Fanfiction Peeves

I was looking through some notes for some pairing essays that I did, and MAN, I am rather opinionated, aren't I?

For those of you who follow this blog without following us at DeviantArt, you might have missed that I plan on updating at least once a week here, and probably at least once a week at the DA, from now on. Trust me, I have every determined intention of actually doing this. I'm making my Angry Yugi Face right now. (The little cute guy. I couldn't pull off Atem by any stretch of the imagination.)

So for today, I give you my list of things which, if I see it in the first few paragraphs of a fanfic, I'm liable to close the window and look elsewhere. I don't actually run into them on a regular basis (thank RA), because I now only skim recommended and favorite fanfic lists, but I still find 'em from time to time. There's no accounting for taste. XD

1. Kaiba using the word "mutt" when referring to anything other than an actual dog.
-Kaiba only very rarely uses animals as insults, even in the dub, and he really only ever insults Joey to his face. (Probably because he's going for a reaction, because I don't see him as actually disliking Joey.) I think he's called Joey a "monkey" more than he's called him a dog, so really, we should be calling it "Monkeyshipping" instead. Or "Bonkotsushipping." Maybe "Moneybags-shipping."

2. References in the narration to Téa as a "bitch," "mean girl," or anything else blatantly negative.
-Okay, I get that you don't like her, but good narration is unbiased. This also goes for when a character who is friends with Téa in the show reacts with some form of horror or distaste when they see her coming. I GET that you don't like her, but Yugi DOES. A good fanfic writer accepts that sometimes a character they like gets along with a character they dislike.

3. Taking a character out of a scene from the show due to dislike.
-Yeah.

5. Slavish imitation, in dialogue, of a character's accent.
-So you want the characters to "sound" like themselves. I understand. But Joey's "voice" has little to do with his accent, it has to do with the words he chooses to use. Having him say "da" instead of "the" is one thing. Having him say "Da quick braown fohx jumped ovah da lazy dohg" is quite another. Writing like that hasn't been in fashion since Mark Twain. Stop doing it. (On the other hand, using British spelling, like "colour" instead of "color," is a perfectly acceptable way to imitate a British accent. Why? It's less distracting.)

6. Runtogethersentencesandparagraphswithoutformatting.
-Don't upload with notepad; save it into Word or something first. And if FF.net eats your formatting anyway, keep at it until it's at least sort of readable. Just trust me on this. Don't have any of the acceptable filetypes except for txt? Get them. You're going to need them eventually anyway.

7. Mixing dub names and Japanese names, such as calling Serenity "Shizuka Wheeler."
-Following a mixed continuity? Almost impossible not to do, since the different continuities fill in each others' gaps. Using mixed names? Confusing and weird. I used to put up with this, but my tolerance has gone down the more I've seen it.

8. A character like, say, Tristan, calling Téa "darling," and then you realize a few sentences later it's because he's gay.
-Tristan would be the butchest gay guy ever. Not all gay guys talk like that.

9. Realizing a few sentences in that the character you thought was a canon character is actually an original character who happens to have the same name.
-Curse you all for the confusingness! Make it clear from the outset! Good grief.

10. Author's notes that say anything along the lines of "Marik is the yami, Malik is the hikari, okay?"
-It's not so much that I begrudge you the right to do that, but if you do, you're going to confuse me. It's a difference of one letter that doesn't actually happen to be much difference; the dubbers call him "Marik" because that's what the Japanese VAs sound like they're saying. And I, personally, am very mildly dyslexic: I am going to forget which you said is which, and I am going to get frustrated. Besides that, it's not even accurate to either versions of the show OR to the manga. Call Yami Marik something else in narrative-- if you don't like "Yami Marik" (and there are so many reasons not to) you can call him "Ishtar," or "the Ishtar demon," or whatever else that appeals to you and makes sense. (Yami M himself considers his name to be that of the original Marik Ishtar, because he considers himself to BE his "hikari.")

11. A sex scene between two members of a non canon pairing in the first chapter.
-I love silentshipping, as anyone who knows me should know. I love it to death. But I accept that any fic featuring it needs to nurse it along, to nurture it and let it grow. A good silentshipping story accepts that the "blimp scene" doesn't point to eternal love; Kaiba's reaction to meeting Serenity again would probably run more along the lines of "Oh, it's you. Uh. Hi." Not the first meeting, but it might as well be. Personally, this fanfictionist can't see Kaiba as a "kiss on the first date" kind of guy, much less a "sex after the first walk in the rain when we're not even sort of dating" kind of guy. I mean, yuck.

12. The lyrics of a song, cut and paste verbatim.
-I have no problem with songfics, even though ff.net's management does (obviously, you get around THAT by not posting it on ff.net) but I didn't click into your fic to read a huge block of text that didn't come from you. If you're planning to incorporate the lyrics into the story itself, be a little more creative than that. And if your story is only INSPIRED by a song, all you need to do is point out the song's official video on Yuutube and inform the reader of the relationship. It'll keep you out of trouble AND be less annoying. I didn't used to click out of these right away, but now I don't tend to waste time on them-- because I've spent too much time already reading through the songs in the past, only to find out that the story itself is only two paragraphs long.

13. Overly cute stuff.
-I'm not really talking about fluff here. When I come across a sentence like "Yugi skipped across to Kaiba and stared up at him with enormous puppy eyes," there's something wrong.

14. A character being the wrong gender without explanation.
-If it's an AU (alternate universe), please, please tell us before we start reading. If it's NOT and Kaiba is secretly a woman, please explain in the story WHY she's a crossdresser (and shame on you if Mokuba doesn't know already.) And for heaven's sake, DON'T gender switch someone just because you like a pairing but can't get past the ghey. Pairings don't have to involve sex or romance. Write something where they become brotherly friends and get it out of your system.

15. Male pregnancy with no explanation.
-One time I read this story in which Bakura was "getting really chubby" and the doctor was all "Oops, Marik, you got him preggers!" It was supposed to be funny, but the fact that nobody even batted an eye at the idea of a pregnant man and the only explaination was "gay sex" really killed the humor for me. Even humor has to make SOME sense. When you treat male pregnancy like it's a normal thing, it is not funny absurd, it's just absurd absurd.

16. When the summary of the story is essentially the first paragraph.
-It's a narrative. Not an essay. Take a writing class.

17. Dialogue, in a supposedly serious story, which sounds like chat-room speak. And also narrative that sounds like chat-room speak.
-USE PUNCTUATION. USE IT. USE SPELL CHECK. IT DOES NOT COST MONEY. For that matter, reread your story before putting up for the rest of us to read. The computer, she misses things.

18. Being dumped into a non-canon status quo without any warning, explanation, or reaction on the part of the characters.
-If it's a few years in the future, say so in the narrative. If it's AU, say so in the author's notes (unless it's a case of "AU clashes with Canon Universe," then you can just do it in the narrative.) If the story opens with Pegasus essentially saying "I love you kay?" to somebody we've never met before, there needs to be some explanation of how the characters got to that point, like "ever since they had met several months before" or "Since Joe was the first person Pegasus had laid eyes on after drinking the magic potion...." I mean, seriously.

19. Mokuba needing a babysitter.
-Did we seriously watch the same series, guys? This kid is an awesome little ninja who referees tournaments and is the vice president of Kaiba Corp. And when he's not in school or being Kaiba's ninja messenger and head general, he's hanging out in Kaiba's office, apparently making sure he stops working long enough to eat and sleep. If anybody needs a babysitter, it's Kaiba-- and he's got one: Mokuba. Being able to take care of himself and more mature than he might have been otherwise is one of Mokuba's character traits-- and anyway, at the age of ten, he's already old enough to be left home alone by most countries' laws. The same goes for Mokuba feeling ignored by Kaiba or for Kaiba abusing Mokuba in any way after Duelist Kingdom. This isn't going to happen.

20. Kaiba having a girlfriend that Mokuba doesn't like.
-Unless she has eldritch powers and is controlling Kaiba's mind, this isn't going to happen either. Kaiba places his brother's needs above his own when it comes to this kind of thing. Mokuba doesn't need any help getting Kaiba's brain out of the gutter and the girl out of the house-- all he really needs to do is say "Well, Seto, I hate to say it but she's kind of a bitch" and Kaiba'll respond with "Oh well, sex isn't everything." (My cat has a similar hold on my love life, so I know what I'm talking about.) (On the other hand, if your story actually features this conversation in just the first few paragraphs, I would totally read it.)

21. Yugi being significantly younger than the rest of the cast, or Mai being in high school with the rest of the cast.
-Yugi is shown as being in high school. Mai is explicitly stated as being out of high school even in the dub-- as being IN HER TWENTIES even in the dub. Yugi is not a little kid and Mai is not a teenager; jokes are made right in the series about Yugi looking younger than he is, and a large part of Mai's character is that she's been around the block once or twice. I'd totally read a story about Mai before Duelist Kingdom, but you can't just shove her in a Domino High uniform, plop her in Yugi's class, and expect me to go along for the ride.

I'm stopping here, because these are the main things that kill a fic for me in the first chapter. Ciao for now!