The value of failed art
14 Nov 2025 04:02 pmRecently I watched a random algorithm-suggested YouTube video about that DIY house from the SomethingAwful forums and it reminded me of a Folding Ideas video that talks about the child-obliterating zipline discussion, so I'm rewatching some old Folding Ideas videos (still can't remember which one did that and I haven't found it yet). Today I watched Folding Ideas | An American Tail: Fievel Goes to Video Game Hell (Oct 4, 2018) and came across this striking quote that articulates a lot of what I enjoy about reading bad and mediocre fanfiction.
Interestingly, the fact that it tends to be novel, unpredictable, and fun, in a way that is maybe like watching bad movies, remains true even though there are probably many more pieces of bad fanfiction that aren't driven by a profound lack of caring.
On one level, yes, there's an overwhelming carelessness in a lot of badfic and a lot of modern fanfiction in general - I've talked before about the changing norms around beta reading, then editing, then even spellcheck, so that now editing is vanishingly rare and an overwhelming majority of the works you see in the tags I've visited at AO3 in recent years - with the sole exception of Yuletide and other fests - are dominated by things that haven't even been spellchecked, and you're less likely to see betas thanked in the notes than to see a statement that they didn't bother to spellcheck, didn't have a beta, or will maybe proofread later but they couldn't proofread before posting because they just "had to" post from their phone on a train in a tunnel at 3 am to meet a nonexistent deadline. The current norms seem to be extremely casual, and to consider editing and spellcheck and even reading back over what you've written as a fussy optional bit of formality that isn't really needed on comfortable casual occasions like posting fic, but should be saved for very special events.
But on another, of course, fanfiction is not often produced with a complete lack of caring. There is at least an enthusiasm or interest, an effort, however small, involved in putting their ideas into words - even if they've just sort of farted out the initial form of the idea without engaging their internal filters at all, or posted a chat log and not bothered to take out the tags and add sentence-final punctuation to it, at least there was a mental spark behind it that is probably not present in the corporate greed and maze of underpaid subcontractors involved with cheap crap videogames.
In spite of the presence in most fanfiction (I say most because you will still run into things that are like 'this was actually written for my OCs and I've used find and replace with the pairing names from this list of five popular fandoms, you can read this same poorly-punctuated fart with the names from the other fandoms here!') of that animating spark, though, overall, surveying the field of badfic and, tbh, even most of the generically mediocre fanfiction that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waxjism would describe in her spreadsheet as "sub mid"... the vibes of what he's saying here hold true.
They do reek of an often fascinating level of not-caring, whether it's caring enough to use spellcheck or taking five seconds to google an incorrect fact they stuck in that they didn't have to put there in the first place. They do provide a fully perceptible class of novelty - random, bizarre innovations that it feels like nobody could have done "on purpose". They do remind you of very bad movies. And in many of them it does seem like something in the creative process had to be fundamentally broken (perhaps just the steps between the initial brainstorming and any analysis or consideration or planning).
I wanted to share this with you, not because it's important or good or an underrated gem, but because it's none of those things. This game is bad. It's cheaply made, it's difficult to find, it's largely forgotten, it's not fun, and for all those reasons, it's likely to vanish entirely. And that's why I wanted to preserve it.
I believe in the value of failed art. Art that is driven by carelessness, by unchecked and untalented ego, by spectacularly low-stakes greed. It has a tendency to be novel, to be unpredictable, in a way that deliberate art never can. This is why it's so much fun to watch bad movies.
No one would ever make this game on purpose. Something in the creative process needs to be fundamentally broken to get to this point.
If you were going to sit down two decades later to make a game out of An American Tail because you actually cared about the movie and you cared about making the game, you're not going to churn out a hodgepodge series of disconnected minigames that don't work well.
It is not simply a lack of time or money that produces something like An American Tail the video game, but a profound lack of caring.
The end product of that broken process isn't worth playing for its own merits, but it is worth playing because it's worth remembering.
Dan Olson, "Folding Ideas - An American Tail: Fievel Goes to Video Game Hell" (Oct 4, 2018)
Interestingly, the fact that it tends to be novel, unpredictable, and fun, in a way that is maybe like watching bad movies, remains true even though there are probably many more pieces of bad fanfiction that aren't driven by a profound lack of caring.
On one level, yes, there's an overwhelming carelessness in a lot of badfic and a lot of modern fanfiction in general - I've talked before about the changing norms around beta reading, then editing, then even spellcheck, so that now editing is vanishingly rare and an overwhelming majority of the works you see in the tags I've visited at AO3 in recent years - with the sole exception of Yuletide and other fests - are dominated by things that haven't even been spellchecked, and you're less likely to see betas thanked in the notes than to see a statement that they didn't bother to spellcheck, didn't have a beta, or will maybe proofread later but they couldn't proofread before posting because they just "had to" post from their phone on a train in a tunnel at 3 am to meet a nonexistent deadline. The current norms seem to be extremely casual, and to consider editing and spellcheck and even reading back over what you've written as a fussy optional bit of formality that isn't really needed on comfortable casual occasions like posting fic, but should be saved for very special events.
But on another, of course, fanfiction is not often produced with a complete lack of caring. There is at least an enthusiasm or interest, an effort, however small, involved in putting their ideas into words - even if they've just sort of farted out the initial form of the idea without engaging their internal filters at all, or posted a chat log and not bothered to take out the tags and add sentence-final punctuation to it, at least there was a mental spark behind it that is probably not present in the corporate greed and maze of underpaid subcontractors involved with cheap crap videogames.
In spite of the presence in most fanfiction (I say most because you will still run into things that are like 'this was actually written for my OCs and I've used find and replace with the pairing names from this list of five popular fandoms, you can read this same poorly-punctuated fart with the names from the other fandoms here!') of that animating spark, though, overall, surveying the field of badfic and, tbh, even most of the generically mediocre fanfiction that
waxjism would describe in her spreadsheet as "sub mid"... the vibes of what he's saying here hold true. They do reek of an often fascinating level of not-caring, whether it's caring enough to use spellcheck or taking five seconds to google an incorrect fact they stuck in that they didn't have to put there in the first place. They do provide a fully perceptible class of novelty - random, bizarre innovations that it feels like nobody could have done "on purpose". They do remind you of very bad movies. And in many of them it does seem like something in the creative process had to be fundamentally broken (perhaps just the steps between the initial brainstorming and any analysis or consideration or planning).
Fangirl X , you are awesome bb, and the angst from your stories inspires. I read everything you've written so far, but am truly unable to come up with a adequate response that I feel you deserve, so I will be commenting on those soon.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
cimness
