It's time for another peeve post

[estepheia]

If this will make me unpopular, so be it. I have to vent. Please do not feel insulted. It's nothing personal. Whatever floats your boat, etc.

Hunging season is open. Here's a list of words and expressions that I'd rather shoot myself than use (although I may have used them in my younger days...)

* chocolate orbs traveling the angular planes of his face
* cerulean orbs
* velvety orbs

What is it with those orbs? The only orbs I like are real objects. And the chocolate. Chocolate eyes? a) read it so often that it makes me gag, b) has a horrible eating vibe which doesn't go well with eyeballs. Eeew.
'Cerulean' is a nice word, very pretty. So is 'blue.' But we do know that Spike's eyes are blue, so maybe just maybe we don't need to be told every second sentence. Same with the hair-color. Which means that constant use of 'the blonde' is just as out.

* Spike's soft hair - Oh please. After twenty years of bleaching? You wish.
(There is a brilliant story by Zero that deals with the fact that even Spike has his imperfections and is on some level just a guy)

* childe - noooooo please. As a real parent I find the vibe off-putting. Makes me think of small kids, not of sexy vampires. The whole concept of vicious killers turning into cuddly poppa-bears for their adored childe makes me cringe. (However I *do* see different emotional ties when the vamps are souled)

* sable hair - Ask me what Nicholas Brendan's haircolor is and I sure as hell won't say sable. *snort*

* beautiful - a word to be used with care. How about 'handsome', 'good-looking' and 'attractive'?

* pulsing - in conjunction with certain parts of the male anatomy I think 'throbbing' is the nicer image. Just saying.

* baited breath - shouldn't that be 'bated'?

*sucking - a lovely word used to describe what mouths do. Not so great for other orifices. Anataomically impossible too.

I used to love the badfic thread at TwoP. *Sigh* I never got into the habit of visiting its new home. Sometimes I wonder if mikelesq shouldn't resurrect it here. Sometimes I even wonder if I shouldn't quote a few paragraphs of truly horrible writing, but I don't really feel like offending someone.

Oooh, maybe I can do it behind cut tags. Do not read if m/m smut offends you. Do not read if you think pointing out bad writing is mean. But if you do read it please tell me, is it just me or does this really suck? Is this so-called purple prose?



"Slowly, Spike raised his body until only the bulbous head of Angel's cock remained inside him. Watching those velvety brown eyes flare with gold as Spike slid down again joining them together again was nearly Spike's undoing. Angel's eyes were held mesmerized as he watched the place where his body joined Spike's. He stared as Spike rose again; seeing his hardness bathed in his
Childe's blood disappear into that hidden reasure once again."

later:
"Over and over, Angel slid his way home into the only place he felt truly alive. Inside his beautiful childe."
Wickedly Delicious by Amy.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I tend to be a lot more free with my delete key these days when it comes to mailing list fandom rants, so I probably didn't see the last one in NT.

The thing is, in the smorgasbord of example opinions you mention there, there isn't one that doesn't disagree with the fact that there are overused words and phrases in too many fanfics these days, and that there is some disgraceful grammar out there - all the differences I ever see are about whether it really matters or not, and you have to admit that the vast majority of these kind of posts just perpetuate much more of the "I'm glad somebody had the nerve to bring this up..." kind of replies than anything else. That's what I mean by preaching to the choir.

there's plenty of us who are gratified to know that we're not the only ones out there who are going to gack if we see one more use of the phrase "His Nummy."

Don't you tire of all the negativity generated by this though? Self-gratification aside, how many times do people need to be reassured that everyone is thinking the exact same thing that they are?

- Dudette

[mpoetess.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'm not an unbiased observer, since I co-host the S/X writers' guild zone, but honestly? I'd rather see someone make a post every so often that points out specific peeves and bad writing techniques in general, and watch folks bitch about whether it's important, whether those particular peeves are legitimate writing critiques or just personal gripes, etc. Because then people are talking about it, instead of going on their merry way and pretending that every story and every writer is wonderful and precious from the get-go.

The negativity isn't unrelenting -- hell, I think in the 3 years I've been on NT there's maybe been two peeve/writing discussions. Certainly the few discussions like this one that I see spread out across various boards/lists/etc are vastly overwhelmed by the mountain of badfic out there.

And obviously by the number of generally agreeing or discussion comments here, there is still an audience for it. So what if it's mostly the choir? You rephrased my comment about feeling gratified as "self-gratification" but what the hell on the internet isn't about self-gratification? If we want to have a discussion about the foibles and quirks and just plain badness we see in fiction, and it's not off-topic for the arena in which we're discussing it, then at least it's amusing or cathartic for us. And if somebody god forbid does realize that there *are* folk who don't think "Spike and Xanpet's Luv Shack With Occasional Random Guest Appearances By Oz" is the be-all end-all of decent writing, huzzah.

It seems to me that it's you who are tiring of [your perception of] the large amount of negativity -- which is fine, but your delete key works in this case too. Or your scroll wheel.

[mpoetess.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I should clarify that I'm thinking more of the general peeves and badfic items and sure, why not, rants on the use of they're, their and there, vs. mocking specific stories, in terms of it being a cathartic and non-harmful discussion. Even if it's inded boring for some.

[(Anonymous)]

If I could just jump in here for a moment- you said:

It seems to me that it's you who are tiring of [your perception of] the large amount of negativity -- which is fine, but your delete key works in this case too. Or your scroll wheel.
_____________________

This seems a little hypocritical. Isn't this the exact same argument that the badficcers make, and which is dismissed by the opposition as being non-constructive?

So, maybe this hasn't been constructive to this point, so allow me to propose something more to that end. It seems to me that making a periodic, general rant to hundreds of people in the hopes that an odd newbie will see the light seems wasteful. Why not target the criticism a little better, and offer it specifically to people who are actually seeking it? There's less fall-out from the badficcers who don't want to change, and it will save the rest of us the redundancy.

[mpoetess.livejournal.com]

You're assuming that everybody's main intention is to specifically change the behavior of badficcers. (Or potentially good writers who just need that push towards getting a beta, etc.) It may well be so for some, but for some, it's just a rant to blow off steam. For some, it's a discussion topic that they'd welcome opposing arguments to, because they enjoy the back and forth of trying to convince people that they're right. Even if it's the same back-and-forth, from the same types of people.

Hence my pointing out that the back button and the scroll wheel exist for folks who are tired of such discussions, just like they exist for those of us who are tired of badfic. The difference here is that those of us who are tired of badfic are at least talking about something specific -- bad *things* in fic, bad trends, opinions on pet peeves. Something that could possibly be contstructive. We're not -- most of us anyway -- tearing down specific fics and telling those authors that they shouldn't be wasting their time posting. While there's a couple of y'all -- who seem a bit like you popped up here with an agenda -- who are essentially telling Estepheia that she's wasting her time posting, and specifically annoying you. So I don't think my comment about your delete key is hypocritical in this case.

In answer to your actual point -- do I think targetting individual writers with suggestions for improvement would be more constructive than posting occasional public lists of things that annoy me? (Not that I usually do the second; I'm just defending Stef's reasons for doing so.) No, I don't think so. I think they're about equally constructive, for different reasons. Sending feedback to specific authors -- which a lot of us do anyway -- is helpful for those specific authors, but it doesn't let the general public know what annoys some readers. So under your model, there would always be more specific authors to say it to -- and time wasted on small, ridiculous stuff that we could be using to say "I loved your storyline and language, but I thought the Angel characterization was a bit wonky here..."

There's a reason, for instance, that when someone sends an OT post to the fic-only list I co-mod, we always send a mod/warning both to the individual, and to the list. A personal one for the individual, and a note to let the list know that such posts aren't acceptable -- otherwise the one person won't do it again, but everybody else on the list wouldn't know that yeah, we're serious about the fic-only rules. I'm not implying anything ridiculous like "I or Estepheia think we're good taste fic-mods for the world" -- I'm just drawing a parallel in the reasoning.

[(Anonymous)]

You said:

You're assuming that everybody's main intention is to specifically change the behavior of badficcers.
_________________

Nope. I'm addressing the reason Estepheia specifically gave me.

As for the rest? You win. You sucked all the life out of me. I have lost the will to argue. Good job.

- Birdie