Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Category: Fiction

  • Fan fiction

    Checking out Wikipedia’s excellent (as always) article on fan fiction today, I ran across the site FanFiction.net, which I hadn’t seen before. It’s a comprehensive directory of fan fiction, organized by TV shows, movies, cartoon, games, books, and much more.

    The amount of fan fiction out there is truly astounding; I’ve known this, of course, but I just never guessed at the sheer depth and breadth it covers. Let’s take a little stroll through the site for some examples.

    • The combined number of Star Trek stories: 9240. Wow. They actually split the Star Trek stories up by each TV show, but that doesn’t really matter.
    • X-Files: 5393 stories.
    • Lost (the TV series that debuted just this season): 1462 stories.
    • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 26,567. Holy shit!
    • Law and Order: 2037. Like Star Trek, they split out by the different subseries.
    • Star Wars: 11,828.
    • Lord of the Rings: 37,136. Good grief.
    • Harry Potter: 190,077! If I’d been drinking something when I read this one, I would have done a spit-take. This is beyond comprehensible!

    Those are kind of the usual suspects in fan fiction, what you’d expect… but there are seriously hundreds more different topics people are writing about. Here’s a sample of some of the oddball ones:

    • All in the Family: 4 stories.
    • Bill Nye the Science Guy: 6 stories.
    • Lazytown (a kids show, our kids watch it): 16 stories.
    • Diff’rent Strokes: 2 stories.
    • Saved by the Bell: 13 stories.
    • Moulin Rouge (the movie musical): 1466(!)

    You get the idea.

  • Yes, I was a French Major

    The dice tumbled across the table, bounced in unison against the far end and skidded to a halt. The woman in the red dress looked up, her full pouty lips pursed in excitement. Her face was bright and intelligent; her dress faltered to reveal sensuous thigh when she moved. “You’ve won again, Mr.—” She paused. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

    “Fromage.” The man’s mouth barely moved as he spoke the name around the cigar clenched between his teeth. A lighter flashed, and orange-blue flame licked the cigar’s tip, igniting a red ember. The man drew deeply, extinguished the lighter with a deft flick of the wrist, and exhaled thoughtfully. A cloud of sweet, pungent blue smoke wafted upwards over the table. “Jacques Fromage.”