What kind of fanfics do you hate?

[Rei-chan]

Having just ran across a story that was the third one I had started to read within the hour I was reminded of one thing I hate. Fanfiction where the author has such a problem with the character's gender they feel that they must change it. Things like Naruto fics where Haku just has to be female is what I am meaning not whether Ranma decides to be a guy or a girl. If I see that Haku is female in a story I tend to stop reading as that just makes the whole story crap in my eyes.

I'll make an allowance for, I believe it was, Zoicite from Sailor Moon since a lot of people have only seen the English dub so they assume that he was a girl but otherwise I just can't accept it.

[TerraEpon]

I agree that Ranma should be referred to in the proper gender, but when CHARACTERS do it, they should do it canonically (which...I actually forget at the moment for most of them).

-Joshua

[Uldihaa]

I agree that Ranma should be referred to in the proper gender, but when CHARACTERS do it, they should do it canonically (which...I actually forget at the moment for most of them).

-Joshua

Unfortunately, the vast majority of fanfiction writers can't define the line between them. I usually have no problems if a character does it in dialogue but too many fanfiction writers have trouble separating a characters thoughts from the narrative. So you end up with things like: 'Oh that Ranma makes me so mad', Akane thought as she looked over at him. 'There he goes again, running around without a shirt on and giving any guy that looks a free show!' And yes, Ranma was female for that. While a writer should use 'her' in place of that 'him' in the example, that can also lead to confusion when combined with the way so few fanfiction writers are able to balance out the name/physical descriptor/pronoun usage in referring to a character i.e. too many he/him/she/hers when a lot of characters are in the scene.

So with all that, I'd prefer for an author to just stick with using the proper pronouns. Personally, I think that if an author finds it uncomfortable to refer to Ranma with female pronouns, then he is probably writing fanfiction for the wrong series.

[Comartemis]

Having just ran across a story that was the third one I had started to read within the hour I was reminded of one thing I hate. Fanfiction where the author has such a problem with the character's gender they feel that they must change it. Things like Naruto fics where Haku just has to be female is what I am meaning not whether Ranma decides to be a guy or a girl. If I see that Haku is female in a story I tend to stop reading as that just makes the whole story crap in my eyes.

I tend to take this route too unless the author provides some really good explanation as to why the character has suddenly switched genders.

An excellent example of this is a story called Tempered In Water by HitokiriOTD, wherein Haku has always been a girl and was only pretending to be a boy. The author justifies this by claiming that life on the streets in the Land of Mist is extraordinarily dangerous for little orphan girls, who are likely to be hunted down and chucked into brothels by opportunistic criminals. Little orphan boys on the other hand, don't have to worry about this so much. Haku got used to disguising herself as a boy, using a choker to hide her lack of an Adam's Apple and binding her breasts, as a survival tactic which she continued out of habit once she joined up with Zabuza.

[TerraEpon]

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.

Oh yeah, I forgot to agree with the above (outside the yaoi/yuri thing, which I don't see any different than ANY non-canonical pairings) -- it really annoys me to see fics that really don't have to actually do with the series, but the genre above is worst of all. And of course it's ALWAYS a Ranma/Akane pairing. And the worst is that so many FF.net people praise them to the hills, it's ridiculous.

-Joshua

[Yrael]

Oh yeah, I forgot to agree with the above (outside the yaoi/yuri thing, which I don't see any different than ANY non-canonical pairings) -- it really annoys me to see fics that really don't have to actually do with the series, but the genre above is worst of all.

Oh, don't misunderstand. I have nothing against yaoi, yuri, or really any combination of. It's just with these fics, more often than not, it turns in to little more that an exercise for the author to matchup their chosen characters, with no actual plot in sight.

Another category that came to mind today as I was skimming ff.net was song fics. Theoretically, I think these could possibly be decent fics, but I've yet to come across one that I actually liked.

[dogbertcarroll]

Songfics are just an excuse to steal someone's work add a few lines and pretend you've written something profound.

[Atlan]

AU fics which change the cast of the source to any the following:

A band
Highschool kids
Car racers

[camk4evr]

I was looking at some older fics and noticed something that irritates me to no end; Kuno calling Ranma a 'fowl sorcerer'. What? Is the author trying to tell us that Kuno thinks Ranma conjures chickens, controls pigeons, and summons crows (or any other birds you can think of)?

Another thing that bugs me is when people use draw or draws instead of drawer or drawers.

Really I just hate it whenever an author uses incorrect word choices like that. Although, I can understand it if they're not native english speakers (one of my mother's aunts used to confuse flour with flower).

[CRBWildcat]

And along similar lines, mispelling "quiet" as "quite". There's no way they'd type so fast that they'd switch the last two letters repeatedly without noticing.

[Penguin-sa]

And along similar lines, mispelling "quiet" as "quite". There's no way they'd type so fast that they'd switch the last two letters repeatedly without noticing.

Actually, I find that your fingers are programmed for some words. I only type about 35 words a minute, and I produce fairly clean copy, but I WILL spell fantasy as fanatasy almost everytime. If it wasn't for rigorous proofreading, the word would be mispelled throughout.

Quiet and quite, calm and clam, these are errors that are missed because people edit via spellchecker. To get anything near clean copy, you must manually edit your work.

('>

[Atlan]

I hate fics where the author starts the story off in the same way that EVERYONE starts that kind of story.

Example: A Ranma fic starts off with Ranma sitting on the roof, depressed, thinking about his fieancee problem, and mentally debating the merrits and flaws of each rival and feiancee.

Example: A teen titans fic starts off with Cyborg and Beastboy bickering about eating meat.

These starts serve no real use except to boost the word count. More than that, they show the sheer lack of origionality the author has.

[CRBWildcat]

Actually, I find that your fingers are programmed for some words. I only type about 35 words a minute, and I produce fairly clean copy, but I WILL spell fantasy as fanatasy almost everytime. If it wasn't for rigorous proofreading, the word would be mispelled throughout.

Didn't occur to me up until now. I've been guilty in the past of typing words a certain way on reflex. I typically read over something I've written (heh, almost put two 'r's in "written" just now) for the sake of running it through the mind, and it's a bit of work keeping those things out.

[Southern Cross]

What I really hate are fics where one or more of the villains of the piece ends up with one or more of the heroes.I don't mind villain/villain pairings so much (I'm a great fan of the Herb/Nabiki pairing),but I really hate a pairing where the villain doesn't join the good guys before the end of the series).
Ranma-AU pairings I particularly hate are as follows:
Nabiki-With almost anyone-ESPECIALLY Ranma.The Twisted Path series and Comes The Cold Dragon are the only times where Nabiki's met someone who would make a suitable romantic partner.
Shampoo-With anybody.My opinion of Shampoo is much the same as that of Akane-haters,only with more justification.
Tatekawai Kuno-This lunatic should be prevented from breeding at all costs.

[Vilkath]

Well I am sure these have been said before but they are my biggest pet peeves.

1. Dramaticaly AU characters, like having Naruto trained by some super teacher as a kid or Harry Potter tapping into his magic as a kid, raised by Flamel etc but end up following the main cannon plot exactly any ways. This most often happens because the author lacks the courage or skill to change things, but seriously how many AU's do we have to read Harry going after the stone, becoming Rons friend, becoming a seeker etc. Not to mention it's even worse with Naruto fics, how they all almost the same till at least the Chunin exams with little more then dialog and romantic pairings that change.

2. Yaoi pairings as a whole, not only do I not really care for this pairing as I like girls but most the time they are badly written fangirl fantasy's with little relation to reality. Like the sick Harry/Voldemort or Harry/Snape pairings, because you know they just love each other. Never mind the fact they are least 2 or 3 times each others age, or only shown absolute loathing towards each other before. Does not help matters most the time in yaoi fics there is little to no transition between the 'I hate you' stage and the 'we are soulmates' bit.

3. Slang, especialy american ganster like slang in really stupid situations. Harry potter trying to act like a wanabe black ganster is just plain stupid no expection. Even worse in japanse based settings like in Ranma 1/2. I love the Chaos fight for life series, but seriously ganster Ranma done to such an extreeme like that is perhaps one the biggest turn offs of the series.

4. In closing I suppose I will say authors that demand reviews for updates, lash out at any constructive critism and all around refuse to improve their writing. I can understand not every one is perfect on their first story, we all have to start some where. But those authors who are shown their problems and refuse to change it is anoying. One the worst is ofcourse the ones that are told they make spelling errors and the author says they don't even care enough about their work to run it through a spell check program.