Songfic

A songfic is a fic into which the lyrics of a song are interspersed. They are notoriously bad.

Many songfics have lyrics that have been used for countless of other songfics, such as 'My Immortal' by Evanescence, putting the fics in danger of suffering ficverse fusion. (Oddly enough, Legendary Badfic My Immortal actually has very little to do with the song of the same name.)

Possibly among the most aggravating are the ones that use a song and get the lyrics wrong. If the song in question is one the assigned agent likes, bloodshed is likely to follow, or at least a lot of twitching and sobbing. If the song in question is one the assigned agent hates, the results are, oddly enough, very similar. Some authors often edit out names or locations in a song and replace them with ones from canon, or worse, their own story.

The phenomenon of songfic is most likely due to the large numbers of careless young girls that write fanfic&mdash;very rarely is a songfic written by a male found. For many adolescent girls, surface image, culture, and specific subculture are very important to their identity, and part of that complex is the music they listen to. Thus, they're more likely to have an emotional attachment to a specific song, music genre, or artist, and more likely to get a Plot Bunny inspired by some song they know. And it takes a fangirl to actually include the copyrighted song in the resulting fic itself.

Songfics likely exist for the same reason that many Mary Sues suddenly begin singing songs the author likes or knows. It follows a very Pepper-Jack Cheese logic: If I like these two things, they must obviously go together.

Glopsnerch earmuffs are highly recommended.