criminalxminds | let's discuss!

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discussion: characters

let's discuss!

this if for those of you who read fanfic, which is hopefully most of you.

what are your fanfic pet peeves? is there a pairing or genre you won't read? do you hate mistakes in canon?

for me it's more about grammar. i get irritated with bad spelling (use spellcheck!), poor use of punctuation (besides commas because there are about 40 rules. you should know the basics), and capitalization. in posts i don't bother with caps. but when i publish i try to make it as correct as possible.

other things are the use of certain words. there/their/they're, we're/ were/where, bare/bear, lie/lay/laid etc., i/me, overuse of italics and bold. to me italics are good for emphasizing certain words that should be stressed, either in dialog or narration, sounds coming off the television/phone or written words read by the narrator or out loud in dialog, musical lyrics. it just makes it easier to understand that it isn't normal sounds. i only use bold in my author's note, disclaimer, and warnings.

also, i won't even read a fic that has all the text bunched up because someone didn't press enter. or something with only about 200 words.

also, when you address someone it should be like, Person, blah blah. with the comma there. that just bugs me.

for specifically CM i won't read Morgan with anyone but Garcia. i don't know, i just think they belong together and i love that Garcia is one of very few average sized women on television. in spite of what hollywood wants us to think, most women are more Garcia's size than JJ's.

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Isn't the point of fan fic to kinda make up your own canon?

I suck at con-crit when I comment on other people's stories, but I do try to comment at every single thing I read.

Mary Sues? What does that mean?

Did you mean AN's in the actually story, or just at the beginning/end?

I usually base titles or intros on song lyrics, but I never put them in the story. Basically, because I started writing the fandom before I thought I should use quotations like the show ;) But when I read a fic that has song lyrics posted in it, like transitions to the next part, I instantly hate the story!

Reading these comments make me think that I'm a terrible writer ;)

I don't have a beta, that's partially because I only have internet access a couple times a week for maybe an hour a two and to work with a beta would be pretty damned hard. I try with my grammar, and I know I make mistakes. I did competitive speech in high school and undergrad so I write like I talk.

Spelling errors piss me off.

People who say 'this is my first...' piss me off. It's like you are fishing for comments on how great you are.

People who read and don't at least comment to say they read it piss me off.

While I love the love...I love to get concrit too. That being said, I suck at giving concrit. I was a member of a comm. once where I gave concrit and essentially got burned at the stake for it! It was a different fandom and all, not CM fans.

I hate song lyrics posted in stories. I base titles off song lyrics and I do tend to use song lyrics as the text in the link to the story, but that is the extent of my use of songs in the stories.

I don't read cross-overs with shows I don't watch.

I don't mind alt/un as long as the writer supports it and does a good job at creating the story. For example, in my current series Hotch isn't married and JJ was never with Will/had Henry but I started that out in the very beginning and have supported it through the series. In fact, some of my favorite stories have been alt/un, such as the one where the team is teenagers at a camp and Reid is an elective mute? Who wrote that again?

I love the 'porn' stories when they are just porn. Either write the sex into the plot and have it work or just write the sex.

I don't think I don't need a beta, I know I do, but I don't have one because I only have internet access a couple times a week for maybe an hour a two and to work with a beta would be pretty damned hard.

don't feel bad. i don't have a beta either. i'd never publish anything if someone read it first because i'm too self-conscious about my writing. and i make some of the errors that have been discussed her.

it all depends.

all but one of my fics is Twilight. i don't write canon stuff because i don't like it and the characters from Meyer are so underdeveloped that it's easy. plus, AU/AH are really popular. that's most of what i read.

i use some accent spelling for the characters who i want read in a southern accent. they might say swimmin', runnin', gonna, hafta, and so on.

most of my fics are from 1st person pov, but i almost always switch pov's. it depends on the particular fic, but i do have a couple that are 3rd person. if the narrator in the 1st person pov doesn't care about who they are referring to i might use epithets. they might say the bitch said, or that blond girl. it's part of their character traits.

my stuff is always ooc. the one CM fic i wrote was ooc, though i tried to keep the two characters in character as much as possible.

everyone likes or dislikes different things. the point is to keep writing so that you get better.

and what was that teen camp CM fic? where was it? if you can't remember the title/author, do you at least know where you found it? i'd love to read it.

Mary Sue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue?). Original characters that bend the rules of canon, usually by being perfect and loved by everyone. Also usually a glorified self-insertation on the author's part.

Author's notes are fine, as long as they're short and relavent. This does not apply when you're writing a fic and do something like this:

And Garcai stared up at Morgan with her big blue eyes (AN: Okay, so I don't actually know what color her eyes are, just go with it, guys!) and whispered, "I love you."

Unacceptabe. I don't care what it says, you don't do it.

Quotations at the beginning, or a few lines from a song, are fine with me (it kind of goes with this fandom, to do so), but I don't want to see the first ten pages of the Cantos. Not that anyone would ever use the Cantos, they'd use My Chemical Romance or something.

Gah. I'm really not a bitter person.

Lol. Maybe we're secretly twins, separated at birth!

Seeing badfic get praised just sets my teeth on edge, but I don't trust myself to leave my own comment. Most of the time. Sometimes I just can't resist. *g*

"Begin Transmission"? That is so unnecessary. Especially if you're not even using it as a story element.

*groan* This is why I hate being a teenager. We get such a bad rap.

i don't know about all fanfic sites, i only use ffn. but ffn actually has a rule against author's notes within the fics. they state that A/N's go before or after the story/chapter and not within. there are actually lots of rules. do other fanfic sites have rules? and i was wondering what the best sites for CM fics are.

Ah...I've done OC's but I don't always make them likable, in fact most people hate them ;)

I understand what you mean by AN's now, that is tacky.

No, it's begin transmission before the author's note, and then end transmission at the end. Drives me nuts. The stories might be good, but I don't know, because I can't get past that! Why someone can't just write a note at the top the way everyone else does is beyond me.

Don't worry about the teenage thing! There are plenty of people in their 20s, 30s and older who have no idea what they're doing when it comes to writing. I know plenty of teens who are way more together than some of the 40 somethings I know!

Hahaha. Agree 100 percent. I've seen a few of those with author's notes randomly placed willy nilly in stories!

I thought the point of it was to write a story that you can see happening within the show/movie/book/whathaveyou.

If other people can see something happening that I can't, good for them. Write on. I'm just probably not going to read it because I can't get into that sort of thing. That doesn't mean others won't read and enjoy it.

I think the intent of fanfic is so broad (and I am not sure it started out that way) that now when it comes to what it is, there is so much out there that many (like you and I) may disagree.

I totally see your point. There's stuff out there I don't read too.

On the other side...if people don't comment then why bother?

Did that look like the kiss of someone inexperienced?

Well...My first kiss went something like that. :o
Lol. I'm not saying Reid's a virgin. I actually agree with your logic (I'd never thought of that before~). No to mention, before the show had even started we're made to believe they had been working together as a team for 3 years prior. Something tells me there's no way for a guy friend of Morgan's to remain a virgin for that long. Just sayin.

Anyways. But yeah. A first kiss/inexperienced can go like that. ^^;

I was in collegiate speech/debate for 4 years and spent 1-3 nights every weekend in a hotel for 9 months at a time and I know what you mean! I try to write hotels accurately.

In many of my stories in all fandoms, you will see characters walking the couple of blocks to the gas station, or down to the restaurant or bar connected to the place. And I rarely if ever use room service in my stories because all my room service experiences were for crap.

*cracks up* OMG you rockstar!

Some people are just born knowing how to work it. *g*

xD Thank you hahaha~

Very true.

That, and like I said in my OP, I don't read fanfiction very much. I was super into it from ages 13 to 16, but now I'm just kinda me "Meh." I feel like I haven't found anything that's blown me away as much as the series that the fanfic is originally based on, so I kinda detatched from it and gave up. Don't get me wrong. I have read some amazing fanfics before. Its just been so long since I have and now I'm like ":|" with every one I try to read.

Hm. The rules must have changed since I was in The Pitt--which, granted, was years ago. Whoever proposed that law was genius.

I know that Fiction Alley (a Harry Potter fanfic site) actually screens each fic for spelling and grammar and such before it's allowed to be posted, which makes browsing through their database so much fun, as 80% of their fics are great. I don't know of any other CM fanfic sites, though. Sorry.

It goes like this < BR > (remove the empty spaces before and after the BR, like <BR )

Exactly. And while breaking them isn't out of the question, you do have to know them thoroughly in order to know when and how it's ok to break them - and do it extremely rarely if ever.

* The mother of all pet peevees--epithets. They make me cringe. You know what I'm talking about: "The young BAU member lovingly embraced the Supervisory Special Agent."

This made me lol. And I agree, it can be excessive. Poor JJ so often morphs into "the press liasion" in the most innapproriate contexts.

I still remember several years ago I was reading a fairly good Buffy story until Angel attacked Spike with a steak.

*giggles helplessly* That one really tickled me :D

Re. Britishisms in the mouths of Americans and vice-versa - that's something Ive relied heavily on criticism to correct over the years. I'm always grateful when a reader pms me politely and let's me know a rogue term got through. If my fic is set in a foreign TV show I try to write in that country's vernacular, even if it's not in dialogue: torches/flashlights, etc. I stick to my own country's spellings, though, as is proper :)

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Re: Ode to the Hotel Mini Bar

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