Tweet
I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this way. Don't get me wrong; I love good, well written fanfic; however, those fics are sadly in the minority buried beneath a pile of dross masquerading as fanfic. I was driven to write this after reading a LOTR fic starring a disgusting Mary Sue who not only was a better archer than Legolas, but was betrothed to him, the tenth of the Fellowship AND had one of the elvish rings. Bitch fucking PLEASE. 
1. Mary Sues. This to me is unfgrgivable; it's not that hard to create a genuinely well rounded character with flaws. Also, creating a self insert who is obviously you, only more speshul, just so you can screw a canon character vicariously thru your loathsome Mary Sue is vomit inducing. Like the aforementioned Mary Sue, most of them are incredibly beautiful, have better powers than the canon characters, have at least one canon person in love with them and basically twist the story for their own ends. They also have ridiculously long names, and flowery descriptions. This makes a fanfic completely unreadable and if you're a purist, makes you basically want to murder the person responsible.
2. Second person writing. Makes me wonder if I've accidently stumbled into a Choose Your Own Adventure story.
3. Unfinished stories. Don't be lazy; finish the bloody story you started. If you don't want to write loads of chapters, then write a oneshot or a five chapter fic. Don't start a huge epic then leave it unfinished halfway thru, especially if it's well written and everyone is going to be annoyed cuz they want to know what happened to your character in the end.
4. No proof reading and/or no beta. If you're going to write fanfiction, please for the love of cheese check thru it before you publish it for basic spelling and grammar mistakes. Also, get someone to read it thru first, preferably not your bestest friend ever, but a neutral who will truthfully tell you if your story's not good enough and tell you what to do to fix it. Don't use chatspeak, insert stupid author notes right in the middle of a chapter, use XXXXX or something similar to divide chapters or change character's names right in the middle of the story for no reason.
5. Canon is key. You know, it's called fanfiction for a reason. The key word is FAN, not fiction. If you don't want to follow the rules of whatever fandom you've chosen to write about, then write original fiction instead. The same goes for unrealistic pairings. No, I'm not talking about slash; done properly, slash can be great. Same goes for non canon pairings. What I mean is people who completely destroy the characters in order to match them up, and don't explain, if they are two characters who hate each other, why they stopped. Just cuz Hermione is with Draco, she's not going to stop being a know it all. He's not going to stop being a cowardly snob. You work around that; you don't turn Draco into a woobie and Hermione into a sex crazed bimbo. If you can't do that, then rename your characters Bill and Teresa, and write an original fiction story.
6. Rapefic. Yes, you can have rape, child abuse, incest etc in your story, but you have to write it in realistically. You can't have someone be raped, and recover instantly from it. Or fall in love with the rapist. I absolutely loath people who write about "non consentual sex" as if it's different from rape. There is no difference; they are exactly the same. If it's Bill and Teresa pretending and playing sex games, then that's fine. But don't have Bill raping Teresa, or Draco raping Hermione, and act like it's perfectly alright.
7. Plagurism. Yes, I know you've seen the movie, but there's no need to copy huge bits out of it and stick it in your story. You're just demonstrating a pitiful lack of imagination, as well as stealing what someone else wrote. The same thing applies to stealing someone else's work and copying it for your story. Any idiot can copy; it takes skill to write something original. Also... songfics. These I hate with a deadly passion. It's like there are people who assume that everyone goes around randomly quoting lyrics into thin air. No wonder even the pit of voles, Fanfiction.com, banned songfics. You know, not just cuz they're irritating and out of place, but it's also plagurism!
8. Lemons. No, I'm not against all sex scenes. Written properly, a sex scene can be very readable. However, it must not be gratitious, unless you're actually writing erotica. And if you're doing that based on a kid's book, I've got to wonder at what resides in your head. O_o A lot of sex scenes, particularly slash scenes, seem to be written not only by virgins, but by people with no fucking idea, pun intended, of how things work. For example, any guy who was given unlubed anal intercourse by another guy would be in pain. Second, semen does not taste "sweet like candy". And outside of porn flicks, women don't squirt cum accross the room. If you can't write a decent sex scene, then just do a fade to black and leave it at that.
9. Saidaphobia. This is what I call the fear of using the word "said" in fanfic, and instead insisting on using loads of different words; for example, growled, muttered, expostulated, yelled, shouted. Said is only bad if you're using it constantly, but most of the time, a character really is just saying something, not yelling, muttering or shouting. It doesn't seem like a big thing, but it really does annoy me.
10. Bitchery about criticism. This isn't so much a rant on fanfic itself, but the way that the authors react to constructive criticism. Due to the fact that so many authors drop the dummy when given polite, but negative reviews of their fanfic, I've pretty much stopped leaving reviews unless I'm sure that the author isn't going to cyber screech, "IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN DON'T READ IT!" or "It's fanFICTION so I can do what I like!" Actually, no you can't; if it's noncanon, such as having a Mary Sue who's Harry's sister, a much cleverer witch than Hermione, beats Harry playing Quidditch and is in love with Sirius Black for no reason whatsoever, then you're abusing canon in a horrible way and you should either quit it right now, or change all the names and write original fiction. I'll go further; if you're too immature to accept constructive criticism, then you might as well give up any dreams of getting your work published, as any publisher is going to criticise your work far worse than the casual reviewer ever could.
1. Mary Sues. This to me is unfgrgivable; it's not that hard to create a genuinely well rounded character with flaws. Also, creating a self insert who is obviously you, only more speshul, just so you can screw a canon character vicariously thru your loathsome Mary Sue is vomit inducing. Like the aforementioned Mary Sue, most of them are incredibly beautiful, have better powers than the canon characters, have at least one canon person in love with them and basically twist the story for their own ends. They also have ridiculously long names, and flowery descriptions. This makes a fanfic completely unreadable and if you're a purist, makes you basically want to murder the person responsible.
2. Second person writing. Makes me wonder if I've accidently stumbled into a Choose Your Own Adventure story.
3. Unfinished stories. Don't be lazy; finish the bloody story you started. If you don't want to write loads of chapters, then write a oneshot or a five chapter fic. Don't start a huge epic then leave it unfinished halfway thru, especially if it's well written and everyone is going to be annoyed cuz they want to know what happened to your character in the end.
4. No proof reading and/or no beta. If you're going to write fanfiction, please for the love of cheese check thru it before you publish it for basic spelling and grammar mistakes. Also, get someone to read it thru first, preferably not your bestest friend ever, but a neutral who will truthfully tell you if your story's not good enough and tell you what to do to fix it. Don't use chatspeak, insert stupid author notes right in the middle of a chapter, use XXXXX or something similar to divide chapters or change character's names right in the middle of the story for no reason.
5. Canon is key. You know, it's called fanfiction for a reason. The key word is FAN, not fiction. If you don't want to follow the rules of whatever fandom you've chosen to write about, then write original fiction instead. The same goes for unrealistic pairings. No, I'm not talking about slash; done properly, slash can be great. Same goes for non canon pairings. What I mean is people who completely destroy the characters in order to match them up, and don't explain, if they are two characters who hate each other, why they stopped. Just cuz Hermione is with Draco, she's not going to stop being a know it all. He's not going to stop being a cowardly snob. You work around that; you don't turn Draco into a woobie and Hermione into a sex crazed bimbo. If you can't do that, then rename your characters Bill and Teresa, and write an original fiction story.
6. Rapefic. Yes, you can have rape, child abuse, incest etc in your story, but you have to write it in realistically. You can't have someone be raped, and recover instantly from it. Or fall in love with the rapist. I absolutely loath people who write about "non consentual sex" as if it's different from rape. There is no difference; they are exactly the same. If it's Bill and Teresa pretending and playing sex games, then that's fine. But don't have Bill raping Teresa, or Draco raping Hermione, and act like it's perfectly alright.
7. Plagurism. Yes, I know you've seen the movie, but there's no need to copy huge bits out of it and stick it in your story. You're just demonstrating a pitiful lack of imagination, as well as stealing what someone else wrote. The same thing applies to stealing someone else's work and copying it for your story. Any idiot can copy; it takes skill to write something original. Also... songfics. These I hate with a deadly passion. It's like there are people who assume that everyone goes around randomly quoting lyrics into thin air. No wonder even the pit of voles, Fanfiction.com, banned songfics. You know, not just cuz they're irritating and out of place, but it's also plagurism!
8. Lemons. No, I'm not against all sex scenes. Written properly, a sex scene can be very readable. However, it must not be gratitious, unless you're actually writing erotica. And if you're doing that based on a kid's book, I've got to wonder at what resides in your head. O_o A lot of sex scenes, particularly slash scenes, seem to be written not only by virgins, but by people with no fucking idea, pun intended, of how things work. For example, any guy who was given unlubed anal intercourse by another guy would be in pain. Second, semen does not taste "sweet like candy". And outside of porn flicks, women don't squirt cum accross the room. If you can't write a decent sex scene, then just do a fade to black and leave it at that.
9. Saidaphobia. This is what I call the fear of using the word "said" in fanfic, and instead insisting on using loads of different words; for example, growled, muttered, expostulated, yelled, shouted. Said is only bad if you're using it constantly, but most of the time, a character really is just saying something, not yelling, muttering or shouting. It doesn't seem like a big thing, but it really does annoy me.
10. Bitchery about criticism. This isn't so much a rant on fanfic itself, but the way that the authors react to constructive criticism. Due to the fact that so many authors drop the dummy when given polite, but negative reviews of their fanfic, I've pretty much stopped leaving reviews unless I'm sure that the author isn't going to cyber screech, "IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN DON'T READ IT!" or "It's fanFICTION so I can do what I like!" Actually, no you can't; if it's noncanon, such as having a Mary Sue who's Harry's sister, a much cleverer witch than Hermione, beats Harry playing Quidditch and is in love with Sirius Black for no reason whatsoever, then you're abusing canon in a horrible way and you should either quit it right now, or change all the names and write original fiction. I'll go further; if you're too immature to accept constructive criticism, then you might as well give up any dreams of getting your work published, as any publisher is going to criticise your work far worse than the casual reviewer ever could.
but stil it got my typing skills up and I became more careful abotu my use of the langage (in conversations as well) and my speech became more elaborated and pleasant to the hear.
Comment