If you're going to criticise me on canon, know what you're talking about, please.

I'm quite canon-obsessed. I'm generally pretty accurate, and the times I've messed things up have been nicely pointed out and consequently fixed (or, if unfixable, prefaced with a 'I fudged this particular detail and it's rather important and to fix it would muck the whole fic up...if it bothers you, click out')

But if your review consists of a few paragraphs harping on about a particular inaccuracy and the importance of keeping things canonically accurate, you might want to check to make sure it is actually an inconsistency. Because it's a long fall off that high horse, and you just look dumb.

Okay, Oz complaining to Willow during early season three that he is eighteen and 'entitled to a sex-life' and that he's tired of walking in circles with her — strangely out of character. Seriously, did we even watch the same show?

Then again, maybe a warning light should've gone up when it said he'd been doing acid during the summer before. "Hey, you don't smoke, but you do do drugs? Oh well, no biggie. C'mere, you."

I bloody hate finding what looks like a really lovely bit of slash only to have the story suddenly go Mpreg on me.

For the love of God, people! A little warning, please? So that I know not to waste my time getting invested? Mpreg still squicks a lot of people and I'm afraid I'm one of them. I would never knowingly venture into a Mpreg fic and I'm tired of getting mislead.

A bit of consideration? Not too much to ask, is it?

Transformers fandom? Time for a word with you (which of course does not apply if you're writing crackfic).

Yes. We get it that in the G1 cartoon continuity, Wheeljack and Ratchet made the Dinobots, and this makes them something resembling 'parents' if for the only reason that they created five stompy aggressive war machines. Seriously. We know this.

Where do you think you can get off having the Dinobots call either Wheeljack or Ratchet 'daddy' and the other 'mommy'?

-blah blah blah, there's no good, solid G1 cartoon canonical evidence that Cybertronians would use parental terms to describe creators, yadda yadda.

-the Dinobots really don't like the Autobots. No, really. Watch the series again. They don't even like Optimus all that much, and they've been known to completely abandon the Autobots. The only Autobot who likes them is Wheeljack, and that could arguably be simply because he knows how valuable they can be to the Autobots (not a stance I agree with, but the case can be made for it). The Dinobots don't ever show any particular love of Wheeljack, and this is even after the guy saved them from being eternally trapped in a mountain. If that doesn't make someone love you, I don't know what would. So I highly doubt the Dinobots are going to be calling ANYONE mommy or daddy, words that generally imply some sort of attachment to someone.

-same continuity: Autobots built the Aerialbots. The Aerialbots are a rather friendly bunch; even Slingshot's more agreeable than the Dinobots. And yet even they don't call anyone mom or dad.


If there's one thing that makes me never want to click on a story ever, or hit the back button faster than you can say Vector Sigma, it's non-crack stories where the Dinobots deliberate on whether to call Ratchet their mom or dad and having whoever gets called their mom flip out over it. Seriously. The 'joke' wasn't funny or cute the first time. Won't become funny the more you write about it. It's OOC, and even the crackfics involving it are getting old.


On that note, yes. We're also very aware that Slag shares his name with a Cybertronian swear word.

Dear particular fanwork-exchange participant,

Here's a hint: if you're going to sign-up, make sure you do it properly, hm?

( Trials and Tribulations of an Exchange Mod )

I'm sure you don't mean to do this, but would you mind actually reading the imformation before attempting to sign up in future? I'm sure it would save us both an awful lot of stress.

-Cerberusa

I don't understand some authors insistence on removing the aspects of a work that make it unique, recognizable, or otherwise enjoyable and replacing them with the same trite, overused BS whose absence is part of the reason why we like the show in the first place. Why would you do that?

( Rantrantrant )

I am at an absolute loss as to why people insist on being warned for character death. I cannot bear reading a story where I have been warned for death - I'm on edge throughout, trying to predict who is going to die and how they're going to die, without reading the story for the story. Hell, if it's a good story, I'll skip to the end to find out who dies just to get it over and done with so I can enjoy the rest of it properly. Yes, if warned for character death, I will spoil myself rather than waiting, because this lingering warning ruins it for me.

Though that only really works if the author's gotten that far in the story yet... 'cause if not, I dwell on it and roleplay in my head about it while waiting for an update. If it's that good, of course. (Does anyone else do that? Roleplay in their head?)

And then when the death finally happens, I sit there all "that was it?" because with a great big character death warning splashed on it, it makes out like it's something heart-wrenching or whatever and then it falls flat on its face leaving me unimpressed. If I hadn't been warned? There might be actual impact. Unless of course it was a death prior to the story for either tone-setting or setting up for a future plot development, where emotional impact is not so much the author intention in the first place.

Oh, it's entirely different if the story revolves around the death. Because then the story is about death, and thus may as well be labelled as such. But otherwise? No. Please don't.

I'd hate to beat a dead horse though it would be fun but please, warn for things that might squick people in the summary.
I know that about 80% of all Kingdom Hearts fanfic is slash, but warn for it or just put the pairing (akuroku, which is pretty much 60% of all Kingdom Hearts fanfic all together) in the summary. I don't want to read a perfectly fine fic then have Axel kissing Roxas.
Please, fanbrats. learn to warn.

Dear FFN Administration,

I love you guys. No, seriously, I love you. I think you're the bestest administration people I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with. I love the fact you made the abuse review feature. I mean - wow - ingenuity at its finest. You see a troll review, spam review, or flame, and magically, you can report it!  I can't stress how giddy I feel when I hit that little text-button-of-fun, and get to chose what kind of abuse the naughty review should be labeled!

But, do you know what gets me giggling every time? Every time I click the "send report"?

 No response!

Nothing! Not a gosh darn thing! I can't tell you how much satisfaction that brings me, knowing that no matter how many reports I send regarding the signed spam on every chapter on every story I had uploaded, that spam will still be there the next day, and the next day, and the next day!

Warm fuzzies all over! I think I'm grinning ear to ear!

And who's the clever one who designed that review throttle for only 15 seconds? LOL, someone had their smartie cap on didn't they? Golly, I could just hug you to pieces! Because of you, someone finally showed how much love they had for me by spamming one story over 2800 times! YES, 2800 times!!! I'm blushing!

I was so overwhelmed with their shameless display of affection that I simply had to disable anon reviews. I can handle only so much love you know! However, I afraid my fans might get jealous of those tidbits of joy on my review board - all 198 pages worth - so I must delete them all and send another supportive email that will never be read! I have tingles now from all this love and joy and extra work I have to put into erasing these tokens of desire that I have to stop at forty deletions or else I'll go cross-eyed!

But don't worry now, I'll restore my review count to normal, someday.

So WORD to you, FFN administration, for making lovely useless features and keeping your site a frolicking Troll Playground!

XXOOXXO,

M

ETA: edited to insert random bold

ETA2: hopefully this is allowed.

 Adding a link to a petition on the Writer's Anonymous forum if any FFN members want to sign.

Um... Ben 10 fandom? I know I'm new to you, but why is Ben/Gwen so common place? THEY'RE COUSINS. Ew. I mean, write what you like if that floats your boat I guess, but please, please label it as such. It is incest and it makes a lot of people squeemish, including me. It makes me think of kissing my cousin, who while he may be attractive and my age, still makes me squirm.

And fanbrats, I'm fairly sure in a tv show for children Ben/Gwen will never be canon. So really, don't be surprised when they don't get together. Yes, sometimes people will experiment as children, but in a Y7 show? Yeah don't see them becoming canon.

Thank you.

Edit: Okay, nevermind this because I grew up with my parents & teachers drilling a misconception into me. Sorry guys.

I read mostly m/m slash, so I don't know if ficcers do this with lesbian couples, but why the hell do fanbrats feel the need to have a child call one of their two male parents "mommy" or any variant thereof? I can understand this in certain situations, such as if one of the men does indeed identify as a woman, then he'd likely tell the kid he's "mommy."

There's also a One Piece fic where Zoro and Sanji end up attached to a kid and Zoro tells the kid that Sanji is "mommy" because he's a bastard like that.

But beyond that a a select few other situations, it makes no sense, especially when, canonically speaking, neither of the men in question are what one would call "effeminate."

I understand the need for a distinction, but there are better ways of doing that, like calling one father "pops" and the other "dad" or something of that ilk.

Or, if the kid is in his obnoxious teenage years, "sperm donor" and "thing attached to sperm donor."

SD and TASD for short.

Authors, lets talk about location. Specifically, locations in smut fics.

Put plainly, there are some places where characters would not be getting it on, or at least not without certain reservations. For example, I cannot see Hermione being comfortable giving Ron a blow job in the middle of the Gryffindor common room without so much as a thought about someone potentially walking in on them. Hermione is a smart girl and I think she would realize that the common room is not the most private place. Nor, as I encountered in a particularly bad hurt/comfort fic, would Peter Petrelli do the deed with his brother who is lying injured in a hospital bed, again without any worry of being noticed. (Not to mention the stupidity of having sex with a seriously injured person in the first place.) There are nurses and doctors and family members in and out of hospital rooms all the time, and a passing mention of that would have been nice. And so on. Its almost as if the author got so caught up in the action that they forgot where the characters were. It distracts me and always seems extremely unrealistic, and I spend the entire fic wondering if someone is about to unintentionally walk in on them.

Now, there are characters who wouldn't think twice about that sort of thing, and if it's in character then fine. Young!Sirius strikes me as the type of character who would be sexually uninhibited, for example. It is fine if the situation is canon, such as Angela and Hodgins' canon sexcapades at work. An intentional exhibitionism kink is also different. I still think it needs to be handled properly, though, and it doesn't work well some characters. Yes, people can have lots of weird kinks that you wouldn't expect, but there does come a point where "previously unknown kink" turns into "wildly OOC", though this is largely dependent upon the author's writing ability.

I guess I just want recognition that not all characters would be comfortable having sex in a public place, and not all locations are entirely appropriate for sex. Even if it wouldn't particularly bother the characters, a throw-away line in the fic or some indication that the author realizes that "yes, the cafeteria is a rather public arena for sexual activity" would be nice.

Hello Author!

Sometime in your life, you may have heard Mr. Hugh Laurie say something like this,

"Michael is my son... in the normal way. [...] Well, the normal way to have a son, is to get married. Uh, buy a house, get properly settled in, uh, furniture and so on. And, um... just wait for a bit. Make sure you eat properly! Three hot meals a day."

Now, by some stretch of the imagination, you seem to have got '86!Hugh Laurie confused with House, confused with a real doctor. And then you decided to apply it to BtVS, awarding Tara a pregnancy. A magic pregnancy where she was not artificially inseminated, but rather, was a gift rewarding them for eating three hot meals a day and waiting a bit. And then you skip off to show she and Willow in a happy blissful life of domesticity with babies everywhere.

Rule one of the Whedon-verse: Everything has consequences. Yay, Tara had a magical pregnancy that doesn't need to be explain because it is so wonderful! Um, no. It does not work that way. I think to think Tara, at least, has enough sense to not try and use magic like that - especially when magic has been proven to, in that canon, be incredibly volatile. But you didn't even get that far. You just went, tra la la, babies and everything is great! And then I hit the back button. Oh, back button. If we lived in Canada, I'd make you my bride.

Attention all writers in anthro!fandoms.

Fur does not blush. No, really. It doesn't. Nor does it pale. In fact, there is absolutely no blood-flow within fur whatsoever! That's why we can go for haircuts and not bleed to death!

So for the love of whatever, stop with the whole goddamn fur-blushing-because-character-A-has-got-the-metaphorical-horn (as it's perfectly possible he's got a real one), or medical diagnoses based on fur-colour. It's annoying.

kthx.