I am thinking of the fine line between "This is badfic" and "This is fic I do not like" and "This is fic by an author I hate a lot/hurt my friend/eats puppies/didn't leave me feedback/killed puppies while leaving feedback to someone else/whatever" and "This is fic that makes me uncomfortable"

I do not like getting into semantic discussions because I tend to either get way, way too deeply involved and then there's blood pressure medications and valium being pushed my way, or I get so annoyed at the uselessness of it all that I throw up my hands and invariably hurt someone when I leave the conversation.

That said, this really, really is a semantic kind of thing. The terms 'badfic' and 'crackfic' are very problematic. Both have a tendency to be used synonymously, which is annoying as they aren't, and different people have slightly different versions of each which can lead to a lot of bad feeling and misinterpretation. Both terms can refer to a variety of different aspects of writing -- characterization, plotting, flat-out skill with words -- and without specifics and a common frame of reference, when someone says 'wow, that was awesome crackfic' what another person hears is 'man, your writing sucks and I just totally invalidated you and I think you eat babies, die, kthnx'.

And yes, I am speaking from wanky, wanky experience.

Does crackfic imply that a story is bad? No, because to me, anyway, crack!fic is when John is a rainbow and Rodney is a unicorn. It's when they turn into penguins and dolphins or Elizabeth suddenly decides that everybody needs to get married right now, yes, including you, I don't care if you're different species, you're marrying! All of those situations are... strange. Even within the confines of a world like Stargate, they're strange. However, they aren't necessarily bad because I have read all of those stories and adored them beyond belief. A good writer will make me forgive a lot of things, particularly if the writer acknowledges it and handwaves and I am so okay with that tactic, because a good writer will get the reader to believe the insanity is possible.

To me, that's crackfic. Badfic is the inability to make that, or even more normal plot lines, work. And even then, it doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the story or that there was no worthwhile payoff for my time reading it, or the writer writing it.

It's all incredibly, incredibly subjective and I wish we had twenty or thirty different words. Because sometimes it's "omg, that was so badly written and nobody was recognizable but I love it and would like to have it's ficcish babies". And sometimes it's "wow, that was really badly written, but I see potential so I am going to be nice because hey, encouraging people makes me feel like I'm a nice person or something" And sometimes it's "I have no idea what crack you were smoking but share now" And sometimes it's "Okay, put down the pipe and please back away from the small furry mammals".

And sometimes it's probably all of that at once. But all we have to use is 'badfic' and 'crackfic' and neither of those truly encompass anything at all, except for unreliable standards of 'this isn't my standard'.