Badfic

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Synonyms: bad fic, turkey, evol fic
See also: Brain Bleach, Crack, FanficMaker, Godawful Fan Fiction, MST3K, Sillyfic, Sporking, Turkey Reading, Trollfic, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping
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Badfic is fanfiction that is very badly written, characterized, structured, or all of the above. It can refer to fic written badly by accident, or fic written badly on purpose for amusement, such as on the site Bad Fanfic! No Biscuit!, but is not to be confused with the Lord King Bad Fic.

The term can also apply to fanfic that is competently written, but contains bizarre, absurd, or brain-breaking content, as in the infamous Care Bears BDSM rapefic, Slave Bear of Care-A-Lot.

One of the most infamous badfics is a bizarre "emo scene" work called My Immortal, loosely set in the Harry Potter universe. It has never been fully decided if this work, riddled as it is with bad spelling, terrible sex, and catty notes from the author, was written as a deliberate attempt to troll the fandom or a serious attempt at writing a story.

Since 2005, MrsHamill has run The Great Bad!Fic Challenge, a multifandom (originally The Phantom Menace) challenge for deliberate badfic.

Evolfic was what the Homicide: Life on the Street fan community called intentional badfic. The term was taken from something Munch said about "Love backwards is 'evil', then somebody corrected him and said it was 'evol'. Hence evol fic. The Lord King Bad of their time. Deliberately written Evolfic was gathered together into the the Evolist FanFic Archive, Evar! [1] The archive was run by the TwoWeevils.

In 2006, svmadelyn's Smallville and Stargate Atlantis Badfic Summary Mini-Ficathon had fic writers first submit badfic-style summaries of as-yet-unwritten fic, and then quickly write fic (excerpts) for each other's summaries. The challenge generated many fandom (at least on the SGA side)[2] classics in both the deliberate badfic[3][4][5] and "well written fic from loltastic summary" genres.[6][7]

cupidsbow's 8 ways not to write a fanfic (2007) and sequel With 6 You Get Unicorns (2008) deconstruct badfic and are also meta reflections on the genre. Among other things, the stories parody badfic formatting and flashback indicators, OOC behavior, songfic, Trinity, extreme woobieism, badsex, Mary Sues, were-unicorn issues, and end with an unforgettable reference to My Little Pony.

Comments from writers of deliberate badfic:

To write enjoyable badfic, you've got to be a really bad writer or really good writer. I'm not "a writer", period. Still, I had fun writing it and caused some of my friends multiple sporfle attacks, so overall I think it was worth the effort. — noorie[8]

Connotations has had a yearly badfic panel for a while, at which examples are discussed of amusing mistakes made in fic, cracky fic, and other types of bad!fic. In 2010 it had illustrations of spelling mistakes, such as "furry was written across his face" and a "rouge angle" (presumably intended to be a rogue angel).

While many fans have wondered over the years what makes badfic so attractive to some readers, so far only one fan has attempted to offer a unifying theory for the phenomena: alexfandra's satirical Standby Theories for the Inexplicable Poor Taste of Fans.

Although it is not specifically a fanfic competition, students of badfic may be interested in The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest,[9] an annual contest to write the worst opening passage for a story in any genre.

Further reading

Notorious Badfic Titles

These are the badfics that are infamous for incomprehensibly bad technical writing, mishandling of taboo or sensitive subjects, or their authors exhibiting wanky behavior.

Site or Community Examples Which Highlight or Mock

Further Reading/Meta

References

  1. ^ Evolist FanFic Archive
  2. ^ Could use ref examples from the Smallville submissions from someone familiar with those?
  3. ^ And Thanks For All The Fish by iamtheenemy, SGA. Fanfiction.net fic-type spoof in which John is a were-dolphin.
  4. ^ Still the One by devildoll, SGA. Genderswap, unicorn-saving, non-con, and songfic all in one.
  5. ^ 101 Uses for Spellcheck by someinstant, SGA. Metafic about badfic.
  6. ^ Under the Sea by astolat, SGA. College AU.
  7. ^ An Aesthetic Solitary Thing by eliade, SGA. Rodney is an alien with pon farr issues.
  8. ^ A day after posting "Love Fools", noorie felt she should add an explanation of how the story came to be written. This was posted as "WTF?! explained" (accessed 12 August 2011).
  9. ^ The Bulwar-Lytton Fiction Writing Competition
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