I just realized that I seldom write/read fanfiction of books, and when I do, it’s because they’ve been adapted to multi-media. Like, when I was into the LoTR and Hobbit fandoms, my baseline was the movies. When I got into Hannibal, it was because of the TV show. Harry Potter–the recent video game. Even my most recent story, set in the Song of Ice and Fire, is based on the series.
The only time I’ve had the book-version in mind, was when I was looking for stories on Arya/Jaqen H’ghar.
Everything else, I imagined the assets and events used in the shows/movies.
It’s the same with drawn media. Manga and comic books don’t inspire the urge for fanfiction in me, but anime and movies do. I had no interest in reading Marvel fanfiction until the movies came out. I only got interested in fanfiction for Haikyuu, One Punch Man and Chainsaw Man when I saw the anime.
The type of media I tend to write for is video games and the ones I read from are TV shows. I have no idea why, but I just thought it was interesting how certain media can make my brain latch onto the IP more creatively than others.
How about you guys? Any media preferences as well or maybe you have other factors in play?
I admit, I had to google some of the characters to refresh my memory of them (I think I’ve only seen 1 or 2 episodes of YGO 😅 I bought some of the cards as a kid but that was because they were so shiny and pretty :D). It’s a shame they felt they had to add more romantic subplot to make it more “interesting” --I always find it shallow when adaptations do that and it usually comes at the cost of character relationships.
I suppose that’s part of the struggle of anime adaptations. The business seems so finicky. It’s tough for developers to figure out which arcs to include when they don’t have the guarantee of another season. So they end up cutting filler content, but then some plot points don’t make sense without it, and so they include filler–but now there’s less episodes for plot. Then the characters suffer, because some arcs take a while to develop, but they still have to justify an animator drawing them in, so they get shoddy characterization instead. I imagine it’s far easier to have characters return to status quo, like a sitcom. So they end up learning the same lessons all over again.
Thanks for the write-up! It was interesting to read. Good luck on your project! :D
There was another anime adaptation which actually started at the beginning of the manga, instead of going immediately into card games. They did the same thing there: added another girl to the main cast, then made one of the boys revolve his entire character around being in love with her. I hate it.
Romance has to be put in everything somewhere. I don’t have anything against romance, but I do have something strong against it being shoehorned in.
I’ll never understand how they decide what to do with adaptations. A lot of the time, I think they should just make their own original story that is “inspired by”, instead of saying it is an adaptation. They could fit what they wanted in better like that. Oh well. Some anime is good despite it. Some are even better than the manga they came from. It really depends.
Agree heavily on the romance thing. Two of my current fandoms just got on the romance train and it was pretty disappointing. 😅
It’s even more frustrating when the producers are obviously using the existing IP for their fanbase and reputation.