AO3 is a lot better than FFN in that sense; most readers just leave kudos if they don't have much to say. There are more options for subscribing, bookmarking, marking a work for later, adding fics to private collections, and so on, so there's little incentive to abuse the "favourite" button like on FFN.

The tagging system is still an unholy mess though.

 

Thumbs up means "I approve", which is precisely what a one-liner like "I like this" is. Both tell the writer you like the stuff, but nothing else.It doesn't say what you liked or why, so for me, looking for thought-out critique over unspecified praise, it's kind of meh, but one can't have everything.

Yeah, I myself have written things like "I agree with xxx" in reviews, but I always try to add something from myself. Sometimes you don't know what it was that drew you in right away and that's fine. You can always come back later and leave a review then. Speaking from my own perspective, I appreciate it even if a bunch of people tell me they liked the same thing. Hearing that something was good or bad from three reviewers carries more weight than one post with two thumbs imo.

That's right.

This, so much.

 

I just see it like applause, it's the polite thing to do when you see something you've enjoyed. Sure it's nice to get detailed reviews, but I wrote for my own enjoyment and any additional praise is just icing.

 

Are you twelve?

I can understand not wanting to read slash, but dropping a story on the basis of a character not having canon sexuality is kind of childish.

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Does it apply to femslash as well?

 

I just ignore slash stories. I mean, it's not like they are guaranteed to be poorly written by default so I can't hate them outright, I do have no interest in them though.

Most of them are written like trash though.

 

You appear to have missed my point. Does a story containing slash bother you, or is it making canon straight characters gay that bothers you?

 

I stand by what I said then.

 

Author's that treat their story like a blog. It's one thing to give a short explanation for why an update might be late or something in an author's note, but constantly updating a story with real life bullshit, and no actual content, is annoying as all hell.

 

When I see "Wordcout: 1400" and "on hiatus" together. You can't put a story on hiatus if you never had a story to begin with.

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Also, any description that says "ass kicking" or "badass". 99/100 times it's neither.

 

Singing. Under no circumstance is it ok for Harry or any other character to whip out a guitar and start singing "I won't give up" or any other sappy ass romance song. I will immediately drop the fic If that happens. And enough with sparkly ass eyes that entrap the womanly souls in them. I get it, he's got pretty green eyes...

 

Slytherin "masks"/hiding their emotions, because it isn't really true in canon. Draco and Pansy are depicted as prone to yelling and being quite the opposite of poised. Most of the Syltherins were also very upfront and not underhanded when they were mean (the others such as Crabbe, Goyle, and Nott are either stupid and meek).

Luna being a Seer. I just can't deal with fanfics turning her into the fortune-telling, manic-pixie dream girl.

 

Guest reviews that actually raise good points, but that I can't respond to because they're guest reviews. Especially bad with one-shots, where I can't even offer up a response in the AN.

 

Absolutely agree. The main cold/masked Slytherins that JKR wrote was either Riddle the psychopath, Lucius the politician, or Snape the spy. And all three had rage issues.

Yes... Add that to the list of house descriptors. The ambitious, sly, and prone to rage.

 

"Reviews make me happy hint hint" or any other variation really turns me off. In a lot of cases it actually makes me not want to review regardless of the how good the story is.

I realize as a writer people want reviews that give good constructive criticism, but asking or blatantly hinting is on the same level as holding the door open and saying to people you should be thanking me for this.

 

Trick I learnt back in the Hero Trilogy trenches, was to leave a few questions in an author's note at the end of the chapter. Something along these lines:

A/N: Thanks for readings, folks. New chapter should be up and running in a week. Will resolve this convenient cliffhanger I always end these chapters on to keep you reading. What did you think of the relationship developments? Any thoughts on descriptions in this chapter? Did you see that super cool twist coming?

Usually I'd get a 1/3 or so more reviews than I normally would.

 

Both of these, so very much. Depictions of Slytherin as a house full of cold-blooded 11 year old Francis Urquharts are almost always painful to read, and don't even get me started on fanon Luna.

In addition (I'm sure all of these have been mentioned before, but I need to let it all out):

- Marriage contracts and women as property in the wizarding world, which has no basis in canon and makes no sense as magical power isn't tied to physical strength. If anything one would expect wizard society to have been more egalitarian than the muggle world in that respect. Happens a lot because A: People like period pieces, and B: It's easier to write wizard society as medieval or Victorian than to think of how magic as the primary source of power would shape a society.

- Dumbledore as either a plotting psychopath or strawman pacifist. The second I read 'meddling old coot' a part of me dies.

- Anything that pretends Snape's inability to move past childhood crushes and grudges and taking them out on a kid isn't pathetic, and that James was the bad guy. Snape is the typical 'nice guy' who constantly whines about how 'girls only go for assholes', and I instantly suspect his biggest fans of being the same (Or maybe they just like Alan Rickman, which is fair enough).

- Insane levels of Ron bashing. I mean sure the guy wasn't perfect but come on. Other bashing too really but poor Ron gets the worst of it.

- Stuff from the movies that gets stuck in people's heads: Short Harry (canonically he was small at 11, but described as tall as a teen). Hot Hermione (the only time she's really noticed as pretty in the books is when she went all out with clothing choice and magical assistance, otherwise she's described as average looking at best). Several other things too, but these are the most common.

- Abuse of magical vows to solve every problem ever.

- The typical stupid stuff like absurdly friendly+useful goblins, Harry inheriting a trillion zillion galleons and lordship of 20 super kool houses, soul bonds, magical cores with power levels over 9000, etc.


A sufficiently well written and engaging story can perhaps get away with having one or two of these issues if it's otherwise good, but it really has to be a cut above.

 

I wouldn't mind Dumbledore being a plotting psychopath so much if he actually were intelligent in such stories. Instead, he usually almost immediately falls to the might and awe of Harry Potter, often when he's still 11.

And not to mention his "schemes" don't really make sense half the time when you start to really think about it. Like stealing from Harry's vault: what exactly is he spending it on? Either he has a serious lemon drop addiction, or he would be using it to fight Voldemort. How evil?

Just once, I would like to read about about an Evil Dumbledore actually done right.

 

I can agree with that, though the sheer number of terrible evil Dumbledores (most often written by authors claiming canon Dumbledore was exactly that evil) means it'd have to be pretty exceptional to avoid an instinctive negative response on my part.

 

Amen.

Also, something that really rubs me the wrong way is how so many authors took "For the Greater Good", a phrase that represents everything Dumbledore vowed not to do, and basically made it Evil Dumbledore's Catchphrase. That tells me more than anything how little they actually know about Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, as opposed to that mockery of a character created from well over a decade of FanFics Bashing on him.

 

Who's vs Whose

Who's is the contraction of Who is, while Whose is the possessive form of Who. I see this mangled so often.