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

[theredoormouse]

No shower after sex, nor comment on the nasty sheets in the morning. Realistic sex people! It's not that hard. (pun intended)

Certain repeated typos. I can handle a couple, but there are some that just REALLY bother me.

Like when they make the (startlingly common) wrap, rape typo. That one just really bothers me. And makes me giggle incessantly.

[verilyverity]

WAUGH! MAKE UP YOUR MIND!

[theredoormouse]

Sorry, today has been a day of indecision. It took me an hour to do my laundry. And half the day was lost at dinner.

[verilyverity]

So...

Cake or death?

[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

[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.

[verilyverity]

Yep. That's epithets.

[verilyverity]

But oh! I hear you on the epithets. I have zero tolerance for epithets. For the life of me, I can't understand why they're so common. It's such a counterintuitive use of language.

[moony_blues]

In our specific fandom, it's the "Cain gets jealous of a suitor" or "The Queen throws a ball!" plot lines. Or any plot line that doesn't involve angst of some kind. Come on, people! I know we all want to sing "Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead," but we're dealing with some seriously broken people here. At least acknowledge that fact.

Oh, and another thing that sends me spasming to the back button is unnecessary references to Other Side movies or fandoms, especially if they're chick flicks. We have no indication from canon that DG watches ANY specific kind of movie or television show or reads a certain kind of book. I think it's a bit pretentious to say that she's a science fiction fan or that she's going to quote lines from The Princess Diaries. Self-insertion anyone? I will occasionally borrow a line of dialog (like I did in Beautiful Disaster) or reference something in my narratives, but I will never, ever, ever write a DG who intentionally quotes lines from movies from the Other Side

[kseda]

Oh gawd, royal balls (teehee). I've finally started work on my first proper fic and am deeply disappointed that it opens with a dance. It's not a ball, though! It's, um, a prom an end-of-term formal. So there's a difference. *eyedart*

I think we can kind of infer a few things about DG's taste in movies, books, etc. given what we know of the charatcer. She grew up with her dad telling her endless fairy tales, she's constantly sketching scenes and people from a "fantasy world," she's a dreamer who wants to escape from her small town existance. Put that all together and I can see where it's plausible to have her like fantasy and other escapism-type genres. (In fact I will go on record stating that in my personal canon DG has/had a massive crush on Brendan Fraser in "The Mummy" movies. You heard it here first.)

Quoting things? Eh, that's a bit indulgent, plus you run the risk of the refernces sailing straight over your readers' heads. Making pop culture refernces to flesh out a scene (This was almost as embarrassing as the time her

[icarus_chained]

Royal balls ... *shifty eyes* Sorry.

[n_e_star]

DG accidentally turns Cain and Glitch into adorable four-year-olds

But it wasn't DG, it was Glitch that did it!

::runs off to hid crack fic::

[andrealyn]

If the worldbuilding in an AU becomes too stagnant and too much about the setting and not the characters, I just tune out. I'll get through to the end, but I skip a lot of details (and still manage to come out on the other side!)

Overuse of stammering gets me, too. It just becomes a chore to read and I like having fluidity when it comes to fics.

Other than that, I've got pretty high tolerance and I will read just about anything if it's even remotely IC.

[kseda]

Character > everything else. Trufax.

[andrealyn]

EVEN CAKE?

[kseda]

I GET TO USE THIS ICON TWICE! Um, maybe not cake. However if a fic has someone who is being REALLY in character eating cake I may end up dead from squee.