I’ve been thinking about the nature of fanfiction recently, what spurs people on to write stories in pre-established settings, and what sources make for good fanfiction. For you fanfic buffs, what I’m about to say probably isn’t going to be anything new to you, but I just felt like jotting some thoughts down in a public setting. Feel free to correct me or to chime in.
I feel that there are two types of stories most conducive to creating a fan community that generates fanfiction. These are “detailed world fiction” and “sparse information fiction.” That is to say, the former is comprised of series which provide detail after detail about the setting of the story, while the latter consists of fiction where details are scarce but just enough are provided to get fans thinking about possible connections. Examples of “detailed world” include Buffy and Harry Potter, stories that lay out how the world works and why, while examples of “sparse information” would be something like Super Mario Bros., where its lack of real concrete detail means you can fill in the blanks with your own imagination. They’re not separate ideas either; a story is capable of having both a detailed world and sparse information, only concentrated in different areas.
In a “detailed world” series, so much information is given about the “rules” of the world that the basic building blocks for establishing a setting are there, often under unique guises. If you’re writing a Pokemon fic for example, then having a character who only uses Grass-type Pokemon can say a lot about their character. The type weaknesses chart is your basis for action scenes. Creating an original character within these worlds ends up being an exercise in just how you can incorporate the properties of the source material into your own ideas.
However, just as Pokemon provides endless information on certain aspects of its world, so too does it skimp on other properties, particularly in characterization and small details. Characters’ last names for example can be a big deal. The logic here for example can work like this: “If the main protagonist Ash Ketchum can have a last name, that means last names exist in this world, so why shouldn’t Brock and Misty have them as well?” In contrast, there is an explanantion in Avatar: The Last Airbender for why Toph is Toph Bei Fong and Aang is just Aang, and that is because last names are a sign of affluence in that world and culture. And never mind that the whole Misty’s last name thing only applies to an English dub of an anime; Robotech is all about that.
Fanfiction thrives when it has a place to grow. A story that is a little too closely woven, such as Monster, doesn’t do well for fanfiction because it fails to provide room for fan thought and imagination that could potentially be true. But when you have a story like Dragon Ball Z, with a universe full of planets and super powered entities, why the stories simply write themselves.
OGIUE MANIAX 
It’s a bit odd for me to want to create fanfiction since I’m all about ‘creator’s intent’ however for the reasons you’ve laid out there have been some fanfiction I’ve wanted to do/have done.
I did a sci-fi Hatsune Miku fanfiction because Miku has no set personality or world, allowing me total creative freedom. I’ve considered doing a Bleach fanfic based on one character who was interesting but appeared very briefly (and died) whose backstory I would love to explore.
Back when I was new to anime I did a lot more fanfiction – you are right that Pokemon is a great one to do, but there’s one series that I think is the easiest to do an infinite amount of fanfiction for, which is the Zelda series. Any individual Zelda game plot is developed with enough sparcity to allow any amount of addition, and if you want you can create your own world for Link to explore since he’s done so many adventures as it is. I once had a fanfic wherein all of Link’s old enemies teamed up on him in the world from Ocarina of Time and he had to fight them at each locale.
One fanfic type you may have overlooked, though, is the ‘alternate universe’ type, as well as the ‘where are they now’ type. I did a (terrible) erotic Toradora fanfic taking place after the series (which actually hadn’t ended yet) as it would have been quite difficult to do an in-universe fic of such a tight story, but I could do a ‘where are they’ for any of the characters. Another one I plan to do is an alternate universe Lucky Star fanfic wherein all of the characters are gang members in the middle of an epic city-wide gang war… yeah.
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This is just an observation, but one of the most popular anime to do fanfiction of in the heyday, back when the Internet was young and there was no fanfction.net, was Ranma 1/2. Somehow, on the big fanfic communities such as the FFML or rec.arts.anime.creative, about 70-80% of all anime fanfic was Ranma 1/2 based.
Ranma and his buddies were subjected to every kind of fanfiction staple and concept under the sun: Ranma was paired off with each of his fiancées, or crossover characters, or even guys; there were stories that changed the setting to the far future, to feudal Japan, there were happy ends and bad endings.
When I think about how this came to be, I usually think of two factors. One was that there were a large amount of characters, but they weren’t that developed. A lot of characters were very one note, and went through routines instead of actual character development. So fanfic writers end up making their own interpretations of characters, which often vary from writer to writer, especially in the case of the fiancées. And second is that the manga essentially has no ending. Or it has an ending, but it’s so inconclusive that it may as well not be. So a lot of fanfic writers end up writing their own ending for the series.
As an occasional fanfic writer myself, I suppose the fun of it is manipulating characters and making them do things that the creators haven’t thought of, or taking them to places the source material wouldn’t cover. But it is a bit of a tightrope to walk, because you still have to ground the characters in their canon, and if you don’t do that, then it just comes out looking ugly.
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What interests me is how the type of story encourages the amount of fiction written, or at least published at ff.net. Fantasy settings seem to reign in anime, books, and TV, probably due to the detailed rules that are set–and assumed to be understood–by the author and the readers. There’s always lots of room to wiggle, to create an alternate ending or continuation, or to simply create more fantastical elements that legitimize whatever plot you’ve come up with.
Though, especially after seeing the top stories be from titles such as Naruto, Gundam Wing, and strong showings from more obscure ones like Prince of Tennis, Loveless, Hetalia, and Ouran High School, I can’t help but think that the more yaoi-riffic a series, the more eager fangirls are willing to throw down some time at a typewriter to push out an Alt fic about how their two favorite male characters get together. This reminds me of fanfiction’s modern roots, which came from ‘zines publishing Spock/Kirk shipping fics. Fanfiction born from yaoi?! Ick!
Personally I’m a yuri fan and enjoy having the Mai Hime fandom completely overrun by ShizNat. ^_^ Boo boring hetero Mai/Reito and Mai/Tate!
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