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Pet Peeves in Fanfiction

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Kadmus said:
50-70k words is a good novel length; there's nothing wrong with doing a romance novel-length romance.

200k is really too much, but that's because it's too much for, well, almost any single thing. And dragging out a romance, where the core of the appeal is these characters getting together, over like 3-4 novel's worth of words, is just not good writing? If you're doing a romance work where the characters actually get together within the first 50k words, and the further stuff is about the now-established romance, that's a different beast to 'these characters are going to get together, i totally promise, what do you mean i've written literally ten books worth of words about how they haven't got together'.
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That...strikes me as rather arrogant? Slow-burn is a genre. Calling the entire genre of drawn-out romance bad for being drawn out is like...have you considered that's you're just not the audience, and to look for more concise stuff?

Like, I can't stand slowburn, but I know what technique looks like, and I know when someone is going for a thing. A lot of those stories are not about establishing a romance. They're about the agonizing process of getting over yourself and your circumstances and occasionally your trauma or your stupidity and actually becoming happy. The story ends with the romance happening, because it's about the long journey of actually getting there. There's good and bad ways to actually implement this, but the thing itself is not automatically bad writing just because being concise is what you value in a story.
 
Kaiya said:
That...strikes me as rather arrogant? Slow-burn is a genre. Calling the entire genre of drawn-out romance bad for being drawn out is like...have you considered that's you're just not the audience, and to look for more concise stuff?

Like, I can't stand slowburn, but I know what technique looks like, and I know when someone is going for a thing. A lot of those stories are not about establishing a romance. They're about the agonizing process of getting over yourself and your circumstances and occasionally your trauma or your stupidity and actually becoming happy. The story ends with the romance happening, because it's about the long journey of actually getting there. There's good and bad ways to actually implement this, but the thing itself is not automatically bad writing just because being concise is what you value in a story.
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Heck, as long as it's engaging, intentional, and not contrived, I don't care about slowburn fic. I might've written one myself in the long ago, halcyon days of yore.
 
Kadmus said:
50-70k words is a good novel length; there's nothing wrong with doing a romance novel-length romance.

200k is really too much, but that's because it's too much for, well, almost any single thing. And dragging out a romance, where the core of the appeal is these characters getting together, over like 3-4 novel's worth of words, is just not good writing? If you're doing a romance work where the characters actually get together within the first 50k words, and the further stuff is about the now-established romance, that's a different beast to 'these characters are going to get together, i totally promise, what do you mean i've written literally ten books worth of words about how they haven't got together'.
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I mean, it's fine if it's 200k words where a lot of things happen and while they are happening the characters slowly grow closer, until they officially get together.
 
I practically can't get into romance unless it's slowburn.
Short Romance can be fine as a side dish, but romance is about how people grow closer through various situations.
If your story has less than 1 million words then I'm not likely to ever get really interested in the romantic bits.
 
The more I grow older, the less I can stand getting-together romance.

I'm an established relationship kind of person :V
 
Kadmus said:
200k is really too much, but that's because it's too much for, well, almost any single thing. And dragging out a romance, where the core of the appeal is these characters getting together, over like 3-4 novel's worth of words, is just not good writing? If you're doing a romance work where the characters actually get together within the first 50k words, and the further stuff is about the now-established romance, that's a different beast to 'these characters are going to get together, i totally promise, what do you mean i've written literally ten books worth of words about how they haven't got together'.
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I mean... I may be biased here because, uhhh, yeahhh... :V ... but I don't think the comparison to printed novels really holds? Basically, fanfic has set its own standards. And I don't even mean the ludicrous 1m+ words fanfics. Those are outliers. But I think a length of around 300-400k words for a completed longfic is pretty standard on Ao3 or ffn. So, if you have 300,000 words, and it is focused on that romance, then 2/3 of that length being them coming together seems... pretty normal to me, t bh?

I mean, you say "where the core appeal is these characters getting together", but in fact, most romances are about the getTING together, not about the being together. Which of course definitely is its own can of worms, it also definitely is how it is. So considering that process is the focus, spending 2/3 of a work on that focus seems perfectly fine to me.
 
There's something so wonderfully agonizing about the yearning of a long ass slowburn. It's not the only kind of romance i read, but the people who are masters of it really understand the power of delayed gratification.

One thing that i dislike though, is the canard that romance isn't plot. Romance novels have plots, they have twists, they have character development and themes and all the other juicy stuff. Plot isnt equivalent to going places and having action scenes. I think some people are so condescending about romance- no its not just purely motivated by sex drive or a desire to smash characters together like dolls. Some the best character writing in fanfic ive written has been romance. The best romance stories are also inherently character studies. And just because a story is primarily about two characters bring inna relationship doesnt mean it cant be about other things as well. I've read some of the most nuanced depictions of bipolar disorder, childhood trauma, alien worldbuilding and queer family dynamics in a fic where sollux captor falls in love with dave strider- characters that dont even talk in the story they're from. It fucking owned.

It's fine to not like something but its annoying when you fail to properly explain the actual appeal as well. Leave that to the people that actually enjoy it. You won't see me trying to explain why people love milsci so much.
 
Slow burns are fine, as long as they keep moving forward (slowly), instead of constant 'two steps forward, one step back'.
 
I think this entire issue is swerving back around to the old 90% rule.

And because there is so much Romance around, these 90% of it that are bad are a lot more prominent. Good Romance is nuanced and takes care, just like all its constituent parts. Bad Romance is egregious and everywhere. Many newcomers see their favourite stories having (a) romance and conclude they must have it too, then mess it up because they lack the ability to include that nuance.

And consequently, people get sick of seeing Romance in stories.

Personally, I do not find much enjoyment in pure Romance stories. Not my cup of tea. I am also not the sort who can write a full-on Romance story, though I like to season my projects with it where appropriate.
 
I will say one thing that is kind of lost as specific fanfic sites get merged together into the archive or shutdown altogether is that there used to be very specific spaces for the fanfic you wanted to read. I've been revisiting Twisting the Hellmouth and even if its not the most robust site now, its nice knowing I could click randomly and find a decent Buffy crossover that abides by the site's rules and was engaged with by people whose interests overlap with mine.

Hell on SV, SB and the like, audiences come with a wide range of expectations as to what your story could be. Where as on Spock X Kirk fansite number 23 (this time as a farm au) you know exactly what you're signing up for. And you don't have to hunt around for a discord link to get there.
 
Honestly, one of my smaller peeves is how often we all (myself included) use language that unintentionally makes our venting come across like all fiction needs to be what we want, instead of it being clear we're just expressing our current annoyance.

I want to empathize with everyone, but some comments are just phrased in a way that turns it into an objective statement or question I have to answer. I don't want an explanation for why my peeves exist, I just want to be able to vent about them and maybe get a few other people to chime in with agreement. But If I can't stay objective and do that for everyone else, why do I deserve that treatment?
 
Pet Peeve: When the author overdoes the dark and grim of the start of a story, quickly realizes it and tries to veer the story into another direction, but doesn't actually change the start to make the story flow better.
 
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Hologram Killer said:
There's something so wonderfully agonizing about the yearning of a long ass slowburn. It's not the only kind of romance i read, but the people who are masters of it really understand the power of delayed gratification.

One thing that i dislike though, is the canard that romance isn't plot. Romance novels have plots, they have twists, they have character development and themes and all the other juicy stuff. Plot isnt equivalent to going places and having action scenes. I think some people are so condescending about romance- no its not just purely motivated by sex drive or a desire to smash characters together like dolls. Some the best character writing in fanfic ive written has been romance. The best romance stories are also inherently character studies. And just because a story is primarily about two characters bring inna relationship doesnt mean it cant be about other things as well. I've read some of the most nuanced depictions of bipolar disorder, childhood trauma, alien worldbuilding and queer family dynamics in a fic where sollux captor falls in love with dave strider- characters that dont even talk in the story they're from. It fucking owned.

It's fine to not like something but its annoying when you fail to properly explain the actual appeal as well. Leave that to the people that actually enjoy it. You won't see me trying to explain why people love milsci so much.
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I basically agree with all of this, which makes it so goddamn annoying that I get annoyed at romance-heavy stories
 
Vyslanté said:
The more I grow older, the less I can stand getting-together romance.

I'm an established relationship kind of person :V
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The more I grow older the less I can stand long form fics in general. Get to the point because I have other things to do in my life too. I love the main theme but stop throwing in a bunch of extra stuff. Save that for your next fic or something.

As far as the romance debate goes I am fine with it if it is a core part of the story from the beginning. It just so happens that it is one of two things that regularly steal the focus from what was initially the main focus and can completely subsume it if the author is not extremely careful.

The other is the need a lot of long form anything authors seem to have to add "seriousness" to their story. And by "seriousness" they mean edgyness and darkness.
 
Ophelia said:
Heck, as long as it's engaging, intentional, and not contrived, I don't care about slowburn fic. I might've written one myself in the long ago, halcyon days of yore.
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I honestly don't have a lot of patience for the vibe, is all it is. I need other stakes, romance alone isn't enough to carry 200k words, in general.

Susano said:
I mean... I may be biased here because, uhhh, yeahhh... :V ... but I don't think the comparison to printed novels really holds? Basically, fanfic has set its own standards. And I don't even mean the ludicrous 1m+ words fanfics. Those are outliers. But I think a length of around 300-400k words for a completed longfic is pretty standard on Ao3 or ffn. So, if you have 300,000 words, and it is focused on that romance, then 2/3 of that length being them coming together seems... pretty normal to me, t bh?

I mean, you say "where the core appeal is these characters getting together", but in fact, most romances are about the getTING together, not about the being together. Which of course definitely is its own can of worms, it also definitely is how it is. So considering that process is the focus, spending 2/3 of a work on that focus seems perfectly fine to me.
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sometimes it's also just a structural problem. Like, honestly? A big part of why I think writing Wormfic took off like it did, even when people engaged with the actual themes and characters is somewhat uncommon, is that Wildbow's specific arc structure is actually really really good for automatically outlining your story to a degree. I could be wrong, but like, my own fanfic is 5 arcs, roughly 10 chapters apiece at 6000ish words per chapter, adding up to roughly five novellas, each following the one before it and building on what was established.

It made it much easier to plan by going "okay, this is the Theme And Conflict for arc 1, how can I arrange this into chapters", whereas in the past when I've done fanfic as one big chunk I've tended to get lost pretty fast. I had the most success writing Buffy fanfic because I was doing it season by season and changing stuff as I went on.
 
New Peeve: Characters keeping secrets for flimsy reasons, particularly when they have the attitude of "secrets for me, but not for thee".

You'll have someone who is trying to stop some world-ending threat, or who is from another planet and trying to find a way home, or whatever, and they won't tell anyone because... it's hard to explain or 'they'll be in danger if they know... somehow' or whatever, and the excuses don't really hold up to even a little bit of thought, but the author obviously wants to isolate the characters, and can't think of a better way to do it, so needless secrets it is!

And it gets even more annoying when the MC will also be constantly trying to pry into other people's secrets. Because when the MC is keeping a secret, it is "noble" and "justified" and "for their own good", but when someone else is keeping a secret, that is "suspicious" and "dangerous" and "a breach of trust", etc etc.
 
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