Fan Fiction: For Better or Worse

So it seems I have come full circle and ventured back into an avenue I never thought I would again. That’s right folks, I’ve started to do fan fiction. What makes this so weird is, well I was around back when Fan Fiction.net was new.

Fan Fiction.net is the site I cut my teeth on and with the help of Juliet Singleton I got my real start writing and working out plots and just trying to feel my way around characters. If it weren’t for fan fiction I don’t think I would have this site or be writing.

When I discovered fan fiction it was shortly before the site went online and I honestly thought it was a dream come true. I couldn’t imagine that people who were not published were out there writing stories about shows they liked for nothing more than fun. Fan Fiction does predate the internet and before the circles were actually forced to communicate through more rudimentary ways, like at conventions.

But I loved fan fiction, I neglected work and friends to read the stuff. I printed it out and lived over 8.5 by 11 sheets that I cast onto the floor as I read them. I read them at school and I felt as if they were deserving of more recognition.

Then the unthinkable happened. I was asked to review fan fiction at a site and the more I read over the stuff coming in, the more disgusted I became. Fan Fiction had gone from an honorable thing to something written to indulge in deplorable fantasies. Many of the tales I looked at were rife with rape and mutilation and sexual acts that would make even the most seasoned porn star cringe.

I, by this time had started using my own characters and writing stories in worlds of my own making. The trend of ridiculous sexuality didn’t die down and it was followed closely by the bad characterization that that took the characters I loved and changed them into unrecognizable people who only bore the name and most times the looks of the character they were meant to be.

I resigned from the world of Fan Fiction by the middle of high school. I tried to venture back once or twice over the years and within a few hundred words of starting I was always bored and completely uninterested in continuing.

Flash forward to now, the world of fan fiction isn’t really any better than it was back then. With stories like Little Miss Mary (a Snape/Harry Potter fic that involves cross-dressing and male impregnation to name a few things) and Agony in Pink (a mutilation rape story about the first Pink Ranger) its easy to see that the crazy stuff isn’t just out there…it’s the norm.

Still I am able to look past this and see there is something inherently fun in writing this stuff, and that’s what brought me back.