Things you *hate* to see in fanfiction

[Eris]

Dirty little secret is that Ebonics is a dialect of English, from England, that the Royalists brought it over after they lost to Cromwell and settled in the southern colonies.

I do not care where it came from or what it's doing here. I still refuse to recognise it as real English. And if you're right about it being a Royalist thing I think I'm going to start writing it off to severe inbreeding.

I am curious about the hatred of present tense. I find people who shift tenses, often in the middle of the sentence, to be far more irritating.
Pick a tense and stay with it.

I think this is mostly a problem of association really. There is nothing wrong inherently with writing a story in the present tense--I've seen it done before to great effect. However, within the fanfiction community most people who use the present tense in their writing tend to flip between tenses and otherwise butcher the language in their fics, so the use of present tense has become to be seen as indicative of poor writing. It's not a causal relationship to be sure, but there's enough of a correlation that it puts people off anyway.

[camk4evr]

I am curious about the hatred of present tense. I find people who shift tenses, often in the middle of the sentence, to be far more irritating.
Pick a tense and stay with it.

In my case, it's because I was taught that, when you are telling a story or writing a report or essay, you use past tense because you're writing about about something that has already occured.

[Cyber_Skaarj]

In my case, it's because I was taught that, when you are telling a story or writing a report or essay, you use past tense because you're writing about about something that has already occured.

Exactly. That about sums up what I was saying on the first page of this topic.

[Forum Troll]

I think the present tense thing comes from whether you view reading a story as one of two things:
1. The author telling about what happened. (past tense)
2. The author is a window through which you view the story. (present tense)
To me, it really doesnt matter, the way I read I really don't notice what tense a story is. It is usually established by the situation in the story.
To change back to on topic, I really hate people discriminate between characters when they take their actions in canon out of context. Ranma for example being a slapstick comedy, yet many times characters actions are judged as though the canon was a serious realistic story. At least for certain characters, others apparently can do no wrong...
Troll
PS: Don't cure the curse ><

[Pale Wolf]

Having said that though, "Ak-chan" is possible... It sounds like you have something stuck in your throat and are trying to cough it out, but it's possible.

It suits her so well

Have you spoken to any New Zealanders lately?
I know one who takes a sheer (shower)everyday. Brushes his hair while looking in a meer {mirror}( actually I know a lot of Americans who do this last as well), and parks his cair (car) in a gear aj (garage).

And what the heck is with 'nukular'?

Hmm, I was working on the fact that most Canadians seem to speak with an American accent. But if what you say is true, then maybe there's hope for 'em yet, what with the fact they're resisting the influences of the neighboring country...

Americans seem to think we have an accent, actually...
And we don't say 'eh' all the time, eh?
There is no Canadian accent. It is the right and proper manner in which to speak, all others are corrupt

People who have old, magical beings use words like 'thee' and 'thou'. It's okay with Kuno, since he's an oaf, but most people do it poorly enough that it's impossible to take any character using it seriously.

Another really annoying thing is when they make radically improper use of it ("Thee are"? Come on! Almost ruined my enjoyment of a pretty good book...). Although, again, it's okay with Kuno - he's a moron, and I distinguish him by using piss-poor archaic dialect as opposed to the ones who really speak it.
Other than Kuno-type (ie poser who doesn't know what the hell he's doing) though, correct or nothing. There is no middle ground.

Damnit, you could've used a line of asterisks or something!'.

To be fair, part of that could be blamed on FFNet, since they delete every empty line after the first - I was used to leaving double lines between scenes...
... like so. Although on the other hand, not checking your fic once it's uploaded and making some kind of effort to fix it is pure laziness.

Agreed. I generally only reveal future plot twists if I'm iffy on them and absolutely NEED a second opinion. Otherwise, it defeats the whole purpose of writing the fic. I mean, I already know what's going to happen! Why bother?

Heh, I go one step further - I don't even reveal non-twists, because I like to make things mysterious. To anyone, even pre-readers. ...Probably a bad habit with my slow pace of writing, actually...

which, come to think of it, also tend to exhibit the aforementioned "all male characters are in unexplained homosexual relationships with random characters" idiocy.

That has a tendency to exist on either side of the equation - 'everyone's homosexual' is more common than I'd like on the Internet, whether for guys or girls.

Oh, and to get off the Ranma thoughts for a bit, how about "heatless bitch Pluto" (Haruka and Michiru are moreso than Pluto ever is in the anime when it concerns Hotaru and at times the inners)

Bah, on the other hand the one SM fanfic thing I hate most is H/M-bashing. Ruthlessness is not a bad character trait! I guess that's what I dislike most about SM canon - it's so idealistic, 'the power of love' and waving a pretty wand'll get you through all the time... So the people who use effective real-world tactics, that're all that'll work in a universe that's not slanted to let the good guys win, get demonized.

3. Idealistic, black-and-white characters and story-telling

Kill it. Kill it violently.
Unreasonable bad guys tick me off so much too. Blah, they're people, and as such have reasons for their actions.

10. Getting canon facts blatantly wrong (as well as real-world facts)

Sometimes, in Ranma 1/2, you have to choose between one and the other (Not talking about issues that can be explained away by ki or freakish strength, but the occassional basic violation of physics) I pick physics, usually, and just forget about it

When it comes to over done Cliche's, if they are done well, who cares?

(Waves at Trimatter)

3. Immersing a character or characters from the series in an environment populated by OCs which are destined to become PoV characters at the expense of the original Ranma cast.

Would Black Dragon's Guardian fall under that category?

'Kodachi murdered Akane and went on a killing spree which was put to a stop by Nabiki (who has been training) and stakes her claim as Ranma's husband and battles Cologne to a tie for Ranma's hand while Ukyo no longer cares about Ranma and is involved in an illicit affair with Shampoo despite being married to Mousse's younger brother Ice McCool who fell into the pool of drowned DBZ character and because Ukyo's seiyuu is Hiromi Tsuru it has been revealed she's the reincarnation of Bulma and is preganat with a demonic version of Kenshin but Konatsu (who is a vampire) is blackmailing Pink and Link who as it turns out are Shampoo's long lost sister and aunt respectively, and only Swordmaster Nodoka can save the world from Akari Metallium's schemes!

Well... colour me impressed.
Colour me even more impressed if you can believably cross that distance.

They just become pointless drivel, and just because it's a spamfic people tend to ignore such basics as grammar and punctuation.

People read those?
Damn, my knack for glossing over fics by summary is looking nicer and nicer to have...

I guess in other words I like stories that look like it could go many ways when it comes to romantic pairings, that way it keeps a bit of suprise in the story.

I've got a few fics where I'm keeping myself in the dark as to pairing, just surrounding him with possible candidates and see how well the characters write themselves.

well other than the obvious 1 chapter fics that had so much potential and then the author went poof

Sorry 'bout that
Personal peeve? People who say 'this or that is wrong'. There's a fine difference between a flat-out mistake (spelling, for instance), and a concept that's just poorly executed (original characters, Ranma-as-girl, present-tense...), and to just say that it's wrong is laziness - although saying that it grates on you is fine, that doesn't mean it is 'wrong' from an objective viewpoint.
... Think I'll stop now before I start getting into philosophy.
Of course, the poor executions mentioned above tick me off even more, because they poison the community against those of us who actually put some work into our execution.

[Cyber_Skaarj]

Unreasonable bad guys tick me off so much too. Blah, they're people, and as such have reasons for their actions.

I'd expand that into any unreasonable character, y'know, the ones that no matter how much of a valid arguement is used to prove them wrong, or how many times and how badly they get pounded upon, they still refuse to budge an inch with their views on how they want their world to be. A good example of this is fics that depict Genma and Soun as never changing their mind about the engagement between Ranma and Akane no matter how drastically things have changed to make it practically impossible (such as Ranma going Ronin). As moronic as those two are in both the manga and anime, they're not that bad.
Other examples would be Ryoga and his hatred of Ranma (read Forever the Tomboy for a good example of this one... Ranma threatens to KILL Ryoga if he doesn't leave her and her family alone, yet he still doesn't listen...) or the Amazon's completely ingoring situations where Ranma cannot become one of them (Accidental Goddess... Ranma ascends to Goddess-hood and Cologne's still wanting to drag her back to their village, which would completely prevent Ranma's new duties, not to mention most likely bring down the wrath of the Kami for trying to entrap one of their own).
Stubborness is one thing; outright refusal to accept that the situation has completely changed out of your favour despite huge and undeniable evidence to the contrary is just not within human nature, and even if it was, not to the degree of having so many people experience it.

[Atlan]

I do recall a fic where Akane knew about ryoga being p-chan, and thought Ryoga was in love with her. Ryoga was just trying to take something from Ranma that would hurt him, and his feaincee was just the thing. Then he made akane put ranma into the Nekoken, and then Ryoga shot ranma.
That fic summed up everything I truly hate in a Ranma fic. Not bad spelling, or punctuation, or overdone cleiches. No, it was the whole way they made everyone out of charecter, blatently went against everything from the manga AND the anime, conveantily forgot about half of what happened in cannon, and used that as a way to get Ranma from point A to point B. There ARE other ways to get ranma to a new place, would it kill people to have immagionation?

[Daniel Jess Gibson]

I'd expand that into any unreasonable character, y'know, the ones that no matter how much of a valid arguement is used to prove them wrong, or how many times and how badly they get pounded upon, they still refuse to budge an inch with their views on how they want their world to be. A good example of this is fics that depict Genma and Soun as never changing their mind about the engagement between Ranma and Akane no matter how drastically things have changed to make it practically impossible (such as Ranma going Ronin). As moronic as those two are in both the manga and anime, they're not that bad.
Stubborness is one thing; outright refusal to accept that the situation has completely changed out of your favour despite huge and undeniable evidence to the contrary is just not within human nature, and even if it was, not to the degree of having so many people experience it.

These are the same people who refuse to believe Ranma's transformation, or Ryoga's, or that you aren't supposed to breathe underwater to swim, or that . . . .well you get the point.
These people rarely if ever let evidence get in the way of their deeply held conclusions.
Properly tied into their existing preconceptions, any irrationality still applies.

[Daniel Jess Gibson]

Maybe we should get a list of these along with their proper uses and post it somewhere that the vast majority of authors will find and read it. Then perhaps we might not get so many of these sort of annoying mistakes in fanfics.

It's called Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and should be required reading for any author. A slim and inexpensive volume, easily worth its weight in gold.

[Vasey]

It's called Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and should be required reading for any author. A slim and inexpensive volume, easily worth its weight in gold.

http://www.bartleby.com/141/ - the book, free, on the Internet.
Best thing I've ever found on the Internet. It was reading that book that got me to start writing in something that even vaguely resembling proper English.
*Forgot about the nested quotes thing. Sorry 'bout that.

[Neko-]

Word of warning: Double quotes (a quote in a quote) are frowned upon. I suggest avoiding doing that...

[Pale Wolf]

Stubborness is one thing; outright refusal to accept that the situation has completely changed out of your favour despite huge and undeniable evidence to the contrary is just not within human nature, and even if it was, not to the degree of having so many people experience it.

Actually...
It's way more common than I'd like. Look at religious fundamentalists. Do they trust their eyes, or their book?
All evidence can be denied if you ignore it, or ignore its value.

[Cyber_Skaarj]

It's called Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and should be required reading for any author. A slim and inexpensive volume, easily worth its weight in gold.

As good as that book is, a browse through it shows that it does not have any of the more common mistakes that fanfiction authors make. Like, for example, the There, Their and They're situation. (admitedly I was skimming through it though)

[lwf58]

Like, for example, the There, Their and They're situation.

That's a matter of not being familiar with the proper spelling of synonyms, not a problem with style. While I'm sure that someone, sometime has written up a list of the common ones, the only sure way to learn them is the hard way. Read pro fiction with a critical eye and see which words they use, and note the spelling. You won't learn it reading most fan fiction, especially what is on FF.net; it would be a case of the blind leading the blind.
At the risk of sounding vain, though, the Lost Library is one place where you'll find a minimum of such errors. That's because I edit all the stories and catch the majority of them.
Now, getting back on topic: Another peeve is people who create their own web sites for fiction and use reversed colors (light text on dark background) or put eye-wrenching wallpaper or headache-inducing background colors behind the text. It's like they're saying "I'm posting my stories because I want you to read them, only I don't really want you to read them so I'll make it as hard as possible."

[Forum Troll]

I actually prefer white on black for text, it is much easier on the eyes than black on a white background, especially for reading stuff like Destiny's Child in one sitting...
One thing that has been bugging me lately is displaying fiction online in a way that wont fit to screen for any resolution. I really hate trying to read a story where it only takes up the left half of the screen.
Troll