Found in the dark of night

I blame my friend Zzyzx for informing me of the absurdity of fan fiction in the first place. One day he joined an IRC channel I used to frequent and told me that Backstreet Boys fan fiction existed. I was dumbfounded.

So I haven't been sleeping all that well over the past month or so. (Rob says it's because of the Bush administration, and I have no real reason to disagree.) Every so often I get out of bed in the middle of the night and prowl the internet for the cheesiest writing I can find, because it makes me laugh.

At fanfiction.net, there are a huge number of categories. I looked at several of the listings to see which entity had the most stories. So far, it looks like boy band N*SYNC is the leader by a large margin. As of today, there are 4,208 N*SYNC stories, and this is just one web site. If I were guessing, I'd say there are many, many stand-alone sites devoted to one person's stories.

In comparison, there are 2,742 Star Wars stories, about 1,800 Star Trek stories if you add up all the different flavors of Star Trek; there are several hundred X Files stories and 27 stories based on the films of Kevin Smith. Boggle.

There are three Ricky Martin stories. I seriously hope none of them involve his dance with "President" Shrub.

The TV category, which is led by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also features stories about shows I've never heard of: Cleopatra 2525 provides me with a bad earworm and has 15 stories, but where in the world would I find it on the air? Wishbone, Covington Cross, Caitlin's Way, Freaky Links, Time Trax, Queen of Swords? Do the people who write about these shows get cable channels I don't?

Most of the authors of these stories are young--high-school aged for the most part. They apparently compete for "reviews," which I don't understand at all because for the most part they're not very good writers. [1] I'm sure there's more troublesome stuff these kids could be getting into, though. I don't think there's anything wrong with fan fiction, I simply think it's strange.

Sometimes it makes me shake my head at myself for reading, and other times it just makes me sleepy. That's kind of the point, isn't it?

[1] Disclaimer: In my experience in the middle of the night, the more interesting stories--the ones you might actually read into a little bit--are written by people with a little more experience, who also know enough to use a spell checker. However, this is not always true.

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