What Does Sporking Mean?

Sporking in Practice

Sporking inherited the MSTing tradition after the Mystery Science Theater framing aged out: communities dedicated to the practice would select notoriously awful fics — purple prose, infamous Mary Sues, legendary trollfics — and publish line-by-line riffs, sometimes with recurring commentator personas. The golden age ran through LiveJournal-era badfic communities, and the practice generated real institutional memory; certain fics achieved immortality primarily through their sporkings. Fandom's attitude has since shifted toward the view that publicly shredding amateur work, especially by young writers, is punching down — so modern sporking mostly confines itself to historical badfic of established infamy, works whose authors are long gone, or commercial fiction, where the power dynamics feel fairer.

More Fandom Culture Terms