Subject: And thus do I submit...
Author:
Posted on: 2018-01-14 04:14:00 UTC
A 40k Potential Legendary: Squad Broken (https://m.fanfiction.net/s/7535246/1/Squad-Broken) (NSFW, NSFB), uploaded to FF.net in 2011, but seemingly around long before then. Almost certainly a troll. It caused the 40k fandom to react loudly with shock and horror, and is still known within the fandom today, years after its publication.
This came up in the chat, and seemed worth posting about here.
Most of the Legendary Badfic list is missioned or being missioned. A good portion of what's left seems to have fallen off the Internet (see, for example, Cho Chang's Desires, where almost all the Google hits lead to ... us).
Is this just because there's no more Legendary Badfic left out there, or that the criteria are a bit strict? Maybe.
However, a much more likely possibility is that we just haven't gone looking. The list hasn't been added to in years. (It probably doesn't help that fandom has moved from where it used to be years ago, and we as a community/broader movement within fandom didn't move with it all that much, IMO.)
So, what's Legendary these days? If anyone, especially some of the newer Boarders, has some insight, please do post, even if it doesn't quite meet the standards we set back in 2016.
- Tomash
I think everything that's been mentioned so far has come up before, and I have no objection to any of them going on the list. The more I think about it, the more I realize it's no skin off my nose one way or the other, so I say have your fun. {= )
~Neshomeh
...but "Latias' Journey" seems like a good candidate. It has at least three pages of hits on Google, it was published between 2004 and 2009, has its own TV Tropes article, and is pretty well known among dA and Reddit. I've been told that at first it seems innocuous enough, but then there's this bit from the TV tropes summary:
It's absurdly long, surreal and bizarre to extremes, interspersed with plenty of lightheartedness, and plenty of fight sequences. And sometimes it's really, really dark, squicky, messy, and all kinds of disturbing.
Oh sorry, we should've mentioned this is rated M. Pack your security blanket and Brain Bleach.
The whole Tropes article itself is here, and includes a link to the fic itself:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/LatiasJourney
And then there's "Sweet Apple Massacre", which I've also mentioned before... It was published in 2011, has its own KnowYourMeme page, and again, turns up three pages or more of hits on Google. And I think it caused enough of a stir in the MLP fandom back in the day to qualify as well.
I'm still not entirely sure if Latias' Journey is eligible for adding to the list, since I think Legendary Badfics are outright BAD from the get-go and there do seem to be a few tidbits of genuinely good writing in the midst of all the grossness, but I believe Sweet Apple Massacre certainly is.
Y'know how Brave New World (the sequel fic) is on hiatus?
Well, Ri2 said he'd get back to it after finishing Sonic Origins...
Which just wrapped up this week. So, there's that to consider.
Speaking on the second matter, I'm surprised Sweet Apple Massacre wasn't already on the list.
One from Naruto:
Chunin Exam Day seems like a pretty good candidate. Published between 2007 and 2010 and still heavily referenced on various sites within the last year, it fits all the qualifications for a Legendary.
As for the fic itself: Naruto gets stuck in a Groundhog Day loop and quickly uses it to start winning over (romantically) all the ladies with massages and simple gifts. This includes adult women. He also uses it to make himself incredibly overpowered. All good characterization is tossed out the window immediately so Author tracts can begin, and the fic is just awful.
The Tropes page, with a link to the fic:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/ChuninExamDay
The other three are from Harry Potter:
The first of the three is Partially Kissed Hero. Started in 2008 and finished in 2012, it is a little less mentioned in the last year. However, it has been very well known, and is by the same author as Chunin Exam Day.
The Fic starts with Harry getting partially kissed by a Dementor, which destroys the Horcrux inside him. However, the story rapidly goes off the rails, with multiple brutal deaths to characters like Dumbledore and Snape for no real reason. The attitudes towards women are the same in the previous fic, and Harry rapidly amasses a large Harem of basically every attractive female character. The plot also rapidly goes more insane, mostly due to Harry spiraling into darkness in a way that is entirely meant to be considered Protagonist-worthy.
The Tropes page is here, with a link to the fic.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/PartiallyKissedHero
The third fic is the rather famous HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, or Thirty Hs. Still rather talked about in the same terms as My Immortal, this fic is still rather talked about with hundreds of hits for either version of the name. It was originally made in 2005, with a recent set of edits in 2015. Like the others, it has a Tropes page, and definitely qualifies for Legendary as far as I can tell.
To quote the Trope page:
It's a Harry Potter fanfic, just like My Immortal. It's So Bad, It's Good, just like My Immortal, it has extreme Canon Defilement, just like My Immortal. However, the two are different in one key detail: whereas My Immortal was (ostensibly) written by a Wangsty 13 year old girl, this was (ostensibly) written by an Ax-Crazy 13 year old boy.
The Tropes page itself, with the fic link:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/ThirtyHs
The final fic I'm nominating is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. This one is the one that fits the least of the requirements. First published in 2010, and completed in 2015, the fic has quite a cult following and a TV Tropes article. The fic itself is quite divisive, with a very 'love it or hate it' attitude among readers.
The fic itself starts with a simple premise: Petunia married a scientist. Now Rationalist!Harry enters the wizarding world armed with Enlightenment ideals and the experimental spirit. Very quickly, Harry becomes a massive Sue, with both his and the rest of the cast being warped to fit into the author's philosophy, which is stated repeatedly in the fic in massive author tracts. Enormous chunks of canon are altered or ignored to make the story fit, to the point of making Lily try to murder Voldemort with the Killing Curse or having Voldemort make hundreds of Horcruxes because he's clever. I'm gonna stop there because there is a lot wrong with this fic.
Tropes page is here, with the link:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality
I have read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and I think it shouldn't be added to the list of legendary badfics. It may have problems, but it's not exactly Little Miss Mary.
by pointing out that, unlike the other candidates, HPMoR is much more divisive. It's way easier to find people who like the thing that it is for, say H^30. So we should probably leave that one alone just to be a bit conservative there, since it's not, well, legendarily bad.
- Tomash
I've suggested My Little Unicorn and The Conversion Bureau as potential legendary badfics, but that seemed to peter off.
A 40k Potential Legendary: Squad Broken (https://m.fanfiction.net/s/7535246/1/Squad-Broken) (NSFW, NSFB), uploaded to FF.net in 2011, but seemingly around long before then. Almost certainly a troll. It caused the 40k fandom to react loudly with shock and horror, and is still known within the fandom today, years after its publication.
This is horrific, also, Orks are sexless animal/fungus hybrids which reproduce by sending spores into the air. I don't think they have penises.
I mean, I think they eat? Not up to date on Ork anatomy.
But they definitely wouldn't use it like that.
Yes, they do eat.
But yeah, almost certainly a troll. The content is repugnant, let's get that right, but the writing is hilarious. Just one non-explicit quote: He grunted furiously, screaming "!" in his deep orkish voice. Screaming "!". *snerk* Also, that second chapter. What? {X D
It seems to fit the same general category as "C*l*br**n." I have no objection to this being added to the list.
(Trivia: I somehow managed to read the title of the fic as "Squid Broken" up until actually clicking the link and seeing it on ff.n. I am shocked to realize my eyes were lying to me the whole time, relieved there were no squids involved, and concerned that some part of my brain expected them.)
~Neshomeh lost her innocence a long time ago.
You can also see the author on messageboards, deliberately saying they were trying to make it as horrifying as they can.
And yes, that second chapter is even worse. I saw 1d4's alternative second chapter the first time around, which is less terrible, so imagine my surprise at seeing the real second chapter...
The term 'Legendary Badfic' is exactly that - a story that is widely known for being so bad there is little to no people saying good things about it.
(Granted, before joining the PPC, I myself only knew 2 out of 15 stories listed on our wiki...)
I'm all in for finding new gems who can be considered "oh, so terrible", but I think the Legendaries we have now are pretty much a closed chapter and a piece in our Hall o' Fame.
I think the most important bit is that lots of people have to be talking about it across the fanbase. It doesn't necessarily mean everyone will have heard of it—that's why we came up with the criteria we did, to get around the problem of most PPCers going "well, I never heard of it, it can't be that big a deal." But we don't all share fandoms, and we're not all active in fan communities outside this one, so that doesn't necessarily carry much weight. {= )
It's possible, though, that godawful badfic doesn't create the kind of buzz it did ten, fifteen, twenty(!) years ago. Perhaps fandom at large has grown jaded to that sort of thing?
~Neshomeh isn't active enough in other fan communities to know.
I'm a little unsure as to whether it still meets the required "five in twenty" Google hits for the past year, since a lot of the returns are Know Your Meme and various video hosting sites that seem to contain the fanime? I think there are still sufficient hits of people talking about it, but you have to go back a few pages to find them in all the garbage.
I don't need this to be acknowledged to stoke my ego or anything—I've waited this long, it won't change my life one way or the other—but maybe it's a good test case?
~Neshomeh
Because, I mean... it has fan animé. And KYM is for, well, memes - major social phenomena. It must be nearly five years old now, right? I say go ahead and add it.