Discussion 65

[jenybear]

Welcome to another discussion round! It is a pretty straightforward game where I give you a question that you'll answer in a new comment, and I'll give you three random single cards and one special card. Since this is a discussion, don't be shy! Feel free to comment on other player's threads too~

"What is your biggest pet peeve in fanfiction?"
(Example: Usually when there is character bashing of some sort or mary sue characters...and self inserts. Honestly I could write a huge book on what I really hate in fanfiction, but it's always worth searching for to find that one gem).

Have fun everybody! This round ends on February11 2015. You still have one day to answer the last round! CLOSED

Comments

[needles]

This is super petty but I really don't like it when fanfics have improper formatting.

"What do you mean by improper formatting?" Jen asked
"Well," Lita replied, "when the fic starts out being single spaced..."

"And then jumps down to double spaced."







"Or sometimes there's even bigger gaps between each line!"

I dunno if it's a problem with an author's writing program or what, but if I see something like that I instantly hit the back button. It's almost impossible for me to read.

[jenybear]

YES to this! So much yes. I seriously cannot deal with authors who can't format properly. I do not want to read an entire story that is in one solid paragraph or bolded.



I mean



Who really


wants to read



with so much space between


sentences

[beezebeora]

:'D I have a lot oh my god. Let the record show though, I only read one type of fanfiction, for only one couple, from only one series. Because idk I just never really read any other ones. My biggest peeve though, is when in a Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic, there is bashing of female characters. Litterally, about 80% of them make Anzu or Mai to be these horrible horrible people. Why? so that there is no reason for the main characters to be friends with females. It always happens in the BL fics, but its just so OOC and weird. Like, they make them either really stupid, insensitive, or jerks to characters that are otherwise there friends, and its only so one character can go 'Oh man, Everyone hates Anzu, she is the class b***". Doesn't contribute to the story or anything, but its easier to have your guys BL it up and then make the remaining female characters horrible, instead of writing them well enough, or shit, just not writing them at all. Id rather in a lot of these fics that they were included at all tbh, because of that reason.

I would say thats my biggest peeve. That and, while this isn't a HUGE one, is when fic writers say 'summary is bad, please read the fic inside though its very good' or something, Which I shouldn't say much, Im not much of a writer in the fanfic department, but if you cannot tell me anything about your fic, then I have no reason to actually read it. If your fix is soo good, you should put time and effort into thinking up a summary. You dont sell a book, then on the side go 'Cant discribe it, but its a good book so please just read it.' Thats not how writing works.

[inktrap]

Oh my god, YGO fanfiction are the worst!! I wonder if they actually watched the show. BL fics are ridden with stereotypes that don't match the characters at all (I'm looking at you, Jounouchi).

[beezebeora]

I don't think I have ever seen a FF that portrays him 100% correct :')
iguessyugiohisimpossibletoimitate
A lot of the non BL ones go awole too hahaha but then again, i shouldn't complain 100% of the time, sometimes i like a god bad fic with people OOC.

[inktrap]

I know the feeling... I have my own guilty pleasures as well, but sometimes I wonder if the desire is born out of necessity XD But there's a small number of authors that I consider fairly good. Confiscatethecrown and Septima and Allison Walker are my favorite right now!

[beezebeora]

Are these also YGO FF writers? Regardless, AWalker sounds kind of familiar, but I could be wrong.

[jenybear]

The record has recorded that you only read one fanfiction and is quite proud of your dedication to it. I find authors who character bash super immature on some level. If you don't like the dang characters then kill them off? Don't put them into your story. If you need a villain character use the dang villains! This is especially bad in BL stories because they always bash the girls so the boys end up together. Not all characters in BL should be gay. That is another pet peeve of mine. "All guys are gay, so must pair them up. All girls are gay, they must not date boys." Like common, I get a few couples but not all of them especially in series with so many versatile characters like Yu-Gi-Oh. Heterosexual couples will not destroy your story or morph it into a atomic bomb.

I agree. I avoid summaries that just say summary is bad. If you cannot even tell me a little bit about your own story then you don't deserve me reading it.

[yokatta]

Let's seeee. I hate purple prose with passion. I hate plot devices that become a trope in a fandom when it has nothing to do with canon. Those are the biggest things.

In smaller proportions, I don't like when there's kink and it doesn't seem justified for the character and it just seems like a self-validating thing with characters the writer likes instead of OCs.

[jenybear]

I recently started picking up on purple prose. I don't think it's a pet peeve of mine yet, but I believe it will work its way up the ladder if I keep noticing how bad it can be.

Yes to your plot devices! I've read so many fics where character x is a complete jerk but in cannon he only had like...2 minutes of air time and showed up in two panels of the entire manga. How can the entire fandom jump on board with this character being a jerk. There was not enough time to establish any character traits of this character.

I also understand your kink peeve but I can also see why authors do it. But I guess there is a level to everything.

[netbug009]

AUTHORS NOTES IN THE MIDDLE OF CHAPTERS UGH

DARNIT PEOPLE STOP SABOTAGING YOUR OWN SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF WITH YOUR STUPID LITTLE NOTES THEY AREN'T CLEVER

[jenybear]

Haha agreed! I don't want your opinions/comments ruining my own thoughts and opinions.

[ex_deo48]

when people don't read over their fic one last time checking for grammatical and spelling mistakes... it kills me!
i don't read fanfiction but i have seen excerpts of some and WHAT IS HAPPENING with all these errors!! please don't!!!

also people who write their life story in the author's note. i don't care sorry

[jenybear]

Lots of yup to this one too! Abbreviations also annoy me, I hope nobody actually in life speaks in abbreviations.

Are you sure you don't want my life story in this comment? You know...I was born a long long time ago on-

[chianna]

I hate it so so so much when they make a female character a total fujoshi and drooling over the other characters of the story...

So OoCnes is just a very big now... and bad grammar... a few mistakes okay... but sentences after sentence that just make no sense @_@

[jenybear]

Female characters are always a problem in fanfiction, which I found slightly upsetting because I'm sure a good population of the writers out there is female. You'd think they'd want stronger female characters who didn't squibble over every character.

Grammar and sentence structure is a big reoccurring one.

[akumanomiyu]

I hate it when characters are too much OOC...sometimes I read a fic and think "what!? he/she'll never do this thing!O_O"...then I stop reading. I understand some characters are difficult to get right but some people just write random things that make no sense.
Another things I hate is when I found "always a girl charaA" or "always a boy charaB". Why? If you like a pair and they're male/female, male/male or female/female, it means you like them that way....why change them?? <__<""

[inktrap]

I can only accept gender swapped characters in pairs if both characters are swapped ): Otherwise it just feels like a cheap ploy to suit someone's tastes better.

[jenybear]

OCC is a big turn off for me too. I don't understand the need for it to be honest. But gender swap I'm actually not that turned off from. I think mostly, I'd rather have a gender swapped then an mpreg story. I've read very few well written mpreg's but...most of them I just don't get their logic in the entire thing so I think they'd be better off swapping one for a girl and going about it that way? But I get annoyed when they swap genders and make the new-girl character completely OCC. No. Leave the strong female character in tact.

[omokage]

Too many to count lmao... My worst pet peeve would be references to other series mid fic. I feel like it's the way the author has to say 'Oh, yes I also love this other series so much I just have to include a reference to it in this fic. No reason, I just LOOOOOVE it so much'. Other thing I hate is when the author includes references to other pairings, specially if they are pairings I hate. I also dislike oocness and random headcanons (or headcanons in general) with a passion . Those are the fastest ways to make me close a fic.

On the other hand, something in fics that I love to hate is when writers get all crafty about the way they call characters instead of using their names or pronouns. I have no problem with alternative ways of calling characters as long as they're short, few and related to the character, for example, a title, but when they get all 'the-green-haired-blue-eyed-medium-statured-angelic president of the student council' it's too much fkjshdf. Sometimes I keep reading just to see how ridiculous they can get xD, but after a while I'll close it.

EDIT: Oh and meddlesome OCs (the kind that seem to have a more active role in the story than the actual characters the fic is about) drive me up the wall, specially if they are children.

[jenybear]

Well to the friend of a friend of a friend, who lives in another country and was formerly (and currently) known to me as Dan, I understand all your points! The references are also especially annoying when it comes to pop culture. OCs should always be background fuzz to fill a gap. I feel like they should never have a dominant role.

[kakusei_no_uta]

There are a lot of things that bothers me and must have already been said here by others, which I'm glad I'm not alone on that haha.

As of what comes right at the top of my head right now are Emojis. Why does ANYONE have to put emojis anywhere?? I don't care if it's a dialogue or a descriptive part or whatever, you want to give an image? Do it with words, use some literary resources, do some research in how you could put it. Authors should stop texting their stories.

For example I don't see the need of "And there she was, radiant like moonlight *0*" or "Yeah sure -He said reluctantly -w-U" Like seriously? No.

It's not as common as other things but every time I see it, I swear I cringe.. it's just to awful...

Anyway I'm sure there are other things to say but I don't remember anything else particularly so yeah, I'll leave it to some other player oops!

[jenybear]

...Oksy that's new for me. I have never encountered a story with emojis. But I would close it so fast. Just no. I would cringe and then cry because what has happened to writers

[inktrap]

I'm very opinionated, so when I see something that doesn’t fit my own interpretation of the characters, I hit the close button immediately. TBH, I frequently browse multiple chapters of the story before reading to see if the author has the same opinions as me… I know a whole lot of it ventures in headcanon territory (even my own ideas), but when the author doesn’t make the effort to explain why they believe the character behaves the way they wrote, I hate it. I have a few guilty pleasures, of course, but generally when something doesn’t suit my personal tastes (or the idea the fandom has in general), I can’t bring myself to read it because it feels OOC. I love romantic stuff and the likes, so usually there’s no canon ground for correct interpretation of the characters, but… some people don’t even try!

I’m also brazilian, so when I see someone with an English worse than my own, I usually ragequit. English is your mother tongue! Don’t you dare to get it more wrong than a latino woman! They’re/their/there errors are unnaceptable.

[jenybear]

Yes omg. Yes. If the story provides no reason for a character to be acting OCC (and even then sometimes it's still a no) then you should not be writing them in that light. But haha English is my mother tongue and my best friend, who is latina has better grammar and spelling then me. I think growing up in NA, the school systems just let us be lazy whereas she learned all the grammar devices at an older age and could fully understand how to use them.

However, I also agree with you on that front too. You are writing, although fanfiction, have a bit more pride in your work. Simple errors such as 'they're, their and there' are very much unacceptable as is alot. Alot is not a word, a lot is. Alittle is not a word, therefore alot is not either.