PET PEEVE TIME!

[djin7]

*waves*

Recently, I've noticed an upsurge of a few pet peeves in fanfic. Is it the fandoms I'm in or is it indicative of the new/young writers on the block? I don't know and I don't care, I fucking hate it, anyways.

Comments

Peeves

[pir8fancier]

1. There are reasons WHY caps exist, and I don't find the absence of them arty so much as pretentious bullshit. They are a flag that a sentence is beginning. That we have finished one little piece of interesting thought. And now we are moving onto another. They are also used to indicate a proper noun, i.e.g, something about THIS noun is special. Like in a name. Deliberately removing caps is bullshit

RE: Peeves

[djin7]

YES TO ALL OF THIS. YES. To add to your #3, I feel too that many writers add in a sex scene in a forced way, like, they can't have an adult story without some kind of smut. Really unnecessary in many fics, inserted awkwardly. I'd rather it not be there at all than to just be there to get an adult rating. I grow tired of smut for smut's sake.

RE: Peeves

[pir8fancier]

I think that the problem with kink is that 99% of the time the names are interchangeable. The fandom is used as a vehicle for writing kink and nothing more. I've just stopped reading stories with acres of meaningless sex. Unless it has a real purpose in the story, then I just nope out. And I find myself reading very little as a result.

Re: Peeves

[djin7]

Yes, or I skim past the sex scenes, scrolling through. I think sometimes that my old fandoms have spoiled me for new fandoms or new authors; I've seen/read some of the best there is to offer (story/plot/angst/sex/kink, etc etc), so the chances of seeing something new and interesting are slim, even if the fandom/source material is vastly different. :(

[titti]

I see those as opportunities. You don't waste of time reading fics that are probably written for the Tumblr crowd.

What fandom are you in now?

[djin7]

I dilly dally in a few, thankfully there is a lot of high quality work in the Supernatural fandom which I stil enjoy, SG:A and H5O but I've lately dipped my toes into a boy band fandom and it's rife with "tumblr fics" as you say. You really have to search hard and sometimes that means dealing with those fics with 3986575645 tags or awful formatting. ugh.

I've never looked at Marvel fandoms, but I know there's some really great work waiting for me if I do. I still read HP, mostly drarry, but some het too, there's still a lot of it out there.

[titti]

Wow SPN and SGA, those bring back memories. I used to write in the early seasons.

The Marvel fics are like the only HP fics. Some are amazing and some are FF.net quality except since they are all in AO3, you can't separate as easily. I still read HP and mostly Draco/Harry, but I think it's sort of a forced choice since it's by far the biggest pairing with the best writers. Femme's fics are still amazing and like 100K each, but there are a lot of quality fics especially come holiday season.

[djin7]

Yes, Drarry seems to be the most active slash pairing still, with quality writers, and there's a lot I still devour from the old days. When I was Snarry-centric for many years, I missed out on a lot of the Drarry that was being done, so I had to catch up on that, which was great fun, let me tell you.

[sugareey]

No caps is annoying, for sure. I hear ya! Then again, using uppercase and lowercase letters as part of SPaG is just something I'm used to, so when there's all caps or no caps, it irritates me. And I actually hit the back button.

And, I still use story descriptions or authors notes to decide what I want to read before proceeding with it. Sometimes, the tags are just too much and too overwhelming. When I see stories with an excessive amount of tags, I then wonder what the story is really about and if it's the right story I want to read. So, I do agree with you there.

Also, I miss the stories that actually did a decent job with character studies. I've always liked seeing what's going on in someone's head to see where that takes them and why they do the things they do.

[djin7]

Yes, and pir8fancier had a point, above, about how "fast" fandom moves now; the formats like tumblr, twitter, etc, even just AO3 search engine, go by so quick, no one has time to write slowly anymore and build up characters. It's a sad state of "instant gratification" that fandoms are nowadays. No more waiting. :(

[winnett]

For me it's just tropes that seem to be spreading everywhere. And I might have liked them 20 years ago, but now I can't stand them.

If there is no caps, I probably won't read it, so I haven't noticed that much. And the stupid, pointless, look I'm being cute, tagging doesn't bother me too much. I kinda wish that amazon had better tagging to find books that way. But, that's just me.

Anyway, I get just wondering what the new blood is doing? I'm just old and grouchy.

[djin7]

hahahah! Well, I'm not really into new fandoms, so to speak, and I grew tired of tumblr and that lot, so I'm out of it, and not hip. I tried discord and couldn't get it.

Basically I just search for things shiny on AO3 and watch a little this and that, to see if anything tickles my fancy. I read quite a lot, still. Many fics a month. But probably 80% or more is re-reading old favourites or even new(er) ones. Not finding new stuff. Thanks to the tagging and the "lapslocking" (its what the kids call the lowercase writing) I just get frustrated. :(

Eh, fuckit. I'm also old and grouchy.

[pir8fancier]

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

[winnett]

;)

Last man on the bus, as always

[dbassassin]

Ha! And hello to you, too!

My 5 cents' worth:

1. People who don't write like adults don't want adults to read their stuff, so I don't
2. If the tagging is more than 10% the length of the fic, then the fic is more an excuse to show off cutesy tagging, so again not interested

Each fandom seems to have it's own irritating quirks. In HP it's the "must be NC17" rule, which over time turns into a porn arms race. Hence pir8fancier's #3: baaaad kink is the new "top end" of the rating spectrum. Speaking of which, I propose my own #4 (from my HP days):

4. Fluffkink mis-described as darkfic: in the last act the torturer and his victim fall into each others arms and declare their unending love for each other. This, boys and girls, is not darkfic. Torture as foreplay is not darkfic. Darkfic is about power, not Happily Ever After

RE: Last man on the bus, as always

[djin7]

"which over time turns into a porn arms race." & "the $10 Walmart gift certificate of fanworks "

I LOLd like a maniac at work when I fucking read this, omg. bahahahahah. NEW FEST IDEAS AHEAD. hahahah

Also, fluff is a disease, christ. Or worse: Surprise!Fluff. I'm a big fan of angst and dark fic and I agree, fluff should not ever ever be there. There's a time and a place for fluff, I guess. I get choose when I get it tho. ugh.

Let's have a day - my next three weekends are toast. I have a concert on the 4th, but the 5th is a holiday Monday? We can whinge on BC Day. Or the Friday before?

RE: Last man on the bus, as always

[dbassassin]

Sure!

I'm at home and don't have my work calendar in front of me, but if memory serves, either day is fine by me.

Re: Last man on the bus, as always

[djin7]

Excellent, I will pencil us in for maybe the Friday 2nd seeing as I''m already in town, and we can do dinner and hang out. Will follow with email/text to confirm closer to, if you find out differently on the calendar, let me know!