How Fan Fiction can Ruin Your English Grade
I have been reading and writing fan fiction for well over a decade now, mostly of the Harry Potter variety, though as you can tell from my entries here, I've started branching out. I read a lot of fan fiction, most of it of a rather erotic variety, and I have learned one very important thing:
Reading too much erotic fan fiction will irreversibly destroy your ability to read any book normally.
Allow me to explain. I am currently in my second year of college and one of the classes I am taking is British Women Writers. It's about as exciting as it sounds. In this class, we are reading "Lady Audley's Secret," a Victorian novel by Elizabeth Braddon. Without giving too much away (for all two of you who read my journal and are actually interested in reading the book), the story is that Sir Michael Audley marries Lucy Graham, who is beautiful and mysterious and generally perfect. You know, the sort of character all of us hate in fan fiction. Meanwhile, Sir Michael's nephew Robert has a friend named George who left his wife and took off to Australia. If you're familiar with any story ever, you probably already know where this is going. Sure enough, George goes missing and Robert begins to investigate his friend's disappearance, going to great lengths to find out what happened to him. Along the way, he meets a colorful cast of characters and hijinks ensue. Your basic Victorian mystery.
Here's where fan fiction comes in.
First, the first reaction I had when I encountered Lucy Graham was "MARY SUE!" Seriously, if I came across an OC this beautiful and mysterious in a fan fic, that would be my cue to stop reading immediately due to the incompetence of the writer. Of course, the ability of mostly anonymous writers to create non-Mary Sue OCs is sketchy at best, but there have been good OCs in fan fiction before, so the Mary Sue-ness of Lucy Graham bothered me all the more here.
Second is my perception of the relationship between Robert and George. Now, I'm not the only one who reads into their friendship as repressed-by-the-time homosexuality, but I do know that I would not have interpreted their relationship that way if I did not read a lot of (generally male) slash fan fiction. In fact, my first thought was that if the Internet had been around in Braddon's day, she would have found a lot of women writing George/Robert erotica. Actually, based on Rule 34, I could probably find fan fiction about it if I really looked for it. Fortunately, I don't like the book that much.
But it's not just "Lady Audley's Secret" that was messed with by my love of fan fiction. The relationship between Darcy and Bingly in "Pride and Prejudice" can be rewritten very easily, regardless of the ending of the book. And of course there are modern books that are quickly reinterpreted through the lens of a lonely fangirl like myself. Luckily, there's already fan fiction about most modern fandoms that gets not only erotic but does so in excruciating detail.
So what's the point of all this? Simply put, reading too much erotic fan fiction will cause a person to start seeing erotic (usually homosexual) relationships in almost everything, even stories that are very clearly played heterosexually. Needless to say, this makes English papers a lot more interesting to read, and not necessarily in a good way. I know that I, for one, intend to stay as far away from the relationship between Robert and George as I possibly can when writing my paper for fear that it will degenerate into barely-disguised pretentious fan fiction.
I should probably stop reading so much of it.
Nah.
Reading too much erotic fan fiction will irreversibly destroy your ability to read any book normally.
Allow me to explain. I am currently in my second year of college and one of the classes I am taking is British Women Writers. It's about as exciting as it sounds. In this class, we are reading "Lady Audley's Secret," a Victorian novel by Elizabeth Braddon. Without giving too much away (for all two of you who read my journal and are actually interested in reading the book), the story is that Sir Michael Audley marries Lucy Graham, who is beautiful and mysterious and generally perfect. You know, the sort of character all of us hate in fan fiction. Meanwhile, Sir Michael's nephew Robert has a friend named George who left his wife and took off to Australia. If you're familiar with any story ever, you probably already know where this is going. Sure enough, George goes missing and Robert begins to investigate his friend's disappearance, going to great lengths to find out what happened to him. Along the way, he meets a colorful cast of characters and hijinks ensue. Your basic Victorian mystery.
Here's where fan fiction comes in.
First, the first reaction I had when I encountered Lucy Graham was "MARY SUE!" Seriously, if I came across an OC this beautiful and mysterious in a fan fic, that would be my cue to stop reading immediately due to the incompetence of the writer. Of course, the ability of mostly anonymous writers to create non-Mary Sue OCs is sketchy at best, but there have been good OCs in fan fiction before, so the Mary Sue-ness of Lucy Graham bothered me all the more here.
Second is my perception of the relationship between Robert and George. Now, I'm not the only one who reads into their friendship as repressed-by-the-time homosexuality, but I do know that I would not have interpreted their relationship that way if I did not read a lot of (generally male) slash fan fiction. In fact, my first thought was that if the Internet had been around in Braddon's day, she would have found a lot of women writing George/Robert erotica. Actually, based on Rule 34, I could probably find fan fiction about it if I really looked for it. Fortunately, I don't like the book that much.
But it's not just "Lady Audley's Secret" that was messed with by my love of fan fiction. The relationship between Darcy and Bingly in "Pride and Prejudice" can be rewritten very easily, regardless of the ending of the book. And of course there are modern books that are quickly reinterpreted through the lens of a lonely fangirl like myself. Luckily, there's already fan fiction about most modern fandoms that gets not only erotic but does so in excruciating detail.
So what's the point of all this? Simply put, reading too much erotic fan fiction will cause a person to start seeing erotic (usually homosexual) relationships in almost everything, even stories that are very clearly played heterosexually. Needless to say, this makes English papers a lot more interesting to read, and not necessarily in a good way. I know that I, for one, intend to stay as far away from the relationship between Robert and George as I possibly can when writing my paper for fear that it will degenerate into barely-disguised pretentious fan fiction.
I should probably stop reading so much of it.
Nah.