GAFF Wank - now complete with Quotes and Sigs and ALL!
Black Pearl asks: Is it okay to give the authors sporked in GAFF a link to the entries where their stories are laughed at?

"Of course", some say. "No!", others argue and bitch. And in between splooge flows...

Some of the jewels quoted in the whole thing...


But as for why I've been tempted: Two reasons.

1. What Hellfire said. Talking to enraged authors and fanfriends can be quite amusing.

2. Some stories are just so horrible, you think that the only reason they will get a clue and remove their dreck from the net is to link them to a thread dissecting their story piece by piece.

This said, I don't link, and I don't think any registered member or seriously posting guest do either - nor most lurkers. I think it's just a few. I could probably count them:

1. The Phantom Linker (who hasn't been around for a while)
2. The Lantom Phinker (who posts broken links, but only resently gave a name)
3. That person who fixed the Lantom Phinker's link over at that HP mpreg story.


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I want to do it because I want to show the authors:

"You are a moron. Here are a lot of smart people showing WHY you are a moron, dissecting your pathetic little story, and exposing your life for the ridiculous sham it is. Go sit in the corner and cry, then take our advice and improve."

And trust me, if The Site Guru ever came down with some kind of hallucinatory fever and passed control over to me, I'd knock that policy down first thing.


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Come on. We can barely handle some of our own members without resorting to wanky flame-wars. If we linked back to every story we did, no one would get any snarking done at the actual story; it would all just be stupid arguments with the authors and the authors' friends. Because if most of the people whose stories we review aren't mature enough to handle concrit, how do you think they'd react to an entire website devoted to mocking them?

Anyway, re: Phantom Linker(s):
Some people are just assholes. I understand the compulsion to want to link when a story is exceptionally bad, but it seems most of us who disagree with the policy nevertheless are able follow it.

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I don't think authors should be linked here, ever. This is the place to point and laugh and say, "What the hell was SHE smoking?" and get all of that out of the way before we write calm, civil reviews.

I know a lot of what we bring here is written by squeeing fangirls who ignore canon and choose to be illiterate ("hey its tha net not english class LOL!!!111), but someone probably worked hard on each story, and it's better to give them concrit as feedback, rather than flames. Otherwise they'll never improve.


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Eh. Authors have every right to come here and to join in the discussion about their fics, but I can't think of any good reasons for giving them a link - what purpose is it going to serve? Snark is not concrit, and they'll likely learn nothing about how to improve their fic (if they even want to) while being yelled at on all sides by indignant and defensive GAFFers. I have no interest in upsetting anyone because they committed the terrible crime of - oh, horror! - not being a great writer, and I'd rather they didn't take their stories down, because then there'd be less funny stuff to snark about.

I'd rather they didn't know. They get the stories they like, I get the snark I like, and everyone's happy.


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Thanos6: IF I linked, I wouldn't do it to be funny, nor to cause "wank." I'd do it to crush some egos and deliver the Net equivalent of a bitchslap.

Miss kitten: But why do you need to do that? How does it help you to crush someone else's ego?

Casteye: You don't think you're getting things a teensy bit out of proportion? They're thirteen-year-olds writing Mary Sues, for heaven's sake. They're not the Hitler Youth.


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Why drag them over here?

Thanos6: I told you. Schadenfreude. Getting them to admit we're right, while nice, is not the only goal. Another is to watch them whimper pathetically and enjoy it.

VampireNaomi: That has to be the most self-righteouss and disgusting thing I have heard in a long, long time.

Miss X: Ok, here's a question: Who says we're right?
It's interesting when you think about it. All of us on here expect fanfiction to follow certain guidelines (i.e. sticking to canon, no Mary Sues, decent spelling and grammar) but who says those guidelines are correct?
Are GAFFers' views of what consitutes good fanfiction 'right'? Or just 'right' when they're expressed here in this context (and in similar fanfic-snarking groups)?
There's no right or wrong in fanfiction. No rules. We're all here because we like to laugh at the fanfics that do break these unwritten codes. Does that make us right and the author wrong? Not really.

Araniell: Who's the 'we' in that sentence? Could ya leave the rest of us out of it please? This board, as far as I'm concerned, is an association of individuals. I signed up to no collective consciousness.

Stardust Rain: So in other words: sadism is your thing? I'm for "whatever floats your boat" but this is ridiculous.
Entertaining ourselves by causing the author pain is *not* what GAFF is. We mock badfics, we mock fangirls, we mock Mary Sues. We do so in secret. While tearing a fic to threads is fun, we don't do it in the author's face just to "bust their ego" They don't *have* an overblown ego to start with. To vent out anger, we leave them a well-thought-out flame. Or Conductive Critisism.
But causing them pain for own enjoyment? *That* is egoism. That incosideration. And, most certainly, it will get us mentioned on fandom_wank.
Also, there's no "we" in this. You. Don't drag us into your shadow, Thanos6.



Somoeone i don'r remember: But causing them pain for own enjoyment? *That* is egoism. That incosideration.

Thanos6: They have caused us pain and inconsideration by writing Godawful Fan Fiction.

The same someone: And, most certainly, it will get us mentioned on fandom_wank.
Thanos 6: I do not care.

Nurvingiel: Hehe, maybe we should put up a sign... "Welcome to GAFF, bring your own stupid."

Catseye: You realise that the rest of us are joking when we talk about sporking our eyes out, yes? And that most of the time, we just think badfic is funny?



Thanos 6:They have caused us pain and inconsideration by writing Godawful Fan Fiction.

Guest: No, YOU caused YOURSELF pain by deliberately seeking out and reading stories you damned well knew you weren't going to like.
The solution to your "pain" is simple. If you don't enjoy reading wretched stories, then don't hang out on the sites where such stories generally appear. Confine your reading to selective archives, and read only fics recommended by people whose judgment you trust.
Authors are under no obligation to write only stories you will approve of, and it is the height of arrogance for you to imply that they are.

Majin Gojira: Care to actually...PROVE that? There are several topics of people saying they stumbled upon these horrors.
Here's a question for your solution: How do we know a story will be bad before we look at it? I've got several examples I can share if pressed, but I know you won't, because you're an anonymous coward.
That way leads only to stagnation, and OTHERS stumbling accross these blasphemies. You're telling us not to look and trust the judgement of other fanfic writers. This is a flawed logic. It causes more problems than it solves.
You obviously have not read the horrors we have encountered.
AOL Kiddie-speak, False-"Scipt" Format, blatant OOC, bad spelling, bad punctuation, nonsensical plots and plot holes
None of these things are qualitative problems, they are QUANTITATIVE. No matter who you ask, they will always be considered Bad form. It's not opinion, little girl. It is fact.
See, here is an example of what I was talking about. I'm all and well for curbstomping idiots like this when they come here under their own power, but not when they are "invited" by us to come in. See, this one asked for and earned her destruction. Invited ones generally don't.

Guest: Which is precisely my point. It is hypocritical in the extreme for Thanos6 to go around deliberately looking for crappy stories to spork, then try to justify his actions by claiming the authors of those stories "caused me pain." Until the day comes when someone puts a gun to Thanos6's head and forces him to read those fics, he's causing his own "suffering." So he shouldn't be trying to claim otherwise.
Don't like crappy stories? Don't read'em. It's as simple as that. If you choose to read them anyway (even if only to spork them), then at least be honest enough to admit that on some level you are enjoying what you're doing, or you wouldn't be doing it.

Majin Gojira:
Looky, an UNSUPPORTED CLAIM. Prove that he goes looking for it. Go on, prove it.
Glad to see you ignore the "accidental discovery" possibility and think that the only way to find a bad fic is the activly look for one. Nice All or Nothing fallacy.
Bull and Shit. As explained above--Twice. My god, it's another variant on the "You're so MEAN!" argument!
Here's a question, what if we admit that we are "Evil", does that change anything we say about the fics? Does it negate their horrible blasphemy? Does it do ANYTHING?
No, it's a Personal Attack. An Ad Hominem Fallacy. In other words, your entire POINT is worthless.


and it pretty much goes downhill from here.