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Pet Peeves in Fanfiction

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The Englanderish said:
Harry/Hermione is a blight upon fanfic and must be cleansed. With fire, if possible! :V
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Normally I despise all the canon ships in a fandom because the writing of them becomes horribly scripted and samey.

Harry Potter is the exception to this because the ship that acts like "canon" in this analogy is Harry/Hermione.

(Also Avatar with Zuko/Katara.)
 
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Snorpenbass said:
One pet peeve of mine is ship-bombing. Not so common on fic forums like SB, SV or The Third One due to the structure of the sites, it's more common on sites like FF or AO3.

Basically, it's when shippers see a story with a ship they disapprove of, and then spend multiple pages "updating" their own stories in such a way as to drive the offending fic off the page. Like...often not even adding anything, just using the site tools to push the newer story off the front page so nobody can see it.
It's so annoying.
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I suspect that would get people infracted here or on SB.
 
Snorpenbass said:
One pet peeve of mine is ship-bombing. Not so common on fic forums like SB, SV or The Third One due to the structure of the sites, it's more common on sites like FF or AO3.

Basically, it's when shippers see a story with a ship they disapprove of, and then spend multiple pages "updating" their own stories in such a way as to drive the offending fic off the page. Like...often not even adding anything, just using the site tools to push the newer story off the front page so nobody can see it.
It's so annoying.
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Anyway, a peeve of mine that's actually writing-related (as opposed to behaviorally related) is when people keep writing character names wrong, or invent new names because "The character couldn't possibly be named something that silly/unusual/strange to me/foreign!"
The world is big. There are people out there named Dweezil and Boris (without being Russian). Someone could totally name their child "Buffy" after listening to folk singer Buffy St.Marie or something. It happens. So please, stop renaming the protagonists. It just makes me go "Ah, this isn't even a Character In Name Only, this is an OC".
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What is "The Third One"? I tried searching it up but none of the results were fic forums
 
How creepy is QQ on a scale from "harmless fun" to "dear god stop talking about women that way"?
 
Snorpenbass said:
One pet peeve of mine is ship-bombing. Not so common on fic forums like SB, SV or The Third One due to the structure of the sites, it's more common on sites like FF or AO3.

Basically, it's when shippers see a story with a ship they disapprove of, and then spend multiple pages "updating" their own stories in such a way as to drive the offending fic off the page. Like...often not even adding anything, just using the site tools to push the newer story off the front page so nobody can see it.
It's so annoying.
--

Anyway, a peeve of mine that's actually writing-related (as opposed to behaviorally related) is when people keep writing character names wrong, or invent new names because "The character couldn't possibly be named something that silly/unusual/strange to me/foreign!"
The world is big. There are people out there named Dweezil and Boris (without being Russian). Someone could totally name their child "Buffy" after listening to folk singer Buffy St.Marie or something. It happens. So please, stop renaming the protagonists. It just makes me go "Ah, this isn't even a Character In Name Only, this is an OC".
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I've never heard of that. Though tbh it just kinda happens unintentionally in some fandoms because of the sheets volume of fics for one or two ships.
 
"Feature creep", that is when a story keeps adding different viewpoints, side stories, and extra events, so that the actual main plot grinds to a complete hold. At some point it doesn't even matter even if the side stories are super interesting, the viewpoints are compelling and help with world building. That may all be true but if those cause the main plot to barely move for dozens of chapters and years of IRL time, then it just gets exhausting.

Look author, I love your story, otherwise I wouldn't have read your 150+ chapter 700k words story multiple times over the years. But if you promise in an AN that the next chapter will deal with a side story that saw it's last major development 4 years and 45 chapters ago, I'm not going to get hyped. Instead, all I feel is a resigned sense of "finally we're going to deal with that and can then go back to the main plot."
 
Flightless Man said:
What about characters who have multiple canon names/canonically steal a name? Like if I'm writing a Buffy story and it's during her LA stint, I should be calling her Anne for that time period. Angel has 3 different names(, Spike has like 6, and Anne/Lily/Chantarelle go through at least 5 as well. Or in Young Justice Stories, Superboy's name choice should only be Connor Kent under very specific circumstances.
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I mean, did they use it in the canon in that time period? Then sure. But if you're writing Buffy in her LA stint and she suddenly proclaims her "real" name is Elizabeth (or any of a gajillion variants), then yeah, that's not Buffy. Her name is, in fact, canonically "Buffy Anne Summers".
It was even lampshaded in the actual show, where the kids had classmates named things like Aphrodesia.

Sunnydale is basically meant to be Santa Barbara. Which means a lot of the things that are commonplace there might weird out people who think boys can only be named "George" or "John", and girls can only have traditional WASPy names like "Elizabeth" or "Susan", and "anything else must be nicknames". I have honestly heard this argument from a fanfic writer who insisted Buffy's "real" name had to be Margaret.

As for Spike, I only know of three canon names - William Pratt, William the Bloody (Awful) and Spike. What are the other three?
 
Snorpenbass said:
I mean, did they use it in the canon in that time period? Then sure. But if you're writing Buffy in her LA stint and she suddenly proclaims her "real" name is Elizabeth (or any of a gajillion variants), then yeah, that's not Buffy. Her name is, in fact, canonically "Buffy Anne Summers".
It was even lampshaded in the actual show, where the kids had classmates named things like Aphrodesia.

Sunnydale is basically meant to be Santa Barbara. Which means a lot of the things that are commonplace there might weird out people who think boys can only be named "George" or "John", and girls can only have traditional WASPy names like "Elizabeth" or "Susan", and "anything else must be nicknames". I have honestly heard this argument from a fanfic writer who insisted Buffy's "real" name had to be Margaret.

As for Spike, I only know of three canon names - William Pratt, William the Bloody (Awful) and Spike. What are the other three?
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Yeah, the sudden proclamation/Corresting a canon name, I definitly understand. I was more asking because I've had the main character insist in my story on calling Angel, Liam instead (with a line about is he half of Angelus or is the demon a shadow of him). And Chantarelle/Anne ended up taking the name Angel (like how she took Anne from Buffy).

William Pratt/The Bloody, Spike, BlondieBear(mostly joking with this one), Liam is short for William (How did Angel never call Spike, Jr/Liam the second, to mock him), Randy Giles, Hostile 17 (to the govrnment).

Tax: Localized words that have different names eslewhere. The ammount of times someone has gotten legit mad at me for calling Soda Pop, Pop, is mind boggling (especially since it hasn't used sodium as the fizzy part in decades, it's not Soda anymore.). Or people asking what a freezie is and then calling me an idiot for using the wrong name.
 
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Flightless Man said:
Yeah, the sudden proclamation/Corresting a canon name, I definitly understand. I was more asking because I've had the main character insist in my story on calling Angel, Liam instead (with a line about is he half of Angelus or is the demon a shadow of him). And Chantarelle/Anne ended up taking the name Angel (like how she took Anne from Buffy).

William Pratt/The Bloody, Spike, BlondieBear(mostly joking with this one), Liam is short for William (How did Angel never call Spike, Jr/Liam the second, to mock him), Randy Giles, Hostile 17 (to the govrnment).
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Honestly, I was more referring to "actual given name" - as in what would be on their birth certificate or what the setting knows them as officially. Like...Superman aka Clark Kent is canon. Snappyhandsman aka Clover Krump is not, and claiming it is because "Clark Kent is a stupid name" would hopefully rightly get me mocked. Same thing with Buffy Summers and "Elizabeth Summers".
Same thing with Spike - if I started claiming he should literally be named Spoon ("Because it hurts more!"), that's just me making shit up. Canonically his nom de guerre is Spike. Not Spoon, Spork, Spangle or Spiffy.

That said, if in-story, a fanfic writer has someone take a different name while acknowledging it's a new thing, that's absolutely fine. It's just when writers claim their headcanon is actual canon that I roll my eyes and stamp "OC" on the fic.
 
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Regional dialect differences do tend to strongly privilege some regional dialects over others. In the US, the regional dialect that prevails in the Mid-Atlantic region (with the biggest government center, DC, and one of the biggest economic centers, New York) and California (where a lot of the entertainment and media come from)... Well yeah. That dialect tends to get privileged over others.
 
Though most Hollywood/California media don't actually use the California dialect - they tend to go for a generic Midwestern one instead. Only times I see actual Cali accents in use is with Valley girls (like, totally!) or surfer dudes (Brah!).
 
RiverDelta said:
How creepy is QQ on a scale from "harmless fun" to "dear god stop talking about women that way"?
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both but we have limits to it. Unlike these people on SB and SV who can be compared to youtube and youtube comments, we over on QQ can be compared to pornhub and pornhub comments.

Yes, there is porn but we have different types of porn. We have stories on the site where porn is like a side serving, you don't need it but you can taste it if you want(yes that was a dirty joke). If you ever visit QQ and want to taste stories like that check out stories by Ideas-Guy, Silver W. King, Adudefromthesea, JBukharin, Vagabond, ThatGit, Chastity, BlueMuffin, and Cherico.

Note their stories are usually long as fuck like 20K to 300K at least but unlike SB or SV the stories that reached that long have endings. like Cherico finished a story with 130k and started writing another one that same day and it ended with 120k
 
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I'm generally fine with the existence of smut that has content that would disturb some people (including me) or would be disturbing outside of the context of smut, at least as long as those elements are made clear ahead of time through tags and such.

Though in general, there's plenty of non-controversial smut and smut-containing content on QQ.
 
The deliberate calling of attention to oddities that make sense from a gameplay perspective but are strange from a story perspective.

Yes, I am aware that Protagonist is carrying a small arsenal on him at all times, you don't need to go out of you way to somehow justify it with a Bag of Holding or whatever.

Yes, I am aware that Wind magic is effective against monster type X in the game, you don't need to go out of your way to call attention to how it did extra damage in the story.
 
JayTee said:
Yes, I am aware that Wind magic is effective against monster type X in the game, you don't need to go out of your way to call attention to how it did extra damage in the story.
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It might qualify as background information for people unfamiliar with the game.

"I cast Lightning Bolt!"

"I cast Fireball!"

"I cast Gust of Wind!"

"...what?"

"Gust of Wind."

"...why?"

"It's super effective!"

"..."
 
JayTee said:
Yes, I am aware that Wind magic is effective against monster type X in the game, you don't need to go out of your way to call attention to how it did extra damage in the story.
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I admit, I'm guilty of this one quite a bit in Persona: The Beautiful. Granted, it was a Quest that had a light dose of mechanics, so it least has more justification than a purely non-interactive story
 
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LordRageKnight said:
both but we have limits to it. Yes, there are some stories with minors, like vista from worm or one of those "anime" "lolis", but we only use fictional minors. And it is not like the SB and SV are innocent either since minor means anyone 17 and under(yes I know that is a super petty reasoning/defense). Unlike these people on SB and SV who can be compared to youtube and youtube comments, we over on QQ can be compared to pornhub and pornhub comments.

Yes, there is porn but we have different types of porn. We have stories on the site where porn is like a side serving, you don't need it but you can taste it if you want(yes that was a dirty joke). If you ever visit QQ and want to taste stories like that check out stories by Ideas-Guy, Silver W. King, Adudefromthesea, JBukharin, Vagabond, ThatGit, Chastity, BlueMuffin, and Cherico.

Note their stories are usually long as fuck like 20K to 300K at least but unlike SB or SV the stories that reached that long have endings. like Cherico finished a story with 130k and started writing another one that same day and it ended with 120k
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Are you trying to excuse the fact that people sexualise minors on QQ because they're fictional?
 
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