What are your fan fiction gripes?

Discussion in 'Fan Town' started by OtherCat, Aug 27, 2016.

  1. LadyNighteyes

    LadyNighteyes Wicked Witch of the Radiant Historia Fandom

    There's a species in the Stormlight Archive that can change body shapes as a basic part of their biology, and only one of their forms experiences sexual desire or is fertile. The viewpoint character we meet of that species is probably the closest they get to ace, because she hates being in mateform because it makes it hard to think and doesn't really get why anyone enjoys it.
     
    • Like x 6
  2. Starcrossedsky

    Starcrossedsky Burn and Refine

    As a follow up, oneshot collections that span multiple fandoms and have tag clouds that extend for multiple screens.
     
    • Like x 13
  3. garden

    garden lucid dreamer

    AO3 has a half-solution for this! If you go to "My Preferences," you can check "Hide additional tags (you can still choose to show them)," which collapses all additional tags for a work behind a button that says "Show additional tags"!

    Unfortunately, such oneshot collections usually also have a buttload of relationship and character tags, which can't be collapsed. That is why I said this was a "half-solution."
     
    • Like x 3
  4. Starcrossedsky

    Starcrossedsky Burn and Refine

    yeah that's not a solution, really, because it then also hides tags I DO want to see, because as an AU person Additional Tags are kind of important to my browising experience.

    I know there's an AO3 saviour, does it have an option to hide anything with more than three fandoms? That would be a much more useful thing.
     
    • Like x 3
  5. KingStarscream

    KingStarscream watch_dogs walking advertisement

    On the other hand: fun party game is picking a random tag, sorting by word length, and them dramatically readin the massive tag clouds. BDSM is usually a good one for it if it's a risqué party.
     
    • Like x 11
  6. garden

    garden lucid dreamer

    I mean you can still click "show additional tags" on any given work if it seems promising - but I do understand not wanting to have to do that all the time...

    Hiding anything with more than three fandoms would be amazing tho holy shit
     
    • Like x 3
  7. ChelG

    ChelG Well-Known Member

    Fics, mostly AUs, in which a villain is required and apparently picked entirely at random. It's almost worse than Ron The Death Eater cases where the author actively hates the character; in this case, they just can't be bothered to think it through.
     
    • Like x 13
  8. Deresto

    Deresto Wumbologist

    So I decided id save this for later and its later now and i have to say bosoms fantasia is the best fucking character name ive ever seen. Nothing will ever top it. I wonder if the author would mind if i made an oc named bosoms fantasia
     
    • Like x 9
  9. shmeed

    shmeed plant me

    Someone has probably mentioned this but like. When authors shoehorn in characters from the canon that really do. not. need. to. be. there. at all. like. I'll be reading slash about Erwin Smith and Levi Ackerman and oh who's that knocking on the door? It's Hanji Zoe with her husband Mike Zacharius and their children Armin, Mikasa and Eren. They go to the store and who's the cashier? It's Sasha Braus. Their gardener is Jean Kirstein. Their waiter is Marco Bodt etc etc like please. Please stop doing that

    this criticism is brought to you by someone who has done this exact thing way more than he'd like to remember
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2017
    • Like x 12
  10. Acey

    Acey hand extended, waiting for a shake

    I was once very guilty of this, and have a oneshot collection with sixty-goddamn-one separate oneshots in it. I stopped doing that and started posting oneshots individually pretty much for the reason you mentioned, and also because it's easier for me. :P

    Re: tense, I'm honestly fine with all tenses and persons, but I find that first-person, regardless of tense, is the hardest to write well. I generally write in either third-person past or second-person present (the latter because Homestuck fucking ruined me like that). It depends on what kind of feel I'm going for--if I'm focusing on a single character (either on a per-chapter basis or for the entire story), I generally go for second-person present, but for things where there are multiple character focuses in each chapter, I'll do third-person past.

    (Funnily enough, my big SU WIP is second-person present. My big HS WIP is third-person past.)
     
    • Like x 6
  11. OnnaStik

    OnnaStik Relatively nice for a bloodthirsty mercenary

    I grew up on Animorphs; I will never turn against the first person.
     
    • Like x 4
  12. Aondeug

    Aondeug Cringe Annoying Ass Female Lobster

    It's honestly my favorite of the three persons, but I'm also very fucking picky about it.
     
    • Like x 2
  13. LadyNighteyes

    LadyNighteyes Wicked Witch of the Radiant Historia Fandom

    Yeah, first person is probably the easiest to mess up because it's so critical to get the character voice right.
     
    • Like x 3
  14. blue

    blue hightown funk you up

    It is (so far) genuinely impossible for me to write prose that isn't at least partially infected with my distinctive voice, so I don't think I could do first person unless it was an OC who talked/thought like me.

    (Doing limited third-person that has narration that sounds like me but occasionally slips into the character's head isn't confusing or inconsistent, shut up.)
     
    • Like x 2
  15. Acey

    Acey hand extended, waiting for a shake

    Agreed. First person can be wonderfully done (and is a great way to write unreliable narrators--Lolita, for instance, wouldn't be half as excellent in third person, because part of what makes it great is the way Humbert manipulates the reader themselves), but it's very, very easy to do poorly.

    I'm currently writing a book, and it's in the first person largely due to format (it's told solely from one person's POV, and parts of it are blog posts from the POV character); I'm also writing a short story in the first person, and I'm taking great pains to keep the voices as distinct as possible. It's a lot harder than second or third person!
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2017
    • Like x 4
  16. strictly quadrilateral

    strictly quadrilateral alive, alive, alive!

    I just use whichever happens to feel right with whatever story I'm writing. It's usually second or third person, but I have a couple of projects I'm working on that are in first person. It depends on what the story needs.
     
    • Like x 4
  17. Acey

    Acey hand extended, waiting for a shake

    Same hat! It depends a lot on what I'm writing, and what Feels Organic.
     
    • Like x 1
  18. Aondeug

    Aondeug Cringe Annoying Ass Female Lobster

    When I do first person narratives I tend to model the speaking pattern off of someone that I know. Apparently the effect works given the responses of some of the few who've read my original first person stuff. Though it's apparent who I am basing it off if you do know the person I'm using as a model, according to the one.
     
    • Like x 1
  19. swirlingflight

    swirlingflight inane analysis and story spinning is my passion

    I pretty much always skip collections of short fics, so when people make them chapters of a single fic instead of paying reach individually it's easier for me to scroll past.
     
    • Like x 2
  20. cleverThylacine

    cleverThylacine cuddles for the weird and the fierce

    Yeah, I've read that.

    I have a species in my original writing, some of my fanfic and most of the games I've run that are sapient humanoid felines, though, and sex outside of season is different for women than sex in season, but they do enjoy it outside of season quite a bit--probably evolving that way because they opted for lasting (if usually poly) relationships.

    They are however universally horrified upon finding out that human women can be fertile and even conceive without even knowing it.

    And the one character I have that is trans male did everything possible to suppress it until he transitioned.
     
    • Like x 5
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