Revenge Fic

"That's it. Two can play at this extremely nerdy game!"
—Strong Bad
"And that's why I like ALL them Star Tracks!"...said Strong Sad, an entire bag of Twizzlers falling out of his mouth."
—Strong Bad

When the writer has a chip on his shoulder for whatever reason, and inflicts misery on a character perceived to deserve it. Often occurs when the character's role is incidental and the writer really just has a problem with the distinct personality type, or if the character is in the way of the writer's pairing of choice. Another name for it is Anti Fic, although this term implies a degree of clever and biting satire. This type of fic is more commonly referred to as Bashing Fic.

In some circles (such as the Anime Fan Fiction Mailing List), a Revenge Fic can also be about characters stepping out of the fictional realm to inflict some kind of revenge on the fanfiction author for the things he or she made them do. This can be a variety of Meta Fic, and somewhat impinges on and overlaps with the conceit of Animated Actors.

If this is done by the original author, it might be Derailing Love Interests or a form of Creator Backlash. Can be closely allied to Die for Our Ship or Oh Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us.

If it's for an entire series rather than a single character, it's a Hate Fic.

Examples of Revenge Fic include:

Anime and Manga

  • This often happened to Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion, possibly because the authors saw too much of themselves in him. Of course, since he's from Evangelion, Canon wasn't especially nice to him either, but still...
    • Those who don't hate Shinji will often take their rage out on his dad. There are a number of stories that involve Gendo being brutally murdered or at least humiliated for treating his son like dirt.
  • Naruto:
    • A lot of fics seem to revolve around Naruto getting revenge for his initial status as Butt Monkey in the first couple of arcs. Even though things improve for him later on in the series, some angry Fans cannot seem to let go...
    • Setting the filter to Sasuke and searching the term Bashing on Fanfiction.net gives you seven pages worth of character demolition, "hilarious" pranks, and terrible grammar. They tend to give him a characterization of heartless monster, misogynist, impotent, trigger happy, cowardly, backstabbing, whiney emo bastard. The Kicker? Itachi was often put as a good guy/love interest at the same time, before there was even a speck of redemption for the character or any alternative interpretation whatsoever. Right after he brutally beat and tortured two protagonists, there was a flashback of the Uchiha Massacre and tried to capture/mutilate Naruto. And there are Flame Wars by many who state that this is canon.
    • Sakura is attacked without mercy. Just about every character in Naruto has been subject to a Hate-Fic, but not as many as Sakura.
    • Many authors love to add to Naruto's backstory a history of open, often murderous, physical abuse by the people of Konoha. In addition to all the revenge necessary against the village as a whole, this often results in a Plot Tumor in which all the people who should be responsible for keeping an eye on Naruto—the 3rd Hokage, Kakashi, and Jiraiya—are called out as incompetent, cowardly, or callous.
      • Kakashi also gets a lot of malice for perceived favoritism towards Sasuke over Naruto.
  • There is a fic in which Syaoran from Cardcaptor Sakura grew up to be a wife beater, and Tomoyo called in a favor from her mother to have him killed in a hit-and-run. Given how incredibly reviled he is in the shoujo-ai community surrounding the series, due to the perception that he's a poor match for Sakura and edged out the more deserving Tomoyo as her Significant Other, It is surprising that there isn't more about. Since his personality was good enough to land him a role in an Alternate Universe show, more level-headed fans admit the dislike is less about his personality than his use in the story. (Although since said show is Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, an increasingly dark series with more and more implausible Soap Opera drama, there might be some sadism involved...)
    • At the height of Eriol/Tomoyo's popularity, it was not uncommon to find fics where Kaho, Eriol's official Love Interest was put through a Humiliation Conga that only started with Eriol dumping her for Tomoyo amid cheers from the rest of the cast. One particularly ridiculous fic gave the "justification" for all the torture that Kaho was too tall for Eriol. Yes, a woman being taller than her boyfriend apparently makes it all right for everyone to abandon her when she's kidnapped.
  • The second variety was both named and typified by the Revenge Wars which flooded the Anime Fan Fiction Mailing List in response to and in the wake of Scott "SKJAM!" Jamison's story Sauce.
  • There are two really bad Kimagure Orange Road fanfics that are infamous in the fandom for this. The first one is a Yaoi Lemon where Yuusaku rapes Kyousuke for dumping Hikaru and getting together with Madoka, and the other is the infamous Revenge Road where Hikaru goes completely psychotic after the events of the Shin Kimagure movie, murders Madoka by shooting her in the head and then tortures Kyosuke to death by slowly slitting his throat.
  • In the G Gundam fandom, a certain revenge fic was once written to "counter" or "parody" the George x Chibodee yaoi fanfiction by showing how bad they'd get along if they had to move in together. The fans "loved" it, but technically... it' didn't work as well as intended.
  • Sailor Moon fanfics where Sailor Mars and Tuxedo Mask betray Sailor Moon, pair up and declare their collective hate for her was/are depressingly common. This seems to be more common with fics based on the Macekre dub than the original, which made Raye and Darien much more harsh than Rei and Mamoru. But ones based on the original do exist too.
  • Ranma ½ has this going on big time. The two most notable subjects, particularly in the sheer vehemence of what they suffer when one of these gets going, are Akane Tendo and Ryoga Hibiki. The latter even has an underground ring of fanfics where he ends up either permanently trapped in his cursed form and sent to a farm, or just butchered and eaten.
  • The Tenchi Muyo! fandom has what is called AHRL and ALRH fans - short for "Ayeka-Hating, Ryoko-Loving" and "Ayeka-Loving, Ryoko-Hating" - whose fics tend to turn one girl into a raving bitch and another a virtual saint as they win Tenchi's heart.

Comic Books

Film

  • The Lord of the Rings movies triggered a series of fanfics portraying Arwen Evenstar as a vindictive, vicious, shrieking harpy who seduced Aragorn so she could become Queen of Gondor. This is generally perceived as an expression of resentment over Arwen's having "stolen" Aragorn from his true love Éowyn, his real true love Legolas, or his real real true love, Marisuthiel.
    • And then there were the ones written by the people who were upset about her stealing Glorfindel's role from the books.
  • The many ways that Jar Jar Binks dies and/or is tortured horribly in many Star Wars fanfics as a form of revenge for being, well, Jar Jar.

Literature

  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle getting sick of Sherlock Holmes and throwing him off Reichenbach Falls probably counts, even though the death didn't stick. So this is Older Than Radio.
  • Another example might be Ian Fleming getting sick of James Bond and killing him off at the end of the novel From Russia With Love; however, the book was so well written and so much interest generated in the character that this death didn't stick, either. It was never planned that way anyway. He'd already written Dr. No.
  • Another Older Than Radio example is Garrett P. Serviss' 1898 unauthorized sequel to H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds, Edison's Conquest of Mars. In this novel Thomas Edison reverse engineers the Martian technology,combines it with a few inventions of his own to build a giant space fleet, and proceeds to fly to Mars with a huge army and beat the living crap out of the Martians with ludicrous ease. The entire book seems dedicated to inflicting as much pain on the Martians as possible, although the characters relent slightly near the end. Due to the lax copyright laws of the time period Serviss had no legal problems serializing or publishing the novel. H. G. Wells did not approve of the book. Thomas Edison did.
  • Doctor Who Expanded Universe writer Lance Parkin once posted one of these to Outpost Gallifrey about a character everyone probably knew he hated anyway, seeing as he turned into a Designated Monkey whenever Parkin wrote him. Yeah, man, way to show that fictional character, spending your precious time writing two novels costarring him, nursing a grudge for two years, and writing a little story about him getting hurt in a nasty way. You sure showed him! Ha ha, not.
  • The War Against the Chtorr novel "A Rage for Revenge" has a lengthy section detailing the Humiliation Conga inflicted on a producer who ripped off his writer. Author David Gerrold thinks that anyone who pisses off a writer is just asking for trouble. "How many stories have you read that are basically about revenge?"
  • Tread carefully here, for some shipping wars never die, but merely sleep in their house at R'Lyeh until the stars align. As the canon pairings in Harry Potter became apparent, shippers for other couples (most famously, Harry/Hermione) started making massive numbers of Revenge Fics targeting anyone in the way of said preferred couples - the most popular targets being Ginny Weasley, and a certain inadvertently Trope-Naming sibling of hers.
    • Molly also gets it on occasion, frequently as the mastermind (or at least the potion dealer) behind her kids' "trangressions". In fact, with a fanfic community of that size, nobody is safe...
    • In This World and the Next is a Revenge Fic for all the Weasleys, as well as Dumbledore, Snape, the Dursleys and almost everyone else who's not Harry or Hermione.

Live-Action TV

Multiple Fandoms

  • Pretty much the entire point of the Whack a Sue LiveJournal community is to call characters Mary Sues and kill them.
  • Netorare is Rule 34 way of responding to spineless harem males so some claim.
    • Not much of a stretch, considering the definition of Netorare is more or less "Sex with the faithful man rendered helpless to stop" in some way, via drugs, bondage or even taunting them victim though photos...

Video Games

Web Animation

Web Original

  • While fic torturing The Nostalgia Critic is likely the most popular genre in the TGWTG fanfic fandom, at least it's done with love and keeps the boy in-character. Not the case for "Beer Enema", which stars a Complete Monster second-person narrator mutilating a shell-like Critic whose only personality is being a Pretty Boy with no spine.

Western Animation

  • There's a Phineas and Ferb fan fiction writer called "Blackspiderman". A long time ago, he hated Candace. And almost every single thing he wrote had Candace going through all this shit and sometimes some characters will go OOC to rage about her and her busting obsession. Yes. But now, he likes her, and has stopped writing revenge fics. and now he even considers them his Old Shame
  • The Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom is rife with irate shippers. If you've ever gone browsing for fic, you have found bash-fics for any character you can think of, but predominantly Aang and Mai (usually because both characters get in the way of Zuko and Katara being together). No exceptions.
  • It's not uncommon to see Family Guy fanfics in which Quagmire is either beaten up by Peter, Stewie or anybody else for hating Brian.
  • One King of the Hill fanfic by Joey Joe Joe Jr. Shabadu had Peggy, Lucky and John Redcorn going OOC to torture Hank because of his narrow urethra.
  • The Legend of Korra flash-fic You Killed Me is an unabashed one against Zaheer. (Whether or not villains have it coming is likely a separate discussion.)
  • The Celebrity Deathmatch fan-fic, Final Stand of Death, has some of Marilyn Manson's fallen victims coming back for one more battle with him and his group. Manson pretty much accepted this fate. It's mixed with traditional and Script Fic which gives out clues or even spoilers are who the army after Manson was once was.
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