me to move on forward.

If you’re thinking about writing fan fiction, go ahead and give it a try. You don’t have to be into reading it to give it a go. It’s a nice practice run to hone your writing skills and an excellent way to improve by gathering feedback from people all over the world. You get comments from people you don’t know so there’s low risk of bias or them worrying about hurting your feelings. As I’ve mentioned previously, you only need to expand upon the world given to you. So it’s like being a novelist but with training wheels. You also don’t have to worry about incorporating sexy time into your stories. You’ll know your story is good when people don’t need the snuff to be entertained.

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2 Comments

  1. Dat passion…

    This is awesome. I have a history of making fun of fan fiction writers (not personally), but I’ve come to respect the legit ones as people who aren’t afraid to put their own fantasies out there for the world to judge or take a creation they love and contribute to its lore in their own way. If you can put aside the pornographic aspect and just appreciate the passion for the original work, then you’ve really got to respect that as a fellow nerd.

    Personally, I could never do fan fiction. For me, it would actually be much easier to create something that’s all my own from scratch because nobody knows what I know quite like I know it, you know? The amount of research and input required to make a fanfic of true quality would be far harder for me than creating something that follows all of my rules and ideas. So props on that too. Now write a super-explicit story where Tali gets it on with Aria! ;D

  2. Nice read! I’ve also felt as inspired playing through the Mass Effect series, particularly the romances. I’m still a bit too unsure of myself to do something about it, though…

    I’ve got a few story ideas in my head with Miranda as my favorite of the love interests… I’ve never tried romancing Liara, and I probably never will, but the tie-in novels (Retribution, in particular) give very detailed descriptions of asari-human intercourse. Maybe you could make better use of them:

    – a scene where Shepard tries talking with Miranda about her sterility after reading the Shadow Broker dossiers

    – some possible memories Liara may have put in Shepard’s mind from “embracing eternity”

    – an argument between the two women about Shepard probably subconsciously preferring Liara, and bringing up Miranda’s abandoned plans to put a control chip on him

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