I accidentally corner the market for Strunk/White fanfiction

I just went online and – as always – checked my sites for stats and new comments (replies coming tonight) and found that my stats had literally exploded over night. This site has already twice as many views at midday as it got total views on its busiest day so far. And for some reason, 5/6 of those views went to this post from January 31. The remaining 1/6 is here for the plagiarism posts, two or three came for the Game of Thrones posts.

So why would a post that is more than five months old suddenly explode in popularity? What is more, it was never a popular post and got only a handful of views each month. So what is going on here?

There were a few Twitter, Facebook and even Reddit referrals, but most of the visitors arrived via Google and searchterms such as “Strunk White sex” and variations thereof. Now the post, although entitled Strunk, White and Sex is not actually about Strunk/White slash at all. Never mind that I wouldn’t have pegged Strunk/White for a popular pairing in real person slash, though you never know. Still, why would more than 200 people google “Strunk White sex” and variations thereof today of all days?

So I decided to google “Strunk White sex” myself and the top result was today’s xkcd comic which is about – you guessed it – Strunk/White erotic fanfiction. And considering how popular xkcd is, I suppose a lot of people suddenly started googling for Strunk/White slash. My post is search result No. 4 by the way.

There, mystery solved.

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31 Responses to I accidentally corner the market for Strunk/White fanfiction

  1. Ernie says:

    Yeah, I did exactly what you described before I landed here.

  2. DJKib says:

    well, up to #1 in google search results now…

  3. Oh hi says:

    You were google result #1 when I tried “Strunk/White fanfiction”. Although I was sad to discover that this is not, in fact, Strunk/White fanfiction. =/

  4. Clearly, you should make with the Strunk/White slash fiction and capitalize on your accidental searchterm windfall.

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  7. David says:

    Yeah, Strunk/White Fanfic comes right here. Into the throes of the internet.

    I did enjoy reading your Strunk, White and Sex post, though.

    Thank you!

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  9. Hah! Me too — read the cartoon, Googled idly for the phrase, happened on your lovely site, enjoyed your post on Sexy Strunk and White, for all that it was not what I was expecting, to the extent that I was expecting anything at all.

    “Oh, Strunk–” his sigh of carnal pleasure was cut off abruptly as his lover’s virile member sprang into view. White grasped it and sank to his knees…

    • Cora says:

      Well, at least the comments provide a few snippets of what actual Strunk and White slash might look like.

      Glad you like the site BTW and thanks for commenting.

  10. Tim says:

    Haha! Yep, I’m here from the xkcd comic as well…

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  12. Caspar says:

    Okay, i have to admit, i came here by xkcd. but i promise, i will read your posts about childhood SFF events just about now (our public library had a great! children section), but before i have to ask: who are these strunk and white people that the fanfiction goes about? I quickly located the style adviser, but the other side of the cartoon? I don´t get it…

    p.s. i think the sad and one-dimensional character background of smurfette is quite obvious if you ever read the comic album about her creation… (our public library had also an excellent comic section :).

    • Cora says:

      The Strunk and White people from the fanfiction are supposed to be the very same people as the style guide people. The assumption is that since Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style is so ubiquitous in the US that the cartoon assumes someone will have written erotic fanfiction about it, since plenty of people actually do write real person slash. And considering Strunk was an elderly English professor and White a student of his and author of children’s books, the thought is rather disturbing. However, since any Strunk/White fanfiction in existence is possibly resting in closed internet archives far from the eyes of Google, all of the thousands of people who googled some variation of the terms “Strunk, White and sex” landed here.

      I totally agree with you on Smurfette (and all Smurfs for that matter) as one-note characters. Much as I love Franco-Belgian comics (I grew up with them after all), many of the Franco-Belgian comics from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s are really bad on gender roles. The Smurfs, TinTin, Spirou, Blake and Mortimer, Suske and Wiske, Lucky Luke, Asterix, De Geuzen (which no one apart from me seems to know) all were pretty bad with regards to gender roles and also racism. The series from the 1970s on up and even feature female heroine on occasion.

      Hurray for public libraries with great comic and SF sections BTW.

  13. Caspar says:

    The library, to mention it, was in Cuxhaven – it barely made up for having to live with Duhnen 🙂

    • Cora says:

      Oh, so you’re from Cuxhaven. I’m from Bremen, sort of (I actually live just outside Bremen).

      As for the Duhnen thing, there’s a delegation of East European government officials and business people who visit North Germany every October. And I usually wind up interpreting and just generally carting them around to places they are supposed to visit. The Havariekommando in Cuxhaven is usually on the list of places to visit, sometimes the THW as well. And afterwards, they always want to go to Duhnen where they spent two hours riffling through the discounted windbreakers at a tacky souvenir shop, while I have to run off all the time to feed the parking meter so the rented minibus won’t be towed. And of course it’s October, so the weather is awful.

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  15. hermoza says:

    I seriously appreciated your website!

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