1. The idea that anything bright, cute, and cheerful can't be taken seriously, and the flipside view that gratuitous gore, violence, and general edginess means maturity.
   
   2. Apologism for a character's misdeeds, especially when good characters are derailed to force the issue.
   2.5- The above goes double if it's part of the story being turned into a temple devoted to the worship of the author's chosen waifu/husbando.
   
   3. Misanthropy.
   
   4. "I'm the protagonist, so I can do whatever I want and it is, by definition, good."
   
   5. Violence towards animals, especially cats.
   
   6. A villainous character's motivation is incoherent, their own darn fault, and/or just plain ridiculous, and I'm still supposed to sympathize with them (though the 'their own darn fault' can be negated if the sympathy is reinforced by the character admitting their fault and dropping their villainy because of it).
   
   6. Ridiculously obvious science failure, like something going at "the speed of light" and not using hyperspace handwavery or becoming a Relativistic Kill Vehicle.
   
   7. Overly angsty stories.
   
   8. Crowbarring OCs into canon teams without respect for canon limitations on joining said teams, like being a Jinchuuriki, an Element of Harmony, or a Fellowship member despite those rosters already being filled.

Lessee...

-Bad relationship writing: Whether it be slash or het or whatever, writing relationships badly is a quick and easy way to bug me. Out of character characters, total lack of chemistry, go down the list.

Yaoi and ABO writers (I can find no proof, but I firmly believe the two have a deeply-entrenched ancestral link) tend to be guilty of this a lot. For most of the bad writers in this category, their idea of writing a relationship between characters is taking the characters they want to write and crowbarring them into fitting rigid archetypes, regardless of canonical characterization. And the relationships they write are also kinda rapey a lot of the time, which leads me to my next pet peeve!

-Core conceits that are horrifyingly disturbing but never recognized as such: Imagine a world where about once a month, you lose all control of your body and are forced into an alternate mental state. When you return to proper consciousness as yourself, you may find that you have committed horrific crimes against the people you care about, done awful things to yourself, or forced people do to do awful things to you, leaving you memories that don't bear thinking about. This is probably horrifying for you, and makes you really uncomfortable just to think about.

Welcome to ABO, because what I just described is a semi-common interpretation. And yet in the fics that have it, the characters aren't horrified. "Oh yeah, I got forced into horrifically sexually assaulting a person by my genetics. business as usual!"

Most characters in a given canon aren't psychopaths, and many have a common moral ground with the audience. If someone is dating their sister, or the world's been turned into a violent game of bloodsport, or their best friend just murdered someone in cold blood, they should at least acknowledge that this is messed up and disturbing.


...Look, ABO just bugs me, okay?

... But it's still valid.

More than anything, I hate authors making things up to justify romantic pairings and then saying it's True Love. I don't care what the pheromones are doing or what a character's "magic" or whatever wants, I want to see how two characters' personalities interact.

Again, the only fic I read is bad slash so I can torture everyone around me with it, so I don't know if these things are all that prevalent in fic as a whole, but it really pushes my buttons.

Pretty much everywhere.

Yes, many characters are flawed. Yes, it can be interesting to see how events or people would change if specific characters were actually evil out manipulative, *especially* if there's already a bit of canon support for it or at least something that can be twisted that way.

Character bashing, however, generally consists of the author and characters going out of their way to portray someone--often someone close to the main characters, as in Ron Weasley or Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, as secretly evil, physically disgusting, sociopathic, heartlessly manipulative, etc, and then publicly deriding them for it. It ignores the characters' best traits--in fact, it often ignores that they exist, or portrays a complete misunderstanding of the character in canon--and it's just plain uncomfortable and even upsetting to read. I hate it, and would much rather have a more balanced portrayal of a deeply flawed character, thank you very much.

~Z

PS: When you pair this with Scary Sues and protagonist centered morality it gets even worse.

PPS: Why, yes, Partially Kissed Hero was rather on my mind while writing this post. So was Gwen Cooper, though. ...and Peter Pettigrew, actually, though that's a whole different and kind of tangential rant.

Or screenplay, or whatever.

I think fanfiction should at the very least recontextualize the canon, if not take it in a whole new direction. Preserving the canon characters' dialogue is one thing, because how people speak is an important part of characterization, but I don't think there's often an excuse for copying whole paragraphs of narrative. That's a good way to make my brain check out of your story in a hurry, because if I wanted the original, I'd be reading the original.

Also, misquoting the original text. If you are going to borrow lines, get them right. See above note on characterization.

~Neshomeh

Examples:

many, many Harry Potter fanfics

* Loud House

No Such Luck fics, with very few exceptions. The sisters are written as complete monsters who don't care about their brother.

* Mario

Only playtesting with savestates. I hate it when creators forget that Kaizo was meant to be done without savestates.

P.S. Neshomeh, can you unblock me from the wiki?