What kind of fanfics do you hate?

[Comartemis]

Since this thread has the appearance of being dead, I don't think anyone will mind the double post if I try to resurrect it, right?

Extreme angst featuring Hotaru from SM. This crosses with my extreme hatred of dark-fics, but Hotaru has a special place in my heart, and writers who torment her in their fics without providing some hope of a happy ending *shoots an absolutely murderous glare at "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever"* earn themselves a special place on my "People Who Need To Die" list. C'mon, people, hasn't this girl suffered enough in canon without you nimrods tormenting her in fanon too?

[bissek]

How about dark fics where somebody on the 'good' side doesn't even manage to get at least a token victory somewhere? Those are just depressing.

I have to agree with rmt on his latest comment. If you can't average at least 2K words a chapter, I'm not even going to try reading the story, unless the story is a one-shot. The shortest chapter I've ever produced in my (non-discarded) fic is 2,700 words, and I've found that in order to get the amount of story I want into a chapter, they've steadily gotten longer. Is asking for a chapter to be at least three or four pages long according to MS Word too much to ask?

In stories centering around a love triangle, if one girl wins, at the very least you need to do something with the other girl than just have her casually accept it and walk away. You need to have some event which makes them acknowledge defeat and make them able to move on, or something that deals with them not being able to move on.

Honestly, Ayeka and Ryoko are willing to blow up Tenchi's house on a regular basis in their efforts to get him. Ayeka has shown herself perfectly willing to commit felonies to get what she wants and use her rank to hide from the consequences, and Ryoko honestly doesn't know how to deal with life without using violence. Do you really think that either of these girls would back down quietly if Tenchi ever makes up his mind and chooses the other one?

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Competence, lack of.

If the author isn't competent, at least in most things, forget it. If the characters aren't competent, that's even worse.

Let's say you've written a book, and are going to try selling it to a publisher. Welcome to the club! Thousands of other writers are also sending manuscripts there. Most publishing houses have more manuscripts than they can possibly give a fair reading. So what do they do? They look for reasons to reject a manuscript. Your printer isn't printing well? Out it goes! It's not double-spaced? Toss. There are three misspellings in the first paragraph? Out, damned spot!

A manuscript must show it's not bad before getting a chance to show it's good.

Fanfiction is much the same. So many stories, so little time! If it doesn't read easily, it probably won't read enjoyably. So I'll never last long enough to find out how good the characterizations are. Why start?

Bad characterizations, or incompetent characters, are more annoying - I have to read enough story to find that out, and it's a pure waste spending half an hour to get to that point. The rest is detail -important detail, but detail.

As for the yaoi and the yuri - keep it lime, and I'm okay. But I guess that's as much a matter of auctorial competence as anything else - most of the lemons I've read show, at the very least, that the author doesn't know very much about the details of sex. "Spurting" women, egads.

[dogbertcarroll]

*EDIT*
And as long as we're on the subject of Eva, I really hate Gendo/Rei stories, especially lemons. Come on folks, that might as well be incest!

Rei is a partial clone of his dead wife. Where does the incest come into it? He sure as hell didn't raise her as a daughter, he trained her as a tool.

[CRBWildcat]

That doesn't change the fact that Rei's still physically a kid, clone or not.

[dogbertcarroll]

I'm not saying it ain't creepy, I'm saying it isn't remotely incestuous.

[Not-Going-to-Tell]

*Makes notes* Okay, so its no announcing pairings, no pointless "Plot A to Plot B in 5 seconds", no Girl Ranma without explaination, Angst minimal, or cleared up at the end, no saint or super, keep romance out in general if I don't know what I'm doing, No cross for the sake of cross, pace myself?

Okay, when I get my ass in gear and start writing again I can actually have the plots comingle in two of the fics, and I'll just change pace for the other when the point arrives.

[dogbertcarroll]

And if you can make it funny you can ignore all the rules!

[CRBWildcat]

I'm not saying it ain't creepy, I'm saying it isn't remotely incestuous.

Okay, first off, you have your opinions, and I have mine. Second: no. Absolutely not. Let's just leave it at that, 'cause I don't feel like starting a thread on the topic.

[Yrael]

It makes me happy to find this thread.

1.) "High School" fics. The Naruto section of ff.net is crawling with these damned things. You occassionally see them pop up in the Ranma section as well - "Akane is the most popular girl in the class, what will she do with the new guy Ranma shows up to challenege her position." These stories are almost universally horrible, and in the case of Naruto, also an outlet for yaoi/yuri daydreams from the author(s) as well.

2.) Character bashing. Everybody has characters they don't like. This is fine. However, for some reason, there seems to be a very popular influx of fanfics where the author not only detests certain characters, but also makes them into the whipping boy/girl for their asinine revenge fics. Popular beat-downs include Akane, Kakashi/Sakura, and Narusegawa.

3.) Saint fics. These aren't as popular as the above, but equally annoying. These generally come from authors who idolize a certain character to an extreme degree. Generally the main character of the story, these are the pure embodiment of Mary Sue-ism, never making a mistake and far beyond reproach from anyone else in the story.

[Tuisto]

3) Lemons written by people who obviously failed Sex-Ed. I can't recall the number of times I've read stuff where the guy puts his wang into the clitoris. Are you trying to drill through it or something, kid?

I LOL'd and I agree.

[dogbertcarroll]

Okay, first off, you have your opinions, and I have mine. Second: no. Absolutely not. Let's just leave it at that, 'cause I don't feel like starting a thread on the topic.

I'd just like to know how you consider two completely unrelated people as having an incestuous relationship.

[CRBWildcat]

First off, watch the nests there.

Second, you said earlier that Rei was a partial clone of Jerko's---Gendo's, excuse me---deceased wife. Said 'partial clone', although containing a bit of said wife's DNA, is not truly the original, but could still be considered part of the family if you were willing to stretch things a little. And I say again: partial.

The word 'incest' means "sexual activity between two people who are considered, for moral and genetic reasons, too closely related to have such a relationship". If you still don't see how it could be considered incest, maybe you need to pick up some bug spray.

Now, could we skip the questioning before I feel like retching? My point's been made. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

[Uldihaa]

First off, watch the nests there.

Second, you said earlier that Rei was a partial clone of Jerko's---Gendo's, excuse me---deceased wife. Said 'partial clone', although containing a bit of said wife's DNA, is not truly the original, but could still be considered part of the family if you were willing to stretch things a little. And I say again: partial.

The word 'incest' means "sexual activity between two people who are considered, for moral and genetic reasons, too closely related to have such a relationship". If you still don't see how it could be considered incest, maybe you need to pick up some bug spray.

Now, could we skip the questioning before I feel like retching? My point's been made. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

It would only be, from a biological view, incest if Gendo's DNA was used in creating Rei. But from a social point of view, then yeah it'd be incest. Sorta like some guy having sex with his step-daughter (which makes me feel rather ill to think about).

The kinds of things I can't stand in fics is when the author changes POV every few sentences. Geez, pick a character and stick with his or her POV for at least a descent portion of a chapter! By constantly changing POV, the author ends up confusing both the reader and his/herself 99% of the time.

This second one is aimed squarely at Ranma fics: Please use the proper pronouns! I don't care if Ranma always considers himself to be male no matter what form he's in. Most fics are at least limited third person, meaning the reader is 'on the outside, looking in'; that means the reader isn't the POV character. I drives me nuts to read several sentences, and in some really bad cases whole paragraphs, only to find out that Ranma has been in female form the entire time; meanwhile I've been picturing a black-haired, male Ranma. And no, making constant references to 'his breasts' does not help. Both the anime and manga had actual pictures to show what physical form Ranma had at the time, but fanfiction is entirely text-based; that means an author only has words to use. I just wish some of them would use the right ones!

[Yrael]

This second one is aimed squarely at Ranma fics: Please use the proper pronouns! I don't care if Ranma always considers himself to be male no matter what form he's in. Most fics are at least limited third person, meaning the reader is 'on the outside, looking in'; that means the reader isn't the POV character. I drives me nuts to read several sentences, and in some really bad cases whole paragraphs, only to find out that Ranma has been in female form the entire time; meanwhile I've been picturing a black-haired, male Ranma. And no, making constant references to 'his breasts' does not help. Both the anime and manga had actual pictures to show what physical form Ranma had at the time, but fanfiction is entirely text-based; that means an author only has words to use. I just wish some of them would use the right ones!

Ahh, I forgot about that one. It drives me nuts as well.