Authors, we don't need five pages of totally non-sexual boring setup about housework before you get to the fucking. Really.
Disappointingly enough, no. I'd still be complaining if they did, but at least there would be a point. Honestly, I'm reminded of the time I downloaded some self-published horror fiction on Kindle and literally the entire sample was taken up with long boring descriptions of different kinds of knives.
I know that it's hard to do so with how the game is set up and that grumpy asshole/fluffy ray of sunshine is a beloved all-fandoms trope, but please I am begging you I want to read some shane/farmer where the farmer isn't a perky extroverted little ball of positive thinking and incorruptible optimism Let my depression husband have a depression wife without me having to write it
Yes. Yes I do. But there needs to be a thematic or character work purpose to my boring shit before my incredibly pretentious porn. Or else it is just wasted space. LIKE THE PORN WITHOUT SETUPS.
In the case I'm thinking of, there wasn't. Unrelated; I can't help but think something's off when the same author writes only the same two or three sex acts with basically the same wording over and over and over. I keep thinking of a tag used on the babb-chronicles Tumblr: "they already did it all 2 ways i know about, what's left?"
Plus, the farmer...probably shouldn't be a perky, extroverted ball of positive thinking and incorruptible optimism? Or at least, that's how it feels like to me? They just picked up their entire life and moved, in the hopes that this will fix things - and you spend a while at the bare bones level, ekeing out a subsistence-level existence. I can see them putting on a good face about things (they were in customer service, from the looks of it) and hanging on by their fingernails, but it feels like they ought to be more willing to go "yeah, this sucks, it's awful, I'm exhausted and unless we figure something out, Jojacorp is going to take over the one last thing I had hope in. I don't have any more smiles to give today, sorry" around someone like Shane, who's perfectly up front about things sucking and not necessarily liking Joja any more than the rest of the town does.
!!! BABBCHRON IS STILL AROUND?! OMG BEST NEWS Ahem. Anyway, more on-topic, I hate reader-insert fics so much. Like, I'm not your damn Mary Sue, leave me out of it. Also, anything that informs me in the summary/tags/whatever that characters will be OOC; if you know they're out of character, fix it.
I love you I mean, I agree 100% with all of this, and it's what I really wish I could see more of - there's a lot of fic that focuses on how sunshiney the farmer is or how super duper willing to Help they are because they are So Good And Friendly and aargh please, I can't take the sugar anymore. I'd rather read about a Farmer who helps Shane because they understand where it's all coming from than one that is just So Happy And Fine That Shane Must Se How Life Is Full Of Wonder An Mirth!!! And Everything Is Constantly Rainbow Party Emojis!!!! I love ships where people are allowed to be grumpy and upset and have Issues instead of wearing Happy Masks all the time and having someone being happy all the time around Shane of all people is just grating
in my experience it's a thing to share with other people who like it. if it's not your thing, it's not for you. I miss the Ford X Reader blogs badly even though I contributed about half the content to my favourite one. it was like being at a big slumber party where everyone's poly and we all have a big crush on the same cute boy (who just happens to be a 65 year old mad scientist). but now that the show is over, and the weird sex-negative ace-discourse people have made tumblr a scary place for all the girls who are less confident than me and won't stare them down and say "why yes I do want to fuck him and I do not care about your headcanon" they're nothing but crickets.
Ahahaha. "Will be ooc" is like... the bane of my existence for tags. To give the authors credit, they are never goddamn wrong about it. I know people are allowed to like things differently from me, but there's a difference between "character interpretations" (which can be fantastic and IC even if I disagree with the process to get the character there) and "blatantly ooc" (which always makes me wonder if they even read the source material.) And I just... don't understand why you would like a character and fandom enough to write for it and then just write about some OTHER guy wearing paper cutouts of the characters this supposedly represents.
I once told someone as gently as possible that I thought the characters in their fic were a little bit OOC (said characters were virtually unrecognizable) and got a response of "well I don't really care about keeping them in character, I don't think it matters". I still boggle about that.
WH BUT THEN WHY BOTHER??? Like.... writing is a lot of work! Some of these fics are really long! There's time, dedication, genuine care and... I just, I can't grok why? I mean. In big fandoms I can take a swing at "trying to get a boost off of general fandom interest in character to get fans for my writign" and I get that, but with tiny fandoms?
I'd honestly love to hear from people who write extremely OOC stuff on purpose. I'm sure they have reasons, and obviously they were compelling enough to the authors to justify the effort. My brain is failing to provide any likely theories at all. I wanna know. Not even in a remotely snarky way. This human behavior mystifies me. Flailing empathy demands that I must study. (I'll probably just file it away in the back of my head until a convenient opportunity arises, as per usual.)
I expect in at least some cases it's people who can't accept criticism reacting with "I MEANT TO DO THAT". Even if it makes no goddamn sense for them to have meant to write something that barely qualifies as fanfic and won't be at all enjoyable to people who, y'know, want to read about those characters doing things consistent with their canon characterization.. Not like I'm deeply bitter about widespread mischaracterizations that get accepted as gospel by lazy twits who would rather write a cookie-cutter stereotype than spend two seconds thinking about the actual canonical presentation of the character or anything.
Hmm, that's a really good point, @valenstyne. Perhaps some of the people who put OOC warnings in their own tags/summaries/whatever are hedging.
Honestly I think at least some of it are people who have low self confidence/have gotten yelled at before and are trying to avoid further yelling. Maybe not a very effective strategy but still.
To be charitable (as I rarely am), I suppose some of them might be new to the fandom or new to writing those characters and worried that their characterization is wrong even if it's not…but not all of them. And an "OOC" tag implies you're pretty dang sure those characters are not in character, so I'm still going to avoid it.
I see a lot of ooc tags on fic that involve villains because people like to ship them in ships that dont work healthily unless the villain is very ooc. Like, they want to write a terrible person but either dont want to get yelled at or just want to woobify them. Less commonly but infinitely grosser (to me, at least) is ooc tags on fic that is trying to portray a mental illness or neurodiversity in a character without doing any kind of research. Like, theyll be "oh its popular for this character to be interpreted as having ptsd, that means i should write them as a serial killer for reasons unknown"
Re: OOC fic, the kind I like to read is because I like the general archetype of a character/s, but I am apathetic at best about the rest of them and their canon? And I don't want to read a whole lot of set up for a completely new story. So OOC fic gives me characters I already know and the narrative I want to read. OOC fic about characters I actually like is a different matter, and very annoying =P
