What I dislike about fanfics and their authors

[Guest neris]

This topic has probably been done few times already, but as I am new and this is the place for rants, here we go:

Ok, I've been reading fanfiction for a few years now. Every time I try to quit, after few days/weeks/months I come back to it. I don't write it, because I don't have the strength/ambition/tenacity or whatever else to do it. Every attempt ended at few hundred words. So I gave up and having done that I don't really get why some other people won't.

Sometimes you can find great fics, but sometimes, it's just a waste of time and disk space and bandwidth and, yeah, it's gets really bad.

What I absolutely hate in fanfiction (based on HP fics):

1. incorrect spelling of names - how many times it's been Luscious, Grimold, Arthuor. There's no excuse! Dont's say that you don't have anywhere to look it up. If you can post the story on the internet - it means you have internet access -> use the freaking Google!

2. grammar and spelling errors, bad formatting - can forgive some minor mistakes, but major ones give me a headache and no matter if the plot is great, i won't read it. There's no excuse for bad spelling if english is not your native language than welcome to the club. You are on the internet, so use it wisely. There are online spell checkers, communities dedicated to writers, websites describing most common errors and so on. Use them! If you don't want to, then find a beta-reader or an editor, a good one. If you don't know how, then ask. A hint: a beta-reader who allows you to spell: Ascher, prad, Netheniel (in AB fandom) or Grimald, Poter (in HP) is not a good one. Find another one! Quickly!

I think that it's all about respect, if you respect your work and respect your readers, then you want to do write the best story possible. Saying that you(author) are doing your part by writing the story and if your readers don't like your atrocious spelling, it's their problem means that you are basically telling your readers to kiss your behind. After few chapters, all your fans will leave. Nobody likes to be disrespected. If you spent few days writing a story, spend few more minutes to read it again and check it. Spell checker is not enough!

And it's 'might have', 'would have', 'could have' and not 'might of', 'could of', 'would of'!

3. bad summaries - writing in summary: 'summary is bad, but the story is good' - no, it's not.

4. ignoring reviews and ignoring advice - if you're asking for reviews and somebody tells you that there is something wrong with your story (most often bad spelling), it's their right. You can answer them, change the bad bits and go on. It's not a flame when somebody tells you the words are a jumbled mess and asks you to correct your spelling and find a beta reader. This is how a flame looks like:'You will burn in hell for pairing Harry with Hermione' or 'If you write one more slash story, I will find you and...'. You can't expect that every review will be extremely positive. If you want that, then say so, so that people who want to help you become a better writer won't bother and you'll be left with a bunch of sycophants. Besides, many authors say that they want to be published in the future. If you are one of them, then take serious reviews seriously.

5. unfinished and abandoned stories - you build a fanbase, abandon the fic, then after few months come back and promise to update it soon and then leave it completely. Come on! Have a decency to at least put a note in your profile that you won't finish it.

6. alternate universe - if you take HP universe, but take the magic away and add few OC characters and the canon characters that are left are acting diffrently then in the original books, some of them change their names, their appearance and the pairings are all diffrent -> it's not a fanfic anymore, it's an original story and you should say so in the summary and place it in a diffrent archive. You can't take away everything the original story consists of and still call it a fanfic.

7. pretend crossover - where you take one character from a fandom, change everything about them, make them forget about the past and you put that character in a diffrent universe. It's not a crossover, it's just adding an OC character to your story. Don't lie to your readers.

8. everyone is gay - I like slash stories, but what's with making everyone gay? Suddenly there are no women at all or the ones that are there are stupid and not worth writing about. What's up with that?

9. undeserved bashing - if you don't like a character, that's okay, but continuously calling him/her a useless cow makes no sense, especially that there usually is no reason for it. You want to add bashing, that's okay, but don't do it just because someone else did so. And if you're doing it, than don't go calling other characters names that were used so many times, that they lost all their appeal: Dumbledork, Bumblebee, Bumbledork, Voldie-pants, order of the dead/headless/flaming chicken.

10. tattoes, piercings - hate it when Harry or other character shows his independence by doing a make-over. There's no logic in that: Dumbledore is bad and manipulative. I'll show him, I'll get my tongue pierced. Yeah, that'll teach him.

11. describing layout of every room and the colour of every outfit - it doesn't bring anything new to the story, why do it so often in such detail? Few times in a multi-chaptered fic is okay, but few times in a single chapter is not.

12. beautyfing the characters - according to canon, they are all average: Harry is a scrawny kid with messy hair and glasses, Hermione has bushy hair and big teeth and Snape has a crooked nose and greasy hair, don't keep saying that they look completely diffrent and keep describing their petal rose lips and silky hair and so on, there are still some ugly people in the world. And besides you don't have to be gorgeous to be sexy.

13. inheritance fics where characters change overnight - they go to sleep 5'2 and wake up 6'2 with hair that reaches the middle of their backs and glowing skin and if they change sex, they are the most beautiful specimen ever, if the character was malnourished and scrawny why say that he now has a sixpack and superhuman muscles, or when changig gender he has very big breasts and small waist and all the right curves. Makes no sense.

14. name changing - don't keep changing names. Even if Harry turns out to be someone else's son, let him stay 'Harry'. Call him Harry Riddle, Harry Snape or what not. Don't start calling him Kian, Raven, Amadeus, Damien, Devlin or whatever else. It's just silly, especially that after that you go on with this: 'Kian(Harry) stood up and then Kian(Harry) sat down' for at least few chapters. He changed his name, we get it! Changing names makes sense only if he is going into hiding, but even then don't you think that people looking for him would have some common sense and could figure out such a clever ruse as the name: 'Evan Black', 'James Evans' or a combination of those?

15. extreme abuse - you want to describe abuse, then go for it, but please have some common sense. There's only so much a human body and mind can take. Most abuse victims have serious scars: physical and psychological. You don't just get over it in a singe night. The 'rescue' is only the first step in a long road to recovery. A good meal, few bandages and a pat on the back can sometimes do more harm than good. As to graphical description, first check how much blood can a person loose and survive before you start describing pools of it all around the room. And don't forget the smell. In a clean neighborhood, where there are no factories around, the stench from a 'torture room' would be unbelievable during summer. Has any of you ever been in a fight or at least seen one? Hitting something tires you out, very fast. That's why boxers go only few rounds few minutes each, and they are in excellent shape. So let's now take Vernon, an obese man who suddenly has the stamina to hit Harry for a few hours everyday for the whole summer. Come on! He would have a heart attack after only one day. And as to 'torture devices': bullwhips cost a lot of money, so do all the other 'appliances'. That's why most criminals use simple tools: knives or gardening tools, they get the job done just as well.

16. names for the children - it's usually something like: Lilliana Draconisa Luciana Rosalinda Henrietta Potter-Snape-Malfoy. Those poor children, they will be the laughing stock of all their school. Simple is better, choose no more than two first names and one last name and stick to it.

17. mpreg and preg fics - I get the mpreg, don't have anythig against it in fiction, but remember that a pregnant person is not sick, don't go on describing that they are 'waddling' or have a 'bulging stomach' at 2 months, morning sickness is dependent on the person and some don't have it at all, and not always in the morning, some don't have any weird food cravings, especially that strong smelling foods make many pregnant women sick. Hormones don't make you a completely diffrent person, sure than can be a tantrum from time to time, but otherwise it's still the same person. And in mpreg what's with trying to explain exactly where the womb is located and how male pregnancy is possible and than just making a whole mess of everything. Just say that it's magic and don't go inventing some scientific mumbo-jumbo. And remember if you were not pregnant or never lived with a pregnant person, first read a leaflet about pregnancy and then write m/preg.

18. unnatural birth and babies - have the feeling that many authors never saw a real newborn, only the tv-version. Newborns usually don't open their eyes, so there is simply no way to know what colour their eyes are. They are ugly, smelly and all they do is cry, poop and sleep, but we love them anyway. A natural birth takes a really long time and then there is the umbilical cord and the placenta, but in most fanfics you get the feeling that it's just about 15 minutes from the first contraction and than you have a beautiful toddler. When writing mpreg, you're not giving birth, you're not filming it than what's the harm in at least keeping it truth-adjacent.

19. unrealistic sex and having sex all the time - if it's a pwp, it's okay, but otherwise, remember that after few times during a single night, it simply hurts, body is oversensitive and any kind of stimulation designed to make you feel good has a completely diffrent effect. Also don't go writing that somebody has an erection for a few hours and they just keep pounding all that time, possibly in diffrent positions, because after some time it's not pleasant for either party, not to mention that such an erection may be caused by a serious medical condition.

Okay, there are few more things that I don't like, but I think that I vented enough for now.

[PyroYoshi]

I agree with some of those things, especially mpreg. That's one trend in fanfiction that I simply don't understand, and I have no desire to read about it. In fact, if I see that a story is tagged Mpreg, that prevents me from reading it. The only other tags that will completely turn me off are rape and poop play.

I also agree with the 'everyone is gay' rant. This is common in the South park fandom. I like reading slash sometimes, but when every guy in South Park is either gay or bi, that's pretty silly.

Something you didn't list that irks me is high school fics. I have zero interest in reading those.

[Keith Inc.]

Or 3, "I suck at summaries"

Or 'Look inside.' I'm going to up your hits just to find out what the fuck your story is about?

My absolute least favorite, though, a three word summary, fifteen to twenty warning codes for a one-chapter fic. Maybe as a technical exercise, i could imagine a bestiality xenophile threesome moresome slash gentle abuse scat F/F, M/M, M/F/M, AM/FM, blood, sweat and tears PWP, but it doesn't sound like anything i wanna read.

Maybe as a sort of word-search game? "Okay, the monkey-man with two dicks screwing the schizophrenic porn star fore and aft, one personality feeling the butt sex, the other shouting about coming in her cunny, that paragraph counts for bestiality, a threesome, anal AND double-penetration..." But again, other than just doing it to show it can be done, i have more fun reading the cast list for Glee...

[DemonGoddess]

Overtagging bugs me. Undertagging does as well. After all, the purpose of the tag is to let the readers know what they're in for. This way, if it's something I don't like, I know not to click.

[silkyselkie]

I totally agree with this. My pet peeve is the fan boys and girls who make say Sephiroth/Snape/Sesshomaru/ completely uncool by over beautifying them and making them "kawaii" and stuff. This is done to so many initially cool villain characters...such a shame.

I can't believe that people would turn away advice from readers. Heck, I wish I could get ANY reviews, just to get an idea of where I should take things, and what ideas others may have. Collaboration is an important and really helpful feature of writing.

[KerantliDreamer]

There was one on the list that I didn't agree with, and that's the babies one. Granted you're right with the "they not toddlers after 5 minutes" but both my children opened their eyes within a couple of hours.

Also some births can take hours, and others can be over before you know it, I went into labour with my second at around 7:30, and he was born at 9:14pm, that was an hour and about 44 minutes (first born was about 4 hours from waters breaking til birth). It mainly does depend on the person. Not everyone is that lucky, my friend was in labour (early stages) for almost a month (I have no idea how she dealt with it).

Also there is a natural birth, or if there's complications there is caesarian section, but most people do opt for natural births, with or without pain relief of gas and air, epidural, TENS machine. also another more interesting one is a water birth, but that would be hard to tackle if you've never had one... though, so is writing about labour in general (as I figured out myself while trying to write a scene including a birth)

mPreg is also something, that when done right, can be good, but when done wrong, can leave you cringing for days

[JayDee]

One of my friend's third natural births was so fast the damn thing had to be delivered on her bathroom floor. No chance to go to the hospital.

i could imagine a bestiality xenophile threesome moresome slash gentle abuse scat F/F, M/M, M/F/M, AM/FM, blood, sweat and tears PWP, but it doesn't sound like anything i wanna read.

I'd totally read that. Especially if the author added some of that kinky SW/LW action to the AM/FM.

[Keith Inc.]

HA!

[Keith Inc.]

Also some births can take hours, and others can be over before you know it,

My wife was in labor for our oldest for about a month.

Idiot tried to come out at the 5th month, they managed to keep him in for another 32 days.

Two pounds, two ounces.

The twins were monsters, though. Two pounds seven and two pounds four ounces.

My wife's aim sucks, but her GROUPING is amazing.

[DemonGoddess]

Let's see...

labor times

1 - 18 hours

2 - 4.5 hours

3 - 22.5 hours

4- 3.5 hours

5 - 16 hours

[JayDee]

Dat's a lotta labors

[Tribalista]

I don't like "one-character-knows-best" stories. They're openly biased, add nothing to your perception and uninteresting.

If humorous, they can be fun, though:)

BTW, happy ends are overrated. Especially sloppy,quick HE, when sworn enemies \ ideologic opponents are kissing and professing love to each other right after their "ultimate battle". I don't mind happy ends if they're logic \ credible enough.

Sloppy writing ("let's get quickly to smutty \ sex \ yaoi part + dismiss the rest") is always BAD, bad idea.

Edited June 19, 2011 by Tribalista

[Tribalista]

And one more thing: I don't like (and don't understand) when the author, answering to reviews \ criticism, says that he doesn't take his writing seriously.. it's kinda fun for me, so what's wrong with you, guys?..

You feel like a fool wasting your time on such "authors".

[JayDee]

Taking this shit seriously is impossible for me.

[And Your Little Dog Too]

I don't like (and don't understand) when the author, answering to reviews \ criticism, says that he doesn't take his writing seriously.. it's kinda fun for me, so what's wrong with you, guys?

It's fear. Pure fear. If the author pretends that they don't take their writing seriously, then they can't be hurt when somebody hates it. Which is silly, since it hurts just as bad.

Write! Dream! Dare! Be brave!

And grow a thicker skin. In the circle jerk of life, everybody has their turn at being the pivot boy.

Edited June 19, 2011 by Self-IndulgentCarp

[DemonGoddess]

The same applies to visual stuff, actually. This is why some things I've drawn will only ever stay in my sketch book.....

[Tribalista]

Write! Dream! Dare! Be brave! And grow a thicker skin. In the circle jerk of life, everybody has their turn at being the pivot boy.

Yep. And be a bit more responsible for the stuff you upload or more self-critical It just the way to improve everything. And I'm not talking about grammar or spelling mistakes.. they're nothing compared to the rest.

Edited June 19, 2011 by Tribalista

[Tribalista]

Hm.. it's not the thing that I "hate" about fanfics, for me it just shows that the author's a beginner or too ready to follow some 'standards' (or lazy \ uncreative). I'm talking about "FLASHBACK" devision of narration. The best AFF authors I've read know well how to avoid this. There are plenty of ways to make such transition more subtle, natural. I think anything is better than these annoying letters in capitals )

What do you think about the excess of (very) personal info about the author? (included into the summary \ prologue \ else)? Does it help you to trust the author more, to sympathize with him \ her (who claims to know something terrible from his\her own personal experience) or just annoys you?

It doesn't work for me 'cause a badly written story is a badly written story, and these extra details won't change it

I'm asking because in our culture it's not typical for authors to mention some really intimate details about yourself, esp. if you're a grownup.

[DemonGoddess]

I think it kind of depends what part of the US you're from, as to whether or not one will keep personal information private or not. Also has a great deal to do with the age of the user as well.

For example, most women in my age group, from the Midwest, keep their personal stuff to themselves. It's nobody's business but mine, ya know. And that is the attitude that makes that happen.

[BronxWench]

Ugh, the "FLASHBACK!" thing makes me crazy as well. I've used flashbacks, and I've set them apart by the use of italics, showing a deviation from the rest of the chapter without the use of neon or shouting. But those glaring all-caps warnings just ruin the flow of a chapter for me, and act as a turn-off, no matter how good the story might be.

On the topic, the endless list of how certain forms of dialogue will be shown also bugs me no ends. If you know how to do it, the reader will pick up on it without a clue card.

And yes, I can do without the often far too intimate details of the author's life. If you're writing to work through an issue from your personal life, I applaud you, but if the story's not well written it's not going to hold me no matter how much I admire your pluck and determination.

[Anesor]

I agree with all the original list, ans would like to add large infodumps/"as you know, Bob," where there's 10+ lines of background that sound cribbed from some other source, no one talks like that, and there is no reason for the reader to care or be involved.

And while some grammar things drive me up a wall, sometimes the rules can be broken if it makes the story stronger. But you have to show you know the rules before you may break them. You can't just change how grammar and formatting are done and expect readers to understand the story you want to tell. If you don't want to explain it so they understand, why post it?

Edited June 20, 2011 by Anesor

[frannie14]

I totally agree with those points. I cannot stomach fics with really graphic abuse scenes in them, especially ones with really graphic rape. It frustrates me that many authors who do write that have Harry getting over it practically overnight.My best friend has been in that situation and has taken years to get over flinching at the sight of men. It's just not something that goes away ever. Bugs me more is that some of the fics I've come across won't even have a warning about the scene. There will be fanfic fans who have been in these situations and could easily get a flashback by some of the more sicking fics

[BronxWench]

I totally agree with those points. I cannot stomach fics with really graphic abuse scenes in them, especially ones with really graphic rape. It frustrates me that many authors who do write that have Harry getting over it practically overnight.My best friend has been in that situation and has taken years to get over flinching at the sight of men. It's just not something that goes away ever. Bugs me more is that some of the fics I've come across won't even have a warning about the scene. There will be fanfic fans who have been in these situations and could easily get a flashback by some of the more sicking fics

If you run into stories here on AFF that are missing a trigger tag like rape, minor1/minor2, incest, and the like, PLEASE either post the link here or email us with the story url at tos_team@adult-fanfiction.org. We really do take that sort of thing seriously, and the last thing we want is for a reader to stumble on something that will cause them grief or pain.

[AquaTonic]

I had to giggle at the list because I remember doing a lot of these things when I first started writing at a young age. I was still in the bloom of developing my voice and writing style so I would test styles out that seemed popular at the time (that was in the late 90s, early 2000s). The whole '~*~*~*~*~*~*~' to show time pasted or changing scenes.

Something I would like to add: a review being skewed as a 'flame'. When someone points out an inconsistency, grammar/spelling error, etc., hardcore fans of that author used to lynch-mob the person as a 'flamer'. Then authors would put a note on their fic: 'No flames allowed!'

[BronxWench]

I had to giggle at the list because I remember doing a lot of these things when I first started writing at a young age. I was still in the bloom of developing my voice and writing style so I would test styles out that seemed popular at the time (that was in the late 90s, early 2000s). The whole '~*~*~*~*~*~*~' to show time pasted or changing scenes.

Something I would like to add: a review being skewed as a 'flame'. When someone points out an inconsistency, grammar/spelling error, etc., hardcore fans of that author used to lynch-mob the person as a 'flamer'. Then authors would put a note on their fic: 'No flames allowed!'

Here, we call that constructive criticism, and I for one adore it. We define flaming as an attack that is not related to the story, but becomes a personal assault on the author. Pretty much what the hardcore fans in your example would be doing, and we don't tolerate that here.