What don'ts have you do'd?
Challenge: Head over to the Things You Don't Like in Stories thread. Pick out 3 (or so) things Mibbians 'dislike' in stories that you've done. Give us the details!
Tag: Tag 3 people to do the challenge.
“A character who is supposedly a 'unique special snowflake' who ALWAYS turns out to be a walking cliche.”
Ineffable Plan was the first full-length, non-fanfiction story I ever wrote. It's now probably over 10 years old and I've lost and found that piece so many times over (on old accounts, pieces in e-mail, on various cloud-type drives). It's guilty of so many writing sins, but it ranks pretty high on the 'special snowflake' scale. The story is about a girl named Justine (originally 'Justice') who goes off to college and meets a boy. The boy turns out to be a vampire who is her soulmate (they know this because when they swap blood, a tattoo appears on their bodies) who often tampers with her memory to keep his vampire-ness a secret.
Justine's 'special snowflake' quality is that, if I'm remembering correctly (I literally haven't read this story in about a decade - even when I transferred it to Mibba, I just copied and pasted), she somehow saves or destroys the vampire race? And then comes back to life (in an unfinished sequel)? Something like that, there's a whole monologue devoted to it at some point near the end of the story.
“May not be the actual story per se, but when people add in author's notes, "I don't know what I'm doing/where I'm going with this,"/"Let's just see where this goes,"/"I don't know what to feel about this," because I'm NOT going to stick around for your roller coaster of a WIP if you don't even know the direction you're taking the story. Don't expect readers and rave reviews (from me, that is) if you're kinda just going with the flow, not knowing where this WIP is going at all.”
Due South is a Lucifer fanfiction I started when the show was like 3 or so episodes in. Lucifer is based off the character 'Lucifer' from Neil Gaiman's Sandman - I have not read Neil Gaiman's Sandman. So Due South is a story that I am in no way taking seriously. It's probably the most lax I've ever been when writing a story and I've written it, purely, to amuse myself and the easily amused.
In the long summary, I mention that the story is a garbage story for garbage people. I also summarize the story as: Lucifer's penis opens this girl's third eye (not her vagina, don't be disgusting) and now she has to deal with seeing gross hell-stuff and possibly being damned for all eternity. So, yeah, I definitely don't know where I'm going with it. I don't know how I feel about it. Hell, I don't even know if I ever even plan to finish it. It's 100% a go-with-the-flow kind of story and I'm 100% okay with that.
“When people use words like "member" and "warmth" instead of penis and vagina.”
Driving Lesson is probably the most explicit thing I have written on Mibba and it's not even that explicit. It's a SPN, reader-insert, smutty fanfiction. (Self-inserts also rank pretty high on the 'Dislike' charts, so I'm assuming the same hatred applies to reader-inserts?) It was a written based on a prompt submitted to a SPN fanfic website; the prompt being: Imagine Dean teaching you how to drive Baby and it just turns into really hot car sex. - and that's literally it, that' the whole story.
While I don't think I use the exact words 'warmth' or 'penis', I do think I used euphemisms for sex organs - because penis and vagina isn't always sexy. I do use the phrase wet center. Sue me.
“Also, female characters. Call me sexist (don't, I'm female too) but I can't stand females as main characters. I don't know why, I just don't like them unless they're very, very well written.”
I think pretty much all of my original stories feature women/girls as main characters - especially when I'm writing YA fic. Because if I have to read one more book about a boy and his pet or a boy trying to 'find who he is' by shitting all over some poor girl, I'm gonna lose it.
Gin Romeo is a story about a girl that slowly pulled away from social life and is slowly trying to push herself back into it. She's accidentally isolated herself (due to insecurities and anxieties), but she doesn't want spend the rest of her life looking out at the world from her window or only experiencing it through books. So she starts with small steps, forcing herself to have at least one drink a day at a local pub.
Silver is about a fae girl forced to live in the human world because of her mother's crimes. Even though the city life (and all the metal and silver that surrounds her) is slowly poisoning her, she has to learn to adjust and make due.
DUMBO is a story about a human girl who stumbles and gets trapped in NYC's underground faerie world.
Guilty and proud! We definitely need more women as main characters in fiction! We need more diverse women as main characters in fiction! We need more women as main characters in more kinds of fiction! More women! More women! ::And lesbians::
So that's what my "Things You Hate..." list looks like. What's yours?