December Talking Meme: Fiction Pet Peeves (Dec 1)

[dhampyresa]

rogueslayer452 : What are your biggest pet peeves in fanfiction? What are your biggest pet peeves about published fiction?

My biggest fanfiction pet peeve is easy: overtagging. No, you don't need to tag a character that has three lines in you 60k+ fic. Really. I swear, it's fine.

The worst case of this I ever encountered was a -- I can't remember the pairing, but it was a slash ship -- fic that was tagged with "Zatanna Zatara" (because I'm a big fan of her) among a variety of characters. It was pretty long fic, at least 30k, so I thought that even though there were a lot of characters tagged, Zatanna would have a role, however small. I was wrong.

She was mentionned in one line.

Not "she had one line". She was mentionned in one line. As in, "Zatanna was sitting on the couch when [the slash couple] came out to the Justice League". That was it. That was the only time Zatanna's name appeared in the fic, even though I'd read the whole thing for her. I was so pissed. SO PISSED.

Don't do that, okay? DON'T DO THAT.

As far as i'm concerned, the rule for tagging is "if anyone specifically looking for the content of this tag (and only this tag) reads this fic, will they be disappointed?" and if the answer is "no"? YOU DON'T FUCKING TAG IT. It's not rocket science, ffs, and that goes for characters, ships, fandoms, additional tags, whatever.


I think my biggest peeve in published fiction doesn't actually count, by virtue of being a peeve about not published fiction. That is to say, it's when characters are identified as queer outside of the text itself. How nice that you revealed in an interveiew that the heroine's male love interest was bisexual. Is that likely to show up in text any time soon? I thought not.

I don't know, something about the way it's clearly trying to have the cake and eat it too and yet, somehow, you the reader is supposed to also had over your piece of the cake (... that metapor got away from me), that really pisses me off. It's talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

At some point you have to walk the walk or shut the fuck up.


Another thing that really pisses me off in published fiction, even though I very rarely encounter it these days, is the rape-as-love thing, when it's presented as totally normal and romantic and not fucked up at all. That's a sure fire way to make me not finish the book and never read anything by that author again.


Wow, the more angry a thing makes me, the less I talk about it, apparently. Use your feeling words, dhampyresa. (And I've gotten better* at avoiding published books that push my HULK SMASH buttons, so there is that, I suppose.)

*I do a lot of reading based on people's reccomendations and y'all have good taste. Also the whole "not picking up books by authors who've burned me once" thing. Except for Jodorowski, for some reason; his work is utterly vile and yet I can't look away.

There are still open days for my December talking meme.

Comments

[schneefink]

+1000 to your tagging complaints. Especially since AO3 has no "main characters" tagging like ff.net, so it makes searching for fic about minor characters extremely difficult.

[dhampyresa]

It is so annoying, urgh.

[alexseanchai]

That published-fiction thing is actually one of the reasons I love Seanan McGuire. Her queer characters are on-the-page QUEER.

(Which, okay, if you haven't read a particular Toby Daye short story published on McGuire's website, you won't know that about Toby's boyfriend, because it's not in the books in so many words. But it's still unambiguously textual canon, and also there's several people who are in-the-books-queer.)

[umadoshi]

*nodsnods* Seanan has several characters I can think of who I know are queer because she's mentioned it on Twitter or Tumblr or something, but that feels very different to me from the Dumbledore Effect since she does have so many on-page queer characters that she's clearly not hiding or obscuring the ones whose sexuality isn't spelled out. (I may have mentioned this example before, but: one of my favorite Newsflesh characters is bi, frex, and I only know because someone referred to him on Twitter as "straight and married [to a woman]", and Seanan was kind of like "...married, yes. Not so much with the straight." So that tends to be the sort of way it comes up.)

[dhampyresa]

Which make s me think of something: I tend to assume that everyone in fandom is non-male and non-straight and (as far as I as know) you're married to scruloose (who is male), while you're female: is my assumption wrong, in this case? (Not that you have to answer if you don't want to.)

Btw, does McGuire has any main and/or PoV queer characters in any of her books?

[umadoshi]

I don't mind being asked. ^^ I am indeed female, and scruloose and I are both cisgender and straight, and in a monogamous marriage. (I tend to have similar default assumptions when interacting in fandom, FWIW.)

None of Seanan's POV characters are queer, no. (Which is on a technicality untrue, but for what you're asking I don't think it qualifies--the Newsflesh character I mentioned in my reply to alexseanchai narrates one of the novellas in first-person, but as I said, his bisexuality never comes up in the actual material, just in an offhand comment Seanan made once on Twitter.)

I second alexseanchai's opinion about May being a main character in the Toby books.

Two fairly important characters in Newsflesh are IDed as bisexual (two women who dated but broke up prior to the series); for the record, I'd hesitate to call anyone but Georgia and Shaun the "main characters" in Newsflesh, but both women have very significant roles in the books.

Oh, and there's a married gay couple in the first Newsflesh novella, one of whom comes as close as anyone to being a main character in that particular novella (it's very...decentralized, I guess I'd say?), and there's a poly triad in another novella, and IIRC one member of the triad is a central character in that story. But I suspect the novellas may not count for what you're asking?

No main characters are coming to mind in InCryptid or Indexing (although it's been a year since I read Indexing, and I forget whether some of the characters' orientations were specified).

[dhampyresa]

I've a question about Toby's boyfriend: is he queer in the books? Because if not, that would fall into "queer in extra material" territory for me, simply by virtue of not being in the books (how many people reading the books will read said short story, for example?). It's different if there are other queer-in-the-books characters, though.

Are any of the main characters? Or PoV characters?

[alexseanchai]

There's only one PoV character in the books themselves, Toby, and she's straight. But define 'main characters'. Tybalt (the aforementioned boyfriend) absolutely is a main character, but I take your point about not-in-the-books. The Luidaeg absolutely is a main character, and her queerness is explicit on-page in another of those short stories, but in the books it's not mentioned in so many words--there's a conversation between her and a minor female character that, once you've read that short story, you go "ohhh they're exes, that explains that".

May...debatable whether she's a main character? She isn't even in the first two books, which is frankly the main argument that she's not a main character. But she is absolutely unmistakably on-the-page in-the-books queer.

[escritoireazul]

As far as i'm concerned, the rule for tagging is "if anyone specifically looking for the content of this tag (and only this tag) reads this fic, will they be disappointed?" and if the answer is "no"? YOU DON'T FUCKING TAG IT. It's not rocket science, ffs, and that goes for characters, ships, fandoms, additional tags, whatever.

This is a fantastic rule! I'm going to adopt it for my own tagging purposes.

I think my biggest peeve in published fiction doesn't actually count, by virtue of being a peeve about not published fiction. That is to say, it's when characters are identified as queer outside of the text itself. How nice that you revealed in an interveiew that the heroine's male love interest was bisexual. Is that likely to show up in text any time soon? I thought not.

This infuriates me. Yeah, it's all well and good that in the author's head so-and-so character is queer, but it means fuck all if it isn't supported in the text itself.

ETA: Supported isn't exactly the word I want. Absolutely, without a doubt clear is more like it. "Supported" could be used more to imply and then confirm outside the text, I guess.

[dhampyresa]

Thank you! It's a rule that's served me well so far and I hope it serves you well as well.

I know what you mean. I like implied-queer characters (any excuse to see myself in texts), but sometimes you really want a character that is unabashedly, unapologetically, unambiguously queer, you know?

[yuuago]

I share your tagging woes. It makes searching by character/pairing so USELESS sometimes. :T

[dhampyresa]

I KNOW!

[netgirl_y2k]

If I could change one thing about the AO3 it would be to add secondary character/pairing categories, but yes, your tagging rule is my tagging rule.

[dhampyresa]

That would be super nice, ngl. I wish it was everyone's tagging rule, but unfortunately not.

[curiouscorvid]

OMG. That sounds like the worst offense. I'm totally cool with people tagging ridiculous funny things, especially when it's not a commonly serached term, but no. Just, no. That's not cool.

[dhampyresa]

It was like a trip to the Twilight Zone, tbh.

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

Overtagging is the worst, imho, especially from those who forget that other sites like AO3 aren't Tumblr where they can literally go off into conversational thoughts in the tags. Like, seeing every single character and pairing tagged is annoying enough, there really is no need for tagging nonsensical sentences when you could have just written that in your summary or the additional notes on the fic itself.

Anything that is tagged a pairing but they aren't actually the main pairing of the fic, or there is a NOTP featured, is something else that annoys me as well. Either don't tag or place a warning. Another thing is when people don't tag for character deaths. I read this one fic where it happened to one of my OTPs and nowhere in the tags or description was there any warning for it. Like, if I want to read angst I'd specifically look for it but to have it sneak up on me like that was just, no.

IA with you about published fiction. I know that with some authors their publishers might pressure them to not include queer characters or keep it on the "down low" or something to that effect, but I wish authors would stand their ground on keeping characters who are meant to be queer in the story. It's not really that hard. To say that it's "not relevant to the story" is kind of ridiculous, because what about all the heterosexual romances in stories that aren't about romance? Are those also not relevant to what the plot is about? Like please, get real.

And yeah, the rape-as-love thing is gross. See: 50SOG and how romanticized it is, when it really is just rape and domestic abuse. And the fact that it's supposedly so popular baffles and scares me, tbh. SMH.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I don't mind the tumblr-esque tags, because they tell me upfront that the fic is very very unlikely to be one I want to read. (It must be a nightmare for the tag wranglers, though, and they have my sympathies.)

I'm pretty sure "Major Character Death" is an Ao3 warning and you can report them to abuse for not using it (unless they use "Choose Not To Warn", obvs). But, yeah, that tends to be the kind of thing I want to know about up front.

I realise some authors might be trying to make the best out of a bad situation and most historical works are given a pass (mostly for reasons of authors having not as much control over thei work as they do now), but it is so so so annoying. Lol, "not relevant to the story", LOL.

It is spectacularly gross when it's not acknowledged as fucked up. I haven't read 50SoG, so I can't comment.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

Je suis d'accord avec tous ces points.

Pour le non-con, je n'en vois heureusement que très rarement dans les livres que je lis, en dehors des manga yaoi. Je n'en lis pratiquement plus à cause de ça.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Oui, j'en vois aussi que très rarement, mais c'est pas top du tout quand ça arrive.