What kind of fanfics do you hate?

[Southern Cross]

And it's even worse when the writers are supposed to be professionals and they want you to PAY them for their work.(Yes,I'm talking about Marvel Comics here,especially Bendis and Millar.Thanks largely to those two (and Quesada-Artists should NOT be editors),I've boycotted their comics).
Another thing I hate in fanfics is when characters are powered down-i.e. "Akane gets raped" storylines.
If you can't write the characters properly,you shouldn't be writing about them.

[Not-Going-to-Tell]

Recently I gained a new hate for certain elements in fanfiction, all due to a fairly well written and inventive story. That story was A Spider in Nerima.

Around the fifteenth chapter there was a fight that left one of the characters weak and on the road to death. HUGE potential for the character to develop on a personal quest or for the author to create a complex (meaning-There may be consequences) magical item. What I got was a LITERAL Deus Ex Machinia. Jesus Christ comes down and spends a chapter opening the character's eyes to the wonders of faith and healing them spiritually (no clue how that works on physical damage). So much wasted potential.

In essence, if you have a potential awesome plot on your hands, don't just use a Dues Ex ANYTHING just to say "Everything is better for everyone!". Run with the potential, make something interesting.

My second hated bit of that story is that it seemed the author was trying to shove their oppinion down my throat. The oppinion there seemed to be "the Christian God is the only real God". The following is a list of my thoughts on the story as a Christian raised person with with only a reasonable understanding of the Ranma continuity.
Healing by Jesus' will- okay, I can forgive it, you wrote yourself into a corner and needed a solution.
Instinctively knowing the Christian incantations to banish demons when the time comes- It works, but the Ranma cast have dealt with possesion before...
Kimiko Tendo changing to Christianity- Also workable, but it seems to just be thrown in for no good reason.
Kimiko leaving her daughters letters..... Which Include BIBLES!- Now this is streching it. All she gives her children is "Change your religion, this one is more comforting."?!?!?
Dr. Strange, supreme Warlock, says That the Christian bible is the best anti-magic- NOW it's getting ridiculous.
Ze Bible, Cure for Junsenkyo!- That's it, I can't read anymore.

Sure, we all read fanfiction to see our favorite characters in different situations, see them kicking ass, see them get their ass kicked, and to see what other people think. But when you try to force others to see the exact same way as you do, you lose a large part of your audience.

[mondu_the_fat]

Healing by Jesus' will- okay, I can forgive it, you wrote yourself into a corner and needed a solution.
Instinctively knowing the Christian incantations to banish demons when the time comes- It works, but the Ranma cast have dealt with possesion before...
Kimiko Tendo changing to Christianity- Also workable, but it seems to just be thrown in for no good reason.
Kimiko leaving her daughters letters..... Which Include BIBLES!- Now this is streching it. All she gives her children is "Change your religion, this one is more comforting."?!?!?
Dr. Strange, supreme Warlock, says That the Christian bible is the best anti-magic- NOW it's getting ridiculous.
Ze Bible, Cure for Junsenkyo!- That's it, I can't read anymore.

Links, please. I just *have* to read this

[Southern Cross]

As you wish: A Spider in Nerima.

[KonokoHasano]

Wait... what? You mean that story literally started tossing Christianity around -- a religion that's of the minority and only encompasses about one to three million people in the country? That whole plot point sounds odd, and the fact that Mrs. Tendo left bibles for her daughters?

Oi, talk about forced.


On the subject of this thread itself, what I hate is when a story just tosses crap together, and the author doesn't even seem to be doing any kind of research or effort whatsoever. The author doesn't even seem to know jack about the subjects that they are using either. The one story that's gotten on my nerves about that? SuperGlue in the Ranma section of Fanfiction.net. A Ranma/Pokemon crossover that pisses me off beyond anything else.

[lwf58]

It occurs to me that I've stepped in a few times, but never threw out my own peeves.

Over the many years I've been participating in the fan fiction community, I've come to despise stories that slavishly follow canon events down to the last detail, even when there were what should be major changes to characters or situations.

Just recently, I was reading a Naruto fic in which he was four years older than the other characters that were his peers in canon, and becomes the Jonin sensei for team 7 (Sasuke, Sakura, and Kiba). In that story, Naruto does things almost identically to how Kakashi acted in canon. What the hey??? So instead of us seeing how Naruto would act in such a situation, we get an OOC Kakashi clone?

Ticked me off, that's for sure.

[WG_Writer]

I would have to say that Christian revival or any Christian fics really irritate me now.

I don't have this problem with other religions because they are not as badly written or out right religious. I remember a Ranma/Transformers fic where Kasumi "brought the light" and basically started acting like a Christian Deus ex. The fic was good until that point.

Shinto elements are fine to me because there is balance to them when used under most situations. Look at the most out right Anime examples of story AA! Megumi-Sama. There always was balance to it to some degree. Christian elements are generally used heavy handed.

/rant off on this topic before I write excessively

another problem I have with recent fanfics is what I dub stupid reviewer whiner syndrome. I could go into detail explaining what I mean by this but I will be simple: on FF.net the dumber a story is the more reviews it will get innitally, which is worsened if some people actually like it. thus the more chapters it gets the dumber it gets as the author just wants a high review count rather then a good story.

[TerraEpon]

One thing to remember in the face of Christianity in Ranma is that Kasumi is shown to be wearing a cross at times. Just a little thing, but it's not completely against canon and such...


-Joshua

[CRBWildcat]

I try to avoid fanfics that make more references to religion than really neccessary.

[EdenB]

Types of fics that I dislike at the moment:

Yaoi/Slash fics, unless it's funny, the characters were that way originally or it was very well done.

High school/band/etc fics.

Suddenly Super fics, common in HP and Naruto where Harry/Naruto suddenly become 100 times more powerful, attractive and almost always over 6 foot tall even though they were short before.

Bad spelling and formatting.

Really short fics (i.e. 200 words per chapter).

Anything which has been done over and over.

Fics where characters are always supposedly perfect when they're usually not so much. Quite often Akane/Ginny/whoever the favourite pairing is) suddenly being sweet, demure, loving and humble. Never any bad personality traits.

[Sky]

another problem I have with recent fanfics is what I dub stupid reviewer whiner syndrome. I could go into detail explaining what I mean by this but I will be simple: on FF.net the dumber a story is the more reviews it will get innitally, which is worsened if some people actually like it. thus the more chapters it gets the dumber it gets as the author just wants a high review count rather then a good story.

I'm not sure where the whining comes in here. I've seen lots of stuff like this (bad stories continued because reviewers didn't bother to remind the author about grammar), but I've never seen any whining. In some cases, the beta that the author has doesn't catch this stuff either.

I've left a few reviews saying "It's decent, but the bad grammar and spelling make it tough to read", and never received any negativity as a result.

[Vilkath]

I have always been amazed at exactly how bad some stories can be and still get reviews that say it is great and such. Some people have really low standards.

I do have to say one my pet peeves is lack of continuity in a story. Times when it almost looks like the author themself forgot what was in the previous chapters for one reason or another. I mean is it that hard to keep at least a vague outline so it doesn't happen with major events, or perhaps reread your own work if it has been months since the last update?

Perfect Lionheart on FF.net is kind of guilty of this. I do like his idea's for the most part, his stories point out a lot of flaws in the worlds he writes about, but often the chapters hardly seem connected. In Chunin Exam Day major things like Naruto's group wearing their special ninja armor on the trip to Sand lead to Ino's team asking where she got it was in one chapter, then maybe two chapters later they get in a fight and some how they did not have the armor as a weak plot device to make a battle harder.

I realize even published books make mistakes, look at the Harry Potter series, still it is anoying to read and to me shows the author cares less about their story then most the readers do.

[antimatterenergy]

Religion in fics doesn't bother me since the Ranma manga is full of references to religion. Buddhist/ Shinto shrines, Ushi no koku mairi (Japanese Voodoo), Characters can be seen praying (like Ranma and Soun), mentions of hell (likely Buddhist hell rather than Christian hell), Taoist Monk, etc... Christianity even has many references in the manga one of the other schools during the romeo and juliet arc was doing a play on Jesus, Principal Kuno says in English in the Japanese version volume 12 "Jesus, Save me" and says "Oh, My God" often, Kodachi goes to a Christian school, Wedding scene in last volume is based on Christian wedding style, Kasumi wears a crucifix, etc...

[CRBWildcat]

Occasional stuff like that doesn't bother me, as long as a habit isn't made of it. If the fic's primary focus is related to religion or if more references are made than should really be given, that's where I draw the line.

[Uldihaa]

Another thing I can't stand is the way some authors just drop information into the narrative like a rock, without even trying to work it smoothly into the story. And those stories often have hundreds of reviews with only one (mine) pointing this out. One on going fic in particular was so bad about it that I stopped reading after chapter 5 (and the chapters weren't all that long); I went back to look at it's latest chapters just to check to see if it had improved...it hadn't .


There is another irritant, somewhat related to the above, and that is writers forgetting/ignoring that it's always better to show rather than tell. Don't just tell me something important happened, show it to me.