Subject: I'd like to present a counterpoint.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-12-17 14:37:00 UTC
I've heard about Chibiusa's seventh birthday, even though I'm not part of the Sailor Moon fandom. It's infamous enough for me to have heard of, at least.
What's more, if "squick for the sake of squick" means a badfic isn't Legendary, it takes "Agony in Pink" out of the list, and so far we've been treating it as a Legendary.
Calling the community's attention: after this discussion, it seems that we have a new method of designating new Legendary Badfic. What do you guys think? Should we designate new Legendary Badfic? Is the method detailed below a good one? If not (and assuming we do want to designate new Legendaries), is there a better one?
THE METHOD (summarised from what hS and Nesh said):
A fic is considered Legendary when:
-It gets a decent amount of google hits — it's an indicator that people are talking about the fic.
-Those hits are not because of a PPC mission.
-The fic is famous by its own right, not because of the author/sequel/prequel/fanart/whatever.
-A majority of PPCers agrees that it is bad.
Even with all my Google-fu, the best results I can get for it are a defunct Pit forum, a dark!Harry fic, and then the PPC Wiki's page. Nobody has saved a copy of it anywhere, not even in sporking format.
Is it really considered Legendary?
Instead of just 'google hits', I suggest the following:
-It is at least five years old. (This could be cut down to 3, but I think 5 is better.)
-It gets a decent amount of Google hits from the past year. (example)
I think this will make sure that the stories that get in have actually attained legendary status, rather than just being a momentary fad, as it were. It's the difference between whatever meme was massively trending this time last year - and 'All your base are belong to us'. You need longevity.
If we had that (or something like that) in there, I would accept this as a good definition for a Legendary Badfic. As it is, I'm still on the fence.
hS
Five years makes sense to me. That's, like, forever on the Internet. By that measure, of course, I'll have to wait another couple of years for BRN to qualify, but I'm patient.
Just so we all know, though, is "decent," say, at least a page of relevant hits (that is, ten)? Or, five years on, are any hits at all enough?
I guess I'd lean toward "any," or possibly five. For reference, "Celebrian badfic" gets five, by my count, and it's about the same for "legolas by laura" (a few of those are the same video in different locations).
~Neshomeh
I'm tending to look at the first two pages. legolas by laura (no quotes) gets 13 of the first 20 hits, which is stunning (and includes what looks to be a translation of it!). Clbr__n... is a category unto itself, being nearly impossible to search for without throwing in words like 'badfic'. I think we just accept that one and move on. ;)
I would accept 5/20 as being 'talked about', on the assumption that there's more buried in the deeper archives; the case of the one that only gets 18 hits total may need to be discussed a bit more.
hS
It looks like a good idea.
Anyone ever hear of "Dipper Goes to Taco Bell"? (link goes to Google hits but some of the results can be NSFW/B)
I remember hearing about this at least two years ago, and it was published back in August 2012, so that would at qualify if we were to go by the three-year timeframe.
(As a side note, I don't even watch Gravity Falls, so that says something to me about its sheer notoriety.)
... to meet the Google requirements on a 3-year basis, though not of course on a 5. I've never heard of it and have no idea how bad it is, but that's irrelevant.
hS
Here is a dramatic reading.
Make sure you have headphones on, that's all I'm saying. And don't do it if you've eaten recently, like, within the last few months. =]
I'll do the same with How I Became Yours. Since the Google hits give us a TV Tropes Article, multiple bad webcomics wiki articles, and even some videos, I think that the Legendary tag is clearly deserved.
I propose that My Inner Life should be Legendary. With an incredibly generic title which is shared by a 2013 film, it nevertheless manages to take over - without quote marks - the first two pages of Google hits. None of those are to do with the mission. The main question is whether MIL is famous in its own right, or as an outcropping of Link's Queen's rants. I think it's the former.
hS
I've held that "Blood Raining Night" is Legendary since I sporked it. See for yourselves, though you'll have to get past the first page, which is mostly hits on the story itself and its fanime on various sites, to really see the amount of discussion about it. I'd point out the TV Tropes and Know Your Meme hits on the fist page as being significant, though, and the fact that my mission doesn't even show up until page 7.
Some of us may recall that a few people have independently brought it up here on the Board, too, which means this might even meet the old standard of plenty of Boarders having heard of it even without my mission.
Full disclosure: I will take great pleasure in adding pages about this story and its Sue to the wiki, should the Board will it. However, I don't really need the glory or fame or whatever of having sporked a Legendary. It's been good enough for me to know it for my own sake for a couple years now, after all.
~Neshomeh
I'm still dubious about this whole procedure, but if the Board accepts it, then Blood Raining Night clearly qualifies. You were ignoring the fanime - but it has fanime. That. Just. What.
hS
It's a fanime in the same way the story is a fanfic. It's not somebody else who likes the fic so much they made a YouTube series for it. (Somebody does seem to have made a wiki for it, though, which, as you say, just. What.)
~Neshomeh
Just make sure your kids aren't around.
Actually, make sure no one is around.
Actually, don't try watching them.
I still feel a little unclean inside. {= (
~Neshomeh
I propose adding Chibiusa's seventh birthday to the list. Here are the Google hits. I think there is a decent amount of them.
As for why it is so bad, well... (WARNING! NSFW, NSFB and definitely triggering section!)
We are taking about a Sailor Moon Bad Slash fic where Chibiusa, a seven year-old, if that wasn't obviously from the title, gets Glaurunging gang raped by every other Senshi, including Usagi and Mamoru, her own future parents! Bad biology abounds here, including Makoto somehow managing to shove all FOUR of her limbs inside the poor little girl's private parts. And by the end of this atrocity, Chibiusa has basically become a sex zombie.
That story appears to occupy every single one of the 500+ hits it gets. Which means it qualifies under the rules as currently set out.
It may be relevant that searching for hits in the past year only turns up 18, of which only 5 seem to be relevant. I don't know how Google determines a year, though.
Looking at the other two suggestions through the same lens, 'My Inner Life' occupies 8 of the top 20 'recent' hits, while 'Blood Raining Night' takes up all except two of the top 20.
Do we want a time-related requirement (such as 'must still be being talked about five or more years after it was created')? I think that would help assuage my own doubts about the process - it would mean that flash-in-the-pan stories wouldn't get in by being prominent right after being written.
brb, proposing that change in a new post.
hS
But when it comes to this particular badfic, it is a bit hard to find out exactly who old it is, since there only archived instances of it, so such as the one on the Godawful Archive.
There are hits from 2010, so it has to be at least 5 years old and there are still hits this year, five years after that, so I guess it would also qualify under that criteria.
I... kinda wish things like this would just die and stay dead, personally. It's probably futile to suggest ruling out stories that are just appalling squick for appalling squick's sake as being beneath our notice, because that would exclude old chestnuts like "C*l*br**n" and probably others, too, but still, I can wish it. >.<
~Neshomeh
I... kinda wish things like this would just die and stay dead, personally. It's probably futile to suggest ruling out stories that are just appalling squick for appalling squick's sake as being beneath our notice, because that would exclude old chestnuts like "C*l*br**n" and probably others, too, but still, I can wish it. >.
~Neshomeh
Teh Bad Fic is so much more than 'squick for squick's sake' - the writer clearly had an actual story they wanted to tell. It has a complex plot, attempts to build a 'magic system', characters with actual motivations...
... which is all bent wildly out of shape in the service (har, har) of turning the daughter of Galadriel into... well... I can't even think of an analogy.
Remove the smut, and you have a story of torture, kidnapping, and Stockholm syndrome. Change the names around (because using Lady Celebrian goes directly against canon) and it could even work as a tolerable fanfic.
It would also be about ten pages long. Hey, there's a reason we call it a Legendary Badfic!
hS
PS: I'm feeling more and more like my mission didn't really do Clbr__n justice. Hrm. :-/
Maybe it would be better to leave Chibiusa's seventh birthday as just a regular Bleepfic and probably untouched as well. That one is really just 'squick for squick's sake' and it's not even a page long.
If you removed all the smut from it, well... It would just pretty much cease from existence.
I've heard about Chibiusa's seventh birthday, even though I'm not part of the Sailor Moon fandom. It's infamous enough for me to have heard of, at least.
What's more, if "squick for the sake of squick" means a badfic isn't Legendary, it takes "Agony in Pink" out of the list, and so far we've been treating it as a Legendary.
About what about the Google hits? Do you all think there is a sufficient amount of them for it quality as such under the new Legendary classification method?
If we go by the tweak hS just proposed, then I don't know if it qualifies, since it gets just six hits on the first page.
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Hello, everybody. This is Cipher's backup consciousness. The boy was smart enough to upload me into his brain, in case the circuits ever overhead. Like now, for example. Cipher usually has very high resistance to badfics, but things like that are abound to happen sometimes. Don't worry, I have already launched the reboot program, so we should be getting him back soon. In the meantime, let me explain:
James' summary wasn't enough, so Cipher decided to check the Badfic Candidate himself. Although he barely knew Sailor Moon canon (Last time he watched it he was eight). The first problem our systems noted at the very beginning, with the 'disclaimer':
"Feel free to read this if you’re a minor, though, people under 18should be able to have fun too!"
Clearly Cipher and the 'Author' have different defitions of fun... moving on! The rest of the reading went something like this
And now you see, oh... looks like the reboot is complete and Cipher is coming back. In that case, I bid everyone au revoir!
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Ugh, what the heck happened? My head... Ah, right! Chibiusa's seventh birthday, huh? I think Master will agree with me.
Something else that I neglected to mention is that the formatting and SPaG are just downright horrible. Oftentimes it seems that the author's space bar is broken, just as when we get a mini-youma like Mamoruapproached.
The "majority of PPCers" in the last criterion should be read as "majority of PPCers who have an opinion," as per hS's original phrasing. The idea behind this new method is to make up for the fact that we don't all share the same fandoms anymore, so it's not necessarily possible to come up with a majority of the entire Board. {= )
~Neshomeh
That sounds like a good method of designating new Legendary Badfics, but how do you know if a fic has a decent amount of Google hits? I'm just curious.
But that’s the easy second step. Since googling story after story while not much pops up would be a waste of time, Rie’s question may have been about how you know what’s worth googling.
HG
I think the thing to remember is that we're not trying to make an exhaustingive list of everything that meets the criteria. What this is about is dealing with the situation where newbie boarder Lacksidacksical bounces in and says 'I've just read this super awful badfic, and I think it should be Legendary! (And also I claim it for when I get Permission and I need sixteen cowriters!)' Previously, the response to that has always been, basically, 'I've never heard of it' (to which the reaction is 'well, I have').
Having a definition like this means that the Board can look at Lacksi's offering and say 'yeah... that doesn't produce a single Google hit related to it'. Or, alternately, when OlderThanThou pipes in with 'it can't possibly be legendary because I'd know it if it was', Lacksi can point at the Googling and so forth and say 'yah-huh it is too'.
Which is very rude and she'll get told off, but her point still stands. ^_~
hS