I mean, to be fair, The Great Gatsby is, like, an enjoyable read, while Crime and Punishment is. not.
I will note that Crime and Punishment becomes ten times more hilarious when read in a class with friends, none of whom can take it seriously, and refer to Razumikhin as the Razzberry Muffin The actual book is mostly rambling nonsense, though
you leave me russian classics alone /me hugs the works of tolstoy, dostoyevsky, gogol and more to her heart
A relatively minor problem, but a thing that's bugging me: Using ALLCAPS for emphasis in the narrative, e.g. "He walked SLOWLY down the hall." It's jarring and makes me feel like the author just screamed the word at me.
ALLCAPS for emphasis takes me back to the good ol' days when Fanfiction.net rejected *any* and _all_ text formatting at each /turn/ and people used lines of ~nonsense~ letters for scene changes. Spoiler: like so! ~oOo~ graceful and understated ~*~*~*~*~*~ very popular as well !SCENE BREAK! less common but at least it was clear °ºooº°°ºooº°°ºooº° now it's getting weird ↑·↓·↑·↓·↑·↓·↑·↓·↑·↓ what are you doing ¸.·ˆ¯)(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)(¯ˆ·.¸ stop When I started finding fics on Livejournal, people at least had the freedom to bold/italic/double paragraph to their heart's content, but on the other hand also had full font size/colour/sparkletext control. I'm not saying that any of those things are bad specifically, or could not be used in fanfiction, but usually they needed a bit more restraint than in the stuff I read.
Don't forget the classic ~FLASHBACK~ and lengthy author's notes explaining how words in [brackets] were this thing, and words in {curly brackets} were this other thing, and words in @#^some nonsense^#@ were yet another thing…
They may have been the bad times but sometimes they were the only times i got! I mourn the fandoms that died before the rise of Ao3, it feels so much harder to for me to track down the good stuff on ff.net.
Ironically I didn't get what KY you guys were talking about until you elaborated in this thread, and I read a fair amount of smut when I was younger in fandom. Being a total nerd I thought you guys were talking about the Japanese expression of KY for a second (the expression of 'reading the atmosphere'). Bit ironic since I'm totally uninformed about KY lube. (and it occurred to me, way past all that, that what it probably stands for is katsuki yuuri lol).
Alternately, something has been done to those drinks. Which is also an issue, but of a different sort. But yes: two beers have, arguably, less alcohol content than two wine coolers. Should you be driving after two beers (or two wine coolers, or two anything-with-alcohol)? No, of course not, but the issue is "because you cannot trust yourself to be okay to drive after any amount of alcohol, it makes your reflexes go to shit and the potential consequences are dire enough that a zero-tolerance stance on the issue is better than going 'well, I've been fine every other time, I can drive myself home'". It's not because two beers are going to knock people on their ass. (Hell, the infamous "but I only had two beers" is because a drunk person who's in shit for being drunk isn't necessarily the most reliable narrator, and someone who's drunk enough that they've gotten in shit for it is not necessarily going to remember precisely how much they've had to drink. Mileage may vary, of course, every person is different, but: someone going 'I only had two beers' is not supposed to be read as giving the gospel truth there.)
Today in YOI badfic: 12:46 PM - [REDACTED]: "When you meet your soulmate, you get sent into a timeloop until the two of you can figure your shit out enough to get together." 12:47 PM - LadyNighteyes: Sooo they're saying they really shipped the Obligatory Het Romance in Groundhog Day? 12:47 PM - [REDACTED]: "after you meet your soulmate, you become progressively drunker around them, unless you're touching. Being absent from your soulmate for a while will result in a hangover, but eventually you'll return to your normal sober life, unless you meet them again. " That also sounds terrible 12:47 PM - [REDACTED]: That sounds like soulmates are anti-soulmates 12:47 PM - [REDACTED]: Stay Away 12:53 PM - LadyNighteyes: ...Does this author have /any/ actual real-life experience of mind-altering substances? 12:54 PM - [REDACTED]: "Soulmate AU where all of your partner's nicknames for you are written on your skin from birth." 12:54 PM - LadyNighteyes: Oh NO. 12:55 PM - [REDACTED]: That seems like it could be fairly self-fulfilling 12:55 PM - LadyNighteyes: And also result in a great deal of profanity. 12:55 PM - LadyNighteyes: Where's the anti brigade on that one? 12:55 PM - LadyNighteyes: This small child has incredibly sexual things written on their skin! [...] 12:58 PM - [REDACTED]: ...what if someone finds out they have a puppy play kink 12:58 PM - [REDACTED]: from their soulmarks soulmate AU premise which is literally a dystopian novel and the author does not appear to notice. 1:08 PM - [REDACTED]: "Soulmate AU where your soulmate's first thoughts upon meeting you are written on your arm." Oh no 1:08 PM - [REDACTED]: Oh no oh no 1:08 PM - LadyNighteyes: "I'd hit that" 1:08 PM - LadyNighteyes: On like. Millions of people. 1:08 PM - LadyNighteyes: In assorted languages. 1:27 PM - [REDACTED]: "Soulmate AU where everyone constantly puts out music, but you can’t hear your own sound until you’re with your soulmate. You can ‘project’ music of your choosing too, which is essentially singing, but far more difficult, and is done as an integral part of the sport of figure skating." 1:27 PM - [REDACTED]: That sounds like a recipe for sensory overload 1:27 PM - LadyNighteyes: I would never be able to have a conversation. 1:27 PM - LadyNighteyes: Ever. 1:41 PM - [REDACTED]: .....that doesn't sound like a good system for finding your soulmate 1:42 PM - [REDACTED]: That sounds like having a problem dog 1:47 PM - LadyNighteyes: Can someone get stuck in a time loop for centuries because the universe wants them to be punched off a building into a dumpster where they get picked up by a maintenance worker, somehow survive the trip in the truck, and their soulmate is sorting garbage at the plant? 1:47 PM - LadyNighteyes: But it has to be a left-handed punch thrown by a particular person, who's right-handed, and it has to be a particular truck, and it's not the one that normally drives that route? And, of course, what is perhaps the overarching theme: 12:59 PM - LadyNighteyes: Author plz consider how this would affect people who are not main characters
i personally like this variation. timeloops/other time travel stuff plus romance is just compelling to me.
As is your prerogative! My brain just immediately goes to the failure states on that, like "what if we don't actually WANT to" or "what if the Time Travel Soulmate Authority finds a solution acceptable that we do not" or "what if the time loop just makes everything worse because we get detached and isolated from experiencing the same stuff again and again a la Homura."
... you know, I read a story like that? There was a house that was maybe haunted, and a time loop... now I gotta find it.
