The Good, the Bad, and the Helpful

It's happened to all of us who read "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" fan fiction, and even to many who write it.... you read a story, or a line, or a paragraph in an otherwise well-written story, that makes you say "Ouch! No way!"

Maybe you wish there was a helpful site for fan fiction authors, maybe some kind of writers' alliance that you could suggest to this particular author, so that s/he could get some assistance with grammar, spelling, characterization, plot, the specifics of past Buffy and Angel episodes or the mechanics of human plumbing.

In most cases, you then forget it, and move on.

And then comes BadBuffy.

The folks at BadBuffy announced their mission as follows: "Ever come across a story that made you cry in pain? That had horrible grammar and spelling? That had painful characterization? That had an impossible sex scene? Or, was just plain bad? We have. All too often. Hence this site, where we'll bring to light the worst out there. You want bad Buffy fic? We got it here."

There's nothing inherently wrong with fan fiction reviews, of course, and reviews aren't always going to be positive. Critics of all genres, whether of movies, television shows, or fan fiction, tend to give the old "thumbs down" more often than "thumbs up." There's nothing new there.

So why the controversy over BadBuffy? Why was a site called "AntiBadBuffy" created to complain about the "BadBuffy" site? Why are fan fiction authors so upset? After all, the illustrations of what not to do in writing fan fiction are intended to be educational and entertaining, right?

Perhaps the problem is that the BadBuffy fan fiction reviews appear to be not so much about the stories themselves, as about their authors. Many of the reviews at the BadBuffy site read more like personal attacks on individual writers than criticism of a particular work of fan fiction.

The BadBuffy site managers, who prefer to remain anonymous, state: "The Bad Buffy site is about fanfiction. It's not life and death. We at Bad Buffy are protected under the First Amendment, and are not violating any copyright laws. As human beings, we are entitled to our own opinions, and we reserve the right to share those opinions at will. We firmly believe that the people at AntiBadBuffy need to grow up. When you push aside all the legal jargon, all they are left with is 'We don't like you because you're mean.' That's not a reason to start a major campaign. The AntiBadBuffy are overreacting because they can't handle an opinion that's different from their own. We've chosen to ignore them from this point on."

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