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Pet Peeves in Fanfiction
- Thread starter LostHourglass
- Start date
- Pronouns
- Male
Exactly, it reads like the teenage author is telling me an adult reader that my life can't be any better because my soul just isn't strong enough. When I know that teenage writer hasn't lived through nearly as much soul crushing life as I have yet and it just feels so condescending.
If it's soul stuff because of magic, that's fine. Just don't try telling the readers some people are born special and I should just be a NPC because I don't try at life.
And that's fine. It's when everyone else in the world is pathetic in comparision to the one Author insert. The MC can succeed a little bit more because they're the main character. But the rest of the cast can't be pathetic.
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FortePlus
The THRILL from Green Hill
- Location
- Toronto
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Nah that's accurate too, especially in the context people have been putting it in, which is combat and magic stuff or whatever. Most people aren't built for fighting or creating complex spells and such in many fantasy worlds, when they are it looks much different. But the assumption that the author is pushing some kind of agenda as opposed to just following traditional story beats is misguided. When that is the case it's pretty obvious, but "implications" from people just being born better with a sword in their hands are pretty weird. That doesn't say anything about anyone or that others are "NPCs" or something else degrading just because they can't fight people who have 6 feet and 200 pounds on them on a whim.
- Pronouns
- Male
Your missing the context. The issue isn't soul stuff existing in a work. It's when it's used as the sole justification for why the MC is so much better than the rest of the setting.
It's generally a younger author problem in my experience and goes hand in hand with the soul bond stuff. The author doesn't want to put the actual work into the relationship/character growth into a hero and just says the soul is stronger.
The difference between a cheap shonen that has the protaganist be a bland superstar with all the powers just because vs a good shonen protag who actually puts in effort for the skills so I can believe they have a soul just a few percentage points stronger.
Edit: If you want to tell me the Protag has a stronger soul, you need to show it as well. If you tell me two characters have a soul bond, you need to actually show me what that means and not just have two characters always agree about everything and have one essentially be a prop.
It's generally a younger author problem in my experience and goes hand in hand with the soul bond stuff. The author doesn't want to put the actual work into the relationship/character growth into a hero and just says the soul is stronger.
The difference between a cheap shonen that has the protaganist be a bland superstar with all the powers just because vs a good shonen protag who actually puts in effort for the skills so I can believe they have a soul just a few percentage points stronger.
Edit: If you want to tell me the Protag has a stronger soul, you need to show it as well. If you tell me two characters have a soul bond, you need to actually show me what that means and not just have two characters always agree about everything and have one essentially be a prop.
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- Location
- Somewhere
Most just go with the "chosen one" thing, where they just happened to be born at the right place and time, so that they can skip the explanation without making it eugenics.
Sonifri
Is this the face of a villain?
- Location
- Texas
I've only seen one story do the reverse and I don't even remember what story it was. The guy was the only person in the universe who didn't have a soul and the inherent resistances and other bonuses that having a soul gives to a person. This weakness was turned into their strength since magic and/or technology took to him better due to having no natural resistance at all.
- Pronouns
- Male
That's all I ask for. Don't just tell me a character who has never done anything with their life is better than everyone, make them work for it.
I also realize I was directing too much antagonism towards younger authors in general which wasn't really fair and I apologize to anyone who was upset by my poor phrasing. Inexperienced would have been a far better word for me to use.
Inexperienced authors won't put the work in to make me believe the character is worthy of the praise.
Dark Mage
Sanity is really overrated...
- Location
- Out of My Mind
Sound like the Darksword series, where the MC is the only person on a planet of mages with no magic.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
nooooo i took a year of training in HEMA i should be able to the best swordsman in this isekai fantasy universe and get a harem of cute elf girls this isnt fair anime and doujins lied to meeeee
I find the original point interesting in that the Gamer power was a manifestation of the protagonist's talent rather than something that made the protagonist effectively talented.
Anyways, yeah, sometimes souls are related to a character's willpower or beliefs or such while other times souls are a power level thing where a bigger souls means more magic/superpowers or a protagonist can get stronger against mental attacks by eating souls with no psychological side effects, and sometimes it's a bit of both. What they are or do varies between settings.
Anyways, yeah, sometimes souls are related to a character's willpower or beliefs or such while other times souls are a power level thing where a bigger souls means more magic/superpowers or a protagonist can get stronger against mental attacks by eating souls with no psychological side effects, and sometimes it's a bit of both. What they are or do varies between settings.
- Location
- Elsewhere
Pet Peeve: Unnecessary Insert
So you have an SI, but not a vanilla SI.
They're an OC-SI, or part of a crossover, or part of some hellish amalgam of 5 characters and a cat, but the character is not defined from the author.
They go into the setting with some quantity of meta-knowledge, but they're totally going to avoid the plot.
That's common enough, but they also don't really have a reason to use their meta-knowledge in other ways.
They don't really need to maneuver through the world carefully, and they don't need to hop around grabbing powerups, and they are perfectly fine interesting with the characters at face value without needing to know every detail of their backstory.
In fact, when you look back on the character's actions, nothing they've done actually requires meta-knowledge at all!
So why did the author make them an insert in the first place?
Ultimately this is a good thing.
Their OC stands on their own.
The crossover works.
They don't need the crutch of meta-knowledge to succeed or justify oddball behavior.
It almost comes across as a kind of insecurity.
They have a good idea, but they aren't confident that they can do it without the crutch, so they toss it in randomly.
Like playing a game you've already beaten with cheats on.
The other possibility is that it's making it absolutely clear that this totally is a stand-in for the author, even if they say it's-not-really-because-it's-an-OC.
Of course, this is completely unnecessary.
We all knew is was an author stand-in when they spent 3 paragraphs describing how big their sword is.
They don't need to actually spell it out like they're marking territory.
And in a few cases it feels almost sad.
Like even when they put themselves in a power fantasy, they can't imagine their own contribution making any difference.
"Here's the crossover character doing awesome stuff, and here's the setting responding, and here's me, in my ride-along doing... not much of anything."
So you have an SI, but not a vanilla SI.
They're an OC-SI, or part of a crossover, or part of some hellish amalgam of 5 characters and a cat, but the character is not defined from the author.
They go into the setting with some quantity of meta-knowledge, but they're totally going to avoid the plot.
That's common enough, but they also don't really have a reason to use their meta-knowledge in other ways.
They don't really need to maneuver through the world carefully, and they don't need to hop around grabbing powerups, and they are perfectly fine interesting with the characters at face value without needing to know every detail of their backstory.
In fact, when you look back on the character's actions, nothing they've done actually requires meta-knowledge at all!
So why did the author make them an insert in the first place?
Ultimately this is a good thing.
Their OC stands on their own.
The crossover works.
They don't need the crutch of meta-knowledge to succeed or justify oddball behavior.
It almost comes across as a kind of insecurity.
They have a good idea, but they aren't confident that they can do it without the crutch, so they toss it in randomly.
Like playing a game you've already beaten with cheats on.
The other possibility is that it's making it absolutely clear that this totally is a stand-in for the author, even if they say it's-not-really-because-it's-an-OC.
Of course, this is completely unnecessary.
We all knew is was an author stand-in when they spent 3 paragraphs describing how big their sword is.
They don't need to actually spell it out like they're marking territory.
And in a few cases it feels almost sad.
Like even when they put themselves in a power fantasy, they can't imagine their own contribution making any difference.
"Here's the crossover character doing awesome stuff, and here's the setting responding, and here's me, in my ride-along doing... not much of anything."
Axslashel
I am a pessimist not a realist.
- Location
- Land of the Midnight Sun
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- When an SI (yes, I know, but SI fics are a bit like junk food; no nutritional value but easy to digest) insists on maintaining that the people around them are fictional and not real people. This might be able to work for, like, a few hours, but you'd very quickly realise that the people are, you know, people. I've yet to see one where the alleged 'not real people' behave like actual NPCs in some way.
- When Worm fics insist on importing the recurring villain cliché from other superhero fiction. The only real recurring villain in the original piece is one of the most disliked parts of it (Jack Slash), and all the other villains tend to end up actually dealt with once their fight/small set of fights is over. Recurring villains only 'work' when you've got a work so long you've run out of fresh ideas or when you want to demonstrate your hero is completely and totally worthless and would be better off doing literally anything else.
- When Worm fics insist on importing the recurring villain cliché from other superhero fiction. The only real recurring villain in the original piece is one of the most disliked parts of it (Jack Slash), and all the other villains tend to end up actually dealt with once their fight/small set of fights is over. Recurring villains only 'work' when you've got a work so long you've run out of fresh ideas or when you want to demonstrate your hero is completely and totally worthless and would be better off doing literally anything else.
- Location
- Home
Pet Peeve: When authors keep using flashbacks during the first few chapters. Stopping the start of the story to tell things that happened before it started feels so counterintuitive to me, are you afraid of progress, author?
You can use one flashback, or maybe start in a flashforward and then start telling the story from the start. But if you keep stopping to retell things that happened before as if you have no idea where to put them or it's like you forgot you had to explain other things feels like terrible writing. If you use too many flashbacks during the first few chapters you may have started the story at the wrong point.
The first few chapters should be those that catch the reader by getting things in motion.
You can use one flashback, or maybe start in a flashforward and then start telling the story from the start. But if you keep stopping to retell things that happened before as if you have no idea where to put them or it's like you forgot you had to explain other things feels like terrible writing. If you use too many flashbacks during the first few chapters you may have started the story at the wrong point.
The first few chapters should be those that catch the reader by getting things in motion.
.
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Vyslanté
The self is a prison
- Location
- European Union
What do you mean, there were no interactive menus on VHS ?
- Location
- Elsewhere
What do you mean, there were no interactive menus on VHS ?
There were interactive menus on VHS.
It had Play/Pause, Fast-Forward, Rewind, and a blinking 12:00.
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- Location
- Just passing through.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
Not entirely true, there was rewind/fastforward on the VHS itself, it just wasn't a buttonNope, all those buttons where on the VCRs, not the VHS.
... anyway, the trick here is to be old enough to remember that fanfic writers were getting them wrong back in the days before DVD, too. It's not a youngin' thing, it's a fanfic writer thing, ha.
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There also weren't portals to the Upside Down in the real 1980s; I just assume they live in an parallel dimension like the one in Fringe (where CDs hadn't been invented yet)
- Location
- Elsewhere
"I think we're in a parallel dimension."
"Why?"
"They don't have tiktok."
"So? Maybe it's just another name?"
"They also don't have facebook, or twitter, or any social media platforms."
"Oh god, are you saying we're from the darkest timeline!?"
- Pronouns
- Male
I think the reason a couple of us have brought up the age thing, is just because it's a lot easier to notice a writer is younger and didn't do the research. Everyone over a certain age, went through generally the same experiences so we can easily see when the writer didn't. But with stuff we never experienced personally, it becomes a lot harder to point out what type of inexperience the writer has.
I'm not really going to know if a writer does correct research on deep sea trawling. I will know if a VCR is used wrong. The overall issue isn't that writers are young, it's just that us old fogies can notice that specific area of inexperience. Same like how those same teens/Young adults, can probably easily see how I don't know how to write a modern teen. We probably make teens comes across like college age people.
I'm not really going to know if a writer does correct research on deep sea trawling. I will know if a VCR is used wrong. The overall issue isn't that writers are young, it's just that us old fogies can notice that specific area of inexperience. Same like how those same teens/Young adults, can probably easily see how I don't know how to write a modern teen. We probably make teens comes across like college age people.
WhiteNights
Notorious Phoneposter
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Opposite of a pet peeve- the writer for one of my favorite fics does the research (even though they are definitely old enough to live through it) and has period accurate memes and cultural references 🥰
Thread tax - writers inserting their own (modern) cultural references into non modern fic. It becomes dated quickly, and it's only tolerable in small doses.
Thread tax - writers inserting their own (modern) cultural references into non modern fic. It becomes dated quickly, and it's only tolerable in small doses.
- Location
- Home
Oh god, I hate this one so badly. I stopped reading RWBY fics because authors kept insisting on their characters start talking about Avengers or whatever movie had just came out. I've seen it also in MHA, though some do a little side-step when they point they have been watching remastered 'old world' media. It's still pretty cringe.