The Badfanfiction Terror Squad
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| Website | |
|---|---|
| Name: | The Badfanfiction Terror Squad |
| Owner/Maintainer: | |
| Dates: | 2000–2001? |
| Type: | |
| Fandom: | Multifandom, Badfic, focus on Buffy the Vampire Slayer |
| URL: | members.tripodasia.com.cn/badfanfiction (2001 archive link) members.tripodasia.com.tw/slothful (2001 archive link) BadfanfictionTerrorSquad on Yahoo! Groups (archive link) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Badfanfiction Terror Squad was a badfic spoofing site.
About
This site focuses on the Buffy fandom and is just a whole new kind of...something. It's hilarious, and whoever wrote it (they're anonymous without so much as a pseudonym) was modelling it after, or replacing, the Bad Buffy site, a site I never had the chance to visit. When this site was posted, at least two Buffy fanfic writers swore off ever writing fanfic again. Oh, the drama of it all! They make good points, although they do have this way of ripping on personalities that makes me cringe. The guestbook rants range between someone saying that the site made her regret gun control laws to complaining about the green and yellow color scheme. Interesting. It does look like a bit of a fly-by-night operation, though, since they haven't updated in ages.[1]
At some point, it uploaded reviews of bad fic without permission from Bad Buffy. From a October 2000 comment at Citizens Against Bad Slash:
Speaking of the Terror Squad, it turns out that they posted the reviews from the extinct Bad Buffy site in their entirety without the permission of the review authors. Even when the review authors asked them to take down the reviews, the Terror Squad said "No, we like annoying you." Some people say this site is too boring, or too mean, or too nice, but at least it's original.
Other comments:
The Bad Fanfiction Terror Squad has moved again. It started off on Tripod's German server, and now it's at members.tripodasia.com.cn/badfanfiction. I don't know why they keep moving it. To avoid getting booted, maybe?[2]
At least two Buffy writers have stopped writing fanfic because of the The Bad Fanfiction Terror Squad. You go to their pages and all you see is some equivalent of "I'm not here anymore. I don't need your flames." One writer, and I'm not going to name any names, posted on her web site that she was dead. She had killed herself. It turns out that she hadn't killed herself, but she succeeded in getting people stirred up anyway. That's a bit tacky. Now it says that she's tired of being persecuted, and that the "foremothers of fandom would be ashamed." If you're having fun writing slash, don't let a badfic site stop you. If it does stop you, you either weren't into it enough to begin with or you need tougher skin. If a badfic site makes you contemplate suicide, you need more shit going on in your life.[3]
The Bad Fanfiction Terror Squad came out of the gate in September [2000], warning people to "be afraid. Be very afraid." They did harsh but very amusing critiques of Buffy stories, as well as reprinting some Bad Buffy critiques without permission. They pissed off so many people that their detractors started a cheesy "Fight Flames with Love" campaign to stop them. Then they never updated again. And speaking of that.... The "Misguided attempt" awardFight Flames with Love Campaign
They started a campaign to get people to mail encouragement to all of the authors targetted on the Bad Fanfiction Terror Squad site. It spawned a message board, a whole alliance of Buffy fanfic sites and a bad mailbomb containing Radiohead lyrics to the BTS mailing list that was sent from eGroups. Check out the phreaks and hacks on that one. (As an addendum, I had a small conversation with the campaign manager, Dreamer, on the message board. It explained things a little more.)[4]
In order to have a fresh go at the BTS, I selected arbitrarily a review on their web-page. Honestly, I was hoping to see something to make me giggle in a juvenile manner. Instead I was reminded why it is that FOP was begun, and why none of the members here felt comfortable participating there. [...]Being cruel and puerile can be fun for all, but after a while, it's all the same old bollocks. Obviously, I'm not (nor are the other Bitcas) above using real names and real text to illustrate my stunningly unclever points, but out and out personal attacks with nothing behind them but spite gives any reader pause. In this pause, the reader asks herself some soul-searching questions: 'Why is this site so atrociously ugly?' 'Why can't any of the reviews be amusing rather than smug?' 'Why do they never up-date the page?' 'How did they choose these ridiculous categories, and what do they mean?' With that last thought, the browser window is closed or occupied with another site whilst the Big Question 'Who are these people?' echoes for a bit.[5]
References
- ^ Citizens Against Bad Slash
- ^ Citizens Against Bad Slash
- ^ Citizens Against Bad Slash
- ^ Citizens Against Bad Slash
- ^ Thunder Theft by Ripe Wicked Plum for Feel Our Pain, archived 5 September 2001 by the Wayback Machine.