#THE LAST TAG WAS SATIRE I PROMISE PLEASE DONT KILL ME

[pr3ttyboyswxgs]

i think the reason i can’t read real books anymore is because y’all fanfic writers gon do it better every time

[imperialdramons]

Things I personally can’t stand in fics and writing in general. LONG rant, so stick with me people. This is a long overdue list that’s been in my drafts for ages.) VERY SUBJECTIVE in case that wasn’t obvious from the first sentence lmao. 1) Characters shipping the otp mentioned. I already like said OTP otherwise I wouldn’t be reading this fic. You don’t have to sell me on the concept of these characters dating, again, it’s why I’m reading the fic. You also don’t have to make characters ship them because, again, that’s what you have friends for- you talk to each other about what you like about the ship rather than sit by as a bystander while two other people go on talking about why they like said ship without allowing you to contribute a word. This is what we have social media for- conversation and opinions. 

I really despise when everyone in a fic suddenly decides “these characters ought to date yes they’re soul mates” almost as if they’re part of a hive-mind when this is the most unrealistic thing to expect when you put two characters in a room full of different people. Trust me, most people would be very uninterested in other people’s love life. The most you would get would be a few close friends making gags (but again- you don’t have to sell ME on the concept of the characters dating. I fail to see both the charm and the point of this) If you’re going for realism, this isn’t where you’ll find it. If you’re going for a joke, I fail to see the humor in it. If you’re planning to make me resent a otp I normally would love by literally forcing me to read opinions of people I don’t even know- you brought your A-game pumpkin, and you succeeded. I often get the impression characters that ship the fic’s otp are trying to either parody what I feel about the characters, or tell me how to feel about the characters, and neither of these leave a good impression. Is the point of this stunt to make the characters feel awkward? There’s many different scenarios you could put them into that could make them feel equally as awkward and give more rewarding results- especially since the fics i’ve read including this have had the characters react very little to others “shipping” them- it kind of just goes on in the background (why? if there is no point to it, why include it? again, it feels like you’re trying to sell me something i’ve already bought). Is it written so often bc there’s some satisfying factor in knowing everyone agrees with you both inside and outside the fic? Oh. I think we’ve reached the reason this is so popular in fics. Score 1+ for the hive mind!

2) Convenient stupidity. When a character acts in a way to either mislead or derail the plot from its actual purpose without getting punished for their stupidity or given a chance to redeem themselves. It’s such a time-waster, and often causes the plot to regress and for the characters to go through the same motions again. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it’s a real joykill to have to read about the characters trying to fix a problem that could easily have been avoided had the character just not acted stupid when it seemed convenient to drag things out further.

3) PLEASE DO NOT COPY SITCOM JOKES FROM SHOWS LIKE SEINFELD AND THE BIG BANG THEORY I WILL LITERALLY FLIP MY LID. It doesn’t take a trained eye to notice when a joke doesn’t fit the phrasing of a character. Some lines from popular sitcoms work with every character because they’re so generic, but sometimes the lines sound absolutely out of character when they come from a character who feels like they’re being held at gunpoint just to hammer in a joke or two. I have seen characters butchered momentarily just to hammer in a few jokes that immediately lose their humor, mainly because the jokes are not funny if I can tell someone is forcing the words into the character’s mouth. It doesn’t sound like anything they’d actually say, but something someone else wants them to say. It isn’t a deal-breaker, but it really takes me out of the fic. There was one fic that actually had me dig through my bad 90′s sitcom archive to find 3 shows with the exact same joke as said fic. Do you know how disturbing it is to read a fic and suddenly see Jerry Seinfeld’s face pop up in your mind like a jump scare? It’s terrifying.

4) I can’t stand when a fic has all the depression tags, all the dark and tragic story tropes, but let’s throw in a joke in every third paragraph despite talking about a dark subject- let’s even ruin the most serious moments with a joke because hey jokes are supposed to break tension right. Let’s not care if it looks out of place or forced, we have to have a joke dammnit. Yes, humor is often used to lighten up the mood when things get too serious- but you actually have to allow your audience to have a pause for things to remain serious for a while before you can make a joke. A lot of the joke relies on the element of surprise (timing), and the delivery. If you don’t allow us to breathe in and grow accustomed to the serious and dark tone, you won’t be able to make us laugh when you genuinely write something funny. It’s just harder to get into it when there’s so many jokes. Instead of being a dark fic with some nicely paced jokes, it turns into an internal conflict of whether or not you label the fic as a dark humor satire or dark themed fic with a lot of comedy in it that just doesn’t pace well. Very few people can get away with this without making the humor seem completely out of place (but I have actually seen it done), and it takes a huge amount of skill to actually make dark humor work- because when dark humor doesn’t work, it just sounds offensive or insulting. (Dark Humor is often offensive, but what’s offensive has to either have some truth to it, or genuinely be funny to work as dark humor.) Meanwhile, when regular humor doesn’t work, we often either don’t notice the joke, or just shrug at it “yeah it was bad but i’ve read worse” and keep reading. I have seen so many fics write dark themes wrong by making light of a very dark situation and that is all fine and good if you’re writing a comedy that is mocking tragic and dark tropes in the form of a satire. However, this doesn’t work if you want said fic to be “inspirational” or “educational” (or even SERIOUS) about mental illness or disorders. It really just confuses the reader as to what your actual goal is with the fic if you’re both trying to mock the problem, and educate people about the problem. This just goes out to the smartasses that dismiss criticism bc “I has the depression so you are wrong and your opinion is stupid bc you dont have the depression so anything you say is wrong 8D” Please gently fuck off.

5) This might be an unpopular opinion, but I personally rank a fic’s appeal by how well they conduct a premise. You might also say I rank fics by how badly they mess up an easy premise/moral they have to work with and make a simple topic seem very absurd. I don’t care if the premise is simple- if they wrote it well, they deserve props for it. If they wrote a difficult premise and the fic kind of fell apart, I can still give them some props because I can tell there was effort put into trying to make something work. However, when a fic takes an easy premise and completely butchers it, ohhhh boy. It almost becomes something akin to reading my immortal- for shits and giggles- a beautiful trainwreck. However, here’s a fun fact; I don’t hate my immortal, or hellstorm evangelion, and wouldn’t class them as “the worst fics in harry potter and evangelion”. Why? Because they started off with an absurd premise. As soon as I read an absurd premise, I know the fic is going to be absurd. The fic delivers what it promises, and I genuinely can’t flaw it for that. Of course the fics are bad, OOC on top of crazy ideas, but it didn’t really market itself differently or as anything but OOC and crazy- and this is why I also don’t take them seriously- because in a way- they don’t take themselves seriously.

What I do take seriously however are fics that try their hardest to make a point and then fail miserably because they didn’t bother to do even the smallest amount of research- and I really do mean the most minuscule amount of research. I read a fic where a bruise lasted for 2 months. A bruise. Lasted 2 months. If a bruise is big and dark enough after 2 weeks you shouldn’t see a doctor, you should see an exorcist- because that thing needs to be sent to the shadow realm and fast. 2 months? A simple google search would have solved this. I actually didn’t know how long a bruise lasted for, but I took one look at that and shook my head, thinking “No. I really don’t think this is accurate.” but I actually decided to go look it up because “I might be wrong”. I might be nitpicking, but when your fic is trying to go for realism it doesn’t really help that you have these small bits of misinformation that could easily be corrected... One or two won’t kill the mood if the fic is good enough, but if the fic focuses on a subject that involves, oh, I don’t know, doctors/medicine (which i might add- i know near to nothing about) and relies on misinformation that even I can spot?... Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to just skim some reliable sources for relevant information about what you’re writing about. Small aside- I get bothered when people put the word “literally” in front of things they mean to say are “figurative”. I can actually gloss over this most times (i do it too sometimes almost unknowingly), but when someone writes “Literally kicked the door down-” and in the very next sentence, say the door “swung open”- No. That is inaccurate. You can’t just shove “literally” in front of things and not expect it to change meaning. That is literally illiteracy.

6) Nicknames. I really cringe at “Darling” or “Cutie” in fics. Yes, people do this in real life and I’m guilty of it too- but have you ever been that one friend in a friendship circle where you don’t exactly feel as if you belong there and then you’re hearing 2 people call each other "darling” over and over again? Doesn’t that feel even the least bit uncomfortable? I often get that impression when I read fics of two characters going back and forth like this- i feel like the awkward third wheel that’s imposing on their fun. I can handle some pet names, but when they constantly say “darling” and “sweetie” over and over again, I can’t help but to feel as if the characters are losing some of their character in the dialogue (it is actually very corny). Most fics of non-canon ships are already putting characters into situations that are hard to swallow- but nicknames like “darling”? That’s probably an aspect of fics i’ll never be able to handle. I can’t say why I feel this way other than the fact it always feels forced and shoehorned in (unless the character themselves have also used this word multiple times) There are of course the exceptions. The exceptions are the characters who you can actually see say this kind of thing. Ringabel from Bravely Default is an easy example, or say, Cat Noir from Miraculous- but the phrases fit because they align with their character, and aren’t just put there to “be cute” but to be “accurate” to the portrayal. That doesn’t mean “if you dont use pet names for these characters, you’re misrepresenting them”- it just means that these specific characters seem like they might engage in petnames, whereas someone as... hm... let’s say Jotaro from jjba probably wouldn’t do it in a serious manner, and neither would Cyrus from Platinum. Some characters fit the bill and others don’t, and I know this is highly subjective, but to make things simple; the goofy characters are always the ones who I can see use such language seriously or unironically without it feeling out of place.

THERE’S MORE, But I’m tired and this rant has been long long long and I want to go eat eat eat. Maybe later i’ll add a few more in a brief because this kind of went on for a lil too long than necessary.