My friend who's been liveblogging extremely bad Darker than Black fanfic at me ever since I posted about Sugar Tits Guy has developed a new and highly specific pet peeve out of it: people writing Darker than Black smut fic in which Hei brings [shipping partner of choice] back to his apartment. There are two reasons for this: Hei is an internationally-wanted assassin working for a shadowy criminal syndicate that would kill him in a heartbeat if he stepped out of line. The less anyone is paying attention to the place he sleeps, the safer for him, and them. Hei's apartment looks like this: Nothing says "romance" like a thin-walled completely barren room next to a bunch of college students who play electric guitar all night and a landlady who would definitely cheer your walk of shame, I guess. Said friend keeps trying to float fic plot ideas involving love hotels at me just in case referencing them might cause anyone out there still writing fic for a definitely-only-one-season seinen anime from 2007 to realize that love hotels exist.
Someone posted a complaining review because our fic set in a rape survivors' support group has too much rape in it.
This fic would be half decent if the author would stop spoiling all the events of every chapter in the beginning authors notes. Author, I get you're excited about the story, but maybe save it for discord with your writing buddies, ok? And speaking of writing buddies, you need to find one who's comfortable telling you to cut out about 80% of your exposition.
Question about other people's gripes; there are a lot of complaints about Homestuck human kids race headcanons which my automatic mental pictures tend to fall into. Specifically, a lot of people don't like the "POC Prospitians, white Strilondes" pattern for various reasons, though honestly these days I see more people talking about disliking that than actually depicting it. Should I try to switch it up in my depictions? I don't want to hurt people's feelings and I know I suck at race stuff.
I'm not really plugged into the homestuck fandom at large anymore, but imo write whatever the fuck you want. fandom opinions change at the drop of a hat, literally what does it matter
the only character that “canonly” has a race is Dirk (and arguably Dave by extension), who is referenced by John as being pretty uncool because he’s like any other edgy white rapper. Hussie tried to play coy, have his cake and eat it too with respect to having a “diverse” cast without having to put in the work. while the kids are, according to him, aracial, their home lives and cultural background radiation reads as pretty white American. all this to say like...go nuts with fanart, depict the kids however you feel like, but there is probably a *reason* why people used to depict the Derse kids as white (not the least of which their hairstyles/colors).
Either way you're going to have to ignore some part of canon (is everyone white or is getting Trickstered in-universe whitewashing? You decide which you dislike more!) so I'm with Penumbra on this one. Textually, there are no people of colour in Homestuck, but we all but have word of god about how that's Hussie not knowing how to add them.
Very true. The specific issue I'm having, though, is someone pointed out how it falls into an unfortunate pattern to make the Prospit kids POC and the Striders white, specifically, as the Prospit kids have glasses and buckteeth (Asian stereotypes, though obviously people of any race can have them) and John and Jane in particular are played up as super strong and through Dad they have an association with shaving a lot so people tend to draw them as big, buff, and hairy next to Striders who are more often either skinny or fat, smooth, and more likely to be drawn as white, which has been pointed out as falling into the "POC look animalistic" stereotype. Normally I'd just switch stuff around a bit but in the specific project I'm working on I was planning on putting them into the big strong dark-skinned Prospitians versus skinny pale Dersites dichotomy. It's a fantasy AU where the cherub parents are the patron gods of their nations and have powers of creation and destruction, so Prospit is very hot and fertile while Derse is freezing and famine-stricken, so, yeah. While there's a logical reason behind the choices, I don't want to end up making outright stereotypes, and I'm not sure if I need to change anything to avoid it.
you could specifically choose a freezing and famine-stricken real life culture, like the Inuit or the Irish, and choose other hot fertile lands for the prospitians, such as Mexico, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia. you don’t have to just pick White American, Black American, or Asian American.
They wouldn't really be American anyway, but I get your point. I'm just kind of asking what specific physical appearance issues I need to tweak or avoid to prevent those particular stereotype issues. Someone on Discord did suggest Viking Strilondes, which sounds fun and would avoid the "animalistic POC" issue if the white characters are running around berserking in bearskins.
Probably okay as long as I make it clear there's diversity in the side characters' appearances and no one behaves like the stereotypes.
when you get into a smallish fandom and read the best fic first because it's at the top of the kudos list, and then are forced to grit your teeth and lower your standards if you want to read any other fanfiction in that fandom PLA fandom has a chronic case of "if the author would just get a beta or do even ONE editing pass before posting directly from their notes app the quality of this fic would go up by at least 150%," and that isn't even getting into the rampant character bashing -_-
I think I've complained about this before but. Fucking song lyrics out of nowhere. At least this fic had it be a karaoke scene. A lot of the time I don't even recognize the song being "sang" and my eyes glaze over as I swipe past it. Tbf I have trouble reading song lyrics and poetry as well but just thrown into a fic??? Breaks the whole immersion completely and I have an unfair urge to just quit immediately.
This is the pettiest thing to whine about but I have seen the word "twas" 37 times in a single chapter which is about 35 too many. Also it should start with an apostrophe!
There is a difference, fanfic author, between bloodsucking capitalist overlords and a guild of traveling merchants whose lives are probably as hand-to-mouth as any farmer, and I have no idea how you got "exploitative war profiteers" out of the canonical depiction of the Gingko Guild as a bunch of backpackers with One (1) cart to carry merhandise and no apparent permanent settlement.
... man. spoilered for, well, spoilers Spoiler I'd say 'association with Volo?' but then volo isn't interested in profit he's just stalking arceus and appears to court one (1) customer for arceus-related reasons and that's the player character, so any comments about needing you as a customer can be ascribed to that and not profiteering and the most expensive things the regular guild members sell are the rotom form change items, which are baffling mystery boxes to them and hardly like, necessities to inflate the price of.
