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10/07/2003: I'm so easy...
The crack_van LJ community totally works. Not only do I now apparently read X-Men Comicverse fiction when previously I stuck with fanfic for the movies, no that would be harmless. I also spent quite some time during the last days watching CSI episodes, because the CSI overview gave me the last nudge to give the series a try. Sure it's not like I wasn't aware of the potential consequences of reading a community where people pimp their fandoms (it's not like you need a huge surgeon general's warning to figure those out), it's just -- I have a number of peripheral fandoms in which I have no real idea where to find good fanfic/recs, and crack_van is good for that too.
On the upside it turns out I can actually read an introduction to a fandom and find that informative, but still feel no interest whatsoever to check out the fiction. Like I didn't develop any interest in Blakes7 or Homicide or The Professionals or Pop Slash (okay, I read one of the recced stories for pop slash, I don't think that counts). Who knows, maybe exposure to temptation will even make me more resilient in the face of new fandoms in the long term.
Anyway, about CSI. Before reading any of the fanfic (I still prefer not to read fiction until I've seen at least some of the source) I watched a couple of CSI episodes, and several of those from third season showed Grissom's hearing problems. So, since this is a crime show and doesn't particularly dwell on the emotional impact of his illness I thought it would be really easy to find fanfic exploring this. But either I'm not good at finding stuff (which is possible, after all I'm not familiar with the fandom yet), or it isn't a popular topic as I had assumed. I mean, the fandoms where I got most of my "tv fan socialization" so to speak, were really large (like TS or XF) and somehow I've come to expect these obvious fanfic topics as a given, like the blatantly missing scenes, the fic dealing with the glaring emotional issue some character has, the emotional fallout of something that is never seen on screen, because it's "off-topic" for a cop show etc. I think of that as the "meat and potatoes" kind of fanfic, the topics/themes/scenes for which (in large fandoms) you'll usually find dozens variations of fanfic dealing with them, and most of these stories aren't terribly original, or brilliant pieces of writing (though some are), but I like to read that kind of fanfic, because it fills in the obvious blanks even I see in a source.
And before I inadvertently start an "entitlement" kerfuffle or something similar, I don't think of fanfic (fandom) as a supermarket, where I can always expect to find exactly the kind of fanfic I'm looking for. But I have to admit, it is kinda neat when it does work like that, you know? So if by chance any of you know of CSI fanfic dealing with Grissom's hearing loss, I'd like to read that.
Also, I was browsing for some Everwood fanfic (and I meant to rec an Everwood story too, come to think of it, but now I can't find the frelling bookmark, and of course I can't remember the author or title either >.<), and I noticed a couple of stories with German phrases/words as titles. And I was wondering about that, because I don't tend to come across, for example, Spanish or French phrases as titles in fanfic (or I don't notice, which is definitely a possibility as well), but see German ones semi-regularly, though from my impressions not as often as Latin ones. Anyway, I've been wondering why that is. I mean, I get that in X-Files fandom it probably is because of some of the episode titles, but Everwood? Does German look/sound exotic or something?
