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Fanfiction Pet Peeves

R

RuinExplorer

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And to clarify, I do not mean just cliches or something overdone. Just something that you see in a Pokemon fanfiction that turns you off.

For me, I hate when the they say "Bad summary but the story is good". If you say the summary is bad, why would I want to read your story? The summary reflects on the story and catches other people's attention but it will not do that if you say it's bad.
-Text blocks. I will immediately leave a story if it is just a wall of text. It's annoying to read because it is so easy to fix.
 
Shipping fic in general. Period.

I am not interested in reading fic that were wrote out for the mere sake of pairing, even you disguised it using other things like adventure or mission or other works need to be done by the characters, because it is still the romance take up most of the fic.

I'm just not the kind of person that like to read romance. Unless, the fic was tended to be major in fantasy/adventure/battle/whatever, whereas romance is used only as a spice once in a while to raise up the atmosphere and tension. But still, no over-exaggeration on the relationship where romance eat up the supposedly main plot of the fic.
 
Seconding the "bad summary/story better than summary" thing. Like, as soon as anyone says that, I'm immediately turned off of the story.

Perfect OCs, or "perfect" OCs where they have flaws and/or tragedy in their lives but it's only used to amplify their Woobie-ness.

Flat, cardboard cutout villains.

Shinies and Eevies. Unconventional starters in general. I saw a fic where the kid gets a Clefairy as her starter from Prof. Oak and was just like why???
 
TwinklingCupcake said:
Unconventional starters in general.
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I get what you're saying, but I don't see this as entirely bad. I wouldn't mind this if there's a legit reason for it. Like, a kid rescues a baby Pokemon and keeps it, and later when he's old enough to become a trainer, decides to register it as his partner. You don't always have to start with a conventional starter, as long as it makes sense and doesn't feel too convenient.

But if your OC's starter is a legendary (just any legendary) and/or shiny, that is borderline dumb, and I agree with you.
 
0bs1d1an_kn1ght said:
I get what you're saying, but I don't see this as entirely bad. I wouldn't mind this if there's a legit reason for it. Like, a kid rescues a baby Pokemon and keeps it, and later when he's old enough to become a trainer, decides to register it as his partner. You don't always have to start with a conventional starter, as long as it makes sense and doesn't feel too convenient.

But if your OC's starter is a legendary (just any legendary) and/or shiny, that is borderline dumb, and I agree with you.
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Yeah, I guess I should rephrase that to like...an unconventional starter being given to them by the professor. Or "Well this is highly unorthodox but SURE OKAY!"
But Shinies and Legendaries are (often in the former, always in the latter) horrible for starters no matter how it's done.
 
This is just a sudden question I wanted to know, what is a "Perfect" character?

I kind of feel this "perfect" wording doesn't have much meaning as it seems to varies between different people, especially when one said a perfect character with flaws and/or tragic past, that already doesn't make the character perfect in any sense. I think many people are taking too much of an issue of the so-called "perfectness".

I'm personally fine with the so-called 'perfect' character which is outstanding in everything if not most of everything he/she do, including having a complicated background or not, as long as he/she contains unique characteristic and personality that allows sophisticated interpersonal relationship which induce interesting character-centered story plot, where it doesn't step into the Mary Sue zone, then a genius character with outstanding abilities is no problem at all.
Also, when such outstanding character is challenged by another equally outstanding character, then despite he/she is already perfectly good in something, interesting drama may still occurs. Sometimes I think such conflict may even be more interesting than seeing inferior character struggle to overcome the superior character, because then the competition need to be made in high quality and portrayed it intelligently in order to reflect the high level of the characters. Such crash of two equally strong power is just more spectacular than watching the crash of two equally weak power, or collision of two imbalanced power where the inferior side is basically hopeless in winning, unless there exist some cheating method to outclass the superior.
 
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Firstly, great topic idea @RuinExplorer.

Secondly, I think my biggest pet peeve is bland villains. I think that there is so much potential for original villains or original takes on canon villains that I get annoyed when people go for Disney-esque stereotypes as to how they should act. Or, alternatively, come up with really boring reasons for why the hero is being stalked by the villains. I think if you are going to go for say the prophecy route/'they are the only one who can defeat me' that I do a lot with my stories (which I admit has become rather a cliche in my work), you need to give a lot of layers to the characters and the storyline for that to work, and sadly most people don't.

I'm not opposed to romance in fics, but I am opposed to people who put ridiculous ships together who logically won't go together just for the sake of a serious shipping fic.
 
クリスタル said:
This is just a sudden question I wanted to know, what is a "Perfect" character?
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Think of the "Mary Sue", a character who's so perfect, the entire world of the story practically revolves around them. Every character (and I mean EVERY character) falls in love with them ala love at first sight- those who don't are and will be demonized to an ungodly high degree. There is no skill that they can't perfect- because they were already born masters of said skills to begin with. They are absolutely flawless in every degree; whatever "flaw" they do have only amplifies how perfect they are in the other characters' eyes.

Think: Bella Swan from Twilight; Anastasia Steele from Fifty Shades of Grey; and Ebony/Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Ravenway from the notorious My Immortal.
 
0bs1d1an_kn1ght said:
Think of the "Mary Sue", a character who's so perfect, the entire world of the story practically revolves around them. Every character (and I mean EVERY character) falls in love with them ala love at first sight- those who don't are and will be demonized to an ungodly high degree. There is no skill that they can't perfect- because they were already born masters of said skills to begin with. They are absolutely flawless in every degree; whatever "flaw" they do have only amplifies how perfect they are in the other characters' eyes.

Think: Bella Swan from Twilight; Anastasia Steele from Fifty Shades of Grey; and Ebony/Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Ravenway from the notorious My Immortal.
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According to my understanding, that is not a "perfect" character, that is simply a Mary Sue. I separate the two terms because their literal meaning is just not the same thing.

Mary Sue, according to my understanding, she (or he) is the kind of character that is excellent in everything to the point of being implausible, additionally having a super complicated background that is also unreasonable in terms of event connection, where her very existence bends the physics of the universe.
However, in another sense, she is not "perfect" nor "flawless", because her existence alone is already a flaw by itself, a flaw in terms of the overworld, an unreasonable being that is not supposed to existed according to the law of physics of the respective overworld of one's fic.

As I had mentioned in my previous post, a character can be perfect without being a Mary Sue, only under the condition that he/she is outstanding in many things in a plausible manner allowed within the setting of the world depicted by one's fic. For such kind of "perfect" character, I'm more than welcome.
 
I think the Mary Sue/perfect character discussion is best kept to its own thread/discussion given it already gets a lot of attention already.

I think one of my biggest pet peeves in fan fiction is that adapting the games is inherently a bad or boring idea. This may mainly be a personal thing since my biggest stories have been game-inspired, but I get the impression occassionaly that a lot of people seem to instinctively view stories where it's small town kid taking on the world gym by gym as uninspired and don't give the original ideas within the story the credit they deserve.
 
Something that bothers me from time to time, not necessarily limited to Pokemon fanfiction, is when a game's more illogical mechanics are translated literally into writing, rather than being adapted as to make more sense, or just cut entirely if need be. I think things like, to return to Pokemon for the example, writing battles as a list of instructions that the pokemon idly stand by and wait for instructions, as a battle might work in-game, as opposed to a more authentic-feeling flow of actions where the trainers give commands other than just naming moves, and the pokemon take some initiative on their own. Simply put, if the way game mechanics work doesn't feel natural, they need some degree of adaptation to fit them into a written format, I feel.

(Wrote this is kind of a hurry, so sorry if this post's a bit of a mess.)
 
Half-done or no law enforcement tends to get on my nerves. This isn't really a problem when the story is going for the Boy's Own aesthetic, the kind that pretty much runs through the games. It's when the fic is trying to convince me that it's a mature, gritty story that it starts to grate.
 
Another dislike I have is the character known as the Reality Warp OC. Events bend themselves to suit the character, other people will seem to have been replaced by aliens. Example: Eusine ignoring Suicune to talk to the OC.
-That or bad worldbuilding.
 
Gama said:
the creation of a new character or event that explains everything else that happens in the universe of that fandom.
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Wait, isn't that half, at least, the point of the Pokémon fandom? That the canon gives out so little that you can't go wrong adding anything (senseful, at least) to patch the holes?
 
I think what they meant was a character that is in the shadows making everything goes right or something like that. If done sensibly, any cliche can be ok. But most of the times it's done so the OC can have super speshul powers.

At least I think that is what they were getting at.

I hate that no one brings up the issues in the PMD part in the fandom. Every fanfic has the main character who is human, usually paired with their partner, and basically follows the game the entire way. I get sticking to canon a bit but that is the storyline of almost every single PMD fanfiction.

I read one that had a female riolu that knew AURA SPHERE. That isn't possible for a riolu!
 
OK, I would like to add another pet peeve of mine. That shall be following the game mechanics too literally.

Previously there is a mention of Riolu shouldn't learn Aura Sphere. I really need to ask: Why shouldn't? Or more correctly, WHY CAN'T? In the game we can obtain a special Riolu with Aura Sphere via event distribution, and in courtesy to that event, we did had a Riolu able to use Aura Sphere in one ranger special episode within the anime. So despite that Riolu by normal gameplay it can't learn Aura Sphere, it doesn't mean there doesn't exist Riolu that can use Aura Sphere. And extend it further, it doesn't mean Riolu possess no potential to use this move, nor it is banned from using this move.

Though, as that was limited to event distribution, within fanfic context I interpreted as only a few selected special Riolu with excellent aura manipulating ability on genius level can learn to use this move.

As long as there exist logical explanation, I wouldn't mind about moves that Pokemon cannot learn by normal mean in the game. If the move by itself is plausible already for the physiology of the respective Pokemon (e.g. Shinx using Thunder Shock), I will be fine even there is no explanation.

But, other than the learning of moves, my biggest concern for this specific pet peeve is the rather on the battle system. Please, no limitation to only 4 moves, no automatic activation of abilities when certain condition is met, no HP/PP/stats/Lv/IV/EV, no measurable friendship nor affection, maybe not even TM/HM and a bunch of in-battle items.
 
I would have been fine if there was a reasonable explanation but there wasn't. They were a former human with amnesia (still so overdone) who didn't even work at it. They apparently knew it and had the Dimensional Screen because they were the chosen one who would defeat all the evils. All of them. It just seemed very contrived and they had a difficult move handed to them with no work. They shouldn't have been able to do the move after waking up with amnesia from being a former human and never seeing the move.

Honestly I dislike this scenario when it occurs to any character. They do no work and get super powerful abilities and or moves. This could easily be fixed with a couple scenes of them working for it but no one does it.
 
The summary thing is pretty annoying. I'm personally not the greatest at writing summaries (at least I don't think I am), but saying it's bad isn't going to make me want to read the story either. Then again, we are our own worst critics... It wouldn't really turn me away from reading a story though. I'd at least give it a shot.

I also just dislike when authors make the same mistakes over and over in their work. If you make it a few times, okay, maybe you don't know that it's a problem. If you do it over and over and over again and someone's pointed it out to you and you still continue to do it though, nope. Sorry. It's like they're not even trying.
 
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