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

[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.