Shockfic

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Tropes and genres
Synonym(s)Shock fic, Infamous fic
Related tropes/genresDarkfic, torture, crack
See alsoPhan, Milk
Related articles on Fanlore.

Shockfic or Shock Fic is a trope of fanfiction in which writers publish stories deliberately meant to disturb, horrify or squick the reader.

Shockfics are often called "infamous fics," which has led to some fandoms adopting the term Infamous Fic as the genre of the stories. See for example these uses in Phan fandom:

i found an infamous fic for you guys. have fun.
tw: tentacles and rape and infamous fic[1]

My friend who isn't in the Phandom got bored one day and decided to write an infamous fan fiction.[2]

In theory shockfic differs from unintentional badfic because it is often actually adequately written and plotted, and its negative effects on the reader is deliberate: it is a sort of more violent/gory crackfic.

However, as always in fic, there is not guarantee of quality, and sometimes shockfic and badfic intersect, to the disappointment of the trope's afficionados:

I'm pretty sure that all phangirls have either heard of or read the three worst fics: the chair fic, the hat fic, and the skin fic. These are extremely terrifying but you gotta admit, they are pretty addictive. So I was just looking for them and I found a whole lot of them, but the thing is, most of them aren't very good... They don't have enough story and detail to them which is what makes a good Infamous Fic. They are written too fast, not edited, have a bad story, are too short, move through the story waaay too fast, or are just bad in general.[3]

Common Features

Shockfic is often nicknamed or actually titled using a descriptive "The ___ Fic" format, giving prominence to the main disturbing element of the story.[4]

It often centers on characters having an unusual sexual kink (such as an unusual prop insertion) and enacting it upon/with a more-or-less willing participant. It might feature elements such as bdsm, non-con or dub-con, bestiality, horror and torture. It is usually appropriately tagged and features warnings.

It seems particularly prevalent in RPF slash fandoms, and for a certain subset of fans, mentioning a particular shock fic to the celebrities in question seems to be more acceptable than other fourth wall breaks. One may wonder if some shock fics are not in fact written with the express goal of being so outrageous that they will eventually be noticed by the celebrity and mentioned by them on social media.

Examples

In alphabetical order of fandoms:

All Time Low

See Infamous Fics list by alltimefanfction.

Attack On Titan

  • the mayo rimming fic by sweggscellent[7]

Danganronpa

  • Candy (Russian Конфета, Romanized Konfeta) by надеждасексуал (Romanized nadezhdasexual) - A SaiOuma fic that is currently deleted, but caused a huge controversy in Russian-speaking fandom back in 2020, when the author posted it with PG-13 rating and the "Fluff" tag, but the work actually contained explicit gore.

Dragon Ball

  • The Other Story by BEAN DADDY – Deals with abortion in a disgustingly creepy and insensitive way for kicks.

Fall Out Boy

The Fixies

  • Fix me, Nolik (russian Почини меня, Нолик, romanized Pochini menya, Nolik) - This fic describes Nolik raping Tom Thomas to death.

Gravity Falls

  • Dipper Goes To Taco Bell - A fic in which Dipper discovers a mysterious Taco Bell in the middle of the forest. Dipper experiences sudden diarrhea after ordering his taco, but becomes sexually aroused by his own feces and proceeds to masturbate vigorously before biting off a piece of his penis and subsequently bleeding to death. Dipper's corpse is discovered by Mabel, who proceeds to have sex with his corpse before being killed by a Taco Bell employee. The Taco Bell Employee then turns the twins' corpses into tacos. The fic has subsequently been removed from Fanfiction.Net for violating the sites' Terms of Service.

Hanson

The Lord of The Rings

Celebrian by Stark. A fic in which Celebrían (slightly misspelled throughout the fic as "Celebrian"), the wife of Elrond, gets Stockholm Syndromed by the goblin king after a series of extremely disturbing and sexually explicit acts are forced upon her. This is widely known as the very worst fanfic in the Tolkien fandom.

One Direction

See posted this list of infamous Larry fics by compiled larrieslibrary on Tumblr.

Phan

  • The Skin Fic by weirdficgirl (now deleted)[9] – The fic centers around Dan peeling off Phil's sunburnt skin and eating it. The Skin Fic is the most famous shockfic of Phan fandom, having been mentioned several times by Dan & Phil themselves, most notably with a dramatic reading of the first few lines in their Dan and Phil vs. Tumblr video.[10]
  • The Chair Fic by strykeroptic[11] – As described on Urban Dictionary: The chair fic is mentally scarring for even hardcore phan shippers. In the chair fic, Phil is basically possessed by a chair, and forced to do horrible things to Dan, involving things like physical abuse, snakes, ants, boiling oil, ect. IF YOU HAVENT ALREADY READ IT, DONT EVER READ IT! SAVE YOURSELF THE TRAUUMAAAAA[12]
  • The Hat Fic by unknown (please edit if you know the origin ^-^) – The hat fic was the first fanfiction I ever read. Imagine my surprise when what my friend described as a 'heartbreaking, moving story' turned out to be probably one of the most disturbing things I've read. I'll never look at small fluffy animals the same way again..." - a poor, highly concerned Phanboy.

See The Infamous Fic Links list compiled by i-fucked-the-burrito[13] and the Phan page Shockfic section for more examples.

Panic! at the Disco

  • "Milk", best known as the Milk Fic, by druscilla-way[14] – Perhaps the most infamous of shock fics, despite the fact that it was not intended to be one. "Milk" is a Panic! at the Disco Brendon/Ryan story in which Brendon gives Ryan a milk enema. Often plagiarised, it is (in)famous for having been acknowledged numerous times by celebrities in various fandoms.[15][16][17] See Milk Fic for more detail.

Pokémon

  • The Pokemon Story by David Garrett – In which a trainer rapes his Gardevoir literally to death and then dies himself.

Sherlock

References

  1. ^ The Lion Fic rec by phanfic, posted to Tumblr in July 2015, accessed May 4, 2016.
  2. ^ The Penguin Fic (Phan), story description by PhantomOwl, posted to Wattpad sometime before Oct 2014
  3. ^ The Infamous Fics rant by AmazingDil_Howlter, posted to Wattpad (date?), accessed May 4, 2016.
  4. ^ Although no conclusive evidence can be brought, this editor speculates that the "The ___ Fic" naming trend actually originated from Bandom fic "Milk," posted around 2012, becoming known as "The Milk Fic" even though it was not titled that way.
  5. ^ [Posted to its own Tumblr in 2013 (?) (Accessed May 4, 2016)
  6. ^ [Posted to its own Tumblr in 2013 (?) (Accessed May 4, 2016)
  7. ^ the mayo rimming fic, posted to AO3 March 21, 2014. (Accessed May 3, 2016)
  8. ^ Worm Kink Fic 1/3, posted to Tumblr 2014 (?), accessed May 3, 2016.
  9. ^ Mentioned in various posts such as Tumblr user Phanfic's Infamous Fics post, accessed May 3, 2016.
  10. ^ Posted July 11, 2013 by danisnotonfire, accessed May 3, 2016.
  11. ^ Chair fic, posted to Tumblr Oct 20, 2012.
  12. ^ the chair fic, defined by Idk I just like llamas, Oct 4, 2013, accessed May 3, 2016.
  13. ^ [Posted to Tumblr in 2013 (?), accessed May 4, 2016
  14. ^ Milk (repost), posted by druscilla_way on Livejournal, 2013-06-21. (Accessed May 3, 2016)
  15. ^ Brendon Urie sings about the Milk Fic, YouTube repost of Brendon's Vine singing "My Milk Fic brings all the girls to the Net, and they're like, it's making me wet" (etc) to the tune of Kelis's Milkshake. Video posted by Ettie Valens, 2013-06-21. (Accessed May 3, 2016)
  16. ^ THE NOT-MILK CHALLENGE, YouTube video by AmazingPhil, posted Feb 15, 2015 (accessed May 3, 2016), in which Dan mentions "recreating the Milk Fic" to a horrified Phil during a dairy-free alternatives testing game.
  17. ^ Gerard Way April 26, 2016 tweets about the Milk fic [1], [2], [3], [4]
  18. ^ Comment thread on the fic (log-in required)