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Posts tagged as “Fan Fiction”

The literary bane that is fan fiction.

In my internet travels recently (reddit? blogs? somewhere else?) I stumbled across FanFiction.net. I’ve never had a high opinion of fan fiction, but that was a purely conceptual bias. The idea of fan fiction seems pretty absurd to me, even before considering the realities of fan fiction. Why would you waste your time creating fiction in worlds not of your own making? Why write stories about Marty McFly’s journeys through time and space with Dr Who? Why write stories about Data and Picard hooking up? Why write stories set in alternate Twilight world where there is a family of Frankenstein’s Monsters who own a chain of discotechs?

I have no idea either. It has never made sense to me. But that’s just me. And then today my curiosity got the better of me and I started reading some.

Wow. Just wow.

As a little experiment, let’s pick a section at random. How about “Games”? Ok. Games gives us quite a few topics to choose from. Let’s see…I liked Mass Effect. Let us see what we can find in Mass Effect.

On the first page there is a story called, “The Rise and Fall of Maria Shepard”. It gives us this gem.

Shepard collapsed to her knees, tears now washing away the velvet blood that was painted on her face, but soon Kaidan interrupted her thoughts with a sudden hand on her shoulder.

Clumsy. Awkward. I don’t know what a “sudden hand” is exactly, but overall not the worst sentence I’ve ever read.

Further down the page is a story called, “Rebuilding Our Realm”. I liked this bit.

“How are you feeling commander?” asked Fallon’s nurse – for what seemed like the 3rd time that day! Fallon herself had a cast on her left leg, her shoulder was still a little sore and her ribs still hurt whenever she yawned, laughed or coughed – not like she had been laughing much anyway! Since Wrex had found her, with the rest of the rescue squad, (in a part of the citadel that had crashed down through Earth’s atmosphere), and had taken her to one of the only remaining hospitals in London. Later that week the hospital had ran out of power, forcing the staff to move the critically injured and most important personnel to a different hospital situated in the city of Oxford. Oxford had mostly been untouched throughout the war, maybe one of two reapers bodies still lying round where they have not been picked up yet. The hospital itself was called the John Radcliffe – JR for short – the staff here were pleasant and she had had access to the best health care they offered; yet she still could not rest. Her crew had been announced missing the day after the war had finished, the same day that Wrex had found her. The press were constantly trying to get into the hospital to see their ‘hero of the war,’ one had managed to get in a couple of days ago and had asked her questions about how she had stopped the reapers, to which she could only answer that she could not remember. According to the doctors she had gone into survival mode when crashing down to Earth, and the horror of the whole ordeal had overridden her memory with information, meaning that the memory leading up to it was blacked out, and this had created a few hours of just blank information. So altogether she was not feeling great, she had lost her crew, her ship, her memory, but also the man she was falling in love with. Well when you say man…?

Whoa. Needless exposition much? Passive voice, run ons, and unnecessary information. I wondered what the hospital was called; I am glad the author deigned to tell us.

But let’s not skip my favorite entry on the first page of the Mass Effect section, “Mass Eject Chapter 1”.

I need some air i went outside and tried to cool off but my sadness from last night turned into rage at the hanar. (How dare it drag me here against my will.) I walk up to a lone tree and punched it pain shot up through my hand. Why me I had parents a family to care about i then kicked the before mentioned tree until my anger slipped away and turned into a dull pulsing pain in my chest. This feeling would not go away any time soon

What is not perfectly sublime about this passage? It displays an essential inability to communicate with the written word, yet here this young fellow is crafting the most awkward fiction I have ever had the pleasure to laugh through. I genuinely feel sympathy for the before mentioned tree and his vicious fight with the protagonist.

I feel like Fan Fiction.net is a lot like Elfwood, but where Elfwood serves as a repository for the worst and less worst of amateur art, Fan Fiction.net serves for writing. Sure, buried in the noise there are a few decently competent creators of stirring fan fiction, but overall the level of quality is so low that it is laughable. And a satisfying laugh it is. Where else could you find Great Expectations/Lord of the Rings crossover fiction?

I almost want to write some.