get out the red pens

[cimorene]

You know that kind of badfic thət makes you get angry at the badthor?

Yes? Discuss.

Comments

[vass]

There's more than one kind, for me. The type that raises my blood pressure the most is when they stereotype some group really badly - for instance, there's this fic in progress on the Panic comm called 'How To Care For A Hobo' or something like that that is just plain incredibly offensive about homeless people, and everyone says how cute it is. (Mental illness as treated in fic is also always worth a few minutes of swearing.) Feminising the male characters, or writing female characters as cardboard cutouts, or writing sex that clearly indicates the author never had sex and can't imagine it well enough, they anger me too.

Awful grammar and spelling don't make me angry so much as frustrated and/or amused. There's this due South story in which someone or other is in 'a fit of furry', and I treasure that phrase nearly as much as the fic itself, which is AWFUL.

So... what type of fic's gotten you angry lately?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Oooh, good point. You're right, things that are offensive outside the context of the story are worse. Racist, sexist, whatever - that's even more angrifying.

But no, what I'm reading right now isn't real-world offensive in the un-politically correct way. It's even mostly competently written - I'm sure there are people in the world who would call it good, or even beautiful or lyrical, although the use of poetic language is kind of sloppy, which I think comes from sort of dropping in globs of language that she's picked up elsewhere. That kind of story often pisses me off, where there was some talent or skill that makes you think the writer should know better. In this case, better than an extremely exasperating, repetitive, melodramatic writing style which I find condescending; better than all the typical Mary Sue faults; and better than really, really sucky characterisation. It's also too long and got boring near the beginning, so I keep skimming and skipping huge portions in the hope that the writer will fall out of love with the sound of her own rambling, pointless voice and get to the point, but she doesn't.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

The stuff that gets me angry tends to be just as often in "good" fic as crap (by good here I mean otherwise well-written, popular stuff).

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I suppose this story should really be mediocre fic. It doesn't have any egregious spelling or grammar errors. The writer is at least literate. It's just, you know, a bad story, not a horribly-written one.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

For me, really the only stuff that makes me angry is badly-written trans fic (the trans part being bad, I mean; if it's just a badly-written story and does good with trans issues, well, I wish it weren't badly-written, but it doesn't anger me) and the usual cliches in genderfuck, where the guy gets The Worst Period Ever and automatically thinks of himself as she and craves chocolate (and maybe even thinks chocolate tastes better now that "she's" a woman, because all women find chocolate orgasmically delicious, natch) and his hair grows because All Women Have Long Hair and he immediately wants to go shopping because women love shopping, DUH. Etc. etc.

The closest I get to angry otherwise is being mildly annoyed that people can't use correct spelling and grammar and have an unhealthy love of epithets.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Ugggggggggggggh. I hate the hair growing in bad genderfuck fic. That kind of ignorant writing of the genders as somehow genetically different pisses me off in basically any kind of fic. I was reading a story the other day where a female character was like, "Why does this alien being not just speak what's on his mind directly? Oh yeah! Because he's a MAN" (no he's not, he's a male alien! Auggh!) "and MEN can't just talk about their emotions, tee-hee!" ARRRRRRGH.