It's more like guidelines than actual rules.

Subject: It's more like guidelines than actual rules.
Author: Neshomeh
Posted on: 2022-01-10 15:47:15 UTC

Just a caution against clinging super-hard to the letter of these criteria. We came up with them after the last ones stopped working. They can always be modified if it turns out they aren't adequate, either. {= )

(The last ones were pretty much just "is it bad?" and "have we all heard of it?", which works when you all share a fandom and are active in other fan communities; not so much when you don't and aren't.)

Anyway, I would argue that the tags are an intrinsic part of fic on AO3 because, as STWWX magnificently demonstrated, you can't opt out of them. They're the first thing anyone sees when looking for a story there, and there's nothing you can do about it if you don't fancy being smacked in the face with a word salad that, often as not, is just the author rambling rather than providing functional data. Sure, you can scroll—but what if the tag cloud is literal pages long? You can't not experience that if you want to read the fic.

Full disclosure: I have never liked how tags are displayed on AO3 or that they're so freeform you could write a separate story in them if you wanted to. I might have a bias here. >.>

~Neshomeh

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Legendary Badfic alert! by AstralCat on 2022-01-07 17:13:25 UTC Badfic report Reply

So, in the wake of all my supposed kinkshaming, I'm thinking of moving my agents to the Department of Floaters. And, may I present to you, StarKitsProphcy. It's littered with minis, and has a LOT of religious symbolism, to the point of overuse. I'm thinking of tackling it as my agents' first mission.

What do you think? Should I do it?

owie brainy by Vioven on 2022-01-16 20:13:35 UTC Reply

This feels like a test of the "hmuaan's cnan raed any wrod wihch bigens wih te firt ltter and edns whith the lsat lteter" thingy - legible, but barely

Also, as a warrior cats nerd, anger
I'd advise against doing Starkit's Prophecy. by Scapegrace on 2022-01-08 05:07:30 UTC Reply

I think one of the biggest problems is that we know nothing about your agents. None of your posts that I've read discuss them. I can't comment on whether or not they'd be a good fit for Floaters or DBS or wherever because, well, they don't exist yet. It's rather putting the cart before the horse.

More to the point, though, is that the PPC isn't just a means of poking good-natured fun at bad fanfiction on the internet. First and foremost, the PPC is a community. Before anything else, we talk to each other. Not just about missions, but about fandom in general and things we're doing in our lives. We know nothing about your agents, and we know barely anything more about you. What fandoms are you in? What do you enjoy? Do you knit tiny bobble hats for sphinx cats to wear in the winter? We'd like to know who you are. The only thing we've got is... that you've got a real bee in your bonnet about fetish-centric fanfiction. On that note: whatever community you're in, describing kinks you don't share as gross is not a good look, and brushing it off as "alleged kinkshaming" isn't okay either. I know Nesh has mentioned "Your Kink Is Not My Kink", but a key expansion to that phrase is: "Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That's Okay".

I'm sure you're nice enough, and I'm sorry if this sounds harsh. So let me say this:-

Welcome to the PPC! I'm Scape. I like bad science fiction, I have a Master's degree in creepypasta, and I like making robots beat each other up. Have you read The Original Serries yet? I think you'd probably enjoy it. =]
Welcome, since I didn't do so earlier. by Silv on 2022-01-08 04:15:30 UTC Edited Reply

I would like to say up-front that as far as I know, we don't know you. And these two threads I can see have not made a great impression so far; not bad or anything, just... a bit shaky. Previous incidents have left us a bit wary of newbies who go straight for missions, and in general legendaries can just take way more effort than you might want for a first mission.

Plus we shy away from missioning anything so heavily steeped in real religion for... kind of obvious reasons. I don't know if starkit's prophecy has enough religious under- or overtones to necessitate that, but how you singled it out as a defining feature makes me wary.

I don't mean to be hostile, and if I come off as that I'm sorry. We would love to get to know you more before you try claiming anything.
Maybe tackle some lighter fare first? by Thoth on 2022-01-08 03:53:01 UTC Reply

Just. Before you go for a legendary.

(Also I have no clue if anyone claimed SKP already. I don't think so?)
With apologies to Gandalf, dawn take this fic and be stone to it! by Tawaki on 2022-01-08 01:59:18 UTC Reply

It reads like a troll.
Also, newbies usually wait a while before requesting Permission so they can get to know us by ClaireBook1 on 2022-01-07 22:25:03 UTC Reply

and we can get to know them. I found the PPC in May of 2021, and I've requested Permission and gotten denied because of some technical errors and logic errors in my writing sample. I waited a few months, got to know the community better, and rewrote my writing sample. I posted it and now I'm hoping to get feedback from the Permission Givers soon. Maybe just chill out for a while and get to know the community. We like shiny newbies, but we also like to get to know them before they request Permission. -Claire, giving the same advice they received when they tried to get Permission. :)

Uh... by AstralCat on 2022-01-07 22:43:56 UTC Reply

I wasn't asking for Permission, just thinking ahead.

I was jumping to conclusions. Sorry if that was rude. by ClaireBook1 on 2022-01-08 02:49:15 UTC Reply

Sometimes I do things before I think them through. I think that was one of those times.

I'm pretty sure that you need several people to nominate it before it becomes a Legandary Badfic. by ClaireBook1 on 2022-01-07 19:28:31 UTC Reply

I've barely skimmed it, but I will agree that the SPaG is bad.

-Claire

I have now read a bit more of the fic. I am not impressed. by ClaireBook1 on 2022-01-08 18:54:04 UTC Reply

In fact, it makes me glad that I'm not really in the Warrior Cats fandom. I read a few of the books a while ago, but that was it. With some other badfics that were reported on the Board, I lost my temper and was told to cool it. I rethought things a bit, and decided that I probably should not comment immediately when I'm really mad with a fic. I need time to calm down before I can look at the problems without completely losing it.

Problems in the fic:

The SPaG is not just bad, it's a Glaurunging mess, which is painful and difficult to read. There is a whole horde of mini-monsters.

"Butter mom wouldn't let her sleep not today."

This reminds me of Glen Warner, a badfic rescuee who was created from a grammar error. This butter mom might also be rescuable.

Starkit has a "serimony" instead of a ceremony.

I will stop now. Reading this fic is weary work, and it's not worth my time.

-Claire

Butter Mom by AstralCat on 2022-01-11 05:13:34 UTC Reply

I think she would just be a living butter sculpture of a cat, thanks to how the Word World works. Also, "Everyone startwf crapping!" would have extra squicky results in the WW too.
I managed to read this back in the day by strawberrybanana on 2022-01-08 22:36:19 UTC Reply

Sometime after I grew out of my 4th grade warrior cats roleplaying phase, I tried to see how the fandom was doing. This was one of the most...famous (or rather, infamous) fanfictions out there. I can solidly say that no matter where you stopped, it probably gets worse after that. Good on you for stopping! I wish I could get the additional however many minutes I spent reading this back.

That and then some. by Neshomeh on 2022-01-08 03:49:14 UTC Reply

The criteria for nominating a Legendary Badfic are on the said wiki page.

But, this fic seems very familiar. That could be because we have a page about it on the wiki. It could also be because we've had this conversation before. And, hey! Looks like the decision was in favor! ... But nobody bothered to update the wiki. So, who's volunteering?

~Neshomeh

Speaking of which, by Lily Winterwood on 2022-01-09 15:53:11 UTC Reply

should we have a discussion about STWWX as well? You, me, and Zing have all agreed that it's Legendary specifically because it forced AO3 to institute a tag limit (and has been cited in a lot of articles regarding AO3's tagging situation). The fic is, granted, more notorious because of its metadata, but the text of the fic itself was written specifically to enable the metadata, so it ends up being a bit of a chicken and egg situation as things progress.

I haven't made a page for it on the Wiki just yet but I do have a completed mission going into beta for it, so... should probably get this duck squared away at some point in the next century 😅

Actually, I disagree that it's Legendary. by Cicada on 2022-01-10 06:23:11 UTC Reply

It might be legendary as far as fics go, but I'd argue that the fic is not technically a Legendary Badfic due to Rule 3- "Must be famous in its own right". Since it's the writing that makes a legendary, not surrounding controversy or tags, I'd say it doesn't necessarily count. I suppose the question is whether or not tags count as part of a fic? Either way, I disagree but it's not as if I'm, say, opposed to it being added. Just throwing in my two cents! Sounds interesting either way, this is actually the first time I've heard about it.

It's more like guidelines than actual rules. by Neshomeh on 2022-01-10 15:47:15 UTC Reply

Just a caution against clinging super-hard to the letter of these criteria. We came up with them after the last ones stopped working. They can always be modified if it turns out they aren't adequate, either. {= )

(The last ones were pretty much just "is it bad?" and "have we all heard of it?", which works when you all share a fandom and are active in other fan communities; not so much when you don't and aren't.)

Anyway, I would argue that the tags are an intrinsic part of fic on AO3 because, as STWWX magnificently demonstrated, you can't opt out of them. They're the first thing anyone sees when looking for a story there, and there's nothing you can do about it if you don't fancy being smacked in the face with a word salad that, often as not, is just the author rambling rather than providing functional data. Sure, you can scroll—but what if the tag cloud is literal pages long? You can't not experience that if you want to read the fic.

Full disclosure: I have never liked how tags are displayed on AO3 or that they're so freeform you could write a separate story in them if you wanted to. I might have a bias here. >.>

~Neshomeh
I think the tags have thoroughly turned off most people, by Lily Winterwood on 2022-01-10 11:11:18 UTC Reply

from actually wanting to read the text of the fic. But again, that goes into the chicken-and-egg conundrum because there were people reading the fic who complained that the bad tagging failed to warn from squicks and triggers within the fic itself, and then the author decided to add more tags out of spite, causing more people to get mad about the fic. And when the fic went offline during the time where AO3 was reviewing the tags, they discovered that all of the tags covered things that showed up in the fic. Which meant the author tagged for the smallest details while they were writing, and/or the author specifically tailored the fic to enable them to tag for more and more things. So for STWWX, I would argue that the metadata was intrinsically part of the fic, which also in turn highlighted how a badfic could misuse the site it was being hosted on.

I can understand not hearing of it if you weren't reading things on AO3 in the fandoms that were unfortunately tagged by the fic, but it was very notorious. Fanlore has an article on it.
It /would/ be nice to have more Legendaries that aren't just bad smut. (Also: 'A Tangled Web'?) by Huinesoron on 2022-01-10 10:14:42 UTC Reply

Some of the old Legendaries* aren't smutty, but I think almost all the recent ones are just edgy lemons (or other citrus as appropriate - there's a kumquat joke in here somewhere). There's a lot of departments in the PPC!

(* I would render this list as 'legolas by laura', 'My Immortal', 'Celebrian', and 'My Inner Life', of which two aren't smut; Marrissa Picard also predates the modern 'Legendary Badfic' concept.)

On which note... last year, Nesh found A Tangled Web, the badfic which broke the Department of Implausible Crossovers. I'm not positive it meets the criteria, but I feel like it might deserve to be grandfathered in for Jay and Acy's opinion of it. (Also, it was last updated 11 hours ago, which is insane for a fic spawned in 2002.)

hS

Yeah it's a thing by Thoth on 2022-01-11 00:23:15 UTC Reply

Edgy terrible smut is... obviously scarring, which is probably why.

Legendary badness usually means either legendarily scarring or legendarily funny. The latter is... usually trollfic? See: anything squirrelking ever wrote back in the day.
I'm for adding "A Tangled Web." by Neshomeh on 2022-01-10 15:55:15 UTC Reply

I agree it would be nice to desaturate the smut level of the list a bit, and since I found the links to the fic on an unrelated wiki because someone was plugging it, that's at least one point in favor of it still being known years after it was first posted. (I guess it helps if it's still updating, which, wow. o.o )

Normally I'd be wary of calling something Legendary because of its impact on a particular pair of agents or an alleged impact on the whole PPC, but since it's TOS and not someone currently trying to pad their resume, so to speak, I think it's okay. {= )

~Neshomeh
I honestly think the smut in STWWX is boring. by Lily Winterwood on 2022-01-10 11:15:15 UTC Edited Reply

It's the painfully obvious way in which the prose is meant to enable the tagging of more and more ridiculous things that does it for me. It's the only real explanation I can muster for why Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji would derail the plot to eat Korean food -- so that Korean food can be tagged for.

There are at least three universe burn-down/timeline resets in the fic, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji become omnipotent Suvian deities, they invent a tentacled AI that is also omnipotent, etc. The smut is excessive, but it's not the worst thing about the fic.

Oh, and re: Tangled Web, the STWWX mission will actually have reference to how it broke the DIC, so there's that :P

100% on board with this. by Neshomeh on 2022-01-09 18:16:36 UTC Reply

IMO, when a fanfiction is so widely known that my friend who doesn't read fanfiction is coming to me and asking if I've heard of "that fic that broke AO3," it's Legendary.

~Neshomeh

Done! by Kittyauthor on 2022-01-08 04:12:50 UTC Reply

The wiki page itself was added to the Legendary Badfic category, and it is now listed in the list on the Legendary Badfic page.