History of fanfic?

Been wanting to ask this for a while, but...

Ive been trawling through the older threads in the fanfic section for a while, and found lots of things of interest - older tournaments, bizarre yet really cool RPGs, the magic that was Tim Sillery, etc. I also found lots of references to things like Fantasy Robot Wars, ARC, Virtual Ebay, and other similar things originally from the old RW boards or before that.

Im aware theres the wayback machine and other sources, but could someone give an explaination of the history of robot fanfiction, just to be annoying and out of interest? Itd be good to know more.

And if anyone can give me another Sadness Badge for wanting to know this, thatd be nice too :proud:

*hands over badge*

nah, tis a cool question :proud:

its too early for me to be writing whole essays atm, lemme guide you to a link that shows some history from my point of view

http://vapourbots.crystalnode.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=61http://vapourbots.crystalnode.net/fo...c.php?f=9&t=61

hope its of any help :wink:

*points Joey into the direction of http://hijamiefans.suddenlaunch.com/index.cgi#Frwhttp://hijamiefans.suddenlaunch.com/index.cgi#Frw *

Some of the early stuff from what was called the Panic Attack Lot which merged with the Robot Wars Lot before being invited onto this forum when the original robot wars forum closed.

I cant tell you excatly when fanfic started, as there were a few things flying around, mostly organised and/or written by one Hector Gilbert using real robots only. He wrote such things as a few What ifs, including 101 winning series 3 and the Biohazard 30 which consisted of Biohazard running a gauntlet of fighting 30 machines from Battlebots and Robot Wars one after the other.

He also ran a tournament using only real robots, which was set up like the fanfic tournaments of today, with one exception. The fights would be reserved by anyone who wished to write them, and completeing the tournament was a collaborative effort. The honour of writing the final was decided in a writing competition.

This tournament was instrumental in changing fanfic to what it is today, as it contained two robots that hadnt yet been completed, but there was enough info on their websites to get a rough idea of what theyd fight like. This inspired me to start a tournament involving nothing but robots that had never been on telley. This was called the NSBFL - the Never Seen Before Fic League.

This included a few real robots that would go on to become familliar faces, most notably Dantomkia. But most of the entrants were vapourbots... And I mean absolutely no disrespect to those vapours, but they were RW series 1-3 equivelent and stats looked more like something cooked up by Timothy.

Because the NSBFL was popular, others started to get in on the act. Loads of tournaments were started, but the only two that hung around were the PTT and VFT. Cant remember which came first though. But lets go onto some other things for now.

Virtual E-bay came about when some bright spark (I think it was Aaron) decided itd be really cool if vapour bots had restrictions like a budget. For a brief period, prizes of vapour-pounds were given out based on tournament performances, participation in quizzes, etc. Virtual e-bay was the market place where virtual motors, amrour and even entire robots could be sold.

Fantasy Robot Wars was a website dedicated to fanfic. I dont know too much about it because to be blunt I had one look at the creation process and decided against it. It was like a robot wars computer game where you chose a shape from pre-rendered bits, chose a weapon from a list then allocated points between pushing, weapon power, self righting, armour and maybe some other catagories. My main problem with this is that although it was easy to design competetive vapours, designs such as the Crashing Bore, or The Disc were impossible because either the shapes werent supported, or the weapons werent supported.

ARC, I believe was an American version of Fantasy Robot Wars. This was a little better as you had to supply your own picture. But still, I never liked the points system either.

And now Joey, I think for managing to remember that lot, that sadness badge of yours now belongs to me:)

NEVER! I AM THE ONE TRUE SAD PERSON! THE BADGE REMAINS WITH ME, UNLESS YOU FIGHT FOR IT!

...and thanks for all that, Frank, Marti, Dave. Sheds a bit more light on things :)

I think it might have been the PTT that came first, Frank.

Can I ask Richard - I know that Steven planed to make a mini-competition which sadly never got going, which was a big dissappointment. Are you planning on making a minor anytime soon, as I would adore to enter - I think that VFT was one the best series ever written and the one that influenced my writing style.

I think hes lost interest in writing fanfic completely, Paul.

But Ill let him answer, possibly to confirm my thoughts.

Never say never, but it is unlikely Ill be writing again any time soon. I am pleased you enjoyed VFT though, Paul.

(Message edited by velociraptor on April 08, 2008)

VFT was definately one of my favourites!

one of mine too!

Me as well...it was what got me involved in all this, in a perverse sort of way.

I must agree. *had recently read through the entire VFT6 thread* :proud:

Are you all trying to make me feel guilty?:sad:

I will say in turn that Franks other example, PTT, was one of my favourites.

(Message edited by velociraptor on April 08, 2008)

well, PTT and VFT were my 2 favourites to be honoust :proud:

sadly, the only editions of PTT and VFT with me in it never got finished :sad:

and if making you feel guilty will get you to start writing again, please feel free to feel guilty Richard :proud:

If Im honest, I liked them all...even Tims efforts, never laughed so hard in ages :proud: but any tournament that got close to being finished is probably one of my favourites, even though that sounds stupid.