In the Epilogue of Rowlett’s article “They’re Letting You Write Your Thesis About That?” she says “Perhaps this is all a folly… Do metaphors of the organic incorrectly a connectness (this isn’t a real word) to human processes?”  After reading her work about how fan-fiction operates like a human stomach all I can respond with is: YES!  I did not think that the metaphor was at all necessary and personally I do not think that it applies and that it makes her whole argument/description very confusing.

What I would have enjoyed was a nice summary of what the different types of “fanfics” were, how they operate in online culture, and perhaps some examples.  These are things that she kind of includes in the article but all of that interesting stuff is hidden amongst a sea of stomach metaphors.  This was such a problem for me that I finished the reading without really understanding the point of it.  I now know that Xena online culture exists.  I know that there are fans of different genres of “fanfic.”  I know that there are fans on top of fans.  But that is all I really know.

I hate to be mean about someone’s thesis, but her actual thesis better be much more clear and interesting than this little description otherwise she probably got a D on it.