What kind of fanfics do you hate?

Where stuff about fanfiction that doesn't fit into any other category goes. Try to make sure that new topics here actually couldn't actually go somewhere else.

Postby Ellen Kuhfeld » Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:59 pm

Religion can be a turn-off, or it can be acceptable. If it doesn't break the fourth wall, if it simply is instead of being preaching, it's okay. But it does bug me when the story stops for a sermon.
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Postby Drawde » Thu Jul 17, 2008 6:00 pm

TerraEpon wrote:One thing to remember in the face of Christianity in Ranma is that Kasumi is shown to be wearing a cross at times. Just a little thing, but it's not completely against canon and such...


-Joshua

Just because someone wears a cross, doesn't mean they're Christian, especially in Japan. Like in Evangelion, most of the religious imagery was just that, imagery. There for looks.
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Postby CRBWildcat » Thu Jul 17, 2008 6:16 pm

That quote-unquote "imagery" is one of the reasons why I've never watched the show in its entirety.
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Postby Ikarus » Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:07 pm

Drawde wrote:Just because someone wears a cross, doesn't mean they're Christian, especially in Japan. Like in Evangelion, most of the religious imagery was just that, imagery. There for looks.


I'd bet they are atleast as bad as we are in the "western" world wearing random foreign religious icons and stuff we really don't quite comprehend the meaning of.
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Postby Terra Hitarumonwa » Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:28 pm

Please fix your nested quote Ikarus.

The kinds of fanfiction I hate, huh? Well, it's probably been said multiple times already, but I hate ones with obvious grammar mistakes. That is my biggest pet peeve in a fic.

Another one is lemon fics. I just don't like reading lemon fics. Lime's are fine so long as it's not the center of the story, but I don't understand the use of blatant sex scenes in a fic. They're just annoying.

And yes, preachy religion is annoying in fics. I'm atheist so I couldn't really care less about religion. Don't use your fic as a way to promote your religion.

But if the fic just has religion, like you say one of the characters goes to church. That's fine. I don't mind that.
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Postby Vilkath » Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:48 pm

Lemon fics are not to bad, but they generaly planned to be lemons and rarely have much of a plot. What really fails to work for me is randomly inserted lemon scenes in an other wise perfectly normal story.

Not to mention a lot of stories simply include badly written smut, like the author hasn't even read so much as a dirty magazine let alone actualy had sex before. Blind leading the blind so to speak. Fanfiction.net seems to be the worst at this, due to it's some what censored content it is always amusing to see authors try to write clean smut.

Spelling errors are always anoying, with how wide spread spell check programs are now it is really unforgivable in authors to post a story that hasn't even been through spell check.

Even worse are those stories with common spelling mistakes that claim to have a proof reader. That means at least two people didn't bother to run spelling or grammar check. Sure the program may not get every thing but it would handle a lot of the more common problems stories seem to have.
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Postby Terra Hitarumonwa » Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:52 pm

Yeah, I know what you mean. I like to proofread the old fashion way when it comes to grammar, but I always run the stories I proofread through a spell checker because I know there are some words I'll probably miss. Especially when I start getting into the story and forget what I'm supposed to be doing. :p
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Postby Nekomata-sensei » Sat Aug 02, 2008 3:36 pm

I think I most hate the really good ones that just barely start up, and hint at something great, but never go further, the author disappearing off the face of the internet or starting up another story and dropping it. In the case of disappearing authors I somewhat understand, but for the ones who switch to other stories, shouldn't they have a good outline for the other one, given the quality of their writing? And if they do, why do they torture us with waiting and hoping when it can't be writer's block that's the problem?

As for stories that I actually hate, it's mainly the ones written for no other reason than to add in nonsensical or downright disturbing pairings that the author desires that clutter up fanfiction sites like clumps in kitty litter left out over a vacation, or ruin potentially good fic themes they use for background, like the endless yaoi that half of the fanfiction.net posts for Harry Potter and Naruto seem to include. I thank the gods of fanfiction that they have to put up those little disclaimers in the description like Naru/Sasu and HP/DM which prevents me from opening any of them up unless they were mis-labeled or I confused it for something else, like I thought it was Naru/Saku and the rest of the description sounded good.

Generally, I dislike pairings used at all in fanfiction, as they either degenerate into poorly written smut or badly written romance that makes the characters seem like utter idiots, or cause the characters to be so out of character it can't even be called interesting or funny, and they've lost everything about them that makes them appealing characters. Most of the time stories with pairings are written for the express purpose of fulfilling the author's desires to see those characters together, and it winds up ruining the rest of the plot, or the rest of the plot plays a badly written back story fulfilling the author's other wishes concerning the characters, often eliminating any suspenseful conflict and becoming sickeningly fluffy, or turning the fics into angst fests rivaling DBZ in power curve, but without any good drama or comedy to spice it up, or bad guys worth their salt that give a reason to make the heroes so powerful.

There is only so many times I can read a fic where Harry or Naruto or Ranma finally realizes how shitty their life is and becomes a rebel and unlocks their true potential with special training they could have only found if they'd bothered to look before, transforms to become twice as handsome with far better social skills after months of isolation and training, and defeats all their enemies with an ease that displays that their enemies are utter idiots without even half of their natural power, who only succeeded before due to everyone else being dumber or secretly bad guys who are betraying the hero. Some of these fics I like, but it's the well written ones which remain relatively true to the characters and world and give an excuse for the power ups with more powerful or cunning villains, and constantly challenge the hero. Most of them are like putting Goku in the old Batman TV show where none of the villains, nor the heroes, fought worth a damn, and the fights consisted of *POW* *BANG* and *BIF* covering the screen so we'd never actually see anyone get hit. The ones I like are more like taking the old Batman TV show and giving it Nanoha's action choreographers and the writers for House MD for Batman's detective work and any comedy they fit in and the villains, or at least some of them, able to keep up with Batman intellectually enough to give him a challenge.

Another thing I hate is stories that are otherwise good, but filled with so many plot holes and author stupidity caused by lack of research or understanding of the subjects related in the story that it stinks of the author being rushed or uncaring, or portray the world inconsistently. This is actually one of the biggest reasons I look for Harry Potter fan fiction, because while parts and aspects of that series are great, Rowling must be the queen of poorly hidden plot holes, like Sirius never being given a trial, or wizards not trusting goblins and having lots of wars with them, yet banking with them, or the relatively poor coverage of the magic of other cultures, like Asian or native American, despite the wizarding world seeming relatively international, and lack of involvement of non-'evil' intelligent races in the plot and battle against Voldemort, what are the Veela doing for instance. Also bad is the final pathetic performance of Voldemort. What happened to the amazing magic he displayed at the ministry against Dumbledore, against Harry it seems like all he does is shoot killing curse which have already proved ineffectual when he must have tons of other lethal spells and tricks to get around Harry's shields. Was he intentionally weakened and dumbed down by the author so Harry's lack of training wouldn't get in the way? Were the hallows a last-minute plot device worked together for the last book from 'hints' that weren't actually planned in the previous books in order to power up Harry and give him an excuse to defeat Voldemort? What is with how wands work and the golden blast at the beginning of the last book?
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Postby Vilkath » Sat Aug 02, 2008 4:05 pm

I will agree romantic pairings can cause problems, but it really depends on the series more then anything else. Harry Potter or Naruto is perhaps one the best examples. Both are set in rather dangerous worlds on the brink of war, or in the middle of one later on hardly the perfect time to have a long drawn out fluffy romance. From that point of view it's either a quick physical relationship or nothing, we really shouldn't be reading about love notes, dates and the all to common missunderstandings and angst from a more 'normal relationship' becasue they are not in a normal setting.

I suppose my biggest turn off with pairngs usualy happens when authors write a story to push their favorite characters together but more or less give up on the rest the story and just follow the canon plot line, no matter how illogical it is to try. Naruto fanfiction is perhaps one the worst at this of what I have read, often having Naruto start to romance Hinata, tenten or some other girl for most the story then when it comes to Sasuke's defection he still promises Sakura he will get Sasuke back for her no matter that she's been a complete pill to him and he is no longer chasing after her affection.

As for plot holes, some times they are anoying but for the most part a lot of the time the source material isn't really much better. My three favorite fan fiction series to read Ranma, Naruto, and Harry Potter and none of those orginal authors seemed to care about consistency. Not getting the exact facts right to me doesn't matter so much, since I do hope the author is AU or divergent enough to make the story interseting, if I wanted read canon events exactly I would read the source material.

That being said it is nice if the author can at least attempt to follow their own rules. Nothing quite worse then authors establishing a rule or event of their own, then not following it later. Like say killing off a character, then having him turn up later with no explination.

For most part I think most fanfiction readers are to much of plot hole nazis to a lot of stories. Complaining about a character being born on a tuesday if the author says it's a monday or perhaps that the character wouldn't like to eat a tunafish sandwich etc. Some people are real nitpickers and far as I am concerned it's not canon so changes are allowed, to a point obviously. I suppose it's the hardest line to walk in fanfiction, be orginal enough that the story is worth reading but don't stray so far that it's just another completely orginal story that has a character who happens to be named Naruto or Ranma. To me worst offenders of this are usualy the non magical, non ninja highschool fics that flood the intertnet.
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Postby Terra Hitarumonwa » Sat Aug 02, 2008 7:24 pm

I don't think I need to comment on the pairings part. I quite agree with that. And I just kind of gave up on the last paragraph when it degenerated into mindless HP talk...
(<---- Not an HP fan. Of the computers or the wizards)

Nekomata-sensei wrote:I think I most hate the really good ones that just barely start up, and hint at something great, but never go further, the author disappearing off the face of the internet or starting up another story and dropping it. In the case of disappearing authors I somewhat understand, but for the ones who switch to other stories, shouldn't they have a good outline for the other one, given the quality of their writing? And if they do, why do they torture us with waiting and hoping when it can't be writer's block that's the problem?


But this part I can help you understand at least a little bit of. Sometimes authors do have writers block with their main stories and switch to another story. Writers block isn't not being able to come up with anything, it's not being able to come up with anything for the story you're working on. So sometimes authors will have different stories they can work on that will help with their writers block. And sometimes those authors will actually release those stories to the viewers.

And then sometimes authors have severe ADD and drop a story for the sole reason that it doesn't interest them anymore. It's not shiny enough. :P

Those two reasons probably make up, I would say, at least 75 to 80% of the authors on the net. There are probably a lot more reasons why people do this, but I would wager that these are the two main reasons.

Sunny can probably illuminate a couple more reasons. She's done this with a couple of her fics. :p
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Postby Vilkath » Sat Aug 02, 2008 7:38 pm

Dropped fics are anoying, but to a degree they seem to fall into one or two catagories. First type is usualy the author wrote some great first few chapters then lost interst, had some real life problem that croped up etc. Or the other one where the writer is just spaming out some idea they like with no real intention of continuing it. Some the weirder cross over stories like 99% of the Naruto/DBZ or HP/DBZ fics probably fall into this catagory.

I can usualy understand the first problem, I kind of suffered from it myself. I started a Love Hina fic, wrote like 4 chapters and had an outline for first 20 or so.. but then stopped. Tons of idea's for other stories but no real interst in my orginal story any more. I mostly blame the fact I finished the Love Hina DVD's and started to watch and read other series.

I can only hope my other projects like my Naruto/Zerg story doesn't suffer from this but who knows.
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Postby Terra Hitarumonwa » Sat Aug 02, 2008 7:49 pm

You see? ADD :p
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Postby mondu_the_fat » Sat Aug 02, 2008 8:20 pm

Vilkath wrote:Lemon fics are not to bad, but they generaly planned to be lemons and rarely have much of a plot. What really fails to work for me is randomly inserted lemon scenes in an other wise perfectly normal story.


Bleh. There was one fic I was enjoying, then _suddenly_ two of the male characters starting getting it on, for no reason at all other than they were in a hotel room together. No warning, no indication, plot out the window, OOC in the extreme, wtf. Pretty graphic, too, for ff.net.
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Postby Vilkath » Sat Aug 02, 2008 8:29 pm

Slash or yaoi fics in general seem to be that way, two people who never showed any signs of liking men before just get down and dirty just because they are suddenly alone. Even worse it's usualy two people who hated each other the entire story like Naruto and Sasuke, Harry Potter and Snape.. wierd stuff like that is really popular for some reason lately.

At least more stories have the deceny to say slash or yaoi in the summary, or the opening chapter so I can avoid them. They definetly are on my not to read list, not just because I don't like men in that way but also because they often fall into the bad romance pitfall to.

I mean forcing a relationship is bad enough, but yaoi stories always seem to pick the most OOC way possible to get the pairing together. Plus the author feels that if one couple could be made so happy, every one needs to be happy. Suddenly every character in the fic is gay and all the men are paired up with each other and more often then not all the girls suddenly love each other. I mean it's obvious if Ron and Draco can find true love it's only a mater of time before Snape and Hagrid feel the magic.
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Postby Not-Going-to-Tell » Mon Sep 08, 2008 7:20 pm

One that may or may not have been pointed out yet.

The bad crossover.

Not the well thought out, plausible crosses thought up by the major players on this board, but the "Square Peg, Round Hole" crosses.

Honestly, certain fics are well done, but others just seem to be an idiot trying to jam two incompatable series together without a change that makes it plausible. Putting a Sayin in Hogwarts or Kohana for no real reason, for example.

Good idea; sending Ranma to america to a school for 'talented' teens to introduce X-men evolution, but not starting Ranma as a mutant. Bad idea; drown Rogue at Junsenkyo and turn Ranma into her to stick him in the plot. Bad idea; take Sora into the world of Hellsing and not think he'll be messed up by the goings on in that world. Bad idea; Stick Sora in a world based on mecha, the giant tank kind, like Gundam. That third idea is the only one I haven't seen, but that's because I never browse KH or Hellsing fics.
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