Tag: slash

I just… AAA!!!!!

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.  A messed up word here, a punctuation thing there, and I can overlook it.  But there are those that I cannot overlook, and it’s this story: “You’ve Got (Blutbaden) Mail“.

I have a personal pet-peeve when a story description is nothing but a clip from the story.  I mean, that can work if you’re actually setting something up for the reader.  But the description of this story doesn’t really do much.  But it goes beyond that.  I personally didn’t get past the first paragraph.  Why?  Here it is:

It had all started rather innocently. Whilst trawling through Marie’s trailer one late evening, Nick happened across a very old watch. At first he had been cautious as most of the trailers contents were either weapons, books or more weapons. What if it send him back in time? Or forward? What if poisoned the wearer? Holding it up to the light, he had noticed that it was stopped. Its hands frozen forever on three minutes past twelve. He wonders if it has any relevance. Knowing the things that lurk in the dark interior of the trailer, probably. Carefully setting it back down, he forgot about it.

So the things that get me right off the bad are the tense changes – sometimes within the same short sentence.  Such as the sentence “Holding up to the light, he had noticed that it was stopped.”  Present tense in the first five words, but not the rest of the sentence.  Same thing with “Carefully setting it back down, he forgot about it.”

Writers: You give your readers whiplash when you write like this.  You need to pick a tense, and stick with it.  A good way to tell, is to read your story aloud.  If it doesn’t sound right, then you need to fix it.  If you’re not a native-English speaker, or if you just don’t know what to fix, then find a beta.  It’s relatively easy these days!  There’s a community on LiveJournal called “Find Me A Beta“; people are there to help  you.  Trust me!

If you’re looking for a well written Grimm fic, then try “Hotel California” by VampirePam.  She’s only written one work in the Grimm fandom, but it’s phenomenal!

This is NOT the kind of review to give someone

So if you’re a writer, you write what you want – what you know.  And what you write is a very personal choice.  And of course fanfiction writers get “paid” in feedback from their readers.  It’s how we not only survive, but thrive!

I was perusing a due South story, and found probably one of the nastiest feedbacks I’ve ever read.  I mean this person was awful!  Exact quote:

Fraser’s a horrible person to break up with Ray at Christmas and choose that immature Kowalski over Ray. I hate F/K slash, especially those written by stupid shippers who obviously hate RayV.

Excuse my language, but are you fucking kidding me?!?!?  This person read a story on their own free will, with a pairing that they already don’t like, and then insulted the author because they didn’t like the outcome!

Bullshit!

Not everyone talks like Data from Star Trek

I saw a H50 fic mentioned on tumblr, and thought I’d check it out.  It’s called, “Five Times it Didn’t Count (and One it Totally Did)“.  Yes, the concept is pretty cute.  And I’m a sucker for kidfic – and this one starts out with Gracie, so yeah, it’s cute.

But there’s something about the dialogue of this fic.  It’s like it’s written by Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  There’re no contractions in it.  At first it was a little off, but the more I read, the more it bugs me.

A little help from a beta – especially one good with dialogue, would help a great deal.  Also, words like “bedroom” are just that – bedroom and not “bed room”.

When it’s pretty good, but needs something…

So I’ve not really been into Hawaii Five-0 fiction yet.  I’ve drabbled a little, but nothing has caught my fancy; just really the “Commander Octopus” series; the first two are pretty darned good!

My cohort sent me a link to “Home Improvement” on AO3 by JiM and kalena, and said, “Trust me – you’ll like it.”  So I started reading it.  Then I got confused and had to put it down.

Then I started again.  Put it down again.  Started.  Down.  Started.  Down.

I finally called her and said, “Dude…  WTF?”  I went on to explain that the fic is majorly confusing to me.  I mean, in the first 500 words, we go backward and forward in time, in and out of dream states and the like.  And not a single bit of it is identified by the author.  Even major points between Danny showing up at the office to get Steve and them showing up at a dogfight aren’t really defined.  I was reading, but wasn’t really “getting it”.  And the more I read, the more frustrated I was getting.

Then she told me what the trick was – to read the story with your internal editor turned on.  That’s what she’d done, and it worked for her.  And you know what?  It worked for me, too.

This is a really well done piece of fiction, as long as you come at it knowing that about the first 1/2 of the story needs you to engage your internal editor as you’re reading.  It gets much better (less distracting scene differentiations) the farther along that you go.  Trust me, it’s well worth the read.  And at more than 30,000 words, it’ll take you a while to get through it.  But like I said, trust me – it’s well worth it.

And to the authors: Just a little cleanup at the beginning – maybe even just a single “*” to indicate how it moves from timeline to timeline or such.  Just a little, that’s all it needs.  But you know what?  The line ‘The Williams Anal Experience’ is the best four words ever strung together in the history of the English language!!!  Okay, of slash, but still!!!!

We don’t even have a section/tag for this… I’m just going to put it under “review” ’cause it mostly is.