Random Blurb: Fan Fiction - Part 2

...and three hours had gone by.

I was shocked to say the least. "Have I really," I thought to myself skeptically, "spent three hours of my valuable life reading fan fiction?"

Yes, yes I had.

And it's not like I could tell anybody about it. I mean, you don't tell people that you've been reading fan fics all day.

Random Friend: Hey, Shauntel! What have you been up to lately?

Me: Oh, the usual. Just browsing Fanfiction.net.

Random Friend: *Blank stare*

You might just find your social life falling into Sturgeon's Law.

Anyway, so here I am, having just realized I've wasted three hours on this stupid website. In most situations, I would politely bid farewell and do something useful, like watch The Onion or something. But let me tell you, fan fiction is not most situations. I don't even think is has a situation category. 'Cause you wanna know what I did? I kept reading.

You. can't. stop.

It's physically impossible, unless you're forcefully repelled by some outside source, such as your sister telling you the cat broke his leg or your date's gonna be there in like five minutes and you're still wearing your pajamas or something. Not that I would know from experience or anything.

So you're probably thinking, "Come on Shauntel, three hours? How could you possibly read badly written stories for three hours? And then not stop?" I'll tell you why. Because at this very moment, at 2:26 PM on whatever day I wrote this (you'll never know), there are 14, 847 fics in the Legend of Zelda category.

That's a lot of crap to sift through guys.

Now, most people would be thinking at this point, "Geez, maybe I should be learning something from Shauntel's example..." But for those of you who are slow learners like myself, I've decided to compile a list of a few of the more popular types of fan fics you would encounter if you were to take on such a harrowing journey too. It might save you some time:

Drabbles- A "story" that's less than 1000 words. Occasionally 100. These make up approximately 98.4% of everything you'll find on fanfiction.net, but are usually combined with other "genres" for sanity. They usually consist of some random thought some random character had or will have during some random moment. If it's written in 1st person, you may not even find out the identity of the character, you just have to sort of assume. I often wonder if these aren't just randomly copied and pasted into different story categories. Because frankly, no one would actually know.

Death Fics- These serve pretty much no purpose except to kill off some supposedly beloved character, at least by the author's viewpoint, and watch everyone mope around and cry. Angst angst angst. Also, some "I loved him/her so much but I never knew it until now" will commonly follow, even if the pair is canonically incompatible. If the character isn't as loved as the author assumes, much rejoicing will ensue from the audience.

Crack Fic- A story that could only have been conceived if the author were on crack. Seriously. This is the story about how the Baudelaire orphans totally teamed up with Rorschach and totally took on Hitler, who had kidnapped the Fairly Odd Parents and stolen their magic powers and totally zaps everyone back in time to when there were dinosaurs and then these aliens totally stole their brains and-
Yeah, you get the picture. Like I said before, check out the X-Over section. Its... well it isn't boring.

Romance Fic- Do I really have to explain what this is to you? The title pretty much tells all. Two characters fall in love. And the author explains how. Happily ever after, the end. Usually this follows the canon, meaning the characters were already destined from the start, but shipping wars* can still start.

Slash Fic- Although technically a subset of the previous genre, this type is so popular I simply had to separate it. A slash fic is when two characters of the same gender, 99.9% of the time male, fall in love. Pending the canon, this is usually followed by denial, angst, then a magically happy ending. And anyone who would stand in their way ( previous love interests, parents, there's always someone) are promptly disposed of.

There. I think you're ready. Baby steps first.

So although that doesn't actually conclude my journey, that's the basic gist of it. Sorry to end so quickly but my email just informed me that a new Wicked fanfiction has been added.

Can't. not. click. on. link.

*To ship means to be in full support of a particular romantic pairing within a story universe. A shipping war is when these fans duke it out of the internet and totally bad talk the other one's pairing. Hilarity ensues.