The deep-rooted issue in fix-it fics is that the author does not want to fix it and be done with it, because that would make a minimally interesting story.
Time travel presents an insurmountable advantage to the fixer. The ability to go back and change any given thing at any point in time should logically result in an incredibly short story. Forget the damn horcruxes, just behead Merope Gaunt with a severing charm to the back of the neck and leave. If the constraints of time travel require that it take place in Harry's own life, he could just fly out to Albania one summer and turn Tom Riddle's bones to ashes. The Dursleys would be happy to have him out of the way for a few days and he could do the whole thing without using magic once, so no one would ever find out. The horcruxes would still be a problem, but he'd know where they were and could tell Dumbledore about them and the Death Eaters.

 

New pet peeve:

When you leave a review for a story, and then the author PM's you in a hissy-fit of insults and name-calling and blocks you before you can reply.

 

Ahh, but that would require some measure of creative thinking. That's not in the spirit of a fix-it fic.

 

I PM'ed an author I (used to) have lots of respect for. I just said great work and asked if they'd ever thought of doing a sequel. I got a several paragraph passive aggressive response back for being so demanding, and then was blocked. It was actually quite bizarre.

 

@Download

They probably can't distinguish entitlement from friendly suggestions.

 

I think this is exactly right.

The typical fanfic reader wants something very different from a fic than a typical DLPer does. Take a glance at the favorite stories around here, and you can see that most DLPers want something similar to original fiction. They've already read five dozen fix-it fics, and would rather have something that goes majorly AU like Song of the Trees, Joe's stuff, Circular Reasoning, etc. So the tendency here is to judge fanfiction based on how well it creates a new fictional universe where lots of unpredictable things will happen.

I'd guess that more than 90% of fanfic readers aren't looking for that. They want to slip into a familiar world with familiar characters and spend some time there, even if nothing radical changes from story to story. It's purely about fun escapism. This results in repetitive, bland storytelling, obviously, but that matters less to them than the dopamine rush of seeing their faves interact with each other and kick some ass. They really aren't looking for something new and different. Hence the popularity of people like robst.

 

So I think this a spacebattles thing, but putting music tracks in the middle of chapters. It completely breaks immersion and flow.

 

Pet peeve of the year:

When people use said to refer to the object of the previous sentence or clause, e.g. "Otters had a stick up his ass. Said stick was because of shitty fanfic writers."

 

It's not a spacebattles thing. I've sees it everywhere.

 

I've seen it 10x more in Spacebattles though. It's so ridiculously stupid. If you need music to set the tone, start writing and filming some fanvideos.

**NOTE** if you're reading Mass Effect fanfiction that involves the Reapers, you better have a youtube video playing the trumpeting blare of horror.

**It's just protocol you see. There's always exceptions.

 

haha The Wheel Unbroken has been doing this, but luckily AO3 allows them to just hyperlink something so it doesn't take you out of it. It's just a few words underlined rather than some author's note: "Hey, go listen to this shitty video game OST while your read my chapter guys!"

 

All fanfiction should be read as accompanied by that stalwart march - Entrance of the Gladiators.

 

Questmasters who can't into maths.

I was reading a quest a while back, where challenges were beaten by rolling nd20, where 'n' is the relevant stat, and taking the best result. It doesn't result in a completely linear growth, but it's decent enough for me to have no major quibbles with it. Rolling a Nat20 was a critical success (generally used to 'bank' a reroll, or an exceedingly good result), and a Nat1 was a critical failure (things went disastrously wrong).

This wouldn't have been a problem, except for the fact that the chance of any single specific number coming up at all increases with the number of dice, and criticals overwrote anything else.

So a challenge with a CR of 17, and you roll a 18, 2, 2, and a 2 is a pass. Roll a 19, 19, 19, and a 1, you've failed.



Similarly, if rolling in opposition, then there should be some follow through. If there's multiple rolls in sequence, then they should either be up to a running total (first to get 300, like darts), or Best of Three/Five/sevenhundredandone. Alternatively, if you only want the decision to rest on the third roll, or the next roll after one person hits 300; then use the previous rolls as modifiers. Otherwise, just skip the rolling, because it confuses the playerbase.

 

The author confused degree with decree in the first paragraph. Nope.

 

My biggest one is confusing 'definitely' with 'defiantly.' It won't make me stop reading the story, but it will make me worry that the writer is 12.

It happens all the damn time too. Is it an auto-correct issue or something?

 

Most likely auto-correct, for some reason my computer tries to correct every misspelling of definitely to defiantly, I assume it to be the same for others.

 

Kind of an odd thing, but during my hunt for 'A Good Romance Story™' on ao3 I came across a startlingly not small number of fics where one or both of the characters in the main pairing is asexual/aromantic. like wut. why?

 

Because its just as realistic as the main character being straight, gay, or trans. Nothing wrong with putting in characters who are part of the LGBT+ spectrum. If the story you want to write includes that as a point of tension in some way, or even a plot arc about the character discovering that aspect of themselves...then why not? How's that any different from writing Harry as discovering that he's actually quite ambitious and cunning, and learning to apply that in his every day life?

And if your problem is the idea of ace/aro people being in a relationship...again totally realistic. It happens. It comes with its own challenges for them, but its still a thing.

 

@Mordecai

I'm speaking strictly from a pure Romance story perspective. E.g. Twilight, not the Katniss/Peeta subplot of Hunger Games. The point of tension is the whole point. It's like picking up an Action fic but the main character turns out to be a pacifist. Sure, it sounds cool in theory, but I'm not reading Action for inaction. Not to mention, having read a few popular ace/aro romance stories, the orientations are very, very rarely written about in a healthy, self-exploratory way -- it all just a vehicle for angst. Heavy angst.

It's valid. It's just not satisfying to read. Which is why I'm so baffled it's a thing -- ace/aro is a small fraction of the population, but there are hundreds of pages of fics under an array of tags which feature this. Many more which aren't tagged.

Anyway, it's a small itch under my skin. I don't care enough to do anything but roll my eyes a little and hit the back button when it turns out I've been catfished yet again. The same way I might if the main character suddenly gets a harem.