Ethan on fanfic.

After a helpful prod in the right direction, I am once again updating my blog. Blogs are quite time consuming. I had the thought of taking a leaf out of Slythergenic's book and drawing some art to make witty (?) comments about, but when I opened Paint, I remembered I have the artistic ability of a rhinocerous on hallucinogens (much like Slythergenic, I'm sure she'll agree). Anyway, determined not to fade away and die in loneliness (although it would be better than dying in Hackney) I have been working on my fanfic.

For those that haven't read it (or what so far exists of it) the link is available to your right (Ethan dons his air steward costume and points out your nearest exits, the location of oxygen masks and lifejackets, and demonstrates how to properly inflate your lifejacket. Ladies and drag queens aboard the aircraft ought to observe that no high heels are permitted on the inflatable emergency slides. Thank you for your attention, I now reschedule you back to your in-flight entertainment.)

I've hit a snag in my fic in that IT HAS NO PLOT. Now, in terms of writing, this is incredibly fun, but in terms of reading, it can make the story drowsy, nauseous and prone to mood swings. It should definitely not operate machinery. In an attempt to make the (intentional) badfic more... well... bad (worse, Ethan, worse!) I began drafting out ideas of what could happen and I ended up with a fantastic story involving peril, danger, excitement, dejection, tears, fears, joy, herpes and a whole host of sexually transmitted diseases. However, with its brilliant plot, believable characters and my invariably excellent writing style, this story was fucking awesome, so it completely missed the point of the exercise. After burning the plan for that story, I went out and bought a new laptop, cursing at myself for not merely deleting the last idea. After a fun trip down to Comet, I restarted my planning. However, I kept coming up with fantastic ideas. So, in order to understand my objective more readily, I went out and got some research on fanfics. The following data and analysis was gleaned from research done by Professor Juergen von Schlubenheimer, the mad scientist with a German accent at Ethanland University.

Fan fiction, a phenomenon best known for its vomit-inducing qualities, has been around for many millions of years. It is said crapfic (a term we shall later define) wiped out the dinosaurs. So terrible is the influence of some fan fiction that it created all the nasty creepy crawlies that you don't like, as can be verified by ancient sources such as The Old Testament, the Koran and Patrick Moore. Insects and biting things were once wiped out by the great floods (Noah swotted the remaining pairs of mosquitos etc) but a resurgence of terrible fanfics swept the lands soon after the flood, reviving all things icky, scary and left wing.

Fan fiction has evolved to follow and destroy all cult books, films, TV programmes etc (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and the Simpsons), as well as less iconic variants of similar nature (e.g. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Kevin and Perry Go Large and Futurama.) The blanket term for fanfics dedicated to less popular media is 'terrible'. These 'terrible fics' are available in abundance but due to their small sphere on influence, they only inflict substantial damage on a small, insignificant proportion of the world's population (less those who don't have access to a computer).

Concentrating on the more popular templates, a variety of fanfic is available. Most is classified as 'crapfic', which is a term that encompasses fics with too much (read: 'any') romance, bad SPaG, no plot and generally no reason to exist, other than the author (read: 'escaped mental patient') wanting to inflict pain on the unsuspecting reader. Crapfics can be split into problem-specific genres, such as KaNtspeL-crapfic, caanyType-crapfic, Pointless-crapfic and, especially in the Potterverse, MarySue-/GaryStu-crapfic. The latter terms relate to original characters (OCs) that make you want to bang your head on the table until you bleed enough to end your trauma (given that this is not the aim of the author, although in some cases - see 'badfic' - this is the intended reaction.) MSs and GSs are usually characters that are far too perfect (or have faults that aren't really faults, such as being 'too pretty') to the point where they are not believable; they influence characters around them, making them behave out of character (OOC) and bend the rules of the fandom in which they are placed, to the point where they barely even fit into the settings into which they are injected (e.g. a first year at Hogwarts who already knows NEWT-level magic).

At a glance, the terms 'crapfic' and 'badfic' seem synonymous, but more often than not, they are in fact opposites. Badfic, where the author deliberately writes a (seemingly) rubbish story is usually satirical and more often than not makes a parody of crapfic. The line between badfic and crapfic can occasionally blur where a crapfic is so bad that it is laughable, or a badfic is so poorly written that it becomes a variant of crapfic in itself. In both cases, the authors have unintentionally missed their objectives, which is why it is so important for me to identify mine before commencing with chapter two of 'Harry Potter and the Teflon-Coated Frying Pan.

Sometimes badfic is so supremely well-written and laugh-a-minute, that it becomes 'shitfic'. This has double meaning in its prefix. 'Shit', meaning excrement, generally indicates that the fic is 'bad', which in this case, it is intentionally so. 'Shit' can also mean good, especially in 'gangster', 'hip' and 'cool' lingo. 'Shit' in the case of shitfic, also means that the fic is THE shit, i.e. brilliant, excellent, thoroughly enjoyable etc. This is what I strive to achieve.

Before I move onto a diagrammatical representation of my objectives, it is necessary to cover another rare, but significant, branch of fanfic. This is called 'goodfic'. As previously mentioned, it is rare, since most fanfic authors consider themselves good enough to be let out of their cages without a lead. But amidst the mountains and lakes of crapfic available, the occasional goodfic struggles for survival in the shadows and eventually blossoms once it properly takes root. Goodfic, when split into denomenations, is usually given the prefix 'GoodBut[problem]-goodfic', e.g. GoodButTooLong-goodfic, GoodButSpellingErrors-goodfic.

Unfortunately, all of the above terms are highly subjective, and so great literary minds such as myself tend to place most fics in 'crapfic' category (fig. 2), whilst other readers leave the same stories reviews to the tone of "OMG!!!1 that was ssOOooooooOO good! Wen r u writing more cos I wana c it!! I can't believe [character] did that!1! omfg i dieeeed!". People of average intelligence and life-worthiness could plot fics on the following scatter diagram:



I have named only two good authors (that I don't personally know) on this diagram (fig. 1) merely because they are probably the most famous in Potterverse. Cassandra Claire, known for her Draco trilogy, writes succinctly and comes up with great plots, but I haven't placed her too highly on the 'good' axis because her jokes are unoriginal (as verified by the references at the end of the chapter - if you want humour from her you might as well go watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and be done) and because, even though she tries to justify it, Draco is v. v. OOC. She also gets away with a lot of typos, seemingly because FictionAlley mods are so keen to read the next chapter they don't care about spelling etc to the extent to which they do with other users. Rhysenn is another good author, but again, not brilliant because she loves the use of love potions, which cause characters to behave OOC, and she's a slasher, which places her firmly in the 'non-sensical' half of the diagram (JKR has not given any indication that Harry loves Draco, get over it). Rhysenn scores more highly on the 'good' stakes because OOC behaviour is better justified and her humour is more often than not, original (or non-traceable). Both lost a lot of points on the good-bad axis for excessive use of romance. Generally, goodfic finds itself on FictionAlley, because of stringent (ahem, normally stringent) guidelines imposed by the FictionAlley mods - a dazzling exception to this rule is Rae Carson, on fanfiction.net (see Further Reading). Rae writes believable, intriguing fics with characters that are truly IN character. I thoroughly recommend her to anyone who enjoys a good story.(No money was involved in this recommendation. Only sex.)

Figure 1 shows many unlabelled black dots. This is because I wouldn't remember the names of authors of crapfics, because once they reveal themselves to be crapfic, I close the browser page, douse myself in holy water and sacrifice a goat to Allah in hopes of forgiveness. So, for illustrative purposes only, the goodfic:crapfic ratio is depicted, without direct reference to crapfic authors. However, being the cynic that I am, I fear the ratio is much, much worse, only I couldn't fit more dots in the diagram without it looking (even more) stupid.

While we are reminded of my cynical outlook, let us see the same axes, weighted for a mind like mine:



As you can see, these axes accommodate my opinions on fanfic in that there is a lot of crapfic out there, only a little bit of goodfic, and there is little difference between the goodfic anyway. You will notice there is no shading in the area labelled 'good'. This is because I intend to focus on badfic vs crapfic, as well as highlighting the intended goal of 'shitfic'. The brown area, that dominates most of the scale not only the less good portion of the diagram, but the whole diagram itself, depicts crapfic. Crapfics' most frequent downfall is its mediocrity; by being neither wildly unbelievable, nor justified, it falls into the middle zone on the x-axis and all across the lower portion of the y-axis (for if it were above, it would be goodfic).

Badfic is depicted by the red zones on the diagram. As you can see, badfic tends to be wildly unbelievable and rarely strays very far up the y-axis (remember that if a badfic is well-written and enjoyable, it becomes a shitfic, not a goodfic, thus will not venture up the y-axis). Shitfic is near impossible to plot on this scale, due to its conflicting attributes. For example, a shitfic will have excellent spelling and grammar, but will depict everyone as wildly out of character. Placing it midway between good and bad puts it firmly in mediocrity, which is clearly not where it belongs. For the sake of depiction, I've attempted to plot shitfics on the scale, in blue, for they are not like normal badfics, but an extension of them nonetheless. Note how some of the shitfics fly down the x axis and find themselves in the area of 'makes sense'. This is because the story sometimes redeems itself; something that seemed strange and abstract throughout the story will suddenly become apparent through clever trickery on the part of the author. This is a credit to shitfics - they can really be excellent and surprise you like that. Thus, these shitfics migrate from chaos to tranquility, a storm in a teacup to dew on grass.

Thus, I conclude that the best type of fic for my purpose is the migratory shitfic and this is what I shall strive to achieve.


Further reading/references:

Goodfic: Rae Carson http://www.fanfiction.net/u/623888/ http://www.fictionalley.org
Crapfic: http://www.fanfiction.net http://www.sugarquill.net
Badfic: See button below
Shitfic: http://www.geocities.com/rampantheathen also see button below