Subject: Fic Pet Peeves
Author:
Posted on: 2012-07-26 05:51:00 UTC
Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Watson being treated as a dunce. He may not stand up to Holmes in canon, but no one can, minus Mycroft. It's partly due to frequent movie portrayals of Watson as an idiot, but fanfic sometimes takes this to extremes. It should be remembered that Watson is an experienced surgeon, and he served as such in the army prior to A Study in Scarlet.
Kingdom Hearts: Kairi-bashing. While I'm not a fan of slash, I can't deny that the close friendship between Sora and Riku makes a relationship between them actually not unlikely. But too many Sora/Riku fics have to get Kairi out of the boys' way in the most obnoxious way possible. She'll either be killed off by Heartless, made out as a rare female Designated Misogynistic Bastard, or just turned into a stupid and clueless shell of a character that makes a bit look fleshed out. I haven't seen it as much recently (possibly just because of Kairi's absence from a lot of recent titles), but early on after KH's introduction, a lot of authors seemed to see Kairi as a Purity Sue. But despite being kidnapped throughout most of Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2, Kairi is far from a dainty perfect princess. Her love of Sora allowed her to retain her memory of him during his forced sleep, when nearly everyone else in the multiverse forgot he existed. In KH2, she risked running away from Axel and a small army of Dusks rather than be taken prisoner; she stood up to Saïx, ready to fight him off despite the impossible odds; finally, she helped Riku fight off a group of Heartless in the Castle That Never Was.
This last point applies more to fanart than fanfic, but I see it in fics sometimes, too. The Heartless tend to have very simplified, almost cute, designs, usually mimicking people or an object found in their current surroundings. They want to blend in, after all, to make heart theft all the easier. So a Heartless is unlikely to walk around as a huge glowing armored wolf with horns and faerie wings and a dragon tail ending in a giant sword. That wouldn't blend in anywhere. Heartless in human form (as Villain Sues) show up way too often, as well. Only a single character produced a Heartless that retained his human form, and he was (arguably) a combination of two hearts, both steeped in the powers of darkness, one of whom had been manipulating darkness for decades, since young adulthood. Not many should be able to imitate that feat.
Halo: Cortana having sex with the Master Chief. Or anyone.
Cortana is a hologram.
That is all.