Do we have a thread for origfic gripes? Meantime I'll share this romance novel excerpt here, because I'm sure we've seen similar issues in fic: Commenters' responses include "I *DO* believe someone took the whole Bulwar-Lytton thing waaaaay to far, but not stopping at the first sentence, continuing on like an impatient driver blowing a stop sign like a ten dollar hooker with a crack habit as heavy as a pregnant sperm whale who’d gotten separated from her pod and was being hunted by that crazy guy from Jaws, not the Richard Dreyfus character who was at least as amusing as Bill Murray was back when Saturday Night Live was still funny."
either use one single metaphor in isolation, or do an extended metaphor that keeps the theme running, it's confusing when you start talking about jewels and moats and flowers and photographs and the reader forgets what's actually supposed to be happening also why bougainvillea specifically? it doesn't have petals, just bracts, which are modified leaves
Similarly, we have the inappropriate metaphor, in which a kid writing a letter to a friend about how much he respects him and likes being around him says "My emotions spilled onto the page like blood from a punctured artery".
Which, incidentally, reminds me of another common mistake: arterial blood is bright red, from the extra oxygen bound to hemoglobin.
i was willing to give this fic where the cast wakes up with magically genderswapped bodies a chance. but then nope nope nope nope (the fic then proceeded to alternate between "She (he?)" and "He (she?)" before settling on "he," for the canonically female character who probably would not identify as male solely because her body was suddenly male) (in retrospect i don't know why i even gave it a chance)
I did once write a genderswap thing where the pronouns changed too, but my intention was to keep track of when everyone was switched or not, not to offend people. In my defence I was only about eighteenish at the time.
Should we start a separate thread for funny or gripe-worthy bad writing in published or original fiction? I keep finding a lot.
Oh, my favourite case of research fail was a Harry Potter fic in which, during the era of the Founders a thousand years ago, the Mary Sue took a train between Scotland and America. So... many... fail layers...
I think a original fic gripe thread would be pretty cool too! (Either that, or finding and unburying the original fic grip thread.)
Technically origfic, but I guess it counts as fanfic of mythology when people use actual mythological figures? Whatever... Aphrodite is the last goddess who would want to transform all men into women!
maybe, like, Artemis might be into that? But I still feel like she'd be more "whatever, as long as they're not bothering me or my nymphs and followers" or maybe she'd just turn them all into stags instead in any case the point i was trying to make was that it took me like 2 seconds to think of a better goddess, c'mon storywriter
I was thinking Hera, starting with Zeus, but maybe she'd be more likely to turn all women into big hairy men in the hopes of Zeus keeping it in his chiton for five minutes at a time.
There's a manga panel Satire Knight Snarks used as a reaction pic which I really want to find a source for, which I feel is appropriate here (not the one with Yugi Moto, scroll down).
