Fan Fiction: Or, Keep Your Ravings to Yourself

While I am willing to admit that I can get rampantly out of control in my fandom, and my brother and I often say that movies would be better if we were in them, I will never write fan fiction.

I am not above reading fan fiction. In fact, did I not read and/or search for fan fiction as much as I do, there would be no post in this location.

I have two main problems with fan fiction. One is the atrocious grammar, spelling, and lack of style. I do not expect this stuff to be Dickens or Yeats, but it would be nice if the authors used spell check.

The summer that Harry Potter 7 came out, after my sister and I had finished it, we went through a metric ton of Harry Potter fan fiction looking for more. We found a metric ton of fan fiction, but only a very few ounces of good Harry Potter fan fiction. Most of it was written by people who couldn't possibly have read all seven Harry Potter books because, judging by the way they write, they are illiterate.

Again, not looking for the epitome of literary excellence. I have gotten very lax about what I consider grammatical, but when the sentences are in structures that I neither recognize nor understand, the language ceases to be English. It is merely English-esque.

My other problem with fan fiction is that I can almost never find anything that isn't pornographic. I've been on a Eureka fanfic kick lately, and almost everything I find is slash fiction. I do not want to read slash fiction. I would prefer if it wasn't slash fiction.

I believe that these are serious problems plaguing the fan fiction reading community. Someone ought to be writing better fan fiction for me to read.

I imagine alternate timelines for television programs, make up stories about what might have happened if I were a character, come up with my own ideas of how to fill in the blanks that never get filled in canon; however, unlike those who write and publish horrendous fan fiction, I keep my raving lunacy to myself and far, far away from the internet.