Dispatches from Mundania

[rivkat]

Slate suggests that CSI might be the most fanfic-generative show on TV.

Say wha?

I understand the need for a hook for a story, and I have no beef with anyone who does write and/or read CSI fic, but that's just annoying ignorance. (OK, when I checked on ff.net, CSI was a lot closer to the top of the list than I thought it would be, but even assuming ff.net is a good bellwether for overall numbers, Buffy beats it by an order of magnitude, and the Slate story's links to two archives with a total of about 300 stories between them does not help persuade me.) I'd be interested in a story about Grissom's attractiveness, but not a story that has to get its punch by making up an exclusivity/preeminence that doesn't exist.

Comments

[cschick.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

*snicker*

ROFL!

LOL

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i love csi fic, but i basically read my way through my favorite pairing (and then some) in 2 weeks :-) not quite working in superlatives here :-)

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

My guess is that somewhere along the line in their finding out about fanfic, learning to look for it, and making a count, the porn got filtered out, thereby thrusting what I suspect is a more plot-heavy-than-usual fandom to the top.

Or, they're just dumb.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

If they looked at ff.net, the porn got filtered out -- but the story makes a salacious point of the sexual fantasies surrounding Grissom; I looked briefly at the two archives mentioned, which seemed relationship-focused and one was slash; and the article quotes a fanfic writer who pretty clearly writes explicit stuff. Thus, I'm going with ignorant rather than filtering.

[fairy-tale-echo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, any article that starts out with "fanfic" in quotes like it's some kind of strange foreign word? Not looking good for really understanding it.

I've read two, count them two, good pieces of C.S.I fanfic. And not just because I was looking exclusively for my pairing but because so much of it is just horrible.

300 whole stories! WOW! THAT'S AMAZING! ((eye roll))

[chase820.livejournal.com]

Not to mention X-Files fics, which may actually have outstripped BtVS in the hey-dey of the series.

I think it's really interesting that a wildly popular hobby which gets so much media attention is still so roundly condescended to. Taking other people's characters and making them your own is a tradition as old as oral storytelling. Why can't we get a little respect?

I blame the copyright lawyers for this. ;)

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

It's hard to compare XF and Buffy because Buffy's so decentralized, but I checked at Gossamer a few months back for an unrelated reason, and Gossamer had only about as many XF stories completed as ff.net has for Buffy, which suggests that Buffy is ahead by a lot at this point. Maybe in part because a lot of the fic-writing fans, MustangSally and Yahtzee aside, never had their hearts broken as badly by Buffy as by XF?

[chase820.livejournal.com]

That's true. By the end of Season Eight I never wanted to read anything X-Files ever again, let alone write it. For all his faults, Joss never hurt me like Chris Carter did.

I'd have sworn there were more XF fics back in the day. I seem to recall downloading hundreds--way more than I ever did of BtVS. But perhaps my taste has gotten more selective over the years.

[jocelyncs.livejournal.com]

Oh, puh-leeze!

Either somebody did exceedingly lousy research or just skewed the statistics to the extreme in order to get the results they wanted. Either way=sloppy, bad journalism.

Did you read the article in the Boston Globe in 2003 about fanfic? It used Harry Potter fic as an example and began with an excerpt from a pornfic (as representative of all fic.) I hit the roof. Bad journalism irks me as a rule, but when the result is to misrepresent my hobby--(Snarl!)

CSI is very popular. Probably out of the TV dramas, it's definitely among the top fic-generators, but why the Slate writer couldn't say THAT, who knows?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was really surprised by how well CSI was doing on ff.net, but I guess I shouldn't have been -- it is a really popular show and it's understandable that the general popularity would show up in fanfic, especially now that fanfic is at least a known hobby if not a "respectable" one like painting yourself the color of your favorite sports team. I guess I would have expected Law & Order to beat it just because L&O has been around longer, but L&O isn't even close on ff.net.

I read the Boston Globe article; periodically some culture writer at a paper will "discover" fanfic and write that very same article, changing only the fandom name. Maybe news writers are particularly interested in distinguishing the "real" professional writers from the ones who are just faking it; or maybe it's just natural in a news story to single out writing that allows them to point and laugh.

[jocelyncs.livejournal.com]

For the record: I *LOVE* that icon!

One of my earliest fandoms was L&O, and for some reason L&O fanfic never really took off. There's always been a fair-sized fanwriting crowd, but not to the extent of other dramas.

The way I read the Boston Globe article was that it wasn't merely distinguishing "real" vs. "fake" writers for point-and-laugh purposes (the BBC did that) but rather to portray fanwriting as something perverse and shameful. The equivalent of trying to represent all literature by showing an excerpt from a yellowback novel. The Washington Post, on the other hand, was surprisingly fair.

[jack-pride.livejournal.com]

Dude, I can't *find* the CSI fandom. I've found two authors who write good Gil/Nick. There are few icons, fewer wallpapers, and no screensavers. Worst of all, there seems to be little in the way of community, even on livejournal.

I would *love* to find more good CSI fic... but I will not tread the halls of ff.net.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling, though with 6000-odd stories (possibly very odd stories), ff.net might have little bits of heaven lurking in there somewhere. I don't know whether the archives cited in the Slate story are any good or not.