Fanfiction Pet Peeves

My biggest pet peeves are probably pretty generic, but it really hurts me when writers don't use quotation marks and spacing properly. It makes a story feel rushed and breathless, and almost unreadable, I understand that many are still learning, but it's such a small thing that can make a huge difference in your writing.

 

When people change the story to be edgy for the sake of being edgy. I tend to be wary if the author prefaces there story with "Lol, I wanted this universe to be more dark, so I added a lot more bloody scenes in it, and also, the main character's friend/girlfriend/sibling/parents really early to set the story in motion."

 

I don't know if mine is in that category. My character is actually violent and has thrown punches in the story countless times. I don't know if it counts as edgy since he's put himself in harm's way and actually fought to save his Pokémon in a situation against a wild Charizard. He's also used his size and strength to threaten and defend his friends. He normally defaults to physical violence but he cares deeply for his Pokémon. He's just not a pushover and has even made fun of Gladion for being an edgelord. If this sounds edgy then I apologize. My fanfics just contain a lot of violence but I haven't been called an edgelord yet. :/

 

I haven't read any of your fanfic yet, but just from this, he sounds like he's more than just an edgelord, which is good

 

Yeah... you'd hate my writing. I'm very sarcastic and tend to use swears or other sh.....stuff. I have a character who uses Spanish a lot since he's Mexican. However, I feel like your being a little hard on people who use these words. I had changed to my sort of snarky style of writing after a few chapters of my first fic. I found it a lot more enjoyable to write in that way and still use it to this day.

If people use slang from their region or country then it's because they feel more comfortable with using it. It could be actually charming to hear slang and language from another region and or country. But it's just a pet peeve of yours so I guess it's alright. It may be a bit unfair to judge a fic solely on the slang

 

Thanks? I mean, I didn't try to make him an edgelord, I would think cowboy with a makeshift-fighting stick would sound less edgy. But hey, what ever :/

 

Most of my pet peeves are relatively small things, and I guess 'when characters act OOC' and 'terrible plots' are universally disliked. But still, characters grabbing the Idiot Ball makes me stop reading.

I'm guilty of doing this, but using spelling and words that don't match the country the fic is set in. E.g. Writing 'mum' instead of 'mom' for a story set in the USA, or using 'lift' instead of 'elevator', etc. It's not noticeable when it's words that you usually use, but it can be incredibly distracting when it's someone in a different country writing about your own.

I also have a minor peeve when instead of writing what the character is thinking, the author writes "!" or "?". That's not something that a person can say!

 

Agreed on the word-usage to an extent - the obvious exception being if the person was originally from a place that used different words than the people that are native to the place said person moved to. So, a Brit living in Seattle would still use 'lift' instead of 'elevator' because that's how they were taught.

Totally agreed about the OOC + Idiot Ball, though (I've been guilty on both of these, but for the first I try to make logical changes to events to justify said character change).

@Gazi Agreed on the 'bashing' nonsense. Being part of the Naruto fandom, I've seen so much bashing (particularly of Hinata, sadly) that it's made me want to puke (metaphorically), so I tend to be VERY selective of the fics I read. Now, there are some fictional characters that I hate with every fiber of my being, but I try to treat them with respect if I have to write about them because my hate for them (if it can really be called hate) comes from my very logical brain. I cannot understand the irrational hate that drives people to bash fictional characters.

 

My main pet peeve is when someone has an amazing idea and self destructs their story with poor writing! Seriously though, my pet peeve in fanfics are the illogical way people move or act. I'm a very spatially oriented person, So often times I can easily understand what moves are feasible for a human or Pokémon and what are fictional movements that would totally break your arm in the real world. So usually I hate it when characters move in impossible ways without explanation. Also because I'm spatially oriented, I don't take kindly to people teleporting across a room or suddenly...bunnies(That would actually be pretty funny for a comedy). I can suspend my disbelief pretty far, but to have a story with magical bunnies that pop in and out of existence with no relevance to the plot is too much for me.(note to self: write a comedy that focuses on magical bunnies that pop in and out of existences)

 

I can deal with a little bit of bad grammar or an interesting idea that's not properly executed, but what really grinds my gears? When writers go into weird amounts of details with visual descriptions. As a reader, I really don't care if this girl has shoulder-length chestnut hair tied back in a french braid, or that this other girl wears a jacket that has a Banette-shaped hood on it, or that boy has a small scar on his cheek, or one of another hundred descriptors some people will try to cram into their first paragraph of the story. I really just don't, unless there's a reason for it other than being controlling with your casting choices. Does she keep her hair long because she used to be bullied for having short "boy" hair, and now she's self-conscious and has low self esteem because of that bullying? Great! Does he wear only green clothes because he loves training Bug-type Pokémon and he's a firm and vocal believer that the clothes make the man? Awesome! Does she have a scar between her middle and ring finger on her left hand because she got hurt while trying to dig her brother out of a collapsed building after a terrorist attack leveled her home town? Incredible! Those are all fabulous reasons to include specifics of character description, but specifying visual traits that have no bearing whatsoever on story is a waste of my time as a reader.

If I'm being entirely honest, I don't know if my best-work-friend shaved his beard this week, and I just spent six hours with him. I don't know if the med tech girl I see in the hall every day had her hair up or down, or what color her eyes are. I'm not 100% certain that any specific person I know has all ten fingers, let alone has a scar on any of them. And I surely can't specify the absolute or relative cup size of any of my female colleagues. And none of that matters. What I do know and what does matter to me as a teammate and a reader is their personality traits: who's reliable, who's lazy, who's quiet, who's energized. Unless his height makes people see him as a leader despite being shy or her favorite jacket is a memento from her dead boyfriend or he has a mustache because you can't wear a full face oxygen mask with a full beard and these things are story-relevant and made aware to me as a reader, then I don't care. We can save the super-specifics of character description for the portrait artist or the screenwriter, and let the reader focus on the story.

What I'm saying is this: if you're going to make me (for example) into a fanfic character, don't spend three paragraphs describing my Ali Express shopping list, my height and weight, and the particulars of every scar on my face. If you mention Zero is tall, have it be in the context that he saw something on top of the refrigerator or that he doesn't want to go cave exploring because it's cramped. If you mention Zero's hairstyle, specify that he doesn't mind if it's goofy because he doesn't care what other people think and that it makes him feel like a rock star in the mirror. If you mention Zero's preferred style of shirt and the way he rolls up his sleeves, let him explain that it's because he likes to look mature and unassuming. Aside from that, let the reader do their own casting for Zero, and don't waste... uhh... *scroll up* three paragraphs of their time on visuals.

 

I can withstand some grammatical error, but if you mix up then and than or they're, there, and their, then we have a problem. Also if you can't get a storyline that makes sense (The new Star War/ all transformer movies are a good example of what not to do), then we have a problem. Of course, I realize that there is always room for improvement but this is the minimum that I'm asking of any writer when I'm revising and editing their work.

 

I have a few, kind of petty peeves.

I do hate when author's use large words constantly throughout the entire story. If it's occasionally they may use a word that you don't hear often, and it's just used as a replacement to prevent from repeating the same word, then fine. But if I have to search up what a word means every other sentence, that makes it rather difficult for me to enjoy the story in its full, and kind of turns me off from it.

I also do hate when a story and plot becomes too complex and it ends up becoming messy. Plot twists and the like are things I love, but sometimes the author ends up branching off and wanting to add in all sorts of different plots and subplots, and it makes the story near impossible to follow, and I know it only makes it all the more difficult for the author to keep track, too.

 

When a reviewer demands you change the entire story to fit a pairing they want/ Demand you change the story because it isn't canon

 

When a writer:
- Spells terribly
- Has poor grammar
- Has OOC or character bashing
- Has a million plot twists
- OVERPOWERED LOVED BY EVERYBODY FAN CHARACTERS. Just... no.
- Songfics. Half of it is just lyrics in script form, and even then they’re just REALLY generic, always some kind of love song and shipping, and it’s because of some dance or contest of crap.
- OOC romance. Remember Meta Knight from the Kirby series? Because he’s obviously going to get nervous about a dance because a girl is there and care about the girl more than everything else. Totally not just this random dude who likes fighting and is a loner. Totally just your average boyfriend.
- Characters with no apparent flaws.

 

Where do I even start...
- Poor spelling and grammar. Autocorrect is created for a purpose, you know! I honestly don’t care what background you come from, but getting your grammar correct is the most basic thing when it comes to writing. If you can’t handle English, use another language where you can write correctly!
- Character x reader or x OC stories. There’s too much romance and too little plot, for most of them, that is. I don’t really like canon x OC stories in general. The author makes their character either super edgy or super Mary-Sue-ish. (Believe it or not, there are millions of Logan Paul x reader/OC stories. Yes, I want to die too.) This leads to my next point.
- Any story that revolves around one specific ship. This is very similar to my last point. All the characters act OOC, or either make a character “jealous” because one of the characters took their boyfriend/girlfriend, even when it has nothing to do with the original franchise, and a lot of the time, they do this to real people.
- Bashing stories. They’re usually disguised as a ship story. Look up FNAF, Undertale, BATIM, Cuphead fanfictions, or any overrated franchises in general, and you’ll know what I mean.

There is more, but I’m too lazy too keep writing.