Minor fanfiction sins

Yea, but it's more commonly used to emphasize someone's status in conversations, rather than a throwaway statement in the narrative (e.g. "You met Alice? THE Alice?").

Also, isn't Gundam the name of mecha models, rather than individual character names? That example doesn't seem relevant to the original complaint about unnecessary "the"s.

Proper nouns are proper nouns, the language mechanically doesn't care if they refer to people or objects, so my example isn't an issue (also there's the fact at least half the references to the original would treat it as if it were a person, since the fact it's even piloted is sometimes disputed by Zeon troops). The example IANCE gives is exceptional clunky, but not necessarily wrong.

It's not done to emphasize anything, Night. It's done in ways that make absolutely no sense. If it was a character saying it, or done in the way described above, it wouldn't be a problem. The problem is that it's clearly a mistake. You see it usually in sentences that go something like: "Bob was talking to the Alice about how irrelevant to the story they are," wherein it's clear it's not like "there are a hundred Alices, but this one is the Alice".

It's like how Twilight, a story about a manipulative sociopath, could be very interesting if it was intentionally about a manipulative sociopath.

Its like Comically Missing the Point deliberately vs actually missing the point.

In the end, it's not like it'll grind a story to a halt and make me eject immediately, but it is fairly annoying and pops up very often, incidentally, more often in fics which are filled with other mistakes (at which point it's safer to assume it's unintentional).

Also, I don't know if someone's brought this up already, but...

Relationships that the author pulled right out of one of their twelve asses. Beyond romantic relationships that come out of nowhere (which is 90% of shipping fics), I'm talking about fics in which characters spontaneously know and like each other even though in canon they've never even met.

I've seen loads of Naruto fics in which Anko and Iruka are paired (they've never met in canon), or Sasuke and Hinata (Sasuke is barely even aware she exists, and she acknowledges his existence only because Naruto is obsessed with him), or Kakashi and Iruka (they've had all of one conversation and it was Kakashi verbally smacking Iruka down for questioning him). But I'm more mystified by fics in which you get people like Namikaze Minato and Uchiha Fugaku somehow being best friends (there's no canon evidence that they've ever even met each other). And these are pretty common.

It's not just a Naruto thing, you also see it a lot in Harry Potter fics, as well. Again, beyond relationships that come out of nowhere, like Ron Weasley and Luna Lovegood (yes, I know it has some degree of canonical support, and it didn't make any sense there either), or the disturbingly popular Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger pairing (the fuck is wrong with you people!?). I've seen fics in which Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter are inexplicably friends. The amount of times I've seen Hermione and Ron get together despite the lack of Harry is also astounding (without Harry to bridge the gap they'd just hate each other because they're complete opposites, and the whole 'opposites attract' applies only to magnetism). Hell, the amount of times I've seen the Golden Trio form around Neville is also astounding (seriously, Neville would just flat out not be in the same situations as Harry, which means that he won't be forming the same friendships Harry did. The formation of the Golden Trio happened on a fluke and is very difficult to recreate without Harry being the right guy in the right place at the right time).

These pairings tend to be minor, and the author doesn't really want to think them through, they're just there to either Pair the Spares or to provide unasked-for romantic resolution to a character we don't really care all that much about (because again, they tend to be fairly unimportant). Hence why they're minor sins.

Usually, they tend to be very unimportant, and can be ignored safely. Which makes me question why they're even there. All they do is turn off people who don't like that pairing. Might as well not throw them in and let people come to their own conclusions.

edited 28th Sep '14 10:34:24 AM by IAmNotCreativeEnough