Stuff you find disheartening about fan-fiction

[Crescent Pulsar S]

I just saw an anonymous review for Charon & Sharing where they say the conception of the Time Gates is absolutely stupid... as if I made it up entirely instead of following canon. It bums me out when my research falls upon the eyes of so-called fans who don't seem to care that much about what they're a fan of to know what they're talking about. Well, assuming that they're reading fan-fiction because they're a fan of whatever series is involved in the story they're reading.

It's just, sometimes, I wonder why I bother putting in the effort to accommodate canon instead of just letting my imagination go wild. All most people seem to care about is shipping and boinking, anyway. ;/

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

The concept of the Time Gates may or may not be stupid - but it isn't your stupid. Ignore them, especially when they're anonymous.

[PCHeintz72]

There is a lot of fanon and stupidity on the time gates... but like what was said, unless you are guilty of adding to it, then it is not your issue. To quote mysefl from a old forum post:

The problem is for whatever reason, in fan fiction involving Sailor Pluto and Time Gates, whether Ranma crossover or not, the time device is *not* how it is depicted in canon, at least not Anime canon.

The time gates as depicted in Anime are shown to literally be a huge white ornate doorway that you walk through, with a tunnel and a end time.

HOWEVER, what is most often depicted in fannon is instead the Guardian of Forever, from Star Trek,The Original Series. That is shown as a semi sentient device that looks like a toroid or lopsided donut made of stone and actually *views* time from the central hole, and you can jump through it to whatever time period is currently being shown.

Another slightly different variant I've seen once or twice is like the old Time Tunnel Series, with a raised dais, and massive computer power in a separate area from the 'tunnel' where you can view or go through time.

Because of the switch, Sailor Pluto can view time frames, jump around at whim (in Star Trek episode, you had to ask it, she uses her key staff talisman, in Time Tunnel, it was focusing the computers on the problem to extrapolate).

Even Better, the Guardian of Forever in Star Trek could not show Dr. McCoy specifically, whom had jumped through, only the repercussions of his tampering after throwing chaos into the time line.

Using this methodology and applying it to Ranma is too good to pass up for most authors.

Or in another variant in fan fiction... it could only track people from either this solar system, or from this plane of existence.

[Spica75]

Even if what you portrayed WAS stupid, it doesn't matter. Your story, your version. If you manage to keep it close to canon because you want to do so, great.

There's hordes of fanon, some good, some bad some terrible, i don't really mind either way as long as the -story- is good, and if you use something more canon and make a good story with it, even better.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

What I find most disheartening about fan-fiction is the grammar, and maybe the vocabulary.

Some fan-writers (and some professionals in newspapers) use the greengrocer's apostrophe to make plurals. They don't know the distinctions between to, too, and two. They think "tenet" and "tenant" are the same word, and likewise for "flaunt" and "flout". They put "the" in front of proper names that shouldn't have it, like "the Fred". (If they talk about "The MacDougall", that's okay.) They can't keep the tenses consistent within a paragraph. They mix plural and singular within a sentence. "Nerima" is spelled "Nermia". If they're trying for nuance, they use the wrong word. And they can't deal with homonyms.

Like pandas, they eat, shoot, and leave.

[Spica75]

What I find most disheartening about fan-fiction is the grammar, and maybe the vocabulary.

Some fan-writers (and some professionals in newspapers) use the greengrocer's apostrophe to make plurals. They don't know the distinctions between to, too, and two. They think "tenet" and "tenant" are the same word, and likewise for "flaunt" and "flout". They put "the" in front of proper names that shouldn't have it, like "the Fred". (If they talk about "The MacDougall", that's okay.) They can't keep the tenses consistent within a paragraph. They mix plural and singular within a sentence. "Nerima" is spelled "Nermia". If they're trying for nuance, they use the wrong word. And they can't deal with homonyms.

Like pandas, they eat, shoot, and leave.

And i've seen many stories where people are being drugged around on the floor...

One i really hate is when people spell phoenix as pheonix... I mean seriously, even if you utterly suck at English pronounciation, anyone reading it out loud should realise there's SOMETHING wrong with that. Fee-nix vs Fay-oh-nix...

"The" in front of names, if i've understood it correctly, that's apparently influence from a few other languages, somehow infecting English with extra weird.


So, SOOO many massacred words...


Wanna know something horrible? A terrifyingly large portion of all that crap is due to spellcheckers and automatic grammar "corrections". I think it may be the 2nd largest reason for "the" in front of names as well, as several times now that i have commented about that, the author replied something like "but my writer app changed it that way so it must be correct!".

And with all the crap becoming so common, people learning the language today can no longer rely on getting it right by feel, because too often, they've seen it done the wrong way often enough to cloud the issue, or worse, possibly even seen the wrong way more often than the right way.

[TerraEpon]

"Nerima" is spelled "Nermia".

Funnily...I actually for YEARS, reading hundreds of Ranma fics, actually thought it was spelled Nermia. Every time my brain read the word, despite it being spelled properly, it registered as the other way.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Shriek! Wail! I don't want to read in pidgin!

The word processor is the villain in much of this. (I was dissed by a reviewer who didn't know "villein" was NOT a misspelling. If I'd let the spellcheck ride with it, I would have had a villain instead of a servant.) Sometimes writers will try something two different ways, and forget to remove the one they don't want to use. Thus you get Monty Python's "Department of Redundancy Department". "Department" is fine in either place, but not both places. Except, perhaps, for redundancy's sake.

I suspect the problem with homonyms is at least partially people using Dragon Dictate or something like that.

I love fanfiction, I really do, but often quit reading stories with these problems after the first or second chapter. Sometimes you run across something like Desperately Seeking Ranma, which I have just this week finished reading all million-and-a-half words for the second time. It's worth it - Pixelwriter1 is a fantastic writer, but he has two bad grammatic habits. He often goes singular-subject, singular-verb, plural object: "This is Akane and Shampoo." And he even more frequently puts his paragraph divisions a sentence later than they should be. But after reading almost three million words of his fiction, I've adapted.

People who insist on canon should go nowhere near his work. But that's okay, I like a well-done uber-hero. (Do you know how I can get umlauts in Firefox?)

[Spica75]

(Do you know how I can get umlauts in Firefox?)

The same way as anywhere else??? ÿ ä ë ö ü ï... The browser doesn't change anything for that, it's just a matter of finding the correct key on the keyboard. For me it's the key for ¨ and ^(with Shift) and ~(with Alt Gr), top right next to Enter, but since i'm using Swedish keyboard, i have no clue if that's the same for you.

If that isn't enough, try these alt codes(down a little):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis ... uter_usage
Alt-codes are also useful for lots of other stuff, if you can remember which one you want at least. ╦╝æÆô║¶☻(♥☺ßÜ○╚ And so on.

I suspect the problem with homonyms is at least partially people using Dragon Dictate or something like that.

Yeah... Except when you actually KNOW they're actually typing manually on a keyboard and they STILL do it... Somehow.

Shriek! Wail! I don't want to read in pidgin!

There, there...

[Té Rowan]

The umlaut/diaeresis is a matter of the keyboard driver. On any Windows box with an unsuitable driver, one can get most of a codepage’s characters by holding down Alt (the left Alt key) and typing (on the keypad, with NumLock on) 0 and the needed code.

So Alt+0162 gets you a cent (¢); Alt+0167, a section sign (§); Alt+0181, a micron (µ); Alt+0189, a one-half (½); and Alt+0252, a minuscule u wih umlaut (ü).

Edit: Had to re-login before answering because I somehow drifted from villein to Falu red.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

I tried the alt-codes. The "Windows Code Page" gave me nothing at all. The CP850 code gave me a U with a circonflex (^) once. After that, it just closed down the window I was trying to enter into. To the trolls with it! I'll either fly without an umlaut, or I'll use the English workaround ueber. (It doesn't look nearly as good there as it does in Roentgen.)

[Té Rowan]

There is another workaround: Have a page or a document with the code(s) you want/need, then copy/paste into the one you are working on. Tad slow and murder on the clipboard, but works.

More edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252 has all the basic codes with decimal values.

Beyond that, http://www.rapidtables.com/code/text/un ... acters.htm lets one page back and forth in the Unicode pages and scrape up characters, as do various other sites. Me, I ended up scripting a few pages to let me see symbol ranges.

[Spica75]

I tried the alt-codes. The "Windows Code Page" gave me nothing at all. The CP850 code gave me a U with a circonflex (^) once. After that, it just closed down the window I was trying to enter into. To the trolls with it! I'll either fly without an umlaut, or I'll use the English workaround ueber. (It doesn't look nearly as good there as it does in Roentgen.)

Huh, now that's VERY weird. The CP850 code is supposed to be universally the same.

Huh, after searching the best ideas i've found is issues with sticky keys or having other apps blocking the Alt key, but since you get SOMETHING, that shouldn't be it.
Uh, numlock on and using numeric keypad?

http://www.alt-codes.net/how_to_use_alt_codes/
The discussion there has some has some alternatives.

This one should help you, open start menu and search for "character map" and start it. There it tells you alt codes AND lets you copy whatever characters and signs you want.


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Edit: Had to re-login before answering because I somehow drifted from villein to Falu red.

I'm almost afraid to ask what the connection was.

[Crescent Pulsar S]

For the most part, I've gotten accustomed to bad grammar and spelling. If it's bad enough to quit a story, and said story was interesting, I'll simply be disappointed.

However, what disheartens me is when the grammar and spelling is at least bad enough to be distracting despite the author having one or more editors to help them. It's like a child going to find fellow children to help them with something that would be better suited for an adult. I know that not everyone can know/find a person who will be a good editor, but it also seems like most people are willing to find someone who seems to know more than them on the matter instead of taking the time and effort to improve themselves. That, too, I find disheartening.

[Té Rowan]

Edit: Had to re-login before answering because I somehow drifted from villein to Falu red.

I'm almost afraid to ask what the connection was.

The ubiquitous Wikipedia. I began with the English article on the Villein, then clicked on “crofter (torpare)” in the final sentence, which landed me in “Croft (land)”. Clicking on the word ‘torpare’ in the section on etymology got me to “Torp (architecture)”. From there, it was only one more click to “Falu red”.