grumpy old bear

[roxy]

You know, young fandom, we have perfectly good ways to indicate that in the featured story, there will be no sex of the boy-on-boy kind. No need to explain that your story doesn't contain slash, no need to make it part of the title. When you have a pairing you use the /. No need to spell it out. Just, Sam/Dean will do. Or Sam & Dean. The & lets us know that this is not an AU of the sexin' brothers kind. (Because if the Winchesters are having sex of any kind with each other, that automatically throws your story into an alternate universe, no matter how close you stick to canon outside of that.) Also, believe it or not, SpN has a *very* healthy gen component, with very well respected and ass-kicking writers. Not writing slash is not a bold move into areas heretofore uncovered, little ones.

While I'm bitching, here's another thing what pisses me off--learn to correctly use cuts, use headers for god's sake--word count would be nice--and stop telling us how shitty your story is, do you really think I want to read it if it's that much a pile of crap? Save the chatty intros for your LJ. Also for cryin' out loud, being new to a fandom is no excuse for misspellings and gross murder of grammar. I'm not on top of it all the time either but I try to listen and remember when I get corrected. My god, make your damn story readable! It's not enough to have a great idea if it sounds like it was written by your 12 year old sister under the influence of too many Skittles.

I'm going to crawl back in my cave now, and just for fun I'm going to kick Boo-Boo's ass. GROWL!!!

*snatches your pik-i-nick basket*

Comments

[bellona-rpg.livejournal.com]

+1 on all that! You've described some of my biggest irritants re fanfiction.

A writer can have the best idea in the world, but if the grammar and spelling are bad, then it throws me right out of the story. On a few occasions I've simply stopped reading.

And then there are the stories where it looks as though someone used a thesaurus without understanding the nuances of the differences between words. And stories which are quite obviously written by someone who is more used to another language (e.g., odd capitalizations and sentence structure) - which isn't to say that some non-native speakers of English can't write really well. Misplaced/anachronistic speech patterns. And writers who don't pay attention to the details of common phrases, thus getting them wrong/inadvertantly reversing the meaning. (A common example: "I could care less" is incorrect. It should be "I couldn't care less").

Betas ... can be used for different purposes. Some help with the story ideas, characterization, etc., others help with spelling, grammar, style, etc. A gifted beta can do both and cheerlead/encourage to boot. By the laws of averages, some betas are probably not as good as others. It must also be frustrating when a writer ignores the good advice given by her betas.

And I could go on ... but I think that I try to stop here (note: not "try and stop"). :)

[roxymissrose.livejournal.com]

And writers who don't pay attention to the details of common phrases, thus getting them wrong/inadvertantly reversing the meaning. (A common example: "I could care less" is incorrect. It should be "I couldn't care less").

Ach! see that right there--I'm guilty of that! I try to check any phrase that's common usage because I know how spelling and usage can migrate. Things we hear everyday and never see written can be a problem as well.

English as a second language presents a whole different set of expectations. I appreciate being 'warned' for that because then I know that I've got to have different expectations when I'm reading.