Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related You Know You're an Evil Writer when...

Final Brainstorming List for Evil Writer - top ten

I'll be posting a poll to narrow these down to a top ten list, but here's what we've got so far:

You know you're an Evil Writer when...

1) You love to torture your characters.
or should this be: "You torture your characters for fun." ??

2) Plot twists and cliffhangers make you chortle with glee.
(I've changed laugh to chortle, hope nobody minds)

3) Your goal is to make your readers cry.

4) You love making your readers lose sleep while they stay up reading your latest installment.

5) Every road your characters find to true love, happiness, or even a simple kiss is filled with potholes, guided missiles, and/or mutant frogs.
(I never heard back from Iolanthe about this edit, but I hope it's okay, if long-winded)

6) Your characters slip on the obvious banana peel.

EDIT: Alt-6) Your characters tend to slip on the proverbial banana peel.

7) You exploit your hero's fatal flaw merely because it's a Tuesday.

8) Angst is your best friend.

9) You know you're an evil writer when readers suggest a) your story belongs in some other Superman-related fandom (like Smallville) or b) your story should be on some other site because it doesn't end with happily-ever-after.

(BTW, Terry, you must have missed Queenie's Bizarro WHAM Fic Challenge encouraging people kill off our favorite characters.) To keep this generic to fanfic in general, do you mind if I edit this to...

EDIT: Alt-9) When readers suggest that your story belongs in some other (darker) fandom because it doesn't end with a happily-ever-after.

10) Your story's villains make the Axis of Evil look like a teddy bear picnic.

11) You hear a maniacal cackling whenever you're writing, and realize it's coming from you.

12) You find yourself constantly using multiple content warnings. In the same story.

13) Your idea of making something suitable for all ages is to take out the 3rd torture scene, the gorier death scene, and that scene with the jello.

14) People who read your fan-fiction ask why you clearly hate the show so much.

15) Your fics are not assigned a rating since the mods feel your by-line is warning enough.

16) Your favorite kind of feedback is the kind where the readers threaten you and/or cry.

17) We have to keep reminding people that Evil Writers aren't evil in Real Life, only in fiction.

***

If I could get final feedback on these nominations, in regards to tightening them up and grammar checks, I'd appreciate it. Also, please let me know if I've missed any. Thanks!

18) Every chapter ends in a cliffhanger.

19) You leave your characters dangling at the end of a chapter ... and don't return to save them - for weeks.

Hey Virginia

I didn't see any grammar issues

As to some of the questions...

--chortle is great...gives it more personality

--my first thought is 'proverbial'--the sentence seems to flow better, but that's just IMO

Going to be hard to narrow this list down--lots of great ones!

Laura

Thanks, Laura. Ooops. I forgot to remove "self" from that one. I agree it sounds better, but just wasn't sure if "Proverbial" worked there, definition wise. I figured some of our wordsmiths would let me know.

The Top Ten things that let you know that you're an evil writer:

10. Your goal is to make your readers cry.

9. Your fics are not assigned a rating since the mods feel your by-line is warning enough.

8. You love making your readers lose sleep while they stay up reading your latest installment.

7. You find yourself constantly using multiple content warnings. In the same story.

6. Plot twists and cliffhangers make you chortle with glee.

5. You have to keep reminding people that Evil Writers aren't evil in Real Life, only in fiction.

4. You hear a maniacal cackling whenever you're writing, and realize it's coming from you.

3. Your favorite kind of feedback is the kind where the readers threaten you and/or cry.

2. Angst is your best friend.

1. You exploit your hero's fatal flaw merely because it's a Tuesday.

In other words, Every road your characters find to true love, happiness, or even a simple kiss is filled with potholes, guided missiles, and/or mutant frogs just because YOU LOVE TO TORTURE YOUR CHARACTERS FOR FUN!


Okay, technically, I guess that's 13, but "top ten" sounds better. Anyway, real evil writers break the rules.

***

Many thanks to: Laura (LMA), Queen of Capes, Deadly Chakram, Lynn S.M., Wendy, IolantheAlias, Female Hawk, Terry Leatherwood, Colleen, KatherineKent, and all the other Evil Writers out there who keep us coming back for more.

Hey. Since when did I become an Evil Writer? I thought I was nice!!!

Although... I do have a propensity for cliffhangers, which you will all start to see when I post my longer stories.

Love the end result. Turned out great!

Laura

<insert pop-culture phenomenon here> thing.

OTOH, it does also work for LnC Michael

Apparently, you didn't read this one, KK:
My special thanks were for the contributors (or inspiration for) the list.

I remember them well from your pirate story. Looking forward to "The Wedding Pact".

What? Me -- an evil writer? No, never. (Well, hardly ever*.)

Joy,
Lynn

* With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Lynn S. M.:
<strong> What? Me -- an evil writer? No, never. (Well, hardly ever*.)

Thanks for remembering that story, Virginia. I'll admit to a handful of WHAMmy stories, but the preponderance is, if not exactly WAFFy, at least FLUFFy*. Hence the "hardly ever." Well, that and I must admit to being a fan of G&S. (See, I won't mention anything specific of theirs, or quote or paraphrase any more of their lyrics here, because to do so after you asked me not to would be evil. )

Joy,
Lynn

*FLUFF = Fun, Light, Upbeat, Feel-good Fluff (or "FLUFF," if you like recursive acronyms)

What? You're calling me an evil writer? Really? But why?

Wendy

Aren't you the one who wrote all those stories with Tank?

Umm... Wendy was the one who fixed most of the evilness in those stories

Then again, she once made it so that Lois only had 24 hours left to live.

LOIS: and not the good kind of 24 hours poison.

She also caused a rift between Lois and Clark that was enough to separate them for months, and made Lois hate Clark and stuff. Might even have accused him of sexual deviancy. Faux pas was actually one of the first fics I read after I read the 5th and 6th season. Come to think of it, that might also explain certain evil tendencies...

Michael

He puts on his asbestos long johns...

I guess I am in the minority here but I just saw a post by Drew Magary in the GQ Mag site( Drew Magary ) which just about covered my view on rape scenes it is talking about Game of Thrones but it applies here sometimes.

I did obfuscate the curse word there. I do find it odd the people that don't like to see cursing in the stories have no problem with rape and torture. I can certainly see that sometimes the torture and rape is paramount to the story but in general I don't like it and try not read it.

But as I said in the opening, I am probably in the minority here...

Mike

I might be in the vast minority here, but my tolerate for rape scenes depends entirely on he story. If it's just in there for shock value, I have zero tolerance for it. But, if the story depends on a rape scene, then I have a lot more tolerance for it.

For example, in my NFic, Broken, Clark was raped repeatedly while in a foster home (I didn't show it happening, but I did have him tell Lois about his experiences) and it left him "broken" as in unable to perform, sexually, once he's dating Lois.

The Game of Thrones scene in question was icky, I'll admit. But I never got the feeling that it was completely consensual in books either. (I read it about a year ago while trying to also devour birth/pregnancy books, so things got a little jumbled in my mind.)

I was just using the Game of Thrones deal because the article used it as a reference since it is so popular currently. I personally have never watched it and probably never will.

I am developing little tolerance for the rape issue even if it is paramount to the story. It is one of the reasons I have never read Broken (sorry). I read What Makes a Man by StopQuitDont (who I normally love) and I could not wait to get that story out of my head. I can read them but I feel empty/dirty at the end. I just recently did read In A Dark Time by Becky Bain and while I found the story worth the read I still did not feel good upon the end even though she (Becky) made a huge effort to get to end on an up note. I tend to agree with the great Nan Smith that she reads these stories to escape and the feel good at the end. I feel the same way so I try to make it a policy to avoid them if at all possible.

The main problem is how to determine if the story will contain a rape scene. One problem is that nobody has posted to the WHAM thread on the main site in years and while WHAM in general does not bother me, in fact most of the time I really like it, I just don't think I want to read through any more Lois rape scenes. I actually prefer to read WAFFY stories personally as I believe to core of the series was the love affair between the two main characters even before they (Lois actually) were willing to admit it hence the name of the series. The problem is how to let the reader know what is coming without giving away the entire store line. Most writers post major WHAM warnings and those cases I scan the story to determine what sort of WHAM it is and to me the type of WHAM is important. Some writers are better about it and many indicate the torture side but rarely do I see a rape warning. We all know that danger and injury are part of the story of Lois and Clark but just bothered me to see the celebration of the ability to create a well written torture and rape scene which a number of the posts on this thread seem to be celebrating.

Heck my wife is a big Criminal Minds (sometimes referred to a torture porn) but I rarely can stand to watch more than a few minutes of it so we rarely watch TV together.

I tend to actually like to read WAFFY stories personally as I believe to core of the series was the love affair between the two core characters even before they (Lois actually) were willing to admit it. On the other hand I really liked Pam Jerigan's Fate Worse Than Death and one of my favorite stories is Shelia Harper's Shot in the Dark so don't get the idea that I am totally anti-Angst. And Angst does not have to involve rape and physical torture. I could list a hundred stories where our favorite couple get put into situations that test them and allow them to overcome the tests but to me that does not require rape or physical torture.

The problem is that I have no real solution to my issue but thought this thread might be a good place to voice this issue and discuss. I like to believe I have an open mind and I have tried not to be too critical here and don't truly mean to be a downer but I felt like the other side should be heard although I may one of the few on this side.

Boy I did not mean to make this such a long post but I tried to craft the response to hopefully better state my position without p*ssing off a bunch of really good writers and people.

Thanks for listening


Mike

Hmmm.

I haven't read or posted fic here for a long time, but I am surprised if there really is a tendency not to warn for things such as rape or sexual assault. It's not about 'spoiling the story', or 'protecting' people; it's that, as I've learned elsewhere around the internet, people who have lived through rape and assault can find these kind of stories triggery, and they prefer to know in advance that a story contains a scene or scenes like that so that they can avoid them.

If people don't want to be explicit about the specific nature of the scene or scenes in their fic because they don't want to give spoilers, why not include a statement at the start along the lines of Contains elements which may be triggery for some. Please IM me if you're concerned and want to know more.


Wendy

I completely agree! I very grateful not to have any personal experience with sexual assault or rape, but I have too many friends who have. The "triggering" we're talking about here is triggering PTSD. It's not a matter of "I don't wanna hear or read about it." It's much, much more serious.

Personally, I've read a few stories with rape in them that I thought were ... important to the story and done "well" (whatever that means). My acceptance of it depends on how it's done. It's definitely not my preference to read these kinds of stories. And, thankfully, I'm not triggered by them.

I'd hate to think that anyone with PTSD would deem these boards an unsafe place.

Sara