I have two opposing gripes of equal gripitude; fics which drop suddenly into something shocking with no lead-up, and fics which take page upon page to get to the damn point.
Portraying characters as either complete idiots or space robots. "Oh hey, I just walked in on you hiding in the cellar with your dick out. I, as another adult man, have no comprehension of this. What were you doing?" HE WAS PISSING BLOOD IN A PENTAGRAM SHAPE TO SUMMON SATAN WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK HE WAS DOING YOU MORON (Frankly, I'd have enjoyed the fic much more if he was.)
I am honestly very fond of the Sufferer's story because then I get to make other religion based bullshit in bloodswaps. And half of the appeal of Homestuck to me is bloodswaps. So I have like precedence to make red blooded Mindfang troll Muhammad and so on.
is the purple clown mIrAcLeS religion like christianity? i don't think it is but i don't really remember much of it either.
I just shifted all the cast up a number of spaces. Enough to get Aranea to being red. It was a mesh of various things besides just Islam. The Handmaid, blue here, ended up with an alchemy theme which, when coupled with her anime thing, led to her adoring the shit out of troll Full Metal Alchemist. She also had a sort of emotionally detached cultural anthropologist thing. The Dolorosa, brown, started out as a slave and ended up the first of Mindfang's wives. She took the spot of Khadeeja and Aisha in terms of Islam lore, but she also had an Avatar: The Last Airbender theming going on. Specifically with how she fights. It was literally just troll airbending. The Condesce, cerulean, ended up taking the role of a wife as well as that of Ali. So Condy and Dolly had lots of conflict with one another. Condy was also VERY HEAVILY pirate themed. Like dumb movie pirates pirate theming. The Sufferer, now tyrian, had a USSR theme going on. Complete with manufactured food famines to keep areas of the Empire in check. The Highblood, jade, was Mindfang's mysterious father figure that raised her. He ended up fucking off and had a werewolf theme for some reason. Dualscar still had a thing for Condy. He ended up being conned into assassinating Handy. Dolly and Condy then went through caliphate wars, which ended with Condy still in control until she got herself killed in a stupid war. The purple Summoner tricked Dolly into meeting with him by abusing her goodwill. She ended up dead and the rebellion as a whole crumbled shortly after. There were Dune styled sandworm's and numerous other references to Dune made. Mindfang used them in her war. The dancestors before this meanwhile were...different. Aranea was insufferable. Like Mindfang she strove to help the world, but unlike Mindfang she was an unlikeable shitlord about it. She'd find Kankri to be incredibly fucking insulting. Aranea, and Mindfang by extension, have epilepsy. A reference to how some atheists try to argue that Muhammad wasn't legit because he actually just had epilepsy. Well now Muhammad does have epilepsy and is still legit fuck off. Aranea has a scrappy I am the ultimate underdog and Thus Know Best thing going on. As well as DO NOT TELL ME HOW I FEEL thing going on. She's exceptionally arrogant and rambly. Both Mindfang and Aranea adore poetry, Aranea in particular being obsessed with the oral tradition. She's exceptionally bibliophobic due to worries about the Empire tampering with texts and censoring shit. Which they do. Porrim was incredibly lacking in self esteem and dealt with this via being Always Rebellious. Constantly. Often over stupid shit. Very stupid shit. She does end up getting over that and godtiering and her favorite thing ever is troll Aang. Damara insists on speaking troll Arabic to Aranea because she knows that is her first dialect. This pisses Aranea off. Our Prince of Space, Kurloz, was Aranea's moirail and Porrim's kismesis who eventually lost his shit and blew up his fucking planet ending their chances at success. He then went out and tried to kill the others too. This was the result of his chats with the Latula about how fucked we were. We were all exceptionally fucked. No one likes teal Cronus.
The closest it gets to Christian is that ICP's music is honestly very morality tale heavy, in a fashion that brings to mind Christianity. Like songs about not murdering people or abusing children because if you do this is how you will be tortured in the Carnival of Carnage. Though the group has gone on record stating that their music isn't meant to specifically be Christian and it's certainly not evangelical.
Exposition bombs in the narration are annoying, but understandable, and I'm willing to live with them Exposition bombs in a character conversation, where it's like they're reading the WikiHow or a Jezebel life article but I'm supposed to believe it's just how people talk? Nah. Throws me right out and I just lose all interest in the thing, no matter how interesting it would be otherwise.
"Now as you know," the character says, condescendingly, as I reach up to x out of the tab before I can even finish reading the sentence. There are better ways to establish that this is a Thing Everyone Knows in universe than having people do As You Know segments when I'm supposed to believe that they aren't condescending dickholes all the time forever.
I saw a post a week or three ago where someone was talking about how much better exposition is in fanfic than in professionally published books because AU setting infodumps are "usually just a couple of paragraphs," and I was like "WTF books have you been reading, because it sure sounds like it hasn't been good books."
Yeah, I saw that post too (with handy additions by publishers who were like 'lol, sweetheart') and always wondered if they missed the point where a) not all AU fanfic is good fanfic and b) fanfic doesn't have to establish setting if it's not an AU, because the primary source already did that, which means half the work is done for them to begin with. I mean, I've read books that are just godawful with exposition infodumps, but hey, look, right at this moment I am also reading really goddamn bad fics that are just... it hurts. It hurts me, specifically.
Yeah reading fic that involves a canon you don't know usually means keeping a wiki open the entire time.
my favorite kind of world info, though i saw one reviewthat specifically complained about it, is the kind where you get introduced to the world gradually, by the character just taking it for granted. Lilith Saintcrow does this though she does still have short narration infodumps, but they get scattered out. Barbara Hambly does this wonderfully with even less infodump, just showing you.
Yeah. Or, like, Brandon Sanderson usually explains his (very complicated) magic systems by having an action sequence early on where most of the core mechanics are relevant- for instance, by the end of the Way of Kings prologue you know what Shardblades are, how they work, what Shardplate is and how it works, how someone drawing in Stormlight works, and how all three Windrunner powers work, all without the action ever stopping to infodump.
Hell, there are so many common AU tropes that half of those don't have a ton of establishing to do, either. If you're writing a daemon AU, you don't have to exposit why the hell there are talking animals everywhere. Phillip Pullman did.
And if you absolutely need to infodump something up front don't go "As you all know- ...", When the readily available "repeat the plan point by point from the top just so I know we're actually all on the same page" is right fucking there, and is actually something people do.
and just to add the obvious: of course you have to have the plan go wrong then, because 1) no plan survives enemy contact and 2) Either we don't know how it's supposed to go or it doesn't go as it's supposed to go, anything else needs some serious maneuvering to make it not feel like you're reading the same thing twice. Obviously more a recommendation than a law I'm sure you could somehow both tell the reader about a plan up front and have the plan work but i dunno how to make it work rn
