Things You've Learned from Badfic

^Idk, I've seen some Voldemort/Lucius rapefic. And "unwilling marriage" fic between Snape and Lucius, though it always turns into TWU WUB eventually.^

Okay, re-amended: if you're Lucius Malfoy, it happens less often.

Mouthing off to your teachers will make them grudgingly respect you and/or fall in love with you, rather than just getting you in trouble.

There is no work of fiction with so interesting a setting that people wouldn't rather read about the characters going to Hollywood's idea of a high school.

No matter what J. K. Rowling or the books themselves say or imply, Harry Potter goes to school in the present day, present time. So did the Marauders, no matter how incredibly little sense that makes.

Ron Weasley is not a somewhat immature, but good-hearted person. He is the devil, and everybody in the universe secretly hates him.

Not writing the relationship the fans expect and/or want is morally much, much worse than simultaneously raping and murdering someone.

Nobody ever does anything but the following:
- Have sex
- Think about sex
- Cry about how much sex they're not having

Nobody is happy with being a virgin, ever. If you're a virgin past the age of 15, you are pathetic and everybody hates you.

Saying things like "you complete me!" and "you make my life worth living!" is romantic, not creepy and codependant!! Honest!!

From Fics:

The average couple rarely talks about anything but their sex life. Sometimes they don't even bother to talk at all.

Whenever a man gets pregnant, the anatomical difficulties and potential damage done to his body are the last thing he has to worry about. Much more important is the fear that his secret relationship will come to light.

For a relationship to work, it must contain one dominant partner and one passive partner.

If your partner tragically dies, you can wangst about it forever and nobody (except maybe the token evil bitch) will complain how annoying you're getting or even suggest it might be a good idea to move on.


From authors:

Research is for losers.
So is the correct use of English.

It is acceptable to genuinely hate someone because they disagree with you about which fictional characters should be paired with whom.

There are children apparently as young as ten reading and writing porn.

Puns about "Whorecruxes" and variations on "Harry Pothead and the Philosopher Stoned" are always funny even if everyone has heard them an infinite number of times before.

A teenage boy can take being sucked into an alternate universe, transformed into a woman, violently raped, and becoming pregnant in his stride with nothing more than mild surprise. He will then cry hysterically on the spur of the moment, but this is entirely due to pregnancy hormones and nothing whatsoever to do with what just happened to him.

Regarding bullet wounds:

* Shooting somebody in the kneecap is very painful and will render them incapable of walking.

- In fact, shooting somebody in the kneecap risks crippling them for life.

* The shoulder IS a safe place to shoot somebody.

- There is NO 'safe' place to be shot. And there's a lot of delicate bones, joints and stuff in the shoulder. It's like shooting somebody in the knee, but with the arm instead of the leg.

* A shot to the stomach is great because it will kill you within minutes, but still give you time for a few last words.

- A shot to the stomach is extremely dangerous, but with rapid treatment is survivable. Without treatment, it will take agonising hours to die. Maybe even a day or more.

* Being shot in the back, in the spine, will render you incapable of walking for life.

- Being shot in the spine can be deadly, and render you incapable of living. However it does not automatically remove your ability to walk forever.

* Being shot in the lungs will result in coughing up blood and you'll die in minutes.

- Not necesserily. It can take hours to die from a single bullet to the lungs. And you won't necesserily cough up blood.

* Shots to the head mean instant death.

- Amazingly, no, that's not true. 35 years ago a man was mugged and woke up with a terrible headache. After an x-ray it turned out he had five shots to the head from a 22-calibre. The shots had all missed vital arteries and he lived a normal life.

* It takes a few seconds to realise you've been shot.

- The nervous system runs at up to 200 mph. There are circumstances under which you won't realise instantly, but for the most part they don't include being awake. If your brain is working at regular speed, you WILL know.

* You can dodge bullets.

- The range for handgun bullets is from 700mph to 1200mph. That's often faster than the speed of sound. Rifle rounds can travel even faster, at over 4500 feet per second. If you've heard it, it's too late to dodge. Although that's no reason not to make yourself a moving target.

* One bullet is almost deadly. Two bullets or more mean instant death.

- The body is surprisingly resiliant. It's all dependant on what kind of gun you were shot with, and where you get hit, and what damage is done by the bullet, and the treatment you get. A few shots with a handgun are very survivable, but I wouldn't reccomend testing that theory anywhere.

People are always either overestimating or underestimating the damage a bullet does. They also underestimate how much pain it causes. While the pain of course varies, being hit ANYWHERE in the body is extremely painful. It's a piece of lead travelling at thousands of feet per second. Even just being nicked is going to hurt a lot.

Harley, a couple of the stories you mentioned are famous because they're unusual. Being shot in the head means instant death 99.9% of the time. I don't think the 0.1% is enough to warrant you getting pissed at authors for killing people by shooting them in the head. Being shot in the back, although most of the time it will kill you, can leave you a quadriplegic if it happens in exactly the right spot. It is an acceptable device to use once in a piece of fiction, so long as you don't let it happen to more than one character in the same piece of fiction.

But yeah a lot of the other stuff you said is perfectly valid. I hate it when people shrug off bullet wounds like they're bee stings or when (even after a semi-realistic recovery period) they just have a scar and no remaining movement problems.

People don't actually attend classes, do homework, or participate in extra curricular activities at Hogwarts. They are all far too busy having torrid affairs with one another.

Narwhal wrote:

People don't actually attend classes, do homework, or participate in extra curricular activities at Hogwarts. They are all far too busy having torrid affairs with one another.

Worse, it is never necessary to go to the lavatory.

Wait, that's canon.

Complaining about characters never going to the bog in a piece of fiction has always struck me as a little bit ridiculous, to be honest. It would rarely be relevant to the plot, in most fiction.

To be fair, Lexin, I'd be pretty put off if we had to watch Harry drain the snake every couple of paragraphs.

anangrychocobo wrote:

Complaining about characters never going to the bog in a piece of fiction has always struck me as a little bit ridiculous, to be honest. It would rarely be relevant to the plot, in most fiction.

Ulysses.

People in offices, law firms, or similar places never actually do any work. Ever. They're either fucking each other all the time or having wacky adventures.

Narwhal wrote:

To be fair, Lexin, I'd be pretty put off if we had to watch Harry drain the snake every couple of paragraphs.

I agree. It's the fact that it never gets mentioned at all - in most books - which always makes me smile.

Count me guilty of gigglesnorting at the thought of Hermione having to wipe with leaves during the camping sequence. Come on! We all know it happened at least once! She has her "but there's no wood!" moments.

Dr. Professor Science wrote:

Harley, a couple of the stories you mentioned are famous because they're unusual. Being shot in the head means instant death 99.9% of the time. I don't think the 0.1% is enough to warrant you getting pissed at authors for killing people by shooting them in the head.

Hey, if granting you a fact from an interesting true (probably) story I read on the internet is too much for you, shove it.

By which I was just saying, it is possible to survive head wounds. It's just not usual.

In another, similar matter, the head is, compared to the rest of the body, a pretty small target. It's almost impossible to hit it when it's a moving target. Especially in TF2. Smart people aim for the torso, unless their target is perfectly stationary. Your character will not be able to score headshots EVERY DAMN TIME, even if they are an amazing mercenary assassin thing.

In one of the Hitchhiker's Guide books, Douglas Adams presented a pretty good argument for why fiction in general doesn't mention going to the bathroom and other common, everyday things:

Quote :

Those who are regular followers of the doings of Arthur Dent may have received an impression of his character and habits which, while it includes the truth and, of course, nothing but the truth, falls somewhat short, in its composition, of the whole truth in all its glorious aspects.

And the reasons for this are obvious. Editing, selection, the need to balance that which is interesting with that which is relevant and cut out all the tedious happenstance.

Like this for instance. "Arthur Dent went to bed. He went up the stairs, all fifteen of them, opened the door, went into his room, took off his shoes and socks and then all the rest of his clothes one by one and left them in a neatly crumpled heap on the floor. He put on his pyjamas, the blue ones with the stripe. He washed his face and hands, cleaned his teeth, went to the lavatory, realized that he had once again got this all in the wrong order, had to wash his hands again and went to bed. He read for fifteen minutes, spending the first ten minutes of that trying to work out where in the book he had got to the previous night, then he turned out the light and within a minute or so more was asleep.

"It was dark. He lay on his left side for a good hour.

"After that he moved restlessly in his sleep for a moment and then turned over to sleep on his right side. Another hour after this his eyes flickered briefly and he slightly scratched his nose, though there was still a good twenty minutes to go before he turned back on to his left side. And so he whiled the night away, sleeping.

"At four he got up and went to the lavatory again. He opened the door to the lavatory..." and so on.

Given that J.K. Rowling actually makes damn sure we know that there are bathrooms and toilets at Hogwarts, I think we can take it for granted that the students (and teachers) actually use them once in a while, without having to be told about it.



Back to the badfic discussion!

It's actually perfectly sensible to judge by appearance: People who ugly, fat and/or freakish-looking are never worth giving the time of day. At best they're dorks, at worst they're evil.

People who are sexy or good-looking, on the other hand, are never bad -- unless they're women trying to steal the dream man from his One True Love, but in that case they are probably vain and obsessed with their looks. Which, of course, is a bad thing.

Ugly men are either horrible villains or noble but misunderstood heroes; there is no middle ground, and nowhere is there an ordinary, non-heroic/villainous man who just happens to look like ten miles of bad road.

Ugly women always have ugly personalities. Beautiful women may or may not be bad, but ugly women are always bad. Further, ugly women always dress to look even uglier, have the voices of harpies with adenoid infections, and have no social skills. Oh, wait, that's not just fanfic; Spider Robinson, I'm looking at you.

Ordinary-looking women are only superficially ordinary-looking. Their real appearance (and alignment) is either beautiful or ugly, and under the proper conditions (a makeover, changing over the summer, letting their true selves out) they will display their natural beauty or ugliness.

Beautiful/evil women are actually secretly ugly, and their major (often only) motivation in life is envy and jealousy of beautiful/good rivals. It's not about conquering the world, it's about boob envy.

To be fair to Spider Robinson, he did recant his impression in his last Callahan book.

Mind you, the book was a collection of poo, but he did have his author avatar apologize to the ugly woman.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Regarding bullet wounds:

* Being shot in the lungs will result in coughing up blood and you'll die in minutes.

- Not necesserily. It can take hours to die from a single bullet to the lungs. And you won't necesserily cough up blood.

I would even say:

* No matter where you are shot, you will always cough up blood (because it looks so damn cool and authentic!!!1!)
Head shots, stomach shots, arm shots, you name it; everyone coughs up blood, even if it makes no sense at all. And NO ONE ever wipes it off!!! Like in theat dreadful movie they made of The Langoliers. The poor kid looked like she'd been drowned in spaghetti sauce...eeewww!

anangrychocobo wrote:

Complaining about characters never going to the
bog in a piece of fiction has always struck me as a little bit
ridiculous, to be honest. It would rarely be relevant to the plot, in
most fiction.

Nevertheless, I always get cramps in my stomach when I see or read about people having been tied up for 12 hours, who, when they're freed, are able to run, shoot, kill, and think about anything else but OH GOD I HAVE TO PEE NOW.
Seriously. I know women are weak of bladder usually, and I seem to be a pretty bad case especially, but really, shouldn't everybody need to go after about 6 hours?

Cutting oneself is the solution to all problems.

-Cutting oneself is the only form of self-harm, and everybody does it when they're depressed.

And you always cut your wrists and arms. You never try to cut somewhere hard to see or hide the cuts and scars.

This is more from fan art, but everybody shouts "SUPRISE!" as they bone somebody up the ass.

If you have an identical twin, you are doomed to be the focus of incest, sibling rivalry over love of a Sue, or attack by identical twin Sues.

All this business reminds me; I was thinking of creating a character who embodies all the traits fangirls usually look for and giving him a twist which would make them hate him. From what we have on this list so far, I'd say a thin blond young man with an identical Evil Twin (TM) sounds the best bet.

chelonianmobile wrote:

If you have an identical twin, you are doomed to be the focus of incest, sibling rivalry over love of a Sue, or attack by identical twin Sues.

All this business reminds me; I was thinking of creating a character who embodies all the traits fangirls usually look for and giving him a twist which would make them hate him. From what we have on this list so far, I'd say a thin blond young man with an identical Evil Twin (TM) sounds the best bet.

Given the sorts of things fangirls go for, what could you do to make them all hate him?