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Sporking
| Synonyms: | Turkey Reading, Cringe Compilation |
| See also: | MSTing, brain bleach |
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Sporking is the practice of mocking badfic. The term comes from the expression "It was so bad it made me want to gouge my eyes out with a spork."
Spork may also be used as a noun to refer to a fic or other fanwork created to parody a specific badfic.[1]
Oftentimes when people spork, they go line by line in a story and pick out flaws in every single sentence.
Fan Comments
[Karukos]:... when I joined fandom one of the big things was that people would do, was doing basically these Space Theater 3000 things about characters "Watching" bad fanfics about themselves. Most often with the consent of the original authors and it was in good fun back then.However, it has been a while since I have seen anything like it before. I also don't think that in the current landscape of fandom this would be a tool that would be used for humor but more so... well you know.
- [deleted]: I remember those! They were called either "MSTs" or "sporkings" in the places I frequented (aka English-speaking fandom sites). People were usually good about keeping it in good spirits and focused on constructive criticism.
- Although I remember an incident where an MST thread on a certain forum had to make it a rule to get express permission. Some posters would just pick something from ff.net without informing the author, so things got a little mean-spirited for a while.
- [Karukos]: Yeah I think that is probably the reason why they kinda died out. The potential for drama is huge. I would love to get back to it at some point but I don't think that is something that will be realizable in the near future for just... well for somebody not knowing anything about it might sound a bit... bad.[2]
Examples
- das_sporking on LiveJournal, and its new community das_sporking2 on Dreamwidth
Communities
References
- ^ Immeritus' Fandom Glossary. "Spork." (Accessed 15 June 2011.)
- ^ from What were popular things writers used to do in their fanfics that have pretty much faded away. (2021)