(no subject)
Okay, so here's the thing.
I've been reading some Good Omens fanfic on AOL and there are two things that are driving me absolutely nuts so I wanted to vent a little and also to ask - am I the only one that wants to shake these people till their teeth rattle and tell them to grow the fuck up?
The first - and I've never noticed this in QAF stories, so I don't know how widespread it is, is the pattern of not putting a summary per se, but instead using one or two lines from the story as the summary.
Drives me nuts. Sometimes I feel it's quite mis-leading because the bit selected isn't really representative of the story. Sometimes it's the opposite - it's like those movie trailers where once you've seen the trailer it's not really worth seeing the movie because all the best bits were in the trailer. Either way it's just lazy. If you don't want to be bothered writing a summary just don't.
So that's one thing. The other is tags.
Now I don't know about you, but I find tags on A03 quite useful in terms of filtering. I use them a bit for QAF fics, but I use them a lot for Good Omens. For instance, I don't, by and large, read fics where Aziraphale is the primary top. I figure that is so far out of character that if they get that wrong then nothing about the story is going to make much sense. (For those who haven't seen GO it seriously is like believing Mikey is the primary top in his relationship with Ben.) So "top Aziraphale" or "bottom Crowley" tags are great, useful. They tell me something important about the type of story it is and can be used to remove stories that aren't what I want to read.
In the QAF fandom, I've never noticed a particular problem with tags. But in GO one is constantly confronted with this kind of garbage.
• No Archive Warnings Apply
• Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
• Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
• Crowley & Anathema Device
• Aziraphale (Good Omens)
• Crowley (Good Omens)
• Anathema Device
• Mutual Pining
• Supporting Local Businesses and Arts Programs
• Dating While Oblivious™
• Ft. Aziraphale's Fear Of Repurcussions
• (Not In The Way You'd Expect)
• Crowley's Secret Love Of Gardening
• Fluff
• Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens)
• Slow Burn
• Like Both Love Each Other But Both Are Also Really Oblivious
• First Kiss
• Mild Angst
• Like. It's an undercurrent but theres also
• Humour
• Baking puns (just a few)
Most of which, in my view, would do better in the summary or the notes and not in the damned tags where all they do is mess things up so that filtering becomes much more difficult.
I mean, how in Hell or Heaven is a tag "not in the way you'd expect" ever going to be useful to anyone? (And don't start me on the "Secret love of gardening" thing because for fuck's sake he has a whole room devoted to his beautiful plants. It's straight out canon.)
Oh, and one last thing is this one.
I came across an author who doesn't use capital letters. At all. None. I posted a comment saying that I for one found that this made the fics difficult to read and the response was that she thought they "looked better".
Here's an example of what a paragraph from one of my fics would look like without capital letters so you can see how it might become a challenge to read.
brian felt his resolve weakening in direct proportion to the hardening of his cock. he tried to remind himself that he was the top in this relationship, but as he was the first to concede that his partner was more than his equal in most aspects of that relationship, that didn't work very well. he tried to remind himself that he was the out and proud super stud owner of the city's hottest gay club, which would be a far more appropriate venue for any halloween celebrations, but as he knew that the club would be packed all night with cases even more tragic than ted and emmett, that didn't work either. especially as he knew that he'd still have plenty of time once ben and michael’s party ground to a halt to make an appearance at the club.
Aside from anything else, it's really hard to see where one sentence ends and the next begins. It gave me a headache and I won't be reading any more of her fic. Why would any author deliberately make it more difficult for someone to read their stuff? Is this no capitals thing some kind of new trend? WTF?
Okay, vent over. Just wondering what people thought.
.
I've been reading some Good Omens fanfic on AOL and there are two things that are driving me absolutely nuts so I wanted to vent a little and also to ask - am I the only one that wants to shake these people till their teeth rattle and tell them to grow the fuck up?
The first - and I've never noticed this in QAF stories, so I don't know how widespread it is, is the pattern of not putting a summary per se, but instead using one or two lines from the story as the summary.
Drives me nuts. Sometimes I feel it's quite mis-leading because the bit selected isn't really representative of the story. Sometimes it's the opposite - it's like those movie trailers where once you've seen the trailer it's not really worth seeing the movie because all the best bits were in the trailer. Either way it's just lazy. If you don't want to be bothered writing a summary just don't.
So that's one thing. The other is tags.
Now I don't know about you, but I find tags on A03 quite useful in terms of filtering. I use them a bit for QAF fics, but I use them a lot for Good Omens. For instance, I don't, by and large, read fics where Aziraphale is the primary top. I figure that is so far out of character that if they get that wrong then nothing about the story is going to make much sense. (For those who haven't seen GO it seriously is like believing Mikey is the primary top in his relationship with Ben.) So "top Aziraphale" or "bottom Crowley" tags are great, useful. They tell me something important about the type of story it is and can be used to remove stories that aren't what I want to read.
In the QAF fandom, I've never noticed a particular problem with tags. But in GO one is constantly confronted with this kind of garbage.
• No Archive Warnings Apply
• Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
• Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
• Crowley & Anathema Device
• Aziraphale (Good Omens)
• Crowley (Good Omens)
• Anathema Device
• Mutual Pining
• Supporting Local Businesses and Arts Programs
• Dating While Oblivious™
• Ft. Aziraphale's Fear Of Repurcussions
• (Not In The Way You'd Expect)
• Crowley's Secret Love Of Gardening
• Fluff
• Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens)
• Slow Burn
• Like Both Love Each Other But Both Are Also Really Oblivious
• First Kiss
• Mild Angst
• Like. It's an undercurrent but theres also
• Humour
• Baking puns (just a few)
Most of which, in my view, would do better in the summary or the notes and not in the damned tags where all they do is mess things up so that filtering becomes much more difficult.
I mean, how in Hell or Heaven is a tag "not in the way you'd expect" ever going to be useful to anyone? (And don't start me on the "Secret love of gardening" thing because for fuck's sake he has a whole room devoted to his beautiful plants. It's straight out canon.)
Oh, and one last thing is this one.
I came across an author who doesn't use capital letters. At all. None. I posted a comment saying that I for one found that this made the fics difficult to read and the response was that she thought they "looked better".
Here's an example of what a paragraph from one of my fics would look like without capital letters so you can see how it might become a challenge to read.
brian felt his resolve weakening in direct proportion to the hardening of his cock. he tried to remind himself that he was the top in this relationship, but as he was the first to concede that his partner was more than his equal in most aspects of that relationship, that didn't work very well. he tried to remind himself that he was the out and proud super stud owner of the city's hottest gay club, which would be a far more appropriate venue for any halloween celebrations, but as he knew that the club would be packed all night with cases even more tragic than ted and emmett, that didn't work either. especially as he knew that he'd still have plenty of time once ben and michael’s party ground to a halt to make an appearance at the club.
Aside from anything else, it's really hard to see where one sentence ends and the next begins. It gave me a headache and I won't be reading any more of her fic. Why would any author deliberately make it more difficult for someone to read their stuff? Is this no capitals thing some kind of new trend? WTF?
Okay, vent over. Just wondering what people thought.
.