frouella, Jenkins

Okay, I'm resigning myself to the fact that after reading this post, in your eyes I will be relegated to the land of Dork-dom, never to return. Credibility, farewell! and scholarly pride, adieu! **sigh**

My name is frouella, and I read fan fiction. It's been a day and a half since my last confession I last read something by an amateur author. This last one was about Samurai Champloo, but it's been on other stuff in the past. At first it was just something I did at anime conventions, but then it happened more and more frequently, until finally it started taking over my life. Now, my friends and I trade links to stories on fanfiction.net (hereafter known as The Pit of Voles), and I've even beta'd a few stories for people. I haven't written anything myself though; that's where I draw the line. If they get you for manufacturing the stuff, that's at least another -10 credibility points right there, know what I'm sayin'?

So, yeah. Anyway, it's not something that I usually admit to people I don't know pretty well, but the subject figured so prominently in Jenkins' article that I had to bring it up. Plus, according to what Jenkins says, I've been vindicated and validated -- it's not fanfic, it's Participatory Culture! Here's a direct quote: "Fan fiction repairs some of the damage caused by the privatization of culture, allowing these potentially rich cultural archetypes to speak to and for a much broader range of social and political visions." Wow, the whole time I thought I was indulging in a nerdy, guilty pleasure, when it turns out I've been healing the community the whole time!

This isn't to say that it's all quality stuff; a lot of it (nay, dare I say most of it) is complete and utter dreck. Imagine a bunch of semi-illiterate teenage girls trying to write scenarios in leetspeak where InuYasha finally hooks up with Kagome. Yeah, it can be pretty painful, especially if you're as particular about grammar and spelling as I am. Here's a good example to give you an idea.

Actually, that's a parody of a bad fanfic (Shhh! -- don't tell Baudrillard, his head will explode!), so it's really quite funny if you're familiar with the shows that it references. If not, you're probably sitting there shaking your head and wondering what the hell I'm doing in a real English class (it's okay, sometimes I wonder the same thing). In the end though, all the slogging through the bad fanfic makes the instances when you find a really good story stand out that much more; it's like you're a literary prospector, panning for gold in a big (vast, huge, immense) river of muck. Sounds appealing, no? ^_^

To bring this whole topic back to some kind of relevance, suffice to say that I think Mr. Jenkins has a good point when he says that the growth of fandom has given people more ways to get personally involved with culture. Granted, these amateur attempts aren't all winners, but at least it gets a larger percentage of the population out there in the mix, instead of leaving culture solely in the hands of "artists."

Random Po-Moment:
Here's a political cartoon written by a scientist, not a cartoonist. So it's cartoon fanfic, if you will...