- Location
- Neptune
And in that regard Led Zeppelin will probably age a lot more gracefully than My Chemical Romance.
Pet Peeves in Fanfiction
- Thread starter LostHourglass
- Start date
To be fair, actual canon Star Trek did this a lot so it's a thing all writers do in science fiction more often than not.
- Location
- Reading, Berks, UK
Actually if you don't have the usual support structure you paint it black to prevent rust, from which the term Black Knight comes since Knights without support structures (Lithuanians after the Teutonic Order rolled over them seem to have been typical) tended towards banditry.
Shining Armour without support structures is one of those minor miracles the Round Table etc tended to receive.
To be fair that was mostly the sort of people who littered their scripts with [TECH], because they weren't SF writers and needed help faking it.
Generally though it's one of the things Star Trek gets criticised for.
It's a dumb criticism frankly because while yes if you stop to think about the fact that every pop culture reference made by someone centuries in the future is one that is recognizable to us the reader/audience in this decade is an obvious artifice. But the alternative is making pop culture references to a bunch of meaningless nonsense that conveys no meaning.
There are some ways to take this a step further to make it less artificial, but they also all require spending more time on it. A somewhat common one is to present the media itself in some form first and make it obviously similar to something the audience will know so they can immediately grasp what kind of art it is by association. And then when a character references it later, the audience will have the context to understand what that implies. For example, from Mass Effect, we are all familiar enough with trashy romance movies about people from opposites sides of the tracks that we immediately know what Fleet and Flotilla is without needing more than the bare minimum of information about it. And then if we find out some character is a fan of it we get what that says about them just as immediately.
There are some ways to take this a step further to make it less artificial, but they also all require spending more time on it. A somewhat common one is to present the media itself in some form first and make it obviously similar to something the audience will know so they can immediately grasp what kind of art it is by association. And then when a character references it later, the audience will have the context to understand what that implies. For example, from Mass Effect, we are all familiar enough with trashy romance movies about people from opposites sides of the tracks that we immediately know what Fleet and Flotilla is without needing more than the bare minimum of information about it. And then if we find out some character is a fan of it we get what that says about them just as immediately.
- Location
- Northern Hemisphere
References to fictional media that are inserted naturally are always going to be better than ones to existing media that are shoved in haphazardly.
I'm not saying you can't reference centuries old media, it just needs to be done with care. And often in fanfiction, it isn't. And even references to ancient media today can be misleading or incorrect when it comes to the source material. People may be aware of King Arthur but that doesn't mean they know it well.
Edit: Ask people how they know about King Arthur and see how many know it from the 2017 film or Fate. I think most of us would agree those weren't that faithful to the source material.
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- Location
- Neptune
Generally, when preferences to actual pop culture are made and they actually work it is down to pretty much two reasons.
One, it's something that is already a bit older and you can already trace a way it is lasting the ages. Do a media reference to Dolly Parton in your story set two-hundred years from now and I will just nod and accept it. Just, give an indication on how perception has changed and evolved with the years.
And two, use something off-beat and out of the left field. Two-hundred years and Lawyer Cat is STILL a thing. That one has a higher change of going wrong though.
Warning: Warning
- Pronouns
- She/Her
warning
Stating that "Genuinely you are the reason why people are cautious about... because they may turn out as proudly ignorant as whatever you write." is plainly intended to be insulting. Rule 3 requires we engage with others with civility, regardless of how we feel about the relative merits of their argument. It requires we respect others' participation in threads and avoid behavior designed to crowd anyone out of participating. You are welcome to disagree with someone's stance, or to argue that an argument amounts to a defense of terrible behavior, but you can do these things without insulting other people.
This is not civil. You later note:
However, stating "Typically a person who did this would be a terrible coward, of course, that wouldn't be you" is plainly attempting to toe the line re: civility. Rule 3 requires we be civil when engaging with other posters, and respect their right to participate in threads without crowding them out. You have not done met that standard herehere. As this is somewhat marginal, a staff notice has been levied against your account under rule 3, though we have not taken action at this time.
Stating that "Genuinely you are the reason why people are cautious about... because they may turn out as proudly ignorant as whatever you write." is plainly intended to be insulting. Rule 3 requires we engage with others with civility, regardless of how we feel about the relative merits of their argument. It requires we respect others' participation in threads and avoid behavior designed to crowd anyone out of participating. You are welcome to disagree with someone's stance, or to argue that an argument amounts to a defense of terrible behavior, but you can do these things without insulting other people.
The Englanderish
Schrödinger's Kuudere Kitty Caliph(a)
- Location
- Califat de Chats
In the interests of moving the topic more rigidy back to fanfiction only, and also to celebrate the quadruple page number:
Mixing up when one has won one wan smile.
Mixing up when one has won one wan smile.
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
I am continually baffled how people can mistake that, and I grew up in a jungle in the middle of nowhere, in a nation that has a decidedly poor grasp of English.In the interests of moving the topic more rigidy back to fanfiction only, and also to celebrate the quadruple page number:
Mixing up when one has won one wan smile.
If you're going to describe eyes as orbs, better be because they're clearly false, completely spherical eyes. That's going to be the first thing that comes to my mind, and the alternative is almost never better.
Harry Leferts
Suave Shadow Cabal Kaiju
I never get the issue with this since, well... I see it in professional writing and is usually poetic license.
Once or twice is alright, maybe more if from the point of view of a character who would tend to wax poetic all the time, but in fanfiction at least it's thrown around pretty often as a synonym to eye. Which can grate when it becomes apparent that that's not being done for any particular effect so much as an aversion to using the word "eyes". Doesn't help that, while a small thing by itself, it rarely comes by itself when it comes to mechanical problems in the writing. Basically it's workable, just that in the specific area of fanfiction it is rarely used remotely well.
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- Location
- Do you really care?
It's a classic example of purple prose and of bad writers throwing in a five dollar word where none is needed in an attempt to appear more highbrow than they really are. It would be less annoying if it wasn't so common.
hghwolf
Bird of contempt
What the hell is wrong with the meatballs at your favourite bistro if they're blue and white run through with red veins and have a black spot.
'orb' isn't a five dollar word. It's like... two fitty at most.
- Location
- Do you really care?
I'll go down to three dollars, but not a cent less!
But really, I think you get the point. It's the gratuitous use of a more 'sophisticated'-sounding word just for the sake of it. Even if it wasn't inexplicably widespread in amateur fiction, it would still be a bad writing habit.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
Poetic liscense os the excuse used by aliens to disguise the fact they have spherical eyes.
Authors who change the entire summary of a fic to the summary of the latest chapter/oneshot in the collection. "Oh, that premise sounds interesting... Oh. That's a collection of oneshots and the summary has nothing to do with the first 30."
(Related: putting "chapter X now uploaded")
Also, tagging characters who have literally zero relevance to early story instead of the actual main characters. (Example: Mass Effect 1 crossover with only Garson tagged, but she doesn't show up in the first 3 chapters. And they didn't tag Shepard. The literal main character.)
EDIT: Apparently that's just FFN being stupid and changing the character tags. In this case, they relabeled MaleShep as 'Shepard' (male and female) and the FemShep one as Garson.
(Related: putting "chapter X now uploaded")
Also, tagging characters who have literally zero relevance to early story instead of the actual main characters. (Example: Mass Effect 1 crossover with only Garson tagged, but she doesn't show up in the first 3 chapters. And they didn't tag Shepard. The literal main character.)
EDIT: Apparently that's just FFN being stupid and changing the character tags. In this case, they relabeled MaleShep as 'Shepard' (male and female) and the FemShep one as Garson.
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hghwolf
Bird of contempt
...WE have spherical eyes. Granted, you can't see most of it in day to day life but most people are actually aware that eyes are basically spheres attached to a nerve.
Which means the 'limpid orbs' thing is totally valid, natch.
The Englanderish
Schrödinger's Kuudere Kitty Caliph(a)
- Location
- Califat de Chats
So what I'm seeing here is I should instead use orbs to describe tiddies.
Tithed_Verse
Vainglorious
- Location
- Iowa
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I mean, how I talk everyday is that I basically have a grab-bag of arbitrary words that my vocabulary consists of during that time period, and I randomly forget pidgin or vulgarate singletons and am forced to use far more esoteric counterparts.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If you're reaching for synonyms like "orbs", it's probably because there would be weird repetition if you just used "eyes" there. But honestly that probably means you're mentioning eyes too much in the first place.
