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May. 11th, 2009 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckHere's another entry in my list of thoughts inspired by reading (mostly bad) fics. I'm not specifying titles, authors or, usually, fandom. That's partly so that I can forget and partly because some of these don't the point-and-laugh or point-and-snarl by name. A few of the items in here are mini rants about genuinely offensive stuff regarding race and transsexuality. The rest mainly complain about sillier stuff.
If you're going to swap two characters so that they have each other's names and don't know they've been swapped, in heaven's name, be careful about the names as you write. Slips are confusing for readers, especially after the two characters meet again and are in scenes together.
I don't believe in a nine year old boy who constantly wants to be hugged, cuddled and carried. I don't believe that he talks like that. If you didn't constantly say that he's nine, I'd think he was four or five. I might push it to six given that he's in school all day, but I'd think he acted awfully young for his age.
I don't believe in five year olds who talk like that. They sound like they're two. There are five year olds who can't pronounce common words in their native languages. There are five year olds who can't manage subject-verb agreement or other bits of basic grammar. All of them have developmental problems or physical problems or are surrounded by adults who speak the same way (making the mispronunciations and grammar errors not errors in context). These five year olds talk like two year olds.
Ew. Ick. Offensive! Do *not* call that character 'trannie' again. Not only is the word offensive, but the character isn't transsexual. He's an occasional transvestite who has used magic to give himself breasts and who uses looking like an attractive woman as a way to manipulate people. He's also bisexual. Stop using 'h/she' as a pronoun. It looks stupid and doesn't fit the character. If you want to show that people think he's female, use 'she' when in the point of view of those who think so. This whole thing would bother me less if it weren't obvious that you were trying to make your villain scarier by making him both a rapist and a sexual deviant. You'd have been fine with someone normal and evil. Real life transsexuals and bisexuals have enough trouble without people like you implying that either quality makes someone evil. It's even skeevier when you do all of this to a canonically black character.
That squicks me. It's not something I'd have thought to put on my back button list, but.... Having all the characters of color lining up happily for the magical potion that turns them white-- How do I put it without profanity? Being white has privileges. You acknowledge that. You just assume that all of these characters will find obliterating part of their identity, part of their family history, part of their culture, happy, easy and a no brainer decision. Doesn't everyone want to be white? Well, no. ::snarls at author:: Some people would do it. Possibly a lot of people would do it. A lot wouldn't, though, and there would be nasty, bitter arguments. Having something like this as a throwaway, two paragraph, aside in a fic insults all of us.
Do boys, pre-puberty, actually-- No. Forget it. I don't want to know. Somehow the sexual behavior of eleven year olds with other eleven year olds, especially the jockeying for status stuff, makes me hit the back button. Go figure.
And once again-- A spelling checker does nothing to assure that one has used the right words. I'm very disturbed by the notion of soup served in bowels.
Okay, you simply look stupid using the phrase 'in Ancient Roman.' Do I really need to explain why? Especially when the character speaking is an archaeologist and a linguist?
Referring to a character as 'the African' is lazy. Presumably, he comes from some specific country in Africa. If canon doesn't specify which country, maybe you need to avoid the subject, assuming you're not willing to take the plunge and pick one. Or is it that you mean 'the black man?' Even if you do, neither epithet is the way the point of view characters would think of him. Really.
Gah. Typos in a fic are bad. Typos in a fic blurb are worse. Typos in a fic *title*? Lose. Especially when the typo changes the meaning of the title.
That's sad. The author lost interest and handwaved all the rest of the fic. I can understand it. The author's note said that a mistake in story structure took away all dramatic tension and all challenge for the characters, and...I can see it. I just regret because the part of the story that was there was fun and a variation I hadn't seen before. I wanted it to go on longer.
Um.... If a story's set in the UK, isn't it unlikely that an ordinary homeowner would have a handgun? This is something that would be helped but even the most superficial Brit picking. If the Dursleys lived in the US, yes, Vernon Dursley would probably have a handgun. The Dursleys would also probably go to church every week. They don't, however, live in the US, and 'normal' and 'conformity' carry different baggage in different cultures.
Your 'boys' are centuries-- if not millennia-- old. They also don't look like children. Using 'boy' or 'girl' to refer to an adult is insulting, not affectionate, even without getting into sex and romance. With sex added, using 'boy' or 'girl' becomes squicky for those of us who aren't into children having sex. (Yes, this is a pet peeve. No, I'm not going to change my mind. Nobody who's over eighteen, especially if they look their age, should be referred to as a boy or a girl.)
'Mesmerize' means something quite different from 'memorize.' You're using 'mesmerize' consistently where 'memorize' makes more sense, so I get the impression you think you're using the right word. Now I have the image of a person spending time mesmerizing guard shift patterns. My brain hurts as I try to figure out how to do that.
It says something-- though not anything particularly profound-- about Ouran High School Host Club that, when trying to describe a long, plotty AU in which people at the school have magic, the first words that came to my mind were, 'More realistic than canon.' Then I laughed at myself. (I liked this fic a lot. If Ouran's your thing and you like AUs, ask me for the url.)
Mixing up 'faint' and 'feint' really alters the images I get when reading your combat sequences. A lot.
If you're going to swap two characters so that they have each other's names and don't know they've been swapped, in heaven's name, be careful about the names as you write. Slips are confusing for readers, especially after the two characters meet again and are in scenes together.
I don't believe in a nine year old boy who constantly wants to be hugged, cuddled and carried. I don't believe that he talks like that. If you didn't constantly say that he's nine, I'd think he was four or five. I might push it to six given that he's in school all day, but I'd think he acted awfully young for his age.
I don't believe in five year olds who talk like that. They sound like they're two. There are five year olds who can't pronounce common words in their native languages. There are five year olds who can't manage subject-verb agreement or other bits of basic grammar. All of them have developmental problems or physical problems or are surrounded by adults who speak the same way (making the mispronunciations and grammar errors not errors in context). These five year olds talk like two year olds.
Ew. Ick. Offensive! Do *not* call that character 'trannie' again. Not only is the word offensive, but the character isn't transsexual. He's an occasional transvestite who has used magic to give himself breasts and who uses looking like an attractive woman as a way to manipulate people. He's also bisexual. Stop using 'h/she' as a pronoun. It looks stupid and doesn't fit the character. If you want to show that people think he's female, use 'she' when in the point of view of those who think so. This whole thing would bother me less if it weren't obvious that you were trying to make your villain scarier by making him both a rapist and a sexual deviant. You'd have been fine with someone normal and evil. Real life transsexuals and bisexuals have enough trouble without people like you implying that either quality makes someone evil. It's even skeevier when you do all of this to a canonically black character.
That squicks me. It's not something I'd have thought to put on my back button list, but.... Having all the characters of color lining up happily for the magical potion that turns them white-- How do I put it without profanity? Being white has privileges. You acknowledge that. You just assume that all of these characters will find obliterating part of their identity, part of their family history, part of their culture, happy, easy and a no brainer decision. Doesn't everyone want to be white? Well, no. ::snarls at author:: Some people would do it. Possibly a lot of people would do it. A lot wouldn't, though, and there would be nasty, bitter arguments. Having something like this as a throwaway, two paragraph, aside in a fic insults all of us.
Do boys, pre-puberty, actually-- No. Forget it. I don't want to know. Somehow the sexual behavior of eleven year olds with other eleven year olds, especially the jockeying for status stuff, makes me hit the back button. Go figure.
And once again-- A spelling checker does nothing to assure that one has used the right words. I'm very disturbed by the notion of soup served in bowels.
Okay, you simply look stupid using the phrase 'in Ancient Roman.' Do I really need to explain why? Especially when the character speaking is an archaeologist and a linguist?
Referring to a character as 'the African' is lazy. Presumably, he comes from some specific country in Africa. If canon doesn't specify which country, maybe you need to avoid the subject, assuming you're not willing to take the plunge and pick one. Or is it that you mean 'the black man?' Even if you do, neither epithet is the way the point of view characters would think of him. Really.
Gah. Typos in a fic are bad. Typos in a fic blurb are worse. Typos in a fic *title*? Lose. Especially when the typo changes the meaning of the title.
That's sad. The author lost interest and handwaved all the rest of the fic. I can understand it. The author's note said that a mistake in story structure took away all dramatic tension and all challenge for the characters, and...I can see it. I just regret because the part of the story that was there was fun and a variation I hadn't seen before. I wanted it to go on longer.
Um.... If a story's set in the UK, isn't it unlikely that an ordinary homeowner would have a handgun? This is something that would be helped but even the most superficial Brit picking. If the Dursleys lived in the US, yes, Vernon Dursley would probably have a handgun. The Dursleys would also probably go to church every week. They don't, however, live in the US, and 'normal' and 'conformity' carry different baggage in different cultures.
Your 'boys' are centuries-- if not millennia-- old. They also don't look like children. Using 'boy' or 'girl' to refer to an adult is insulting, not affectionate, even without getting into sex and romance. With sex added, using 'boy' or 'girl' becomes squicky for those of us who aren't into children having sex. (Yes, this is a pet peeve. No, I'm not going to change my mind. Nobody who's over eighteen, especially if they look their age, should be referred to as a boy or a girl.)
'Mesmerize' means something quite different from 'memorize.' You're using 'mesmerize' consistently where 'memorize' makes more sense, so I get the impression you think you're using the right word. Now I have the image of a person spending time mesmerizing guard shift patterns. My brain hurts as I try to figure out how to do that.
It says something-- though not anything particularly profound-- about Ouran High School Host Club that, when trying to describe a long, plotty AU in which people at the school have magic, the first words that came to my mind were, 'More realistic than canon.' Then I laughed at myself. (I liked this fic a lot. If Ouran's your thing and you like AUs, ask me for the url.)
Mixing up 'faint' and 'feint' really alters the images I get when reading your combat sequences. A lot.
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Some reactions...
Date: 2009-05-11 01:21 pm (UTC)Hell, even "X-men 2" had more smarts than the fic with the white-making potion. It at least had some mutants lining up to get made "normal" and some violently opposing it, and some just saying "meh? I like me how I am". I mean, it wasn't the BEST at this but at least it thought about it to the first level.
Re: Some reactions...
Date: 2009-05-11 03:21 pm (UTC)