(via avatarmovie)
James Cameron’s Avatar disappoints me as a movie. Without a doubt, it’s a beautiful film that a lot of time and effort went into, but despite all that, the story falls flat in so many other areas. In terms of worldbuilding, the movie’s biggest crime is that none of the characters seem to realize that they’ve discovered the key to eternal life.
It’s been my experience that people seem very open to the idea of being introduced to someone new in a published work, but not in fanfiction. I would theorize that this is because people read fanfiction mostly to further explore already existing characters, and new characters are almost always written off as being dreaded Sues. This is such a lie. Yes, a good proportion of original characters in fanfiction are bad. I think we can all agree on that. However, I can list a good number of fanfiction that feature numerous original characters that are far more than just decent, but compelling, thought-provoking, and realistic.
Semper Victoria by Katkiller-V is one such fic. It’s summary reads:
Humanity is on the brink of self-destruction, and unobtanium may be only hope for our species. A story where Pandora is not an Eden, and the shades of white and black have been washed into a sea of gray.
First published late last year, it took the author just under two months to post all forty-nine chapters and start on the sequel, Semper Furor. I can only assume she either had most of the first story written, or at the very least outlined, before she began posting. Notably, she’s been taking much longer to finish the sequel, but she manages to maintain the same quality of writing throughout, that being remarkably decent for something found on fanfiction.net. Hey, Katkiller-V obviously knows a good deal more about grammar than other fanfiction authors, so I’m not going to complain whenever I see a typo.
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 