Okay, we've all seen heaps and heaps of what we'd define as badfic, but in your opinion what is the worst badfic sin?

1. Mary Sues
2. Incoherence
3. Invented words
4. Bad spelling
5. Tense confusion
6. Thesaurus abuse
7. IKEA sex
8. Squicky concepts
9. Biological impossibilities
10. OOCness

Add your own to this list and discuss. I vote for incoherence.

Bad spelling always irks me. You have a spell checker--use it! And then get a beta reader to make sure the spell checker didn't auto-correct to something that makes no sense in the context of the sentence. A few typos here and there are one thing, but when not one word in a sentence is spelled or used correctly, I hit the Back button.

Ignoring canon is another thing I can't stand. I'm not talking about ignorance of canon, although if you're not sure on the details you can look it up or ask someone.
I'm talking about those fanbrats who decide, "I didn't like that Character X died, so it never happened. And this, this, and this that I didn't like didn't happen either, even though they're important plot points."

Immaturity. Specifically, writing more immaturely than the author of the source material. If you're a shallow bitch, then chances are I won't be able to sit through anything you write.

As I discussed in the 'Genericisation' thread, I think the worst badfic* sin is taking an awesome canon and turning it into something terminally dull, mundane and/or stupid. An author can deviate from canon a lot and still produce something good if they know that they're doing it and why, but that's quite different from throwing away everything that made it good in the name of imposing a hackneyed, wafer-thin set of tropes on it because they can't conceive of any other way of writing a story or interpreting the original. This can take a lot of different forms, e.g.:

-Reducing a complex relationship in canon down to "they wanna do it LOLOLOL!" (This comes up a lot with slash pairings, but can of course happen with het ones as well.)
-Crappy AUs that shoe-horn the canon characters into some incredibly overused and simplistic plotline that doesn't suit them at all.
-Assuming that the story would be better if the characters never made mistakes and everything they did went perfectly, which completely misses the point of things like conflict and dramatic tension.

*Some stuff in badfic is actually worse, generally the kind of things that make the reader want to call the police (cf Agony in Pink, etc.), but that sort of stuff is a more general issue rather than a problem with bad fanfic or even bad fiction specifically.

Of that list, incoherence. There's nothing worse than reading a story only to lose track of who's doing what to who, and where, because the author has no grasp of grammar, time, or basic description. But that's more of a general writing sin.

Bashing is something I find particularly unforgiveable. If you don't like a character, either lean heavily on the viewpoint of a character who also doesn't like them or just leave them off the page as much as possible. Additionally, gradual descents into the mouth of badfic madness. So many fics start out untroubled by bashing, OOC, and implausible plot points, and then the author either gives up trying or their muse stops taking its meds.

For me, it's massive OOCness. I read fanfiction to see my favourite characters having new adventures or discover something new about themselves, and the enjoyment is completely lost if they don't act like themselves. I can give some leeway when characters are forced to go through extreme situations, but even then I expect them to somehow resemble their canon selves.

I don't mind if characters change in the course of the story, as long as it's backed up with believable plot and character development. There is nothing I love more than a well-written redemption fic for a villain. It's a double-edged sword because while there are some magnificent fics out there, most of this type of stories are so wangsty and OOC that it's nearly physically painful to read them.

For me it’s canon abuse. It isn’t just there to shoot things with...

To take a recent example, in my sporking of Quantum Guyver, I wouldn’t have so much of a problem of it being a 4th guyver fic if there was an actual reason for the 4th Guyver to exist. But that author not only has three super-speshul guyver units just drop out of nowhere, but has two of them found and equipped by people off-scene... Shortly before introducing another ‘Relic’, a second abandoned Creator spacecraft when the source material makes it clear that the Creators all left earth together, and pretty sharpish.

Granted there was no real explanation as to why the one remaing relic was still there, but at least the characters in the world activly discuss that. Quantum Guyver just stumbles accross it, and Chronos (Who shuold be swarming over the thing like Christians over Noah's Ark) kinda just goes: "Oh, look! Here's a nother one... That's nice...". The implications of it are never mentioned.

There is a difference between bending canon and utterly breaking it.

Bad spelling and lousy grammar are my pet hates.

Mary Sues are subjective, and IKEA sex may be dull but it suits all occasions, and canon abuse is what fanfiction is ABOUT...

But you've got a spellchecker RIGHT THERE in your damn Windows Word program. Hell, you can turn it on and have little red lines under all your damn mistakes! And you've got two eyes - why can't you give your fic a quick read-through?

And for GOD'S SAKE, PLEASE get your tenses right!

Even a really great plot can be totally fuckaroonied up when you can't spell.

Agreed about the spelling and grammar. Nothing pulls me out of a story faster than an author who can't spell the characters' names (excepting where there is no agreed spelling) correctly, or who can't tell when to use objective or nominative cases of pronouns.

And though tense changes can be pulled off by more experience writers, it usually is a very bad idea and makes me want to hurt someone with a shovel.

It's spelling and grammar for me as well. I can let minor typos slide, but all too often WgWer's stumble across fanfictions that are so poorly written that it's difficult to tell what's going on (never mind getting engaged in the story).

I read fanfiction in order to expand upon the characters and concepts of a series I already enjoy... and in some cases AU fanfictions can provide some very interesting insights into the canon. However as it has already been pointed out, there is a fine line between "exploring some concepts not dealt with explicitly in canon" and "completely disregarding and multilating canon."

Excluding spelling/grammar, my biggest pet peeve is poorly written romance. I enjoy a good romance as well as the next individual, but in terms of fanfiction "romance" is typically synonomous with--

+ character bashing
+ OOCness
+ woobification
+ oversimplification of complicated relationships
+ IKEA sex

and many other badfic sins.

A while ago I found a WoW fanfic where the author had killed off all the races' leaders and replaced them with herself (as a Mary Sue of classic proportions) and what was presumably her guildmates - as indicated by such fine names as Sabreddwarf, King of the Dwarves, and Commander Deathdog of the Night Elven hunters. I don't think I've ever seen the likes of that.

I dislike it when people take character from an awesome world and transplant them into something mundane.

Say that there is this Japanese anime called Robot Shark Attack Nisangaged Good Show!!! where a group of spunky teenage robot pilots fight robo shark-men that want to take over all of Japan. The leader is a boy who is half monkey/half human, immortal and comes from a distant future where giant roaches rule the world. The lancer is a llama and the chick is an elven princess from Germany. Now let's say a fanbrat came along and placed them into a generic high school setting.

Wouldn't that make you steam?

Also that whole seme/uke bullshit.

How about...

When people spell character's names wrong.

In The Lion King, people are constantly spelling it Bansai and Edd.

You're supposed to be a fucking FAN! For fuck's sake, what is up with a fan when they can't even spell the names of the characters in their fandom?!

My biggest pet peeve is when authors are writing in a fandom that is at least nominally set in the real world and they can't get well-known, easy-to-find details right.

Isn't it just wonderful to read a fanfic and find out that World War I never happened? Or Columbus discovered the New World in 1482? Or Benjamin Franklin fought in the French Revolution? How about deep snow in Los Angeles every winter? How about sugarcane plantations in Wisconsin? How about someone writing an interpretation of a story for English class (aka assigned fanfic) asking, "Who's the President of the United States?" (and meaning in 2010)?

For me, turning ANY fandom that is not actually set in high school into a high school fanfic will get you a swift kick in the rear. So I'm perfectly fine with Power Ranger's fanfic, because the characters WERE in high school. Not that you saw much of it, but you saw enough to realize they had these secret lives as Superheros, and they probably had to figure out how to get their homework done in between fighting off the latest threat to Earth.

I am NOT fine with turning Torchwood into a high school fanfic. Partially because everyone on the show(with the exception of Jack, and he only sounds American) is from either the UK or Wales. The school systems there are totally different, they don't operate in the same manner as an American High School would (I'm fairly sure they don't have Proms), and you graduate when you're 16. More to the point, I watch Torchwood because I want to see Torchwood 3 in action doing what Torchwood 3 does best-fighting aliens and dealing with the Rift. I don't want to see Owen and Toshiko as teenagers engaged in a soppy romance (I doubt Owen engaged in soppy romances when he was a teenager anyway-it's pretty well shown the only two women he ever loved were Katie and Diane). I can't even imagine Captain Jack Harkness as an American teenager. I might be able to imagine Ianto Jones as a Welsh teenager, but I don't want to.

And this goes doubly for Dr. Who. Any story that takes the Doctor and turns him into an ordinary human is missing the point. We watch the show because he's a Time Lord and we want to see him having adventures in time and space! Why is that so hard for some people to grasp?

I think the biggest sin is failing to respect the source material, and a lot of other badfic comes from breaking this rule. If you want to insert a character, fine, but first understand _why_ the existing cast was chosen and how the author used the relationships between them to move the plot. Same deal with AU - the plot is the way it is for a _reason_, and if you're changing that, you'd better have an idea of the author's intent, and be willing to work with the consequences of your change.

On the other hand, bad spelling isn't a sin - it's a crime. *puts on his Spelling Police hat*

But seriously, that leads me to the second biggest sin - failing to respect the audience. If you're writing for yourself, then that's fine, but don't inflict it on the rest of the world. (Especially don't expect everyone to gush over how awesome it is.) The rules of spelling and grammar exist for a reason[1], and that's to foster communication. If you're not communicating ideas to the audience, you're wasting their time and bandwidth. Similarly, people are reading your fanfiction because they're also fans of the canon material. If you're not respecting the source, you're not respecting them, either.

[1] Admittedly, they're rules in the Lu-Tze sense. You can break them, but please _think_ about why you're doing it when you do so.

Something that isn't mentioned in the list, but was discussed at length in another thread about the movie 'Titanic' is when people write historical fanfic and can't be bothered to actually do any research on what life back then was like. As was mentioned, there were Titanic fanfics with Rose wearing miniskirts, she and Jack kissing in public and nobody commenting, her getting pregnant with Jack's baby, and everyone congratulating the happy couple, etc. I suppose it never occurs to most of the young teen girls who write this crap that there was a time when the world wasn't like it is now, when the rich didn't have anything to do with 'the lower classes' unless they needed some sort of job done, where your father could tell you who to marry and you WOULD marry them, whether you loved them or not. A time when a girl Rose's age was still very much under her parents control, and if she risked even talking with someone from a lower strata of society, she could get a 'reputation,' and no decent man would want to marry her. I know, it sounds laughable now, but my maternal grandmother came of age in a world like that (she was from a 'lower class' family). Your life and how it would go was pretty much dictated by which strata of society you happened to be born in, and the movie showed that. Apparently, the fantwits were too busy making eyes at Leonardo de Caprio to pay attention

I can kind of accept minor anachronisms--stuff most people won't notice--especially when a lot of times canon plays fast and loose with history. Titantic itself has a glaring example when Dicaprio mentioned a lake that didn't even exist yet in 1912. On the other hand, some anachronisms make me scratch my head, like modern music that came out within a teenage author's lifetime... appearing in a fic set thirty, forty years ago.

Another thing: gratuitous Japanese. If I'm reading a fic in English, I expect it to be, you know, in English. It's narrative inconsistencies like having random words and phrases pop up for absolutely no reason other than to show off an author's ignorance of a foreign language (for rarely does it show a mastery) that really takes me out of a story. Slightly lower on the list are honorifics, which I can sometimes sort of understand but don't use myself.

Back to the original list, squicky concepts can be the worst offender, but it depends on how squicky and what the intent. Like, creepy stalkerish obsession is squicky if it's presented as noble (IE Twilight) but can add a dimension to a character if it's treated realistically.

On the other hand, I don't care how well-plotted your Narina fic is if it prominently features sex between Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.