Things You've Learned from Badfic

neris wrote:

21. a child can biologically have more than one father, without any genetic engineering involved

Genetic chimerism. Look it up. (This does not forgive fanbrats who pull this stunt without knowing what the fork they're talking about, but it is possible.)

When a villain is about to do something bad, he will always laugh evilly and explain what he's about to do.

Lady Anne wrote:

When a villain is about to do something bad, he will always laugh evilly and explain what he's about to do.

That's hardly limited to fanfiction though. It's an established cliché in all fiction. Exceptions are so rare they're downright refreshing.

Chaos Control can morph you anywhere, any time, any place.

Sex never hurts or is unpleasant in any way if the person really truly loves you...especially when they have a super gigantic doom!cock and you're a VIRGIN.

Rape doesn't hurt, except for a little bit at the start.

No matter how old someone is and what culture and/or time period they live in, they will approach relationships in the manner of a modern Western teenager.

iPods are a constant throughout history.

Evanescence formed around the middle ages at the absolute latest.

According to FanGirl law, if a character is an old grizzled and scarred bastard with the moral underpinnings of a peat bog, he is actually a friggen saint about 20 years of age, no scars or wrinkles and is suddenly into confessing feelings he has never had before diving into buttsex with a guy he travels with even though there is no inkling what so ever that the two see each other as anything more than vitriolic best buds.

If two words sound even remotely similar then they are the same word.

4shadowedice4 wrote:

If two words sound even remotely similar then they are the same word.

If two words even look remotely similar then they're the same word:

College/Collage
Sit/Site
Flout/Flaunt
Bitter/Biter
Shine/Whine
Shot/Shat
Folk/Fuck/Fic
Angel/Angle

Russian men are either drunk, incompetent idiots with ushankas who long for the days of Communsim/mention Mother Russia in every sentence or Communists spies who hate America. Russian women are either whores desperate for a Western man to take her away from Russia, no matter how ugly he is or old women in babushkas. There is no middle ground. Soviets only call each other Comrade or Citizen. Comrade (rank) is never used. Soviets either love the USSR or hate it. All Russians drink vodka. All Russians want communism again.

Nazis are either misunderstood woobies at heart or evil bastards with no soul. Oskar Schindler and Erwin Rommel types do not exist. Patriotism has no factor in their loyality. The High Command was all secretly gay. The Wehrmacht was all secretly gay. Himmler can fall in love with a Jewish woman because its TWU WUB. All Nazis wore the black Allgemeine-SS uniforms no matter what branch they were in or what year of the war it is. It was easy to escape Auschwitz. If you sleep with a concentration camp guard they will let you escape.

CaptainMcNeil wrote:

The High Command was all secretly gay. The Wehrmacht was all secretly gay.

That's just a sub-clause of LCXXI (iii) a): Everyone everywhere is actually gay.

CaptainMcNeil wrote:

Russian men are either drunk, incompetent idiots with ushankas who long for the days of Communsim/mention Mother Russia in every sentence or Communists spies who hate America. Russian women are either whores desperate for a Western man to take her away from Russia, no matter how ugly he is or old women in babushkas. There is no middle ground. Soviets only call each other Comrade or Citizen. Comrade (rank) is never used. Soviets either love the USSR or hate it. All Russians drink vodka. All Russians want communism again.

Tom Clancy caveat: All Russians are Texans with an even goofier accent.

Quote :

Nazis are either misunderstood woobies at heart or evil bastards with no soul. Oskar Schindler and Erwin Rommel types do not exist. Patriotism has no factor in their loyality. The High Command was all secretly gay. The Wehrmacht was all secretly gay. Himmler can fall in love with a Jewish woman because its TWU WUB. All Nazis wore the black Allgemeine-SS uniforms no matter what branch they were in or what year of the war it is. It was easy to escape Auschwitz. If you sleep with a concentration camp guard they will let you escape.

Tom Clancy addendum: All Germans have OCD and are sickened by things not being in ordnung.

If you haven't had sex by the time you're 16, you're doomed to a life of loneliness.

No ever ever actually chooses to wait until marriage to have sex. It's always forced on them by their parents, their religion, or a series of extremely complicated events that make no sense.

No one ever makes a conscious choice to be celibate. Not even priests. If they have no sex drive and are not sexually attracted to either sex, they obviously have deep-seated psychological problems that need to be addressed with therapy.

Everyone has a soulmate (generally the first person you fall in love with). If you marry or have sex with anyone but this person, you will be miserable for the rest of your life, until you finally find your way back to them.

Sex is the be-all and end-all of every relationship. Never mind common interests, political views, or whether or not the toilet paper should be hung so it rolls over or under. All that matters is sex. If the sex is great, then the relationship will work, even if one of you is incapable of holding a job for longer than six weeks, and you spend half your time surviving on food stamps and have to take your kids to the free clinic when they get sick because you don't have any insurance. SEX CONQUERS ALL, PEOPLE!

Children never get sick in fanfic unless it's a life-threatening illness. No one ever has to stay up nights rocking a kid who's got a snotty-nose and can't breath when they lay down. Children never have mundane diseases like chicken pox or measles (which, btw, you CAN catch even if you've been vaccinated-my sons had measles twice, despite getting their vaccines on schedule).

CaptainMcNeil wrote:

Nazis are either misunderstood woobies at heart or evil bastards with no soul. Oskar Schindler and Erwin Rommel types do not exist. Patriotism has no factor in their loyality. The High Command was all secretly gay. The Wehrmacht was all secretly gay. Himmler can fall in love with a Jewish woman because its TWU WUB. All Nazis wore the black Allgemeine-SS uniforms no matter what branch they were in or what year of the war it is. It was easy to escape Auschwitz. If you sleep with a concentration camp guard they will let you escape.

I would add that a pleasant German is inconcievable. Germans of any era are either psychopaths or stern on the outside and sweet on the inside. Also, Auschwitz was the only concentration camp. [deep voice] What is this thing you call "Buchenwald"...? [/deep voice]

Observation: a year ago I was tearing Hitlerslash to pieces over here, and Hitlerslash deserved it. However, I've changed my mind about whether gay!High Command could ever work. I now think it could, if a writer better than I did it one way and one way only - as dark satire. Not poignant romance, not porn, not light comedy - dark satire. Maybe a portrait of Himmler and Goebbels falling in claustrophobic, dysfunctional quasi-love, much to their infinite horror, amidst a backdrop of Nazi hypocrisy, decadence, and madness, a literalized alternate history of the most weirdly homoerotic regime to ever persecute gays.

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Oh yeah.

Penguin wrote:

Tom Clancy addendum: All Germans have OCD and are sickened by things not being in ordnung.

Yeah, but you don't learn that from badfic. You learn that by coming here.

littledorrit wrote:

I would add that a pleasant German is inconcievable.

- One should never use one word where one could use twelve.

- Actually watching the show, reading the book, etc., is only a suggestion.

- If a particular character trait, ability, object, outfit, or whatever else shows up in a lot of other fics, it's canon! Don't bother checking if it was actually in the source material, that'll just slow you down!

- On that note, research in general is completely unnecessary.

Forget the fact that your story has no plot, is riddled with Mary-Sues and grammar errors! You'll still have hordes of fanbrats kissing your ass in one sentenced reviews by the dozen

4shadowedice4 wrote:

Forget the fact that your story has no plot, is riddled with Mary-Sues and grammar errors! You'll still have hordes of fanbrats kissing your ass in one sentenced reviews by the dozen

This. I have to admit that, while I like getting reviews, a bunch of "Squee! Rite moar!" reviews don't mean much to me. I mean, it's nice that you like the story, but what is it about it that you like? For that matter, what do you think could be improved? I appreciate it when people write well-thought-out reviews. I may or may not take their advice on improvements (it depends upon what improvements they suggest and whether those ideas fit the story as I have it plotted out, and, of course, whether those suggestions make sense--someone saying that they don't like the fact that I followed canon is not going to be listened to).

Lady Anne wrote:

This. I have to admit that, while I like getting reviews, a bunch of "Squee! Rite moar!" reviews don't mean much to me. I mean, it's nice that you like the story, but what is it about it that you like? For that matter, what do you think could be improved? I appreciate it when people write well-thought-out reviews. I may or may not take their advice on improvements (it depends upon what improvements they suggest and whether those ideas fit the story as I have it plotted out, and, of course, whether those suggestions make sense--someone saying that they don't like the fact that I followed canon is not going to be listened to).

The very best is both of the above. I once wrote 300 pages more than originally intended because an incredibly loyal, incredibly positive reviewer, who graced every single chapter of a fanfic I wrote with such deep, insightful, long and helpful reviews (to which I got shamefully addicted) that when she suggested that the story really ought to have a fight-then-make-up part, I wrote it, although I seriously hate fight/make up stories. It turned out to be much better than I thought it would, and made the entire fic much more satisfying. A good reviewer will make you work harder, write better and deliver better work. Mindless squee, while nice, doesn't contribute anything.

Fanbrats, both reviewing and demanding reviews like that, never seem to realise that.

littledorrit wrote:

Observation: a year ago I was tearing Hitlerslash to pieces over here, and Hitlerslash deserved it. However, I've changed my mind about whether gay!High Command could ever work. I now think it could, if a writer better than I did it one way and one way only - as dark satire. Not poignant romance, not porn, not light comedy - dark satire. Maybe a portrait of Himmler and Goebbels falling in claustrophobic, dysfunctional quasi-love, much to their infinite horror, amidst a backdrop of Nazi hypocrisy, decadence, and madness, a literalized alternate history of the most weirdly homoerotic regime to ever persecute gays.

Oh yeah.

I honestly do think it could work too, but you've got to be a damned good writer to pull it off and it better be straight out of an domestic abuse PSA. No cutsie fluff or renouncing the Party. Hell, I think retrobution better be in there for the emotions they'd be feeling (look what happened to the Czechs after Heydrich was killed!).

Hmm...actually pretty interesting.

Lady Anne wrote:

4shadowedice4 wrote:

Forget the fact that your story has no plot, is riddled with Mary-Sues and grammar errors! You'll still have hordes of fanbrats kissing your ass in one sentenced reviews by the dozen

This. I have to admit that, while I like getting reviews, a bunch of "Squee! Rite moar!" reviews don't mean much to me. (...) I appreciate it when people write well-thought-out reviews.

I've been reading a fair number of stories on AFF.net recently, and there's one reviewer that seems to post on a lot of them... always stuff like this:

Quote :

vinzeso where is he will he call again since those meseges made me laught soooo hard, impressive enoght your attract me since i was thinking of emailing you a hate or thread letter for you to update and bang there it is an update thankk youuuuu

Every time I see that person comment, I think that if and when I get around to my own story... I actually kinda hope this person won't be interested in it. I don't even necessarily fault them for their spelling/grammar because they're ESL, but it's just... obnoxious. Their reviews are never longer than that, always hard to follow, sometimes in Spanish with a follow up of WHOOPS YOU GOT ME SO EXCITED I DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE I POSTED IN SPANISH.

A woman can't survive without a husband, even if she's got a successful career, lots of money, and/or lots of talent. She needs a husband, preferably her twu luv, but if he's not around, any guy will do.

Rape is enjoyable and so is slavery.

Broken bones? Bleeding to death? Got cancer? No matter -- just have some sex and you'll be perfectly fine!