Subject: Going Over the Legendaries
Author:
Posted on: 2022-09-15 18:06:25 UTC
So, as you can probably tell, I’m fascinated by badfic, especially the Legendaries. However, some of them...are simply not Legendary. In this thread, I’ll go over each fic (though of course, I won’t read them all. I’m not that insane!) and evaluate whether it really is Legendary. And then we can discuss stuff. Yay.
—Ls
Not to rain on your parade or anything, but I don't think this needs to happen. Things like Cluny The Scourge and Cupcakes and Celebrian and all the rest (personally I would add Dipper Goes To Taco Bell if it's not there already) are, in my view at least, capital-L Legendary because of the impact they had on their respective fandoms as well as the internet at large. People say "The Internet never forgets" but it sure as dammit has a minuscule attention span, and the criteria used for determining Legendary status in the old thread kinda missed that out in my opinion, especially in the case of fics from older fandoms that have gone a bit more dormant - one example being Redwall. I agree there should be guidelines for what a Legendary is, but they should be flexible, and other older Legendaries that might not meet a calcified stricter definition should be considered "grandfathered in", for want of a better term.
In the end, it doesn't really amount to much whether a piece of fanfiction is a PPC-Certified Legendary Badfic or not. The weird fifteen-year-old troll that wrote My Immortal is not going to give a hoot about whether or not some fandom goobers think it's a mythical example of badness or not. We are not the arbiters of what does and does not matter to a fandom because we are a fandom; a fandom for a fanfic in which we engage with and expand the universe, sure, but we're still just fans of Jay and Acacia's writing. What we do is create a shared universe centred around a horrible workplace environment involving good-faith criticism of badly-written stories. We are not important to those fandoms and frankly nor should we be. It's only for us. It therefore has to be a community issue, because it's only for us. If people thought this was something that needed addressing, they'd have chimed in by now.
And they haven't.
Do with that information what you please.
We've been over the subject of how to determine new Legendaries many times. We don't need to do it again right now. We especially don't need to invalidate a status granted by the community in the past just because we do things differently now. Grandfathering-in is a thing. Pretty sure the article even says so. Almost as though we didn't want to have protracted debates about it, eh?
~Neshomeh
This is true.
But perhaps we can have a discussion on Cho Chang’s Desires and Lion King Orgy Poem, as you suggested?
—Ls isn’t sure what. he was thinking earlier.
If people want to talk about this, they will. You can't make them. And if the only responses to your thing are people telling you to Not?
Take the hint.
Search results in the past year: 4, by my count. I believe that is a sufficient amount.
Mission: Removed (the only Legendary for which this is true)
And, of course, it is Bad. And, I believe, the oldest Legendary.
Suggestion: Keep as Legendary. (though adding an MST to the wiki page would be nice)
—Ls