Pet Peeves in Fanfiction

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yrsillar said:
chess being a useful tool for training the basics of tactical thinking
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What's really frustrating is when it doesn't work.

Tactics tend to be simplified in fiction.
Narratively, the story is trying to make an exciting, dramatic, fight with lots of cool moves.
Tactics try to create a boring, one-sided, curb-stomp where they can prevent the other person from putting up any resistance at all.

This means that most stories tend towards slugging matches, with the antagonist providing the game rules tactics, and the protagonist smashing his face into them repeatedly.

Then they drag the story through a long, torturous conversation over a chess board, with somebody trying to tell the protagonist he's a moron without actually saying the word "moron."
Then he goes back into the fight, does one bone-headed move "just like chess" and goes on with his slugging matches.

I understand it's done for story design reasons, but in the setting it just comes across as the character being deliberately stupid.
Not because chess is a great training tool, but because they are refusing to even try.
 
Put me down in the "hates the 'chess makes you a master strategist' trope" camp. Playing chess makes you good at chess, not war. The only part of actual tactics that chess lets you use is "presenting a fake opening to lure the enemy into attacking recklessly." There's no way to hide the location, strength or capabilities of your troops. There's no terrain to take advantage of, no fortification or entrenchment, no force multipliers. No morale, no unit cohesion (and those things were key to pre-modern warfare... you won by getting the enemy formation to break), no communication failures. There's no uncertainty that makes you prepare contingencies: the second force to arrive at the fight always wins! It doesn't address operations (how you get to the fight) or logistics (how you get equipped for the fight), which are what wins wars. Countless stupid nobles throughout history have gotten their whole army killed because they didn't realize that their troops needed food and water. And playing chess isn't going to teach you that.
 
FailLord said:
Just the chess metaphors.

Please, I had enough, this isn't just with fanfic too.

Ffs use something else.
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Do you prefer the poker metaphors because those are about as common?

I always found some central assumptions about chess quite weird for the time period the rules were solidified in. Kings did not hide in the back during the medieval period. They lead from the front to raise moral. Though rare there have been battles were the king died on the winning side.
 
Chess makes far more sense if you look at it, not as a simulation of warfare, but as a simulation of duelling.

Or, more specifically, it's somewhere between "Tag" and "Capture the Flag Crown". A semi-friendly competition between erstwhile allies (or, at worse, respectful rivals), rather than a clash between actual enemies.
 
Axslashel said:
Do you prefer the poker metaphors because those are about as common?
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I actually do prefer poker metaphors.
That's mostly about lying to people about what you have, so it actually applies decently well in a lot of cases.

If some character smugly says "checkmate" in the story, the reader is sitting there thinking "but there's plenty of things they can do?"
If they start talking about how they "have a strong hand" it means they are confident, or lying, but not guaranteed either way.
 
the vale said:
Waxing poetic over mundane things. Like writing a soliloquy on how deep and meaningful chess is. It's a solved game with a finite state space that at a high level involves mostly pattern recognition. It's not some soulful revelatory tool of insight.

Or going full emo monologue over taking a test, like it's some kind of seminal pivoting point for the narrative when in reality it influences nothing and never comes up again.

Some of it is about establishing character perspective but damn, did you have to spend all that effort on a piece of toast?
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Isn't that what Hubert does in Lolita to disguise to the jury that he is a admitted pedophile that groomed and raped his stepdaughter?

Uses these fancy words
 
Axslashel said:
Do you prefer the poker metaphors because those are about as common?
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Yeah, in comparison I take the chess metaphors. While still culture-specific, chess has a far, far larger cultural range. I mean, what do I care about poker, where are the Skat or Doppelkopf metaphors :p

I always found some central assumptions about chess quite weird for the time period the rules were solidified in. Kings did not hide in the back during the medieval period. They lead from the front to raise moral. Though rare there have been battles were the king died on the winning side.
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The weak King and the weak vizier (which evolved into the super-powerful Queen only centuries later on) were a product of Chess' predecessors all the way back to ancient India, though.
 
I have always understood the idea that chess teaches tactical thinking to be that it spurs one to consider many things and an opponent's own considerations, teaching rudimentary 'tactical thinking' which can then be used to apply knowledge of actual battle tactics and other such specialized knowledge. In much premodern combat, often a lot of the control a leader actually had over a given battle was limited to the preparation. Knowing what was going on in a battle was difficult, getting orders to troops not very close to oneself was difficult, getting the troops to perform complicated maneuvers was also difficult.

I would definitely be open to criticism of the idea that chess actually meaningfully teaches skills needed for premodern generalship... but I've never really understood the such criticism being that it's not an accurate depiction of how battles actually happen, or something that models all the challenges of leading in a battle. It wasn't supposed to be, and didn't need to be for the (supposed) lessons it could teach. Am I just super wrong here about what people claimed/thought, or is this sort of criticism talking straight past it like I feel it is?

I know some wargames were treated essentially as accurate teaching tools, but I feel like chess's value was more about the kind of abstract thought it provoked?
 
I mean, I criticize it for that because that's how fiction often seems to present it: as some sort of genius litmus test that makes you a master strategist.
 
The Narrator said:
I mean, I criticize it for that because that's how fiction often seems to present it: as some sort of genius litmus test that makes you a master strategist.
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It's either that or a borderline mind reading, where a person can see the entire thinking process of the other party and basically get their full psychological profile. I could *maybe* see that happening if they played dozens of matches across couple weeks, but not after a single game. You're not getting that level of insight without some form of ESP. (or ability to read "tells" to a level where it's basically a superpower)
 
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What do you mean arranging all your giant mechs into a chess pattern and then fighting out the battle like a chess game isn't the peak of strategic acumen?

(Code Geass was a deeply silly show)

But yeah the overwrought backlash towards chess as a tool for teaching extremely basic tactical thought (if I do this thing, the enemy may respond like that, how do I move so that I can correctly respond to their response, what am I willing to sacrifice to achieve my goal, etc.) is not quite as bad as the 'it makes you a genius military commander' stuff, but it's still obnoxious. A tool is a tool, and if it's used right it's effective for its intended purpose; we don't complain that a claw hammer is bad at sawing things in half, after all.
 
Naming guns.

I mean I don't need to know that you were lugging around a M16A3 every scene that it shows up, it's fine once in a blue moon, but just "assault rifle" or "rifle" is fine for most scenes.
 
FailLord said:
Naming guns.

I mean I don't need to know that you were lugging around a M16A3 every scene that it shows up, it's fine once in a blue moon, but just "assault rifle" or "rifle" is fine for most scenes.
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While I'm not entirely peeved about it, when an author enters the gun porn section of writing it loses my interest. Yeah I got lost somewhere back when it started to talk about calibers and other stuff.
 
Overuse of AUs by a fandom. Not "what if" AUs like what if X character had different powers or what if N character joined the main squad.

But the AUs where the entire setting is changed but leaves the characters as unchanged as possible.

Like how Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan-fiction that removed all the mystical shit from Twilight and replaced it with a wine mom's conception of BDSM.

Those are fine and all. But in some fandoms they outnumber the ones set in at-least a semi-accurate setting.

For example in the JJK fandom


I was trying to find deliciously angsty fics about Megumi's experience as Sukuna's vessel including spending his whole birthday possessed. But I only found one on Fan-fiction.net and none on AO3. On an unrelated note, I'm miffed that cannon didn't explore this. Including the fact that Megumi was possessed over his birthday. It's like Naruto filler arcs have frightened people from exploring characters or letting moments sink in, because we need to go to the next fight.
 
FailLord said:
Naming guns.

I mean I don't need to know that you were lugging around a M16A3 every scene that it shows up, it's fine once in a blue moon, but just "assault rifle" or "rifle" is fine for most scenes.
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Meh. I see it as optional/modular.

That is, guns do have designations in real life. Someone in the know could tell you this or that rifle is a M16A3. It's just that, well, it's irrelevant to me, so I ignore it. And the same is true in stories. So the story calls it a M16A3. Well, whatever, easily ignored. Not much different to just writing "gun". But for some people it's a nice extra detail, so, yeah, modularity, basically.
 
In some cases it's pretty clear that a chapter was written immediately after the author came back from a gun show.
They'll spend the entire chapter listing dozens of guns, many of which aren't even present, just used as comparisons, going into detail not only about the equipment, but also the production runs and versions.

I could do without hearing about the gun they totally wish they had instead of the ones they are actually using. :rolleyes:
 
Blaflaix said:
In some cases it's pretty clear that a chapter was written immediately after the author came back from a gun show.
They'll spend the entire chapter listing dozens of guns, many of which aren't even present, just used as comparisons, going into detail not only about the equipment, but also the production runs and versions.

I could do without hearing about the gun they totally wish they had instead of the ones they are actually using. :rolleyes:
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Or your treated to paragraphs after paragraphs of XXX rated gun porn.
 
Not exactly fan-fiction. But the male version of fan-fiction power scaling and fight debates!!/s

(Yes that's a joke, gender stereotypes suck) it's interesting to look at the gendered dimension of fan creations. For instance generally female Star Trek fans where making Zines and fanart compared to the more documentarian approach of male fans

The way people debate "feats" make it seem if someone beats someone in a fight that means the Victor is superior in every way.

Also dodging bullets makes you light speed.
Blaflaix said:
In some cases it's pretty clear that a chapter was written immediately after the author came back from a gun show.
They'll spend the entire chapter listing dozens of guns, many of which aren't even present, just used as comparisons, going into detail not only about the equipment, but also the production runs and versions.

I could do without hearing about the gun they totally wish they had instead of the ones they are actually using. :rolleyes:
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Especially in settings where those type of guns don't exist or would be really hard to get.

I understand gun fetishizing they are powerful weapons.
I mean I like weapons porn as much as the next person. Warhammer 40k fan
 
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For my opinion on gun porn, I'mma just quote Revy from Black Lagoon; "Were you trying to fucking sell me the gun!?"
 
New Peeve: Characters treating hindsight like foresight.

You'll have a character that jumped into a dangerous situation without thinking, and stumbled through via blind luck, and when they get confronted about it, they act like the fact that nothing bad did happen means that nothing bad could have happened. And then they sulk and act like they are being picked on when they are told they need to start actually thinking things through ahead of time.
 
LordCirce said:
And then they sulk and act like they are being picked on when they are told they need to start actually thinking things through ahead of time.
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Even worse is when they take a moral stance on it.
Someone was in trouble, they had no ability to plan to help them, they flung themselves in anyway and got out through sheer dumb luck, so it was a good thing! 😇
Because people who try to plan are evil! 😈
 
LordCirce said:
New Peeve: Characters treating hindsight like foresight.

You'll have a character that jumped into a dangerous situation without thinking, and stumbled through via blind luck, and when they get confronted about it, they act like the fact that nothing bad did happen means that nothing bad could have happened. And then they sulk and act like they are being picked on when they are told they need to start actually thinking things through ahead of time.
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See here:
Schlock Mercenary said:
MAXIM 42: "They'll never expect this" means "I want to try something stupid."
MAXIM 43: If it's stupid and it works, it's still stupid and you're lucky.
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Blaflaix said:
Even worse is when they take a moral stance on it.
Someone was in trouble, they had no ability to plan to help them, they flung themselves in anyway and got out through sheer dumb luck, so it was a good thing! 😇
Because people who try to plan are evil! 😈
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Did you read any HP fanfics with focus on Gryffindor recklessness recently, perchance?
 
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