Pet Peeves-What can't you stand

[Guest sylvir]

MY BIGGEST PET PEEVES ALWAYS INVOLVE ANYTHING THAT MAKE THE STORY HARD TO READ AND ONE OF THOSE THINGS IS ALL CAPS. I CAN LET IT GO IF IT IS ONE SENTENCE AND SOMEONE IS SCREAMING OR ONE WORD BUT ANYTHING BEYOND THAT IS DESTRACTING. I MEAN JUST READ WHAT I WROTE THERE IS NO NEED FOR IT.

Also...I don't understand the need to write a paragraph filled with the three period separator... Some people will replace all the punctuation with ... Everytime a paragraph ends... And sometimes in the middle... when it should be a comma... and not... Its almost like they skipped all their punctuation lessons in class...

[windofthenorth]

Here's something that makes me want to choke a bitch:

Military women being written as EITHER total sluts or butch lesbians. The former gets out of her uniform faster than an M-16's bullet and lives to sleep with the men in her unit, and the latter exists to torment the poor, weak new recruits.

I'm a long-time reader of AFF (and fiction in general). I've seen a lot of stereotypes, but this one pisses me off the most, probably because I'm a military woman. Now, I'm not not going to be Miss Offended about it, but I've seen first-hand how these misconceptions harm military women in real life. It's hard to be taken seriously at work when people think you just want to sleep around. It's hard to be taken seriously in civilian society when people think you're some kind of man-hating bulldyke. The vast, vast majority of military women are normal people with normal amounts of what Western culture calls "femininity". They just want to serve their country, and make a living while doing it.

[Guest sylvir]

Self censoring.

Ex: f*ck, sh*t, *ss, b*tch, ect.

What is even more annoying is when the self censoring is in the same chapter as a hardcore lemon. The author can write cocks being sucked and holes being entered and people coming but they are not comfortable typing some swear words that 12 year olds use liberally.

This is ADULT fan fiction and I thought that we were all over 18. I mean the owners of the site went to all the trouble of putting birth date verification at the entrance of the site.

[marley_station]

Self censoring.

Ex: f*ck, sh*t, *ss, b*tch, ect.

What is even more annoying is when the self censoring is in the same chapter as a hardcore lemon. The author can write cocks being sucked and holes being entered and people coming but they are not comfortable typing some swear words that 12 year olds use liberally.

This is ADULT fan fiction and I thought that we were all over 18. I mean the owners of the site went to all the trouble of putting birth date verification at the entrance of the site.

Tell the truth and shame the devil, LOL

I think you and I read the same fic yesterday. I didn't leave a review because I didn't want to be accused of being a troll or a flamer. The first time I saw the censor I thought it was a fluke. By the end of the fic (yes, I made it that far), I was laughing my ass off. I was sure the writer lied about the age in the profile.

There should be a rule that one who deliberately censors their work on this site should be cast out like a bad angel from Heaven.

[Guest Vanitydoll]

Womanly male characters in slash fics - It hurts me inside...just a little. I remember reading a story where one guy was at the grocery store, he was supposed to pick up yogurt for his friend but couldn't decide whether to get him low fat or all natural. Most of the guys I know don't pay much attention to detail, and would just pick up the first one he saw.

In another story, a guy who was portrayed as a rugged, anti-hero type kind of guy started crying whilst professing his love for his good buddy after a sex scene. Not only was it incredibly OOC, but in general, guys don't see sex the same way women do. Where a girl would want to cuddle and start a discussion regarding their relationship, a guy would probably want a sandwich or to go to sleep. Even the mannerisms of males and females differ.

There are always exceptions of course because all guys aren't the same (and there are quite a few girly guys out there). Also, I believe that a good author can get anything to work in a story. At the same time, one shouldn't forget the gender of a character portrayed.

When the writing style doesn't fit the mood of a story- This bothers me especially during love-making scenes. For example when the mood is set for an hardcore fuck and all of a sudden, the authors throwing the reader a crap-load of purple prose, strange euphemisms and lovey-dovey stuff.

Or, on their wedding night, two sweethearts prepare to give themselves to each other for the first time, and readers are given something akin to a crappy porn movie.

As I said before though, maybe an author could get this to work somehow. Maybe in the story, two porn stars end up getting married. Personally, I don't want to hear 'love' in the same sentence as 'cock being sucked into a pussy hole'.

Tired Clichés/ Overly predictable plot twists- Of course, I'm aware that everything has been done before, so something cannot be completely original, but it's up to the author to try to add some originality to it and keep their story compelling.

Thesaurus whores- A singleton who surmises it incumbent to transpose every second word with one corralled in the thesaurus. LOL Especially, when they don't realize that they have used the word in the wrong context and used the thesaurus excessively only to seem intelligent.

When all the characters sound the same based on their dialogue- Not everyone would react the same way to a given situation, and the same goes for what they say. Some people would say: "The house is on fire. We have to get out of here."

Another might be like: "We have to get out of here! Now!" And still someone else might scream: "Holy fuckin' hell! We've gotta get the fuck outta here!"

I think the author deserves brownie points when the reader can tell who the speaker is without the writer having to dictate it.

Lol, that's all I can think of right now. Sorry if there's any unintentional spelling/grammatical errors, it's really late. (Yeah I know, bad excuse.) I'm a bit of a grammar nazi myself, so I truly apologize if I manage to piss someone off with poor grammar/spelling skills.

Edited July 30, 2009 by Vanitydoll

[marley_station]

NO RECOMMENDATIONS -- Some of these people spend hours trolling this web site every day. I know this because they're logged on when I'm logged on. So I click on their user name to view their profile and do you know what I find? Nothing. Not that it matters except, for all the time a person spends logged on to the site he or she doesn't have a recommendation for anyone else?

People, there is a section of your profile called 'recommended reading'. Use it! It's a free text field, it can't be any simpler to use! Type in the name of a fic that you particularly liked, something you've come back to read more than once. That isn't so hard, is it? No, recommendations (and reviews) are not required here, but aren't they still common courtesy?

And honestly, if you busted your hump to write a decent fic that turned out to be well-received on this web site, wouldn't you want someone to do the same for you?

[Guest jj19]

I will try to put up some of my favorites for you.

[megadeth425]

-Unnecessary lyrics: I understand songfics on some level, as well as the placement of lyrics in parts of stories that aren't, but sometimes it's just fucking insane. The character (usually either an OC or an OOC canon character) is lying on her bed, listening to music, brooding, and each angsty, generic paragraph is book-ended by a few bars from Nine Inch Nails songs, and this continues throughout the story in every scene that music is played. Having those lyrics there just reminds me there is something better I could be reading that isn't a Mary Sue's insights to how the song really speaks to her soul in a scene that happens with no consequence other than being heathercullen666's mix CD.

-"My writing really isn't that good and I don't know why I wrote this and I probably suck": Good, then I'll skip over to the next story. But hey, thanks for putting it in the author's note so I didn't even have to +1 your view count.

I can understand submitting something you don't think is up to your standards. I've written things that I felt were good, but not entirely up to what I hold myself to, but I still posted them. On the other hand, I also write stories that I can look at and say "One of my best. This is a pretty good fic". I'm critical of my writing, and it honestly surprises me sometimes when I get a glowing review for something I felt weak by my own standards, but I'm not going to mope, I'm going to take it as a compliment. If I submit a one-shot based on half a plot bunny and it fizzles out somewhere down the line, but I still finish it, I'm going to feel much better about my writing to know that even something I feel isn't up to my standards is still well-recieved. That's a testament to my writing, not unwarranted feedback I don't deserve.

-Three page author's notes: When a fic gets long and has a lot of backing behind it, particularly when there's a set of people who regularly leave a review after each update, it is a good idea to maybe address questions posed or provide some information about the story. Keep it quick, though. 

There's no need to go on for what seems like half the fic talking about what's going on in your life that kept you from updating. You don't need to respond to every review, either, commenting on each one. Thank them in one big group by saying "Thanks to everyone who left a review since the last chapter" and repond to the actual questions.

-Not even using spellcheck: With open-source word processors like OpenOffice available for free, there's just no damn excuse for having a story rife with obvious spelling errors, not even ones that people make by omitting an l or such, but things like "taht" and "wnet". Even if you don't have a program that can do it, at last fix what you can.

-Unlabelled crackfests: I don't just mean crack pairings; I should be able to tell it's a Snape/Cho Chang fic and be able to stay away from it accordingly, I mean stories designed to be stupid, out of character, and probably intentionally bad, but that don't indicate it in the description or even the author's note at the beginning.

-Poor descriptions: This ties into the above. A half-decent writer should be able to put in, from the description, the general type of story; if it's romance, smut, crack, or the like, it's not very difficult to write a description accordingly. Here's some half-assed examples:

"Harry's the victim of a broken heart, but will he find solace in Hermione's open arms?"

"Harry and Hermione find some time for a quickie in the common room at Christmas."

"Hermione's got some weed, and Harry's up for some puffs."

Guess which one is smut, romance, and crack.

All I'm saying is, I want an idea of what kind of story I'm about to click on. Content tags only go as far as describing the sex, but I may want to find something fluffy that will give me diabetes.

-Script format: Unless it's a transcript of two characters talking over MSN, the layout should not be the character's name, a colon, and what they said. Even if you aren't describing actions, at least just use quotation marks. If there are two people, you don't need to say who is talking every time, as we can gather that information by the fact there's two people talking one after the other.

-Writing characters you don't know: It's one thing to write somebody out of character or not totally get their nuances, but I find it absurd when people write stories in fandoms they don't even know, having just seen two characters in a picture, reading their character pages on Wikipedia, and then writing a fanfic about them where everything feels so horribly wrong. It delves into the downright unbearable when told from a first-person perspective, with no indication of AU or OOC, and everything just feels so unnatural for the character. If you don't know any of the characters, why are you writing something in this fandom? Even at my smuttiest, I write only about characters I'm somehow endeared to.

-AU without realizing the repurcussions: WHen you radically change a universe, you have to be aware of the repurcussions. I remember one a Harry Potter fic where Lilly married Snape and had never met James, and yet Harry still looked the same as he did in the actual HP universe. It's just overwhelmingly lazy writing.

Edited August 16, 2009 by megadeth425

[Guest jj19]

You made some good points above, those are also really annoying.

But for:

-Writing characters you don't know: It's one thing to write somebody out of character or not totally get their nuances, but I find it absurd when people write stories in fandoms they don't even know, having just seen two characters in a picture, reading their character pages on Wikipedia, and then writing a fanfic about them where everything feels so horribly wrong. It delves into the downright unbearable when told from a first-person perspective, with no indication of AU or OOC, and everything just feels so unnatural for the character. If you don't know any of the characters, why are you writing something in this fandom? Even at my smuttiest, I write only about characters I'm somehow endeared to.

What if you got a request to do that? To be fair I have done my best to get to know the characters (looking at many sites, having the requester go over the story to see if anyone is acting OOC. But I can still only do so much.

marley_station, How do you make the recommended reading look nicer (i.e. without havig to list the story address instead making a clickable link)

[megadeth425]

What if you got a request to do that? To be fair I have done my best to get to know the characters (looking at many sites, having the requester go over the story to see if anyone is acting OOC. But I can still only do so much.

I've gotten requests for series I'm not familiar with, and I've always turned them down saying I can't bring myself artistically to write for characters I don't know. Also, requests are generally labelled as such in the beginning, while I've seen stories that start with "I saw this picture of *insert character here* and she's really hot. I don't know anything about the series, but I wanted to write a fic about her".

[marley_station]

marley_station, How do you make the recommended reading look nicer (i.e. without havig to list the story address instead making a clickable link)

The following instructions are excerpted directly from a post in this forum. I didn't write them; I do use them as a reference and am reposting them here in response to your question.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It's pretty simple; actually, if different than it was long ago. It involves square brackets, as you'll see below, which have been implemented due to their superior flexibility and dynamics (this is called "bb code", and is what is used on the AdultFanFiction.net Forum, too). No worries, though -- for now, the use of the "pointy brackets", a.k.a. "HTML", will still be applicable for Story Editing purposes.

Here's a short for-instance guide that we hope will be easy enough to follow.

Say an Author on our site (we will call him "Narut0r0xMys0x") wishes to recommend a Story in the Inuyasha section. He'd start out by going to the second typing field found in the Edit Profile section of his account, and entering the name of the Archive between the proper command brackets as such: [archive]Inu[/archive].

Directly after that, Narut0r0xMys0x would find the Story number (this is the number following the equals-sign at the end of the Story's url) and tack it on, with a little more code, after the Archive command.

The nearly-complete Recommended Reading Story link's coding would look, so far, like this:

[archive]Inu[/archive][story=#######]

-- of course, he'd use the actual story number instead of number signs. He would type the Story Title (we'll say it's called "My Favorite Inuyasha Story EVAR!") itself sandwiched between the "story" open-and-close commands, as such:

[story=#######]My Favorite Inuyasha Story EVAR![/story]

So, so far, for Narut0r0xMys0x's recommendation of his favorite Inuyasha Story, the coding would look just so:

[archive]Inu[/archive][story=#######]My Favorite Inuyasha Story EVAR![/story]

At this point, your Story Recommendation code is completed!

To add a following link to the Author who wrote "My Favorite Inuyasha Story EVAR!" (which is completely optional), Narut0r0xMys0x could follow up the above coding with a link to him (in this case, we will call the Recommended Author "Iwillnotsit"). Like above, Narut0r0xMys0x would need to find the Author's number (which is found at the end of the url above an Author's Profile Page), and sandwich that between the Author command brackets. So this next step would go something like this:

[archive]Inu[/archive][author=#######]Iwillnotsit[/author]

For kicks, Narut0r0xMys0x could add a fan-boyish (or otherwise zippy) comment at the end of all the above coding. If he chose to do so, the final product of it all could be written like this:

[archive]Inu[/archive][story=#######] My Favorite Inuyasha Story EVAR! [/story] by [archive]Inu[/archive][author=#######]Iwillnotsit[/author] -- this story r0xMys0x!!!11ones!

And congratulations! You -- and Narut0r0xMys0x -- have now got a complete link to your favorite Story (and its Author)!

Got more favorites? (You'd better!) If you want to tell the world about them -- which your fellow AFF'ers would just adore! wouldn't you? -- just lather, rinse, and repeat, using a separate line for each link.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

This should help.

[marley_station]

Breath. Breathe.

Two different things. The first is a noun. The second is a verb. Trust me.

Also...

Choking. Chocking.

Two different things. The first has to do with the throat. The second is a nautical term.

Please stop mocking the damn dictionary. It exists for a critical purpose.

[megadeth425]

Using the Hoover Dam in a blowjob similie. They hear "Hoover" and assume it's related to the vacuum cleaners, but it's just a dam. As in something that keeps water in. Named after Herbert Hoover, who had nothing to do with the vacuums. I've reached the point where I close a window when I read lines like that because I'm just so damn fed up of people doing it.

[Ryder]

This thread should be a requirement for all authors to read. It would make them a better writer.

I don't like when people write a some words in another language.

Or when the chapter is full of author notes.

I don't really care whats Cannon or not, or if they mix it up with original stuff, as I don't know anything about the characters for all these cartoons anyway.

Minor sex stuff: I don't like reading about a 30 year old having sex with a 16/17 year old. But I don't see a problem with 16/17 year old's having sex together. But no younger than 16. When I was 16/17, if you hadn't had sex then everyone thought there was something wrong with you.

I read a story that I might like, if I don't like it I stop reading it. Everyone has their taste in fiction, and I like to give stories a chance even if it sounds like crap.

[RestlessThoughts]

This thread should be a requirement for all authors to read. It would make them a better writer.

I think it's pointless to complain about subject matter. Writers should be encouraged to write what they wish to write, not what the majority wants them to write (espeically if they're not getting paid haha).

Sure, grammer/spelling issues, bad plot devices, inapporiate guessimates etc. are great to post about. Noting that sort of stuff really could help writers improve. But saying you're personally grossed out by pedophilla, or scat play, or yaoi or whatever other kink doesn't help.

Anyway.

One of my pet peeves is with crossovers. I rarely read them because most of them turn out to be the author wanking over one fandom and using the other as a captive audience. For example, in one fic it was a super hero universe crossed over with a demon/demon hunting universe. The superheros ended up cowering in awe, all impressed with the demon hunters (who were disguised as mere superheros) while the hunters went off after OC demons all by themselves. One sided stories are quite annoying to me.

[Guest Marsel]

Rape victims with OCD. This really, really annoys me. As a rule of human nature, people react differently to traumatic experiences. People deal with situations differently. I must have glimpsed over fifty stories this year in which there is a rape victim who becomes of obsessed with 'cleansing themselves' of the horrible experience they have been tainted with. Yes, some rape victims do this, among other things, while others, say, refuse to speak for long lengths of time, fear physical contact with others, lose the will to live, or simply move on, etcetera. I'm sick of reading 'he scrubbed at his skin, feeling dirty, contaminated by those hands, the pain echoing..' in every single rape fic. Goddamn it.

Mpregs. Okay, at first I could deal with them, but the more I read them, the more they seemed to ruin the story they were in. It is not physically possible for a man to have a child. I read one recently and liked how the author avoided going into detail about how the baby was born. The man was being told to 'Push! Push!' - Push at what? Is the baby coming out of his arse, or did he suddenly grow a vagina? And where? On his forehead? In this particular story, the guy's reproductive organs had been changed to female. But it was unspecific as to whether his penis had disappeared and been replaced by a vagina, or how the hormones in this female system would affect him, etcetera. Even fantasy stories try to explain things or at least put mysterious happenings down to magic, but if you're trying to write a male pregnancy, which has to be realistically written in order to be believable, you're going for the scientifically impossible. Grr.

Okay, I'm done

Edited September 11, 2009 by Marsel

[windofthenorth]

I'm sick of reading 'he scrubbed at his skin, feeling dirty, contaminated by those hands, the pain echoing..' in every single rape fic.

Seconded, thirded, and put on a bumper sticker. Rape fics can be so formulaic. I generally stay away from M/M rape, but I can tell you that it's just as bad in M/F.

[Velvet D Coolette]

I hate it when I get into a conversation with someone who has been keeping up with the series I'm writing, so that we can talk about how the story should progress, and the whole conversation ends up as a long, lllooonnnggg and very in-depth dissection of social structures and how they relate to the fanfic. After doing this only on Saturday with a friend, I wondered for a while whether I should forget about using that particular plot as a story and just use it as a fucking sieve instead.

Then I thought, 'nyah, fuck it! It was a fun-sounding story before I started wondering whether this world will want to do war with that, and what the peasant class is doing and all that. Sod it, I'll write it anyway'.

And then I start feeling guilty that it's going to be poorly-constructed.

I think I can find a reasonable middle ground.

I think so...

[zatanaslover]

I have to come in here and defend a segment of the author community: the self-deprecating writer!

I'm a writer, however, I have one major issue - I think everything I write is awful. Why do I write? I don't know. Maybe some psychic schemer has decided to thrust my poor attempts at story upon the world, in hopes that my pathetic attempts to create plot, character growth, appropriate rising action, and a stimulating climax, will so crush the psyche of all who read these horrendous tales, that they will be left as nothing but mindless husks.

See, these are the things that go through the minds of an author with little to no self-esteem.

My defense against this problem, this handicap if you will, is to try and turn it into humor. "Here's some new crap from your favorite hack," or "Enjoy this pile of garbage, I'm off to try and find some talent."

I want to learn, to grow, to become an even more proficient writer. To do that, I need public criticism. Yet, I am filled with doubts - I need to protect myself! Therefore, when someone invariably gives my story a poor review, I can at least say to myself: "Hey, I warned them!"

Please, overlook our self-deprecation. It's all we have in this world.

[Velvet D Coolette]

Yeah, but the most productive way of improving is to seek concrit/feedback/advice/tips/whatever; just telling your readership you're rubbish isn't going to help in that direction. If anything it gives you an excuse to ignore the fact that they're giving you constructive criticism in favour of telling them (and yourself) that you warned them, so they've no genuine reason to complain.

Ignoring for a moment that AFF.net is a notoriously bad place to get reviews for most fandoms, if there's something wrong with your writing, your readers will tell you. Why precede it with your own negativity? It seems an unecessary addition, to me.

That's what boards like this are for: to ask how to improve characterisation, pace and accuracy, write compelling beginnings and satisfying endings, and everything else people ask about here. If you want to improve, why not just ask here?

[marley_station]

I have to come in here and defend a segment of the author community: the self-deprecating writer!

I'm a writer, however, I have one major issue - I think everything I write is awful. Why do I write? I don't know. Maybe some psychic schemer has decided to thrust my poor attempts at story upon the world, in hopes that my pathetic attempts to create plot, character growth, appropriate rising action, and a stimulating climax, will so crush the psyche of all who read these horrendous tales, that they will be left as nothing but mindless husks.

See, these are the things that go through the minds of an author with little to no self-esteem.

My defense against this problem, this handicap if you will, is to try and turn it into humor. "Here's some new crap from your favorite hack," or "Enjoy this pile of garbage, I'm off to try and find some talent."

I want to learn, to grow, to become an even more proficient writer. To do that, I need public criticism. Yet, I am filled with doubts - I need to protect myself! Therefore, when someone invariably gives my story a poor review, I can at least say to myself: "Hey, I warned them!"

Please, overlook our self-deprecation. It's all we have in this world.

Sorry, no dice. Every writer thinks their work could be better. Don't ask yourself why you write, ask yourself why YOU BOTHER TO PUBLISH YOUR SELF-PROCLAIMED CRAP. You aren't fooling anyone but yourself.

If trashing your work is a defense mechanism (and some flaming cheeseball attempt at humor) you feel that I as both writer and reader am supposed to overlook, then the joke is on you. You're not going to earn a review from me. I'm just going to sail past your self-proclaimed crap and read something else. Hell, why not re-read my own stuff? Sure it could be better, but I happen to like my work.

Honestly? This is fanfiction, written for free and read for free. If a forum like this one scares you so much that you'd disclaim every piece of your crap by warning the readers that it's a piece of crap then you are clearly not ready for this. Own up to the fact that you're so desperate for validation that you've resorted to this. It's the first step to writing to your strengths and in fact improving your skill, something I do believe you want to achieve even if it really is only the side benefit.

[windofthenorth]

Please, overlook our self-deprecation. It's all we have in this world.

Nope, doesn't work. Nobody is forcing us to post our stories. Each and every author on AFF (heck, on the internet) believes that their work is worth posting, and self-deprecating comments come off as very false. Even if we know it's fake self-depracation, it's just like those losers in high school who always moan about how much they suck and how everyone probably hates them. Maybe they're nice people, those guys, but I never knew, because I don't respect people who don't respect themselves, and I don't hang out with people whom I don't respect.

I have six college classes, two jobs, and the responsibilities of an Army Cadet to deal with; I don't have time to slog through a story that even the author thinks is crap.

[zatanaslover]

...wow. Just, wow. Satire is truly dead. All of you - your senses of humor are in the trauma ward. I fear for you, all of you.

Edited September 17, 2009 by zatanaslover

[Guest sylvir]

...wow. Just, wow. Satire is truly dead. All of you - your senses of humor are in the trauma ward. I fear for you, all of you.

(Dear zatanaslover; Have you ever heard the same joke over and over again from someone who keeps forgetting that you have already heard it? There comes a point where it is not funny any more and just annoying.)

If the story is good and the author puts it down then I simply disregard the A/N because artists are notorious for hating everything they make.

But when the post contains a 500 word paragraph made up of 5 run on sentences that all start with the same words and then the A/N says "oh that sucked" then it is a waste of space. It was clearly written for a reaction and isn't that trolling?

I'm sick and tired of stomping through miles of smelly shit to find a story to find a story with potential. Seriously there is so much shit we have no other choice but to put up with and if we could get rid of one category of crap then the site would only be marginally better.

[zatanaslover]

(Dear zatanaslover; Have you ever heard the same joke over and over again from someone who keeps forgetting that you have already heard it? There comes a point where it is not funny any more and just annoying.)

True. But then ignoring my paltry attempts (wait, can't hate myself... ah wait!), but then ignoring my valiant attempts at humor would have been appropriate. Or telling me to shut up. Either way would work. Instead, I was treated seriously. Oh well, brand the mark of shame upon my hide and move on!