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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Grammar, spelling, paragraph spacing and characterizations. Check. Granted, I'm guilty of posting without having a beta/editor review my work. Pairings? I'm willing to give any pairing a try if the characters are in character and, well, it kind of makes sense for them to be together. However, I really don't read femslash since it doesn't really hold my interest.

But... One of my biggest peeves is the mini-bar in the hotel room.

Now, I travel 30-45% for my job (US and Europe) and stay at a variety of hotels, from full service (Ritz-Carlton, Marriott, Kimpton, Hyatt) to the basics (Courtyard, Hampton Inn, Hilton Garden). Before people shout, "But they showed Elle getting into the mini-bar, drinking gin with Reid!", here's the thing.

There are very few hotels that still have mini-bars in the US. They've phased them out because of the costs involved. Now, sure you may get snack items for purchase--bottled water, M&Ms, Pringles, peanuts--but the actual "mini-bar stocked with booze" isn't really prevalent anymore.

When the mini-bars are stocked, you usually get one bottle of each type of liquor. Maybe two max. Vodka, bourbon, scotch, gin, cognac (maybe), brandy (maybe), red wine, white wine, and mixers. So the "raiding the mini-bar for four bottles of scotch" just doesn't, well, cut it. Unless, of course, you've told the hotel how you want your mini-bar stocked. I have only been to one hotel with an actual ice-maker in the room. That was in the US Virgin Islands at a resort.

I know, I know. It's a plot convenience thing because, really, is Hotch or Rossi going to run down to the corner liquor store to buy a fifth else carry some in his go bag? But it really does drive me nuts.

Of course, now saying this, I know I probably have a mini-bar lurking in one of my own stories...

i have one that's pretty specific too. you can almost tell when a fic is written by someone who's never been drunk or taken certain drugs when they write about that stuff. for the drugs, i would totally be okay with just research about the effects. we don't want our great writers experimenting just for the sake of realism. but the drunk thing is sillier. in acting class we were told never to do a drunk scene if we haven't been drunk. the same goes for writing.

Oh yes. Morgan has a mini-bar bottle of scotch and, bam, he's drunk. Sigh. Please. Yes, booze affects people different ways, but really, after one shot a grown man or woman wouldn't necessarily be falling down drunk.

LOL yes, that does compute except in the Sweet Valley High universe, in which you got totally sauced after a glass of spiked punch at a school dance

I'm thinking that I should be terrified to know the "Sweet Valley High" reference because I was thirteen when those first came out. //headdesk//

OMG, they're still around??? LOL. Thanks so much for the reference. You've made my Sunday...

Haha ty ty

Yup, they are!

1bruce1 ;)

on that note, it's good to do research on things like that. you can find out quite a bit about the effects of drugs and alcohol, mental illness, and so forth on the net. for some things i recommend this.

but as far as drugs and alcohol go, i only write about what i've experienced personally. i've been super drunk and puked in public, even had black outs. not my proudest moments, but i can write about it believably. i haven't done heroin or meth, but have used other drugs. i don't recommend that at all! but if you haven't then you should find someone who has or do a bit of research on actual personal experience. that would go a long way in helping make it believable. you could even watch intervention.

i once read a fic where the writer kept referring to something as the drug. she never said if it was pills or something else. it was stupid. something like, "my mom turned the drug over in her hand." what?!

and i haven't had a child, but that's the sort of thing i've seen enough of and been around enough to sort of understand. usually i don't write from the pov of the woman giving birth. and i'm doing a fic where a character has an unplanned pregnancy. she won't be having an abortion because i can't imagine what that's like, though i've talked to people who have had them. it's just too much out of my range of experience to understand enough to write it believably.

Yeah. I'm the same way about booze myself. I've been stupidly drunk, amazingly drunk, and WTF drunk. Yeah.

Research is important. This is one of the few fandoms I've encountered where research tends to be a major part of the writing besides knowing the canon. Heck, I've pestered the folks at

little_details about bad DC area neighborhoods and who Rossi would cheer for, Jets or Giants.

There are times when I'll be deliberately vague about certain details, allowing readers to fill in what they want. But I do want to write something believable.

I started with Star Trek, which is the one of the few universes where "everything goes" when it comes to details. X-Men was more specific, because there was 40+ years canon. CM is an entity of itself, which makes it daunting. I want to do justice to the characters, even if I have them in a slash relationship or, in some cases, really pushing an issue.

That would be one of those things where - although I know you are totally right - I'm still willing to forgive because it IS plausible, and it IS a device that's not only common in CM, but often used on TV and in movies as well.

Well stocked mini-bars are no longer a part of our cultural life, but they are still present in our fictional lexicon.

(And I'm a huge sucker for hotel room fic)

Yeah, I know it's a common plot device and is used everywhere. But it's the stupid details that get to me, like having six bottles of gin (doesn't happen unless you specifically order it) plus knowing that those little bottles of booze are $5-7/each... yeah. If it shows up, it's not going to necessarily kick me out of a fic but if it's abused, then... yeah. I sigh. And I want to write: mini-bars don't work that way:)

O snap I just used a mini-bar in one of my stories

To be fair though, the characters have one drink each and no one gets wasted

The idea of one of them running down to the corner store for a flask is charmingly ghetto, however

It's not something you'd know unless you travel a lot. Some hotels do still have minibars. Larger cities, yes. Smaller ones, no.

Most hotels have a "Market" on the premises that will sell alcohol. I just can't see any of the CM crew dealing with the "mini bar" charge on their hotel bill, because that's how it shows up. There's no secret when you snark from the minibar because it's a charge direct to your hotel bill. Someone from accounting is gonna see it:)

Cheers!

I blame Elle and her raiding the minibar for all those fics

Especially since I can totally picture her hitting the corner store. She is from Brooklyn.

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.

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let's discuss!

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