Why yes, I bitch a lot about stuff, get over it
I'm know I'm not in a good mood these days, but anyway, I've been snatching time to read fic. I've been combing through big bang archives of late, as well as reading fics posted in the annual Big Bangs going. It could be any fandom, because this happens to me every time I read my way through BB/fest postings.
Anyway, I end up thinking things like the following A LOT: Why the hell would anybody want to (a) read this particular plot so much they'd actually pitch it as a prompt, and (b) who would want to write this plot? AND (c) Oh my god, I do NOT need to get out more if this is what results. And I am not naming anything specific because (1) this is a cross-fanfic/cross the years experience for me. Also, I don't want to be dog-piled by The Young and Very Earnest Out There. Also, if I never read anybody saying "fuck" every other word in their lines of dialogue again, I will fall down on my knees in gratitude. It's a good word, and I use it often, but when you have to read it over and over and over as in "Fuck this," he thought. So and so was a fucking twat who didn't fucking know what the fuck he fucking thouht" ....OKAAAAYYYYY - it's too much. It makes me want to smack my laptop.
Other stuff that bugs me silly:
Summaries: Do not start out telling me that your fic that I am proposing to read is, "LOL" a piece of crap. Because it doesn't make you charmingly modest, it makes you sound like an idiot and then I backbutton out of the fic leaving scorch marks. If you wrote a piece of crap, please edit it until it is not a piece of crap and then post it.
Plagiarism. I have never seen the point of posting something that isn't from your own head, because if you get lots of comments on something that you didn't come up with, that's like WTF for? Plagiarism, if anybody is still confuzzled, is when you steal lines from other people and pass them off as your own. If you write a story with Bodie and Doyle in a florist shop even if there are 10 other stories in a florist's, I don't think that is plagiarism. Stealing word for word "A Trip to the Florists" by Anonymus, however, and then sticking your name on it, IS.
Please stop trying to impress me with how well you managed to Google Whereverthehellitis on Wikipedia. And I LOVE Wikipedia. But research isn't meant to swamp your story. Weave it into the story, don't stop and give me a dissertation on the subway system's history in Los Angeles.
Back to the big bang experience, whew. There are the Pairings that make no sense or are downright boring - squicky I can forgive, but boring just bites. There are the characters that are so generic they are literally "any two guys in a bar," and in one memorable two hours I will never get back, there was the 6 chapters too long novella where I was actually praying they'd kill off one or both of the main protagonists before the end (no such luck). And before you ask, I kept reading that one because I was SURE something was going to actually happen, but nothing did (if you discount the poisoning, the headaches, and the implants, but I digress) and it was like a train wreck on the way (though it did make me feel sorry for pharmaceutical companies). I just didn't get the point of putting two characters and the reader through a bunch of stuff on the level of an asthma attack, and then not much else occurring. Though, I'm not especially Romantic, I admit - I was that person who saw TITANIC the first time and spend the movie wishing the ship would just freaking sink already, and please please please would Jack and Rose would both just freeze to death and die so my agony and the movie would be over.
Anyway, I end up thinking things like the following A LOT: Why the hell would anybody want to (a) read this particular plot so much they'd actually pitch it as a prompt, and (b) who would want to write this plot? AND (c) Oh my god, I do NOT need to get out more if this is what results. And I am not naming anything specific because (1) this is a cross-fanfic/cross the years experience for me. Also, I don't want to be dog-piled by The Young and Very Earnest Out There. Also, if I never read anybody saying "fuck" every other word in their lines of dialogue again, I will fall down on my knees in gratitude. It's a good word, and I use it often, but when you have to read it over and over and over as in "Fuck this," he thought. So and so was a fucking twat who didn't fucking know what the fuck he fucking thouht" ....OKAAAAYYYYY - it's too much. It makes me want to smack my laptop.
Other stuff that bugs me silly:
Summaries: Do not start out telling me that your fic that I am proposing to read is, "LOL" a piece of crap. Because it doesn't make you charmingly modest, it makes you sound like an idiot and then I backbutton out of the fic leaving scorch marks. If you wrote a piece of crap, please edit it until it is not a piece of crap and then post it.
Plagiarism. I have never seen the point of posting something that isn't from your own head, because if you get lots of comments on something that you didn't come up with, that's like WTF for? Plagiarism, if anybody is still confuzzled, is when you steal lines from other people and pass them off as your own. If you write a story with Bodie and Doyle in a florist shop even if there are 10 other stories in a florist's, I don't think that is plagiarism. Stealing word for word "A Trip to the Florists" by Anonymus, however, and then sticking your name on it, IS.
Please stop trying to impress me with how well you managed to Google Whereverthehellitis on Wikipedia. And I LOVE Wikipedia. But research isn't meant to swamp your story. Weave it into the story, don't stop and give me a dissertation on the subway system's history in Los Angeles.
Back to the big bang experience, whew. There are the Pairings that make no sense or are downright boring - squicky I can forgive, but boring just bites. There are the characters that are so generic they are literally "any two guys in a bar," and in one memorable two hours I will never get back, there was the 6 chapters too long novella where I was actually praying they'd kill off one or both of the main protagonists before the end (no such luck). And before you ask, I kept reading that one because I was SURE something was going to actually happen, but nothing did (if you discount the poisoning, the headaches, and the implants, but I digress) and it was like a train wreck on the way (though it did make me feel sorry for pharmaceutical companies). I just didn't get the point of putting two characters and the reader through a bunch of stuff on the level of an asthma attack, and then not much else occurring. Though, I'm not especially Romantic, I admit - I was that person who saw TITANIC the first time and spend the movie wishing the ship would just freaking sink already, and please please please would Jack and Rose would both just freeze to death and die so my agony and the movie would be over.