What are your fan fiction gripes?

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

  1. peripheral

    peripheral Stacy's Dad Is Also Pretty Rad

    Dear fanfic writers:

    Steve Rogers would know what gay sex was.
    He grew up in NYC for God's sake.
     
    • Agree x 11
  2. Birdy

    Birdy so long

    where's that whole long post about how the area of Brooklyn he canonically lived in was actually a gay neighborhood when he would have been growing up
     
    • Agree x 5
    • Informative x 3
    • Like x 1
  3. ChelG

    ChelG Well-Known Member

    Porn isn't a good fit for a cheesy Everybody Laughs Ending.
     
    • Witnessed x 5
    • Like x 1
  4. Birdy

    Birdy so long

    -fic looks really good
    -characters I like
    -cool concept
    -writing seems good from summary
    -promise of pr0n
    -complete
    -79 chapters long

    hell fucking no
     
    • Witnessed x 4
    • Agree x 3
  5. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    I'm being a little hypocritical here, because I abuse italics hard enough that it's one of the things I'll go back and try to edit down, never even mind how I casually type, but... Fanfic gripe. Using CAPS in a fic, WHENEVER you need a word to have EMPHASIS.

    It's really strange to me, because like, the author uses italics too. The first fic I read with this had italics generally standing in for messages sent over comms, so okay, you need a different way to do emphasis words, I get it.

    But then the next fic. The author uses italics for emphasis. and uses caps for emphasis. Just... why. There are ways caps can work for emphasis or loudness, but it's something that feels kind of like it needs to be sparing. If I'm reading a sentence like 'character did x AND y. never even MIND when he did z.', that has a feeling like I'm listening to a person talk about the character, instead of reading actual prose. If it's popping up once or twice a paragraph, it's going to make it really hard to dive into a story :T

    I can still read it, because I have high tolerance for that sort of quirk, but I just finished doing a google docs edit for a friend so they could get through it. And I do think it's something the author outgrew, because there was a four year pause in the middle of the fic, and I think all the caps might have disappeared after the gap. I'm just so confused about why this thing happened in the first place :P There are plenty of emphasis italics, only one case of overlapping caps and italics, and replacing the caps with italics, just... visually smooths the whole thing out. It's a shame, because I ADORE the fic, caps and all, it's just a jarring quirk to push through. Worth it, because

    Pornstravaganza with literal robot god initiating religiously inspired/mandated orgies, sex as a low-key communion with that deity, sexy mental rewiring (because robots, this is literal, which is so much my favorite jam, oh my god), psychic sexy shenanigans (because sparks), technologically sexy shenanigans (robot tech, including hardline connections and specialized anatomy), and physically sexy shenanigans with super-indulgent robot anatomy. Lots of reunion/peacemaking sex between enemies, leaning on extreme size differences, playing with different flavors of psychic connection, symbiotic bonds between different flavors of people (cassettes), alien twins with linked souls, playing with alien societal structures and how some robots have literal programming that helps fit them into that role, rarepairs galore, and so many wonderfully sexy things that only really fit with a robots+psychic worldbuilding mashup.

    But with a lot of unnecessary CAPSLOCK :P

    (additional gripe: laserbeak as a guy feels so incorrect after tgwp. laserbeak is a pretty little bird lady, and she is wonderful and perfect in every way)
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2017
    • Agree x 4
    • Witnessed x 4
    • Like x 1
  6. ChelG

    ChelG Well-Known Member

    What's worse is when RANDOM CAPITALISATION strikes words that THE author apparently didn't mean TO emphasise.
     
    • Witnessed x 3
    • Agree x 2
  7. LadyNighteyes

    LadyNighteyes Wicked Witch of the Radiant Historia Fandom

    Reminds me of Frank Miller doing that with random bold.
     
    • Agree x 3
    • Winner x 1
  8. Verily

    Verily surprised Xue Yang peddler

    I love that fic!

    Huh, apparently I also have a pretty high tolerance for that sort of quirk as well because I didn't even NOTICE. I had to go CHECK, but you're TOTALLY RIGHT.

    Agree re: Laserbeak. She is she. We don't make the rules.
     
    • Like x 1
  9. Loq

    Loq rotating like a rotisserie chicknen

    Spock you can't describe that and then not link the tasty tasty fic :P give it to meee
     
    • Agree x 1
  10. Verily

    Verily surprised Xue Yang peddler

    I'm not Spock but unless there's more than one, in which case I must know, I believe it's this.
     
    • Like x 1
    • Useful x 1
  11. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    Hahaha, @applechime directed me to some nice jazzwave (bayverse, but man, THIS SOUNDWAVE. also, tentacles.), and then whoops seekers and shipping hello hi there I'm in love and I accidentally the whole AU, and lemme just see real quick what else this author has written--and Prima's Blessing was right at the top. I struggle to focus enough for anything but porny one-shots these days, but this fic went down REAL easy :D

    (fanfic anti-gripe: everything this author does with words as 'glyphs' and all the shades of meaning and nuance you can write in that way. it is a delight. for example, everything that's done in that jazzwave with 'jazz, desired.' but also it's in everything else of theirs that I've sampled)
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2017
    • Like x 1
    • Agree x 1
    • Useful x 1
  12. garden

    garden lucid dreamer

    i am definitely guilty of italics abuse myself (the last time i had someone beta a fic, they basically were like "it's mostly good but you use a looot of italics") but the CAPSLOCK really GETS TO ME.

    like unless it's a HOMESTUCK INTRO, i am just going to be THROWN OFF

    (see also: this gem from about a hundred pages ago)
     
    • Agree x 2
    • Witnessed x 2
  13. LadyNighteyes

    LadyNighteyes Wicked Witch of the Radiant Historia Fandom

    I'm actually worse about italics abuse in nonfiction writing than in fic. I often write a Tumblr post or something and then have to go through and take out about half the italics before I post it.
     
    • Witnessed x 3
  14. Acey

    Acey hand extended, waiting for a shake

    God, italics abuse might actually be my biggest writing sin now that I think about it. XD
     
    • Agree x 4
  15. vegacoyote

    vegacoyote dog metaphores and pedanticism

    ... I'm still stuck on mobile and can't use italics on Tumblr posts.

    I miss italics.

    (I can still use them here though, so that's nice.)
     
    • Witnessed x 4
  16. furrylatula

    furrylatula a pissed off homestuck girl

    <i></i> does italics
     
    • Useful x 2
    • Agree x 1
  17. vegacoyote

    vegacoyote dog metaphores and pedanticism

    Yeah, it should, but for some reason it doesn't work.

    It also doesn't recognize paragraph breaks. I have to do <p></p> before and after, every time. And for some reason that works when italics markup doesn't.

    I suspect Tumblr is punishing me for refusing to download the app.
     
    • Agree x 1
    • Witnessed x 1
  18. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    Yeah, the Tumblr mobile site is awful. Images somehow load outside of their frame and are hidden behind the rest of the page. And if you click anything, half of the time it goes "See, that's what the app is perfect for. > Sounds perfect > Waaaah, I don't wanna".
     
    • Agree x 4
    • Witnessed x 4
  19. ChelG

    ChelG Well-Known Member

    The PPC speaks truth: “Poor spelling and an encyclopedic knowledge of Internet memes are not substitutes for an actual sense of humor.”
     
    • Agree x 6
    • Witnessed x 1
  20. LadyNighteyes

    LadyNighteyes Wicked Witch of the Radiant Historia Fandom

    Tumblr's HTML editor is broken and glitchy even on desktop, so I'm not surprised. Like, this is a site that puts every character of a quote post in its own <span> tag when it displays it, so I don't trust them to be good at much of anything.
     
    • Agree x 2
    • Witnessed x 2
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