Postby Rocket Axxonu » Tue Apr 19, 2016 7:52 am
Oh yeah, Tolkien's work is amazing. I sort of think of him as the father of modern fantasy. His influence is just unbelievable. (Of course, it's my dad who's the real fan of Tolkien in my family...so when we see the movies, I'm always like, 'Did such-and-such really happen in the books??') But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if you've seen dismissive criticisms of his work from some of the elite English-lit world...From what I've heard, there's a deeply ingrained prejudice against fantasy works there, though it is often phrased in such a way that's not immediately apparent. (You'll find elitism is often cloaked in sophisticated language and lofty expressions.)
For me, I sort of have an informal hierarchy in my mind of what kind of fan I am of each particular fandom. I have a casual interest in a lot of different fandoms, but a few stand out as more my favorites, and then there are those that I like well enough to actually inspire me to do work of my own (whether fanart or fanfiction). Then there are a very, very few that I consider my primary fandoms, where I have more longterm projects.
I definitely won't make out an exhaustive list (we'd be here all day), but I put down a few that I remember. I guess I'll try to break it down into four categories, to sort of reflect my thinking. x3
Level 4: (Stories I've enjoyed watching/reading, but I wouldn't necessarily go beyond that.)
-Divergent (Just read this one recently, and I was quite impressed with the interesting themes of the later books.)
-Bleach
-A lot of Pixar and/or Disney movies (I love movies that are computer animated), such as Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph, Inside Out, Toy Story, How to Train Your Dragon, and so on.
(There's probably way more, but I'm lazy at the moment. :p )
Level 3: (Series that stand out from the others, which I've watched/read through multiple times. Those that have captured my imagination enough I've thought about them a lot, and often have had a strong influence on my own works, but I haven't contemplated doing any fanwork for.)
-Skip Beat
-Code Geass
-Once Upon a Time (The television series)
-Hikaru No Go (My dad and I have been rewatching this series recently—so amazing. We only got to watch the first season when we were watching it originally, because I don't think our library had season 2, but we've been getting the seasons on Amazon.)
-Ultra Maniac (the anime more than the manga)
-Marmalade Boy (again, the anime more than the manga)
-Black Cat
-Rurouni Kenshin
-The Books of Bayern (The Goose Girl series)
-Vampire Knight (I'm only reading this one again recently, but as I'm reading, I'm remembering how the artwork really influenced my own anime-style work, so this one gets on the level three list.)
-Beast Wars (Such fond memories from my childhood; my dad and I watched the series clear through a few years ago, which was awesome.)
-Teen Titans (I liked the show so much, I went back and tried to get a hold of the old comics, and I also read some of the new ones. One of the few American comics I've actually read and gotten into.)
-Yu Yu Hakusho
-Naruto (I have a game on Xbox 360 my sister and I play, too. Or at least used to play, before she got busy with school. >> My sister and I have also read some fanfiction together, which was fun. I don't know if anyone else here is familiar with 'Team 8'...quite an amazing work.)
-Alex Rider
-Mulan (I once watched this movie ten times in the same week.)
-Ender's Game
-Inuyasha
-Hoop Days (Also called 'Dear Boys' for the manga)
-S.A. (Special A)
-Sabrina the Teenage Witch (The television series; my parents and I have been going through this one again recently. Definitely one of my family's staples.)
Level 2: (Series that are among my absolute favorites, which I've either contemplated doing fanwork for, or actually have done sporadically. I guess these are what I would call my 'dabbling' fandoms.)
-Animorphs. (Although this one is probably closer to a level 1—it's just that it was one of my earlier obsessions, when I was younger, and didn't have quite as rigorous as work ethic as I do now to put my ideas into concrete projects. So I only have a few bits of fanart here and there.)
-Harry Potter (A huge influence on my writing, and my understanding of what makes characters rich and complex.)
-Princess Nine (An anime; called 'Kisaragi Nine' in the original Japanese version. It's a sports anime about girls trying to play baseball in a boy's high school tournament. I got sucked into this story a long time ago, and my sister and I have watched this one so many times I've lost count. I started writing a story for this one centering around Yuki, the quiet girl with a bit of a darker past than the other players. I hope I'll pick it up again eventually and finish it.)
-Buso Renkin (I actually laid the groundwork for a very long fanfiction that takes places almost two decades after the events of the final episode, and even wrote a prologue and a few chapters, but I started it at the beginning of what turned out to be probably my hardest semester at university, and I didn't have time to go any further with it at the time. Some of the concepts I was planning to use in this story [for instance, the main villains of the story were clones of the main characters—or they would eventually become the main villains] eventually made their way into Noble Heart [my main AF project] instead.)
Level 1: (Fandoms which have caused me to officially cross over the threshold to insanity, which have inspired me to embark on long projects, obsessively studying the cannon for accuracy, among other things. These are my core fandoms.)
-Yugioh (Initiated my first real writing experience)
-Artemis Fowl (I learned how to use photoshop through doing fanart for this series, and through my work on fanfiction, my writing improved tremendously. My work ethic vastly improved through work on this series, and I've also learned how to be a more aggressive editor.)
-Pokemon (This one's by far one of my most enduring fandoms. I think I started playing when I was maybe twelve, and I've played clear through all the main games that have come out so far, some of them multiple times. My sister and I have even done pokemon rps, and I've written some fanfiction, though I never got far enough to feel like showing it to anyone. This is also where part of my username comes from. ;9)
Also, I've recently thought I might be adding a new one to the list. I only really got into it back in November (2015), so it's a bit early to tell if it's going to be one that'll last over a longer term, but considering I've probably done 300,000 words worth of writing for it already over the past five months (I can't count it exactly right now, because I have about eight notebooks' worth I still need to type up, but I think that's a pretty conservative estimate), I'm thinking at the moment it's pretty well established.
(Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined. It's the new gender-swapped version of Twilight that came out for Twilight's tenth anniversary. As for the original Twilight itself, I would probably put it as a level 3. I always liked Twilight, but I only ever read it [well, listened to it] twice, at least until recently. I read it again for the sake of my Life and Death projects, and I felt like reading it again now, when I'm older, I have a clearer view of the series than when I read it as a teenager. I could see why some people hate the books like they do, and why the series has been criticized for not having the most sophisticated writing style. [Course, that's really to be expected, considering the author had never written a book before, and hadn't really specifically trained for it. She hadn't intended to become an author, after all.] But, that didn't really bother me much. Stories don't reach level one status in my brain for any real rational reason, there's just something about the characters and the story that happens to capture my imagination. So, rather than feel depressed looking at the flaws in the series, it's just one more thing I enjoy analyzing. x3)
Like I said, there's probably a lot more, at least on the 2-4 levels. If I think of more later, I might add them.
...Yeah, and here, I thought this post was going to be a short one. (You'd think I'd know myself by now. xD)
“After all, absolutely no one can help but suspect a criminal, liar, and manipulator of committing crimes, lying, and manipulating. And of course, no one is more aware of that simple fact than Artemis Fowl.”
Opal sets into motion her most diabolical scheme yet, to frame Artemis and turn his closest friends against him. Only this time she has a new calculating partner who knows Artemis better than he knows himself. [An Artemis Fowl fanfiction, set after The Atlantic Complex.]
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8336552/1/Noble-Heart ...Shameless self-advertising, guys! C;
(And if you're really bored:
http://axxonu.deviantart.com/gallery/28 ... temis-Fowl AF fanart. ;J)