What are your fan fiction gripes?

What? -innocent cat face-

 

I suppose it'd depend on how much the other designs are changed. Like, if masculine boys are changed to feminine girls, then, yeah, I see the problem.

 

SO AGREED. Especially when it's a ship that's got a LOT of conflict and fuckery in canon.

 

I've gone from being annoyed at this fic to fucking livid. It's so. It's just. Okay, so the main thesis of this fic seems to be "a girl deserves a man who'll drop literally everything going on in his life to cater to her every whim" and it's. Upsetting. The dude keeps calling the chick "helpless" as a term of endearment, which like sure, except that the chick in question is ostensibly Rey, yunno, lived on her own for fifteen years, thrived in harsh conditions, never needed help to save herself just the motivation to stop clinging to the past, extremely competent and self sufficient Rey? That Rey. She's helpless and impulsive and ineffectual and needs some man or another to cling to. Exactly none of the solutions to any of the myriad problems that arise in this fic get solved by her actions. Nope, that can't happen, how will we accept our love interest if he doesn't take care of every little thing????

There was a scene were Rey got sick and had to be taken care of, and for reasons she and Kylo (who is the responsible, compassionate one, which means you're already fucking wrong, but) had to share a bed. She got handsy and he politely extracted himself from the situation, like how a decent person do. And then the next day, Kylo caught the ick, and gets handsy, and Rey makes out with someone described as delusional with fever, like a really cool and likable gal. Only she just sits there passively and lets him do what he wants with her, because yunno, girls. And also so she has plausible deniability when someone brings up that maybe she shouldn't be kissing dudes who aren't her boyfriend.

Rey is outright stated to be an abuse survivor, which, sure, and Kylo is also implied to be a CSA survivor, but every single moment of vulnerability gets put on Rey. Every single time I think this fic is gonna bring up Kylo's shit or have Rey do something cool for him, it just. Like, he got sick, and then the next morning he's still sick making breakfast for her, cause yunno, guys.

Pfffffbbbbt, I'm mad.

 

There's some stuff in it that's really interesting, potentially, and that makes it worse.

Spoiler: CSA/rape mentioned

Like, Rey and Kylo are both CSA survivors, and there's scenes where Rey gets visibly frightened of Kylo, and his response to that is to get really hurt and panicky and offended, and then the get all up in her face in a creepy, aggressively sexual way, like he's trying to punish her for thinking he's like that, or show he that he's not a bad guy cause a bad guy would get creepy and sexually aggressive with her. And that kind of reaction is interesting and entirely in character for Kylo Ren. I kept thinking they'd come back to that, but nope! That scene ends with him running out into the rain after her and the both of them apologizing like they were equally out of line. Piss off entirely.

 

Re: the "genderswapping gender non-conforming characters" thing, I get the frustration on both sides, and I think it can come down to both a matter of what makes the most sense for a specific character, and of which of the numerous possible stories the person making it wants to tell. (Note that I realize a lot of genderswaps are pretty much exclusively a visual character design exercise, but let's assume we're all approaching this as a serious AU/characterization thing since that's more where this conversation lies.)

So, on the one hand, I think whether it makes more sense to reimagine (for example) a gnc man as an equally gnc woman or as a woman who presents exactly the way he does (i.e., probably a gender-conforming woman) depends to some degree on the character in question. If the original character dresses in a traditionally feminine manner simply because he likes it best, then it would probably feel more appropriate to me to transplant those same preferences onto any iteration of that character because it's still the same character; societal norms will just view that same characterization differently depending on the person's gender. Whereas if the original character's manner of dress is in significant part meant as a statement, or an act of rebellion, or otherwise specifically about being gender non-conforming, then I would be more inclined to want a genderswap that preserves that aspect of their character by adapting what makes them gnc as a man into something that would have the same effect for a woman. (Obviously many examples are less black-and-white in this area and more a mix of both these things, and even characters who aren't making any sort of political statement in-universe can still be a statement on the part of the author, so people are bound to have varying reactions anyway, but this is roughly how I personally approach the question from a character interpretation standpoint.)

The other issue, which I think is the main and more divisive one, just comes down to which of multiple possible stories you prefer a genderswap to tell, since there's a wide range of directions you can take these things in. One person might look at our hypothetical gender non-conforming dude, think about how his story might be different if he were a woman, and decide to explore how a female character in his shoes could have a similar experience with gender roles and presentation—and so that person makes a genderswap who is a gnc woman. Another fan might consider the same thing, and instead decide it would be interesting to explore how a version of that character with the exact same appearance, interests, and personality as in canon could be treated totally differently for them just by virtue of being a woman—and so that person makes a genderswap who is a gender-conforming woman. And so on and so forth. (And it's not like those are the only two options, either. A hypothetical third person could take the same character and be more interested in exploring the concepts of nurture vs. nature, for example, and make a genderswap who has less to do with any kind of gender presentation and more to do with the question of how a man and a woman born into the same life could be shaped differently by society. The possibilities are endless.)

That said, I think it's totally understandable that some people would bristle at each of these approaches, whether due to personal experience, ill-thought-out examples with uncomfortable implications, or just personal preference. The idea of making a gender non-conforming character a different gender can be a pretty sensitive subject, especially for gnc people who really value those characters; it's just that not all those people feel the same about what is or isn't the biggest potential problem. Some people will see a gnc man made into a gender-conforming woman and hate it, because it feels like erasing the fact that the character is gnc; others will see a gnc man made into a gnc woman and hate that, because it feels like endorsement of the idea that clothes are inherently gendered and a man wearing a dress is somehow fundamentally different from a woman wearing the same thing. (It's kind of similar to the same thing you see in discourse about trans headcanons, imo, where you have some trans people latching onto any gender non-conformity as a reason to interpret that character as trans, because they can easily relate to that, and other trans people recoiling at that trend because it reads as enforcing gender roles and saying that any gnc person must not really be their gender.)

... tl;dr, I think this is a matter of both personal preference and personal experience with these issues, and also just talk to me about genderswaps as a character exploration exercise because they're so cool

 

I am irrationally irritated by people who specify "no slash" rather than "no romance", even though that is almost always what they mean. I get that when writing a fic with two male characters who are very close but not together, in can be frustrating when people misinterpret it as romantic, but my knee-jerk reaction to it is still "oh great, a homophobe". Probably because I grew up reading on ff and there were a lot of homophobic writers who said similar things, but very offensively.

 

i keep seeing this and it makes me wanna tear my hair out fucking!!! if you're used to drinking and you get someone who is not used to drinking drunk and then hook up with them, it is at the very least dubcon! honestly even if they were both used to drinking i would slap a dubcon label on there unless it was an established relationship because alcohol fucks with inhibitions!

 

Essential oils are a really really terrible thing to put on your mucous membranes. Not quite as bad as the one which had some admittedly immortal characters who can still canonically feel pain use molten iron, but still.

 

I. I don't. what.

Spoiler: specifics

How did they get. Any of that out of your fic???
Like, shit, I can't read half the Rung fic on AO3 because psych/patient freaks me the hell out, and yours still struck me in a 'personal request' place rather than 'a thing asked of a professional who is in charge'. I guess that might be??? Kind of ambiguous, if you come at it from a place of having read all those Rung/patient fics???
What isn't in any way ambiguous is that Rung is absolutely not willing to do serious damage, and spends most of the thing trying to work around 'fulfilling TC's request' without actually irreperably hurting him.

I just.

 

I really want Dead Dove fanfic for a thing which currently has no fanfic. (Specifically, more detail about Dellyn Goblinslayer's dungeon goings-on.)

 

I really struggle to imagine Tolkien's elves even thinking the word "wang".

 

If they ever did it would be with confused horror and then a 30 page long paper discussing why it is an awful word from every conceivable standpoint Illuvatar preserve us.

 

It's not a very attractive word in any context, IMO.

 

I found a reference to a rejected TVTrope which is relevant here, I think; in contrast to Ron The Death Eater, we have "Darth Vader the Eldritch Abomination", where the ficcer takes someone who's already a villain or antagonist and carelessly/unnecessarily makes them worse.

 

Well, that's just a silly name. The "Darth Vader is an eldritch abomination" fic I saw once was good. :::PPP

 

I was under the impression that powerful Sith Lords were essentially eldritch abominations

 

Not a gripe, but apparently, someone wrote a paper on ABO and genderbending.