What are your fan fiction gripes?

when it's in fanfic, unless it's fanfic of original material that's text-based and already use phonetic accents-- like the Wee Free Men-- i think using a phonetic accent is completely unnecessary. if you're writing Star Wars fanfic, i already know that Finn and Kylo Ren sound American and that Rey and Hux sound British. you don't need to transcribe the accent for me to hear it correctly in my head.

(although those are not the best examples, because, despite the fact that American accents are not represented by standard written English either, no one is trying to write those phonetically. which probably says a lot about cultural assumptions and certain accents being unmarked/the default, actually, but i'm at work right now and don't have time to properly articulate the thought. :P )

 

My issue with a lot of phonetic accents isn't necessarily the practice as a whole perhaps, but the way in which I often see it done. Which is to say incredibly stereotypically with not understanding as to how people with these accents actually speak or why they do. See non-AAVE speakers' misuse of the habitual be, as well as non-Irish English speakers misuse of the same concept. Really the way in which people often do Irish English accents phonetically comes off as deeply uncomfortable and inspired by British bigotry towards the Gaelic cultures in general. To say nothing of how horrified I tend to be whenever I see people do phonetic AAVE or Mexican American English.

 

I'm also kind of bothered by how so much of the bad Scottish/Irish transcription looks like very, very poor misunderstandings of what Scots is.

 

This is probably what they are, I'm betting a lot of those are based on Scottish Twitter(tm)

 

Yeah, I grew up around a lot of kids who used AAVE and my parents were horrified when they caught me code-switching between them and regular English because racism concern that I didn't understand grammar, and the way people misuse "be" makes them look both racist and ignorant to people who are used to hearing it in the appropriate places.

 

Not exactly a general fanfic gripe, but still relevant to this thread: I had a, like, 40-minute conversation with a friend yesterday prompted by them finding a Drarry soulmate AU where anything you think about your soulmate gets written on them in your handwriting, and I wish to share the approximate thread of this magical journey:

1. "That sounds massively, relationship-destroyingly uncomfortable." "Yeaaaaah."
2. "What if you had, like, intrusive thoughts?" "Oh gods." "And you KNOW assholes and awful teenagers would deliberately think gross/awful things about 'my soulmate' to be jerks." "Maybe the Soulmate Authority will only match people who'd do that with people who'd appreciate it."
   
3. "I feel like Drarry would be incredibly offended to be soulmates."
4. "Shouldn't there have been major canon divergence in book 6?" "'DRACO MALFOY IS UP TO SOMETHING' constantly written on Draco's arm would probably make him stop being up to something, yes."
5. "...wait, what do you mean the author is claiming they didn't figure out they were soulmates until they were out of school. They're in classes together all the time and constantly antagonizing each other. They should have figured it out AT LEAST when they got 'I wonder if Malfoy is going to turn up for our SECRET DUEL?'/'I told Potter we'd have a SECRET DUEL but really I'm going to tell Filch he's sneaking out, I am a criminal mastermind' on their respective arms."
   
6. "And then you'd just have bratty eleven-year-old soulmates who hate each other and they're SUPER-MAD about the soulmate thing and McGonagall does not get paid nearly enough to cover the uptick in her firewhiskey bill this is causing." "I would read that fic."
7. "GEE, I SURE HOPE DRACO MALFOY DOESN'T CATCH ME SNEAKING INTO THE RESTRICTED SECTION OF THE LIBRARY. I'D SURE GET IN TROUBLE IF DRACO MALFOY CAUGHT ME SNEAKING IN TO THE RESTRICTED SECTION."
8. "Okay but what about Horcruxes. Does the handwriting get all wobbly." "What about Harry. Shouldn't he get Voldy's thoughts written on him?" "Now THAT would cause some canon divergence."
9. "Harry's arm says, 'Hahaha, I will send that foolish Potter boy a false vision of his godfather in danger so he'll try to come save him!' and then the rest of Book 5 just doesn't happen."
   
10. "It'd be easy evidence to show Fudge that Voldy is back, too." "Harry takes pictures of Voldemort's complicated plans and sends them to every wizard newspaper." "He's making a rude gesture in the ones he sends to the Daily Prophet."
11. "Somebody writes a super-catchy song entirely composed of insulting Voldemort, and Harry sings it under his breath."
    
12. "wait wait wait we're missing the best part here. Quirrellmort."
13. "He probably wouldn't get the full 'I hate this goddamn turban' feed, but like at random, 'Fuck that fucking Potter brat, he's the reason I'm stuck on the back of this moron's head."
14. "How specific is it? Could Quirrell just be teaching class and suddenly Harry's arm says, 'I HATE CHILDREN'?" "'Why did I ever want to teach these shrieking brats?'" "'Dark Lording was a much better career, or it would have been if it wasn't for Harry fucking Potter.'"
15. "Professor Dumbledore, sir, I know all this You-Know-Who stuff is the bigger problem, I just think it's unfair that Snape deducted points from Gryffindor for foul language because it was written on my arm."

 

I desire this.

 

"thoughts written on each other" is my least favorite soulmate au conceit but i would read the hell out of that fic

 

I despise 99% of soulmate fic but I'll take 'thoughts written on each other' over 'soulmates feel each other's physical pain and/or get each other's injuries' by a slim margin because jesus cHRIST

 

I had no idea there were so many varieties of "soulmate AUs"

Someone needs to come up with a fanfic classification index a la the Aarne-Thompson ones for fairy tales

 

Especially because it tends to crop up in ships that involve child abuse survivors. I like Tododeku but the soulmate fic is invariably horrifying.

 

Honest to god, this would be one of the coolest things though. I know of rough trends in some areas, but stuff like the flower disease fic never showed up in my fandoms so it’s weird and cool seeing what people are doing with these variations.

 

I strenuously avoid soulmate fic because a lot of it intensely squicks me, but I have heard of some WEIRD variations, especially from YOI Badfic Friend. Somewhere back in this thread I mentioned that YOIBF found one where everyone magically broadcasts music but you can't hear your own until you meet your soulmate (and somehow everyone is not constantly curled into the fetal position?). There was also one where being near your soulmate made you get drunk, complete with hangover when you separated, which we agreed sounded more like a reason to avoid your soulmate.

 

The only reason I like soulmate fic is that people get frustrated with the stupid tropes and write cool deconstructions, which I can then enjoy.

 

I enjoy soulmate fic because I'm a sucker for many of the cheap romance tropes often found therein, but god. sometimes it can just be. yeah.

 

I kind of like the idea of the intoxicated around eachother thing. If like these two are destined to be together at least for a time in a terrible destructive way. They will have a very intense relationship good or bad and if they stay together they'll destroy eachother. The only hope to live a long happy life is apart. Some choose to crash and burn together. Some decide on separation. Some pairs don't actually like eachother and the results are extra messy. Maybe murdery.

Best in a world where there are many kinds of destined relationships and not for everyone present in the world cause boy that'd be a mess.

 

being drunk by being around your partner just makes me think of the couple from the album Tallahassee, who crash and literally burn (their house down)

 

My beef with most soulmate universes is that almost everyone is usually supposed to have one. I think it’s best when soulmates are a relatively rare thing - maybe one in every couple hundred people has one. And it means that the two people will be the most important thing in the world to each other, but not necessarily that their relationship will be romantic. It could be, but they’re equally likely to be enemies or platonic friends or something else. Just so long as they have an overwhelming impact on each other and most likely the world around them as well.

Basically my preferred interpretation of soulmates is that if you have one you’re going to be a main character lol

 

I don't like soulmates any more. It used to be one of My Things, too.

 

i've never really been huge on soulmates, just because the idea as it is is completely unrelatable to me and they never seem to account for anything other than "EVERYONE has a romantic partner that's perfect for them, too bad if you don't want or need one"

i read them once in a while but it's even rarer that i actually enjoy them