What kind of fanfics do you hate?

[Bliss]

I'm actually not as bothered by a lot of these points, I guess I'm just jaded. There are actually three points.

1. When someone writes a mega-crossover that gets out of hand. It becomes too confusing because there are way too many characters being introduced, or the plot twists and turns upon itself so much that what started out as a simple 'what if' plotline evolves into some massive cross-anime battle for supremacy.

2. When someone writes massive harem fics that involve disturbing pairings. Like Ranma+Nodoka+Hinako or something like that. Unless you can seriously explain why his own mother would want to have relations with him, I count this as someone just being twisted for the sake of twisted.

3. Kill-fest fics. Basically a character snaps and attempts to get back at those that seemingly betray them. They leave and several years later return cold, bitter and on a mission. Usually I don't mind these fics if they're done well, but if it's character bashing to the extreme sense... then I become turned off by it.

[FriendlyEL]

Fics that try to pair two characters from the same series who 1. have little/no interaction with each other during the series, or 2. have personalities/histories that would be incompatible with each other, for no reason other than that they think it would make a cute couple.

My personal opinion is that authors can couple whoever they want, just as long as it is done fairly slowly and they both do a decent amount of charachter growth. Just don't make them hit the sack or kiss until the end of the story. Let the story be on how they get to know each other and get to like each other better instead.

And fics where Ranma voluntarily becomes a girl.

[Battlekrome]

lets see... fics that seem interesting plot wise but are just so horrible to read that you can't get past the first chapter...
either due to grammar or just poor writing...

The infamous rush to get to the current events...

ie this suddenly happens and voila i can start my AU story...

some writers write great fiction but... only similarity between that and original is sometimes names...

The worst stories i find are those where the author basically gets a great idea set up but loses their muse mid way to the second act...

[TerraEpon]

I lot of things don't bother me like they do to some. I have no problem with yaoi (and in Ranma, there's far far more yuri fics...I actually like stories where everyone's bi, but eh...). A bit of OOC can be ok if the story is entertaining. I certainly don't mind Ranma is a girl fics (look at what site we're on),

Main things that bug me are bad fanon -- as opposed to fanon that makes sense and is just filling in the blanks.
Also, dark = no, and overly dramatized for the sake of "omg conflict!" -- I much prefer things to be at least somewhat light hearted.

Then there's when things feel very forced for the sake of things happening that way -- where the writer makes everything possible happen so the conflict occurs (this fits in with the above somewhat).

Also, when authors force their favorite pairings even when the story the author is writing seems to go against it. This happens a LOT with Ranma/Akane -- a good example is the Modern Dynasty series -- Ranma is split into three people, yet STILL Akane gets them all (and ONE moves to Ukyo a bit later, but ends up with Akane at the end).

Of course, I also don't like bad grammar/spelling/punctuation/formatting, but that's a given really.

-Joshua

[ToastedPine]

Any story that revolves around the Neko-ken. It's a cheap, and crappy way to amp up the pity and power in any fic. I also don't like it Ranma gets furry.

Rapefics, for similar reasons.

Crossovers that destroy the main characters of the other series.

[three headed dog]

I hate stories where they dumb down charachters Ex. a story where Ranma has trouble doing basic mathematics (simple multiplication/ addition) even though he's in the 10th grade.

I also hate when they completely destroy the power scale. Ex. Akane can suddenly defeat Ranma (even though he's trained for years and years and she only trains for a few hours a day) or Ranma easily defeats Happosai without trickery.

Also hate when all problems are magically solved ex. Ranma and Akane are married Shampoo, Kuno, Ukyo, etc... are all ok with it.

[P.H. Wise]

I notice a lot of people really dislike "Ranma as a girl" fics, and I figured I'd comment. I too usually dislike 'Ranma as a girl' fics, but for the reason I mentioned earlier: they generally involve Ranma being forcibly feminized by the people around him, and I find that incredibly disturbing. Ranma getting stuck as a girl (or even having always been a girl) doesn't bother me. But there's more to gender than a person's biological sex. There are people who are biologically female whose gender is male, and there are people who are biologically male whose gender is female.

Ranma clearly self-identifies as male, which means that his gender is male, even when his biological sex is not. Even when he's a her, she's a him. This is central to how he thinks about himself, and if you intend to move away from that self-identification in a story, it has to be done very, very carefully, or else you'll end up with a bad story with character developments that simply aren't believable. Many stories that involve Ranma locked in female form also involve really badly written attempts to change his self-identification, and would be much better stories if they didn't include that particular sub-plot.

That said, there are some very good, well written stories that actually do pull off the changing of his self-identity. They're just very uncommon is all, as it's a difficult thing to do well.

[Raneko]

I notice a lot of people really dislike "Ranma as a girl" fics, and I figured I'd comment. I too usually dislike 'Ranma as a girl' fics, but for the reason I mentioned earlier: they generally involve Ranma being forcibly feminized by the people around him, and I find that incredibly disturbing. Ranma getting stuck as a girl (or even having always been a girl) doesn't bother me. But there's more to gender than a person's biological sex. There are people who are biologically female whose gender is male, and there are people who are biologically male whose gender is female.

Ranma clearly self-identifies as male, which means that his gender is male, even when his biological sex is not. Even when he's a her, she's a him. This is central to how he thinks about himself, and if you intend to move away from that self-identification in a story, it has to be done very, very carefully, or else you'll end up with a bad story with character developments that simply aren't believable. Many stories that involve Ranma locked in female form also involve really badly written attempts to change his self-identification, and would be much better stories if they didn't include that particular sub-plot.

That said, there are some very good, well written stories that actually do pull off the changing of his self-identity. They're just very uncommon is all, as it's a difficult thing to do well.

Like, girl days?

*Ducks*

[Battlekrome]

Girl Days really isn't Ranma changing his self-identification...

its more him getting to know what the female side is like...


i find most crossovers / fusions / AUs with Ranma to be interesting but darn some of them are absolute garbage...

iirc the term fanwankery comes to mind for some of them...

some are done well... most are done poorly
(notably there are a few authors capable of good AU/fusions... DB sommer for example...)

course with the specific genre... ranma/sm i think that most fukufics tend to over power the enemies and rarely actually come up with well thought out bad guys... (or rather bad guys that do something other than randomly send youma) course i can't recall many fukufics where a new villian comes into play

[camk4evr]

I can't stand:

-bad formatting, crappy spelling (esp. ranma, Nermia, and Furnikan), and really bad grammer.

-rape fics (there's only one that I've read that I enjoyed)

-any fic where Ranma falls in love with a guy

-Sailor Moon fics that switch between and/or mix the American and Japanese versions

-fics that are abandoned part-way through

-authors who repeat essentially the same dialogue in each chapter, or even multiple times in the same chapter, especially if we're shown what happened in the prologue as well

-fics written in present tense

-fusion fics in which the replacement character acts exactly like the original character they're replacing

[P.H. Wise]

Girl Days really isn't Ranma changing his self-identification...

Well, it kind of is, actually. In Girl Days, Ranma does appear to self-identify as female when he is biologically female, but not when he is biologically male, which makes him a strangely schizophrenic character later on in the story. Fortunately, the author has the good sense to approach the whole situation through comedy rather than by means of angst or drama, which makes it easier to swallow. It helps that the comedy works, too.

[rmt]

Fortunately, the author has the good sense to approach the whole situation through comedy rather than by means of angst or drama, which makes it easier to swallow.

That's the only reason I was able to stomach Girl Days. A serious story with the same premise just wouldn't have worked. Even so, the chapters where the girls at school all accepted him because he was one of them were giving me horrible Genma's Daughter flashbacks. *ducks too*

(I didn't dislikeGenma's Daughter, btw. I thought it was quite a good story. It just wasn't a Ranma fanfiction.)

[Bliss]

*shrugs* I don't really have much against a Ranma as a Girl fic, although I guess it's just a matter of taste--- like Secrets by Courtova (although one could argue that that isn't necessarily Ranma fanfiction at all).

Similarly, I don't mind Ranma/Ranko(Curse manifested/or otherwise) but I'd rather they were done properly, instead of "ZOMG! Curse Split! Ranma-chan decides she is in love with Ranma-kun! Angst fest due to Identity Crisis! No wai! Ranma-kun and Ranma-chan run away! They live happily ever after! Yay!" This 'relationship' is probably the one with the most controversy I think, with most people either loving it, or hating it.

[Dumbledork]

I don't have any problems with "Ranma as a girl" fics. There are two in particulat that I like a lot: "Kikuko" and "Nodoka's daughter"

[Neko-]

I don't have any problems with "Ranma as a girl" fics
On that note, I sorta enjoyed 'Genma's Daughter', although I liked it's continuation 'Equal Halves' more.

The contents of the back story don't really matter to me. It's the way the story is build that gets to me. If it's forced into a direction, either by an obvious as hell plot device, or by making the characters into something they're not, I start out with disliking the story. If it's however explained in a plausible way, I can cope with it.