Thursday 12 January 2012

Number Five - American Psycho Shorts

I didn't think that setting the rules; must be in English, must be complete and must be at least 1000 words was being too hard, but guess how many American Psycho fanfics meet that criteria on fanfiction.net.  If you guess 10, then you're right!  And three of those are for some reason filed separately because fanfiction.net only just recently decided to give the book it's own category instead of just combining the two. 

So from 10 fanfics I didn't really have a great deal of choice over what I was going to be reading.  American Psycho is probably the book I've read the most, I stopped counting when I got to 200 and decided it had already reached an unhealthy number.  It's definitely one of my favourite books of all time, but I get why it doesn't have a huge fandom, being in Bateman's head is not a pleasant place to be.

So for this reason, I have decided to cover three short ones, because ALL the American Psycho fanfics are short and these three barely hit the 1k mark, but I'll be dammed if I'm going to cover 200 fan fictions and one of them not be an American Psycho fic.

Five-Point-One

StoryEscort

Author: Overthinkery

Fandom:  American Psycho

Stats:  One shot, 1665 words, Published in 2012,

Summary: Escort is an ok little one shot, told from the third person POV of a prostitute named Desiree.  It's basically just a short kill story, she gives Bateman some sexual servicing and then gets killed for her trouble.  There's not really much to say about it on the whole, it's ok and while it's about American Psycho, it doesn't feel like American Psycho, but I'm going to assume that it's a film fanfic over book fanfic and with a grand total of 10 to choose from, I'll take what I can get.



I would say it's definitely a good start, but would offer the following advice for the author: American Psycho fans know what they're in for, so don't be afraid to be crude.  It's ok to use the most vile language you can think of because no matter how bad you think it may be, I can guarantee that it's much worse in the book.

I'd be very interested in seeing what this author could do in the future, perhaps with a longer fic, it's certainly to do something out of Bateman's POV, so props for that.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Five-Point-Two

StoryGirls Again

Author: raincoatandaxe

Fandom:  American Psycho

Stats:  One shot, 1141 words, Published in 2008,

Summary: It's a nice little one shot, the author said it was written to see if she (I'm assuming from the picture) was able to write like Bret Easton Ellis, I'd say she probably can, but there's four or five lines in there that are right from the book and I think it would have been better to maybe make homage to those lines rather than quote them word for word. 

The story is 1st person and from Bateman's POV (yes!), during about the mid-point of the novel, though it diverges a little from the canon, and recounts the state of a few people he's just killed and the things that he will be doing later.  There's plenty of gore in there so it's not for the faint hearted, then again, American Psycho on the whole isn't for the faint hearted and this really feels like an American Psycho story.

Rating: 7 out of 10



Five-Point-Three

StoryPlotting

Author: OrbThesela

Fandom:  American Psycho

Stats:  One shot, 1087 words, Published in 2008,

Summary: Full disclosure, I was actually already aware of this author because of another fic which I would have included in the 200 if I hadn't already read it, but I hadn't read this one, I wasn't actually aware it was hers until opening up the authors page for the link as she's mainly a Harry Potter writer.


Again this one is in 1st person and Bateman's POV (yes, again!) it's set in present time, or at least I'm guessing 2008 when it was published and has some nice Batemanesque mentions of the things lying around his apartment and how much they cost, but I really want to know what he's wearing.  The story is about a girl Bateman is in the process of killing and the reasons why he is killing her, I won't say what they are because it's quite funny when you find out and I don't want to ruin the surprise.  There are some very run-on sentences (pot/kettle, I know), but that's very much Ellis' style in the book, so props.

Rating: 7 out of 10

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