I have a confession to make: I enjoy fanfiction. No, I don't stay up all night reading stories about the forbidden love between Captain Kirk and Spock -- I enjoy fanfiction as an example of how baffling the Internet can be.
Fanfiction is full of paradoxes. Telling a story with another person's characters is the textbook definition of uncreative, but many fanfictions show a remarkable (and disturbing) level of ingenuity. The fanfiction world is friendly and supportive, but writers refuse to make or receive even the mildest piece of constructive criticism.
These contradictions fascinate me. A story can be insane, riddled with errors and impossible to masturbate to, but still enjoy universal praise.
That got me thinking: how bad does a fanfiction have to be before it will be criticized? I decided to answer that question by writing my own fanfiction, each story more purposely terrible than the last. Read on to see if I managed to receive some genuine criticism, or if my Dora the Explorer/Call of Cthulhu crossover was revered as a modern masterpiece.
The Basics
Before I show you my fanfiction, let me give you a crash course on the medium. That will provide the context for my epic tale of the Flintstones defeating the Decepticons in a dance fight, the intricacies of which would otherwise be lost on you.
We associate fanfiction with crazy people on the Internet, but it's been around longer than that. Hardcore fans of Jane Austin, Arthur Conan Doyle and Lewis Carroll wrote fanfiction, and if you go back further you'll find the Romans wrote Jesus/Judas slashfic (citation needed).
"And then they just started making out right there on the Last Supper table."
But somewhere along the line, fanfiction turned from a semi-respectable hobby into an artistic wasteland. Modern fanfiction is riddled with cliches, angst, and awkward romances. And that's not even counting adult fanfiction, which I won't be getting into because the second I show you a story about the vampire from Twilight having sex with The Incredible Hulk you're legally allowed to stab me.
Today's fanfiction is universally terrible, and I was going to contribute to the problem.
The World of Fanfiction
There isn't a work in existence that hasn't inspired fanfiction (there's fanfiction for Of Mice and Men, The Santa Clause and freaking Minesweeper), but there are a few giants in the fanfiction world. Star Trek, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Twilight have produced a staggering amount of fanfiction, and Harry Potter is a juggernaut -- there are several large Harry Potter fanfiction sites, and some of their stories are longer than the works they're based on.
The largest fanfiction site is fanfiction.net, which has been operating since 1998 and hosts millions of stories. Interestingly, the majority of its users are women, and according to The Wall Street Journal (the number one source for investigative journalism into the world of fanfiction), fanfiction.net is the number one erotic website for women. Ladies, if any of you are turned on by my writing, you're welcome in advance.
I've given you a background, but for you to truly understand the madness of fanfiction you'll have to read some. Here's a sample from one of fanfiction.net's stories:
And here's a review it received:
That's the kind of literary genius and harsh critiques I was up against. Could I write fanfiction so awful it would stand out against masterpieces like that? It was time to find out.
Testing the Waters
My first foray into the fanfiction world was a generically bad Harry Potter self-insertion fantasy -- a litmus test, to see how my fellow fanfiction writers reacted to my work. Please enjoy an excerpt from Harry Potter and the Mysterious New Students.
Despite numerous grammatical errors, a cliched plot and dialogue so stilted it could get a job as a circus clown, early reviews were positive:
misa-chan46 did offer some suggestions, but "a good plot"? "A good plot"? There hasn't been a review this inaccurate since whenever Harry Knowles last reviewed something.
My fanfiction was bad, but not bad enough. It was time to tell a love story.
Please continue to Part 2: The Forbidden Love Between a Plumber and a Turtle!
|
|
Store
2,105 
7 
128,751 
73