I have
never really understood the appeal of fanfics (fan-fictions). If someone wants to write, or feels the genius inside telling her (or him but rarely) to write, what's the
big deal of writing your own story? For me, fanfics are the least creative form
of literature. Yes, I hear your voices, goddamnme!! the defending of the
genre, the opinions that some are really good etc. Some may be, for all I care, I read only the horrible ones.
But for me, being in various
fandoms half of my life, fanfics are not actually Pulitzer award worthy pieces
of writing. It may be because I came across nasty,
incoherent and bad ones first and I'm biased? Maybe.
I don't understand what is so hard in writing
YOUR own story, with names and places created by you. Inspiration from people around, motifs or even
celebrities is fine, it is something natural, but writing slash fanfic with
real people somehow doesn't sit well with me.
I find majority of fanfics a worthless piece of wasted space
(to put the euphemism before the page break).
Opinions
aside, I have always wanted to dissect fandoms and the mechanisms that operate
the fangirl's mind. Inspired by some of my lovely students
(and a blog analyzing "blogerettes") I decided to give it a go.
Some may ask if I can be objective while
reviewing something I don't like. First, I don't believe in "objective
opinions" at all. Everything is subjective and "objective"
opinion differs from "subjective" in the aspect of the number of
people saying this. Subjective fact becomes objective after a certain amount of
people says it. It's just statistics
but not the nature of the fact itself. In short – no, I’m not going to pretend
and be objective.
Second, I may not like something but I still
can do a relatively honest review. I
don't like Murakami Haruki but I can say he is a talented writer.
Should I be grateful people read fanfics as the reading rates
drop? Yes and no. Yes, because it's a reading of some kind. No, because the
fanfics vocabulary is painfully narrow. If someone has enough of clichés in
Kdramas, they are swarming over fanfics like flies over a rotting cadaver. And
people use phrases and whole sentences from series, movies, shows, songs and
other fanfics instead of being creative and write something from their own
imagination. First try may not be the actual Shakespeare, but even the cheesy
lines are meant to hone our skills (speaking from the experience here). One may
return to the "masterpiece" one committed a year ago and see faults
and mistakes. Problem is, the majority of fanfic Writers are so in love with
their own crippled "works" that they are unable to see faults. The
ultimate example is of course Stephanie Mother-of-Sparky-Fairy and lately (Erika
Leonard) E.L. James’ 50
Shades of Crap. First person narration, the narrator is, except for the
name (or sometimes even with this), the exact image of the Writer but…
idealized. That’s the trick. Writer projects her (go to hell, feminists, most
of those craptastic Writers are girly girls) ideal image of herself onto the
main character interacting with others. Reading fanfics one may guess with 100%
accuracy what kind of girl the Writer is by the simple removal of certain
traits. There are only two colors of the main Axis Mundi that holds the entire
Universe – the beautiful, cotton-candy sweet and pure one and the rebellious,
complicated and mysterious one. Both types painfully one-dimensional and blank
as the sheet of paper (and with density below 60).
To be perfectly honest now – I’m talking about teen writers
(and Stephanie Meyer) not older folks who also write fanfics (of more decent plot like alternative version/universe). They are not as
fun as those, so I’m not diving into that. The worlds “created” by those teen
Writers (Writerettes? Writeresses?) are as rich as their imagination. It’s a
simple transposition of watched anime/series/shows onto computer screen and
adorned with sentences barely making any sense, with compulsory carbon paper for
badly used drama phrases. They try to sound so Korean it actually hurts. They
don’t do a “spell check”, probably thinking it is some black magic thingy that
may summon the Dark Lord of English Dictionary and we all know what happens to
people hit in the head with a brick. No descriptions except for clothes and
food preparation. No back reading to, I dunno, maybe confirm what the Writer
wrote two pages earlier? And finally, even swarms of mosquitoes close to the reservoirs here make more sense.
Oh yes, I read few fanfics lately and I will do a literary
criticism by dismantling the highly intricate structure of this Gothic
Cathedral that is teen fanfic. Do I have a right to do it? Yes, I’m doing it
for humanity, strangling and severing the heads of the Lernaean Hydra (Greek: Λερναία Ύδρα) that is the next generation of Stephanie Meyer. Also
because I’m just a bitter bitch who can’t conjure up such beautiful images of
Twu Wuv and in short – is jealous of such enormous talents popping here and
dare like daisies. And I’m just a cow trampling all of them on my way to the
stream.
Have I hurt anyone’s feelings by saying fanfics repel me?
