Oh, sweet back button, how I love you!

[verilyverity]

So, content not withstanding, what boots you out of a story?  I don't mean the usual suspects like punctuation applied with a salt shaker, syntax that looks like it's been through seventeen cycles of BableFish in dead languages, or wildly OOC characters and implausible plots.  I mean the things unique to you -- the style problems you find in

Comments

[kseda]

What gets me is "Well, funny you should say that *blush*" shipping. Like, the story has a clear and obvious primary ship, and one half of the main ship goes to discuss their Deep Emotional Turmoil with some trusted person outside the ship. Then the Trusted Person goes all "Oh, you're in love with so and so? That's funny, because I was about to tell you I'm in love with what's-their-face! You know, that knowing smile we shared two chapters ago should have given it away. *blush*"

It's even more pasted on yay than most ships are in a lot of fics and it really irritates me, as it does NOTHING to advance the plot and is kind of a disservice to the characters in the tacked-on secondary background ship. It's like insta-story for them, the author got lazy and thought "I have no idea what to do with these two. I KNOW! They'll have a Twu Wuv off camera while I focus on developing my OTP."

Can I call it a "ghost ship"? Only rumored to exist, appears out of nowhere, then just as quickly fades away before anyone understands what they're looking at? Inhabited by faded phantoms of human beings with no life or anima of their own... wait. I'm on to something there.

Moral of the story: do not stick characters in a relationship for the hell of it. If you're not going to take the time to develop that ship to even compare with the primary one then it's really just shallow pointless pairing random people off for balance or aesthetics or whatever. You're not fooling me.

That was way longer than I thought it would be. Whoops.

[theredoormouse]

On that note, when you have a large group of people in a Fandom (like in Tin Man) and so feel like by the end of your story EVERYONE has to be in a relationship. Even if that means making up those Ghost Ships, as you call them. Which, on that note, is a very good term.

[verilyverity]

Everyone has to match up. Because fic is like a game of Memory.

[kseda]

Or Pokemon. Gotta ship 'em all.

[kseda]

Yes yes yes and yes. Gah. Save something for the inevitable sequel, folks.

[moony_blues]

one half of the main ship goes to discuss their Deep Emotional Turmoil with some trusted person outside the ship

Or Cain discussing his Deep Emotional Turmoil with anyone without some sort of coercion. Come on, he's not that emotionally open in the mini...at least not that I could see.

[kseda]

You're right about Cain, he's not one for overt, unrequested touchy-feely crap. Fortunately I haven't seen it happening with him all that often in fic, but I'm beginning to think there's some unwritten rule that requires DG and Az to gossip like school girls every four chapters.