To be honest, I didn't know it existed until recently. You mean the original fic, right?
Pet Peeves in Fanfiction
- Thread starter LostHourglass
- Start date
Somic
It's meow or never
- Pronouns
- She/Her
But why? As you said, you brought up gay pairings yourself, so I responded in that direction. Is this some kind of game of chase? I don't want to have to repeatedly come back here and explain that I didn't mean things that I didn't say. The original peeve had no mention of gender and made no difference that you now imply I'm making. Can we let it stand this way?
Edit: Sorry for the rough tone. I was feeling defensive.
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- Location
- Not the asylum anymore
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If I could offer a peeve of mine; I hate the tendency for fics in the SB/SV sphere to treat genocide really casually. This tumblr post explains it better than I can.
View: https://www.tumblr.com/pluckingstarsoffmoontrees/758771253063630848/manufacturing-a-blueprint-for-a-more-stable?source=share
View: https://www.tumblr.com/pluckingstarsoffmoontrees/758771253063630848/manufacturing-a-blueprint-for-a-more-stable?source=share
- Location
- Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
An annoyingly certified hood classic. It's always a genocide of a non-European group too, these kinds of authors would almost never dare to say a bad thing about them while consigning anyone with a different color or lifestyle into the dustbin of history with nary a thought. Nomads and tribals are annoyingly common as a target in fantasy especially.
Ophelia
unpleasant
I already have an aversion to those kinds of stories (because they always seem to have pages of gun/boat/ship/logistics info dumps).
If it's not genocide, it's a White Savior fantasy with these kinds of authors.
If it's not genocide, it's a White Savior fantasy with these kinds of authors.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Nothing wrong with that, at least.
(never touched that particular story, but the rant is so hilariously over the top mask off that no amount of context could salvage the other thing. Also, despite whatever the fuck the guy says about "saving franchises", none of this has anything to do with Battletech. Like, one of Maximillian Liao's villain marks was exactly attacking a religious community on some planet because they didn't fully toe the line!)
Ophelia
unpleasant
When you write that many empty words about how your Mary Sue military is totally awesome and curb stomps all the "lesser" people and how your chosen OC is super cool and gets all the chicks, one does get defensive.
My advice is to not write it at all or, if you must, take the L and commit to doing better.
Long descriptions of battleships and ammunition capacity put me to sleep...
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, it's just telling on yourself in the worst possible way. Like, an SI is always going to be a masturbatory power-fantasy to some extent or another - that's why you write them, that's why people read them (myself included, don't judge me, a good SI fic is the literary equivalent of popcorn) - so the fact he chose to go out of his way to invent an entire people to genocide is just... ugh.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Well, I'm glad it's dead.
Honestly what got me about it though was it wasn't really an anything-in-particular story. You could have set it in Game of Thrones or something without really changing it much (and I mean yes BattleTech was Game of Thrones before it was cool in its own way but at the same time...it's got its own flavor and its own storytelling traditions that are not here). You normally assume somebody's writing an SI because they're...invested, at least, in the universe? Maybe not like it, exactly, you can nail a bunch of thesis to canon's door if you want, but there's none of that here. It just feels like they were trying to piggyback onto a sufficiently Spacebattles-y setting and they couldn't figure out how to shoehorn their political fantasy checklist into Worm. For all its focus on minutae it has no command of the canon.
Like I dunno it's a crosspost from QQ so maybe there's a bunch of missing porn you could only do in BattleTech! I'm just super not sure what that could be, especially in this time period. At least after you add the Clanners to the setting they make for suitably different cultural mores for that sort of thing.
Honestly what got me about it though was it wasn't really an anything-in-particular story. You could have set it in Game of Thrones or something without really changing it much (and I mean yes BattleTech was Game of Thrones before it was cool in its own way but at the same time...it's got its own flavor and its own storytelling traditions that are not here). You normally assume somebody's writing an SI because they're...invested, at least, in the universe? Maybe not like it, exactly, you can nail a bunch of thesis to canon's door if you want, but there's none of that here. It just feels like they were trying to piggyback onto a sufficiently Spacebattles-y setting and they couldn't figure out how to shoehorn their political fantasy checklist into Worm. For all its focus on minutae it has no command of the canon.
Like I dunno it's a crosspost from QQ so maybe there's a bunch of missing porn you could only do in BattleTech! I'm just super not sure what that could be, especially in this time period. At least after you add the Clanners to the setting they make for suitably different cultural mores for that sort of thing.
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- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
And not in an isolated Davion outback world of 100k people, anyway. But apparently, it does feature a harem, because of course it does.
Though perhaps more pertinent to the points that had been discussed here, it is now also up on the Sietch, apparently.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
People fucking in a mech? Or just fucking the mech?
Grey Rook
Genuine Nerd
- Location
- The Quantum Foam
Or both! I'm sure there's some way to use Neurohelmets for sex with a bit of imagination.People fucking in a mech? Or just fucking the mech?
Well, naturally a story about genocide would be attractive to genocidal maniacs in real life. That's just to be expected. *spits*
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Naruto peeve: no, just because there's traditional architecture visible between the literal power cables doesn't mean that the ninjas are 'medieval'. While their tech is mildly inconsistent, they're at an absolute minimum at roughly 1940s America real-world levels of technology where they aren't leaps and bounds ahead. They don't have guns, sure, but that's because any given cannon-fodder ninja is significantly more dangerous than a gun, and they also have fuck-off huge magical spells.
They have throat mics! They have cars! They have international telecommunications!
(They also don't have psychology as a discipline until Sakura and Ino explicitly invent it after the Naruto manga ends.)
I'm also sick and tired of 'real ninja' shit that's just an excuse to inject 'gritty' (read: boring and/or disgusting and/or explicitly not what Naruto ninja do stuff) and badly executed angst.
They have throat mics! They have cars! They have international telecommunications!
(They also don't have psychology as a discipline until Sakura and Ino explicitly invent it after the Naruto manga ends.)
I'm also sick and tired of 'real ninja' shit that's just an excuse to inject 'gritty' (read: boring and/or disgusting and/or explicitly not what Naruto ninja do stuff) and badly executed angst.
- Location
- Somewhere
Wildly inconsistent, not mildly.
It's not even all that inconsistent. Most of the technology and stuff that they haven't developed is because chakra already does it better/easier. You don't even consider a 'need' for widespread trucks and freight-trains when you can just chuck your goods into a Storage Seal and hire a Ninja to run it halfway across the country overnight. That's why the "technologically advanced" countries like the Land of Snow tend to be the ones without a well-established Ninja presence, and so look for alternatives.
It's like how Asian countries invented porcelain for things like vases or drinking vessels, while European countries developed advanced glass-making techniques to do the same. And, since they each had a method to meet their goals, there was no incentive or reason for them to research or develop the other method.
But neither porcelain nor glass is in any way "futuristic" or "medieval" when compared to the other — it's two different routes to the same goal, and declaring that a magical or fantasy society must follow the same routes as on Earth, or else be deemed "backwards" and "undeveloped" is arrogance derived from either ignorance or bigotry.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
People fucking in a mech? Or just fucking the mech?
A joystick is just a really poorly made dildo.
Nah I doubt that either. In's a solid take though.
LordofTentacles
Surprisingly Sturdy
- Location
- Louisiana
I realized one of my major peeves that just comes with the genre, celestial forge fics and the fact that there will be chapters where the protag never leaves their workshop. Just no actual interaction with another character just pure technobabble and rebuilding thing you just made to make them 2% stronger. None are more egregious than Brockton Bays Celestial Forge though the author has made a great effort to pick up speed these last couple months.
Really I like CF fics at first but then it reaches a point where the growth just drags down the fic. Though there are some fics that balance perk gain with story progression really well and thus don't feel frustrating too read. I like fics where their knowledge really only covers one aspect of crafting and the author has to get down and dirty with creativity to figure out what to make to solve an issue, instead of learning how to make standard guns one chapter then the next being able to make massive exo suits the next.
Really I like CF fics at first but then it reaches a point where the growth just drags down the fic. Though there are some fics that balance perk gain with story progression really well and thus don't feel frustrating too read. I like fics where their knowledge really only covers one aspect of crafting and the author has to get down and dirty with creativity to figure out what to make to solve an issue, instead of learning how to make standard guns one chapter then the next being able to make massive exo suits the next.
- Location
- Elsewhere
Pet Peeve: Spontaneous Morality
Some settings have some very common moral criticisms.
To the point where any random Average Joe that enters the setting is pretty much obligated to comment on some genre issue.
This is usually pretty annoying because the author isn't actually writing a story about some moral conflict, they just feel like they have to include it.
So the Average Joe will look at Batman and Robin and make some comment about child endangerment, and Batman will make some excuse that he'd fight crime with or without Batman so it's better to be there.
Then Average Joe will sneer at that, but not make any counterargument and they will be pissy at each other for the entire story.
There will never be a resolution or character development because the author is absolutely not going to go into that debate, and it's just generally obnoxious and brings down the tone.
That's bad enough, but then they do it with crossovers.
With characters that do the exact same thing.
Naruto Ninjas and Robins absolutely do not have much to say about age.
Methodology, or training, plenty of other issues, but not age.
Not only have I seen this, I've seen stories where it goes both ways.
Whichever side the author is biased towards apparently spontaneously develops this moral standard.
It comes across as completely artificial and stilted.
None of them have the background morality that would lead up to this conclusion, so they just seem to bleat it out without any context or nuance at all.
And then the author doesn't do anything with it because it's not a story about morality!
Some common moral points of contention:
Child abandonment/neglect/endangerment
Lots of stories have young characters, and lots of them have almost no adults and lots of them are perfectly fine with that.
Trying to tack this on later requires a lot of world-building and excuses.
Killing/violence/torture
This can be tricky because a bunch of settings seem to have a lot of killing happening off-screen, with a lot of ambiguity over whether the antagonists die, or survive, or if the MC realizes they died and there isn't any clear moral stance taken.
It can lead to some weird scenarios where the character from the hellish death world is protesting the violence of a setting that's much lighter overall, but shows more violence on-screen.
Slaves/Clones/AI labor
This one is sneaky because some settings have this out and obvious, but others will seem to avoid it... except for that one filler episode where they totally had it and were completely fine with it.
There's so many ways it can be implemented that you end up saying "Wait a minute, that artificially created golem is totally an enslaved AI just like the one we're talking about!"
Mind control
Very common in Masquerade settings, very uncommon to be used by the MC themselves.
Makes for a lot of objection despite the fact that they implicitly benefit from it all the time at home.
Some settings have some very common moral criticisms.
To the point where any random Average Joe that enters the setting is pretty much obligated to comment on some genre issue.
This is usually pretty annoying because the author isn't actually writing a story about some moral conflict, they just feel like they have to include it.
So the Average Joe will look at Batman and Robin and make some comment about child endangerment, and Batman will make some excuse that he'd fight crime with or without Batman so it's better to be there.
Then Average Joe will sneer at that, but not make any counterargument and they will be pissy at each other for the entire story.
There will never be a resolution or character development because the author is absolutely not going to go into that debate, and it's just generally obnoxious and brings down the tone.
That's bad enough, but then they do it with crossovers.
With characters that do the exact same thing.
Naruto Ninjas and Robins absolutely do not have much to say about age.
Methodology, or training, plenty of other issues, but not age.
Not only have I seen this, I've seen stories where it goes both ways.
Whichever side the author is biased towards apparently spontaneously develops this moral standard.
It comes across as completely artificial and stilted.
None of them have the background morality that would lead up to this conclusion, so they just seem to bleat it out without any context or nuance at all.
And then the author doesn't do anything with it because it's not a story about morality!
Some common moral points of contention:
Child abandonment/neglect/endangerment
Lots of stories have young characters, and lots of them have almost no adults and lots of them are perfectly fine with that.
Trying to tack this on later requires a lot of world-building and excuses.
Killing/violence/torture
This can be tricky because a bunch of settings seem to have a lot of killing happening off-screen, with a lot of ambiguity over whether the antagonists die, or survive, or if the MC realizes they died and there isn't any clear moral stance taken.
It can lead to some weird scenarios where the character from the hellish death world is protesting the violence of a setting that's much lighter overall, but shows more violence on-screen.
Slaves/Clones/AI labor
This one is sneaky because some settings have this out and obvious, but others will seem to avoid it... except for that one filler episode where they totally had it and were completely fine with it.
There's so many ways it can be implemented that you end up saying "Wait a minute, that artificially created golem is totally an enslaved AI just like the one we're talking about!"
Mind control
Very common in Masquerade settings, very uncommon to be used by the MC themselves.
Makes for a lot of objection despite the fact that they implicitly benefit from it all the time at home.
- Location
- Somewhere
K, so torture is always wrong, because it's not even good at producing reliable information. They have every incentive to lie to you, and if you have a way to check their answers, you wouldn't need to torture them anyway.
Likewise slavery. You may not be in a position to abolish it, but taking part is always the immoral choice. (Do note, this applies only to sapient beings. A D&D golem is not sapient. A HP House Elf is. A horse is not.)
- Location
- Elsewhere
I have no problem if they actually address a moral issue, the problem is when they bring up some moral issue despite the fact that they do the same thing themselves with a slightly different name.
"Torturing people is wrong!"
"Well..."
"You should be using spells that cause mind-shattering agony."
"..."
"Torturing people is wrong!"
"Well..."
"You should be using spells that cause mind-shattering agony."
"..."
- Location
- Bay Area, California
It's true that they are evil, and that there were people who recognized these things at all points in history.
and yet, if someone wrote a Naruto/24 crossover and the Naruto ninjas were objecting to Jack Bauer's use of torture on the grounds of morality, it would be very strange. (And if their arguments on the grounds of efficacy were not "and here is how to do it effectively" it would also be kind of strange, because again, the setting...)
Axslashel
I am a pessimist not a realist.
- Location
- Land of the Midnight Sun
I have always wondered about that latter part. Why is it unnecesary to coerce an answer just because you can check its validity?
"Give me the password to this computer or I whack you with this hammer."
"Eh. 1234"
"Whack. Give me the right answer or I whack you again."
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think it depends? Like every society on some level has conscientious objectors or otherwise to one level or another, but you'd definitely have to sell it really well since we don't see any in the setting itself, I feel