let's discuss!

[drasticbarbie.livejournal.com]

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.

Comments

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

Do any of these people HONESTLY think the fit, cool, hot guy would really go for the geeky computer nerd

Yep. Seen it happen, more than once.

Fanfic pet peeves-- well, everybody's hit on the grammar stuff already. :-) I'll skip past a story if the summary says "this story sucks but I'm posting it anyway!" ((I have seen that several times, and it still baffles me))

Not many pairings I won't read . . . some I have a more difficult time 'seeing' than others, but then I figure it's the job of the writer to be good enough to make it seem plausible.

[alyssa22.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Maybe in the US, but I can tell you, it wouldn't happen where I live. Men here are more superficial than that.

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

Ouch. :-P

[alyssa22.livejournal.com]

You have no idea. I've been to the US and looked at these guys who look like models with girls who are overweight/plain, and ... yeah, men over here are all about looks. I was surprised how despite the Hollywood image, the US isn't all looks-obsessed.

Australia, on the other hand? Obsessed.

[drasticbarbie.livejournal.com]

actually, studies the the US find that Black men like women who are bigger. the ideal of thin beauty is a recent phenomenon and is only in existence due to popular culture and the presence of mass media in our lives. it is not by nature for men to only want very skinny women.

i like to think that Morgan is not that shallow. true, there is nothing besides their flirting to indicate that Morgan and Garcia have more than a platonic relationship. but i see a little more to it.

a friend from New York who moved here to southern LA actually told me that she found that girls down here were more attractive on a whole, and men up there were more attractive. it could be a regional thing, or just differences in taste.

[alyssa22.livejournal.com]

Interesting. A friend and I were on holiday in Hawaii one time, and there was this 18 year old couple on their honeymoon (that in itself was unusual to us -- it seem more common to marry young in the US)

He looked like a model. She was very average looking and was extremely overweight. We were surprised. That sort of thing would be rare here. Oh, and they were white, by the way.

[alyssa22.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine who's on the large size did go to LA a couple of times, and said that while men here ignore her, all the black men there were into her. She said it was a very weird experience.

[drasticbarbie.livejournal.com]

i should have been more clear. i'm from Louisiana. did your friend go to Louisiana or Los Angeles? either way, i'd expect the same result. down here i've seen guys about Morgan's size with 300lb women. and they are really proud of their women. it's not that they don't think they can do better, they already think they're doing great.

honestly, people are really mean to overweight people. it's ridiculous. there is nothing wrong with being bigger than average. and average isn't what everyone assumes it is. people assume that most women are a size 5 or so, but it's more a size 12. there are so many skinny actresses on tv and in the movies that it's easy to assume they're the norm. but it isn't so.

personally i'd like to see more women like Garcia on television. not everyone can be a size 5. for some people it is literally impossible. i'd rather be bigger than die trying to fit into clothes from stores that only go up to certain sizes.

[alyssa22.livejournal.com]

Los Angeles.

I was surprised when I was there. I thought I'd feel overweight and frumpy and because everyone would be like they are on TV. Not true. I'm an Australian 6-8, which is a US 2-4. I was convinced I'd be "overweight" by LA standards. I was amazed to see that almost everyone was bigger than me.

[iamtheliquorr.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, where do you live? I've lived in Hawaii and southern California, and for the most part I find what you've said to be true. But in appearance I'm much more JJ than Garcia (petite blonde) so I probably wouldn't attract the same cross section of guys.

[alyssa22.livejournal.com]

Australia. Trust me, guys over here? All about looks and weight.

Then again, it could be a cultural thing, because when you look at our population, it's majority white, with large ethnic groups of Greeks, Italians, Vietnamese, Turks, etc. We've only recently had large numbers of African migrants moving here.

[alyssa22.livejournal.com]

I had some guys on Facebook tell me that men like curves. My friends and I were all "Yeah, if it comes with a gorgeous face, flat stomach and fits into nothing larger than a size 12"... Australian 12 being a US size 8

[lastrega.livejournal.com]

You're kidding, right?

[alyssa22.livejournal.com]

Nope.

Check this out: http://www.theage.com.au/national/outrage-after-mayors-ugly-behaviour-20080818-3xdk.html

I've worked with men who've talked about very presentable women having "a head like a burnt thong" (thong being what Americans call flipflops) or "a head like a robber's dog". Charming.

[lastrega.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm Australian too. And you know the wrong men if you think they're all like that. There are plenty of cockhead bogans out there, but there are plenty of decent ones too.

[alyssa22.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Maybe, but I've come across a hell of a lot with attitudes like that.

I do believe that Australians are more superficial when it come to looks than Americans are,