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What are your most hated fanfic tropes

Lavos said:
The fight scenes might be the worst. It's very clear especially with the sword fights that most fanfic authors don't understand how someone with a sword would fight nor did they take the time to watch actual HEMA practitioners demonstrate realistic sword fights/fencing instead of cribbing off of Hollywood's all style no substance choreography. The fucking reverse grip is the most egregious example because any human that's held a sword shaped object will be able to tell that's it's just trash for anything other than some lighthearted thrusting.
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Let's be real almost nobody watched HEMA. But they should if they're writing normal guys with swords.
 
Stimpak Medic said:
I 100% believe that this is the case, either consciously or unconsciously. They don't have the experience or confidence to write someone built like a linebacker and it frightens them just enough to not write it, and that's pretty sad putting it nicely.
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What are you telling me that the linebacker build isn't this guy?...

iu

You mean Scott Bakula's Necessary Roughness lied to me? My day is ruined...

Lavos said:
The fucking reverse grip is the most egregious example because any human that's held a sword shaped object will be able to tell that's it's just trash for anything other than some lighthearted thrusting.
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Thank you! I fucking hate the reverse sword grip.
 
Cariannis said:
Thank you! I fucking hate the reverse sword grip.
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Genuinely anytime I read a passage that has the character hold the sword in reverse grip and CUT something, I'm out
Instant drop and ignore, that shit is too irritating to witness ngl, especially the fuckass 'infinitely sharp and durable double bladed' katana shit. YOU CAN'T CUT WITH A KATANA IN REVERSE BECAUSE YOU CAN'T DELIVER ENOUGH FORCE AND YOUR WRIST ISN'T IN ALIGNMENT.
I can excuse authors not knowing how to write a typical sword duel match with proper movements but that reverse grip is just inexcusable 😭.
 
I've been doing Judo since I was 11. I've taken classes in Karate and Aikido, and while waiting for my Judo class to start, I've tried Kendo. The one major thing I've learned from all of them is that the most important thing is the teacher.

The Karate class had a guy who couldn't have been more than 20 if he was over 18 at all. The Karate class felt like babysitting. The Aikido guy could barely be understood, but he seemed to know how to do the moves. The Kendo guy was good from what I saw and seemed pretty easy-going with the group. I mean, he let me, somebody who wasn't in his class, practice with them. The Judo teacher was an Army paratrooper who taught the class when he wasn't doing stuff for the Army. Best Judo teacher I ever had and the best I've ever seen.

Out of all of them, the Judo and Kendo guys were the only real teachers in the group. Outside of Naruto, something a lot of stories seem to overlook is how important a good teacher is. Even in modern days, it's hard to find a good, reliable teacher in martial arts. Getting fit and eating right is hard for a lot of authors to write about because they don't have the experience. They have just as hard a time with whatever martial arts their super special MC wants to learn.
 
Cariannis said:
Thank you! I fucking hate the reverse sword grip.
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I mean, I kinda get it. If you messed up and someone's real close, maybe you don't have time for a proper grip and gotta try to pull the sword real quick to deflect an incoming strike. It's gonna suck, but better than getting hit. What I don't get is why the next move isn't getting distance and trying to get a proper grip tho.
 
Stanley_Jeb said:
I mean, I kinda get it. If you messed up and someone's real close, maybe you don't have time for a proper grip and gotta try to pull the sword real quick to deflect an incoming strike. It's gonna suck, but better than getting hit. What I don't get is why the next move isn't getting distance and trying to get a proper grip tho.
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I want you to pick up a baseball bat, or a length of steel pipe, and hold it in a firm reverse grip. Then I want you to swing it, even at 2/3 full force, at an object roughly equivalent to the thickness and density of human flesh. You won't be able to respond to this comment afterwards, because your wrist will, in all likelihood, be badly broken. It's all physics at the end of the day, the sword is a lever and you are exerting a lot of force in the wrong direction upon your wrist bones. That's why it's stupid.
 
Truthfully even in sword fights blocking with reverse should be the LAST resort because in reverse grip your guard is shit and you can't protect your hands or prevent the blade from moving with the force of the opponent's blow. It only really works for knife sized daggers built for thrusting like a rondell and even then you have to be up close so that your opponent doesn't just stab your hand.
 
If you messed up and someone got real close, you still wouldn't have the sword in reverse grip. It would still be in your normal grip. And then, instead of spending time changing your grip, it would make more sense to just grapple him or pull out a dagger. That's usually what Dequitem does.

But that's neither here nor there. It's all just rule of cool, probably inspired by kerambit or bowie knife techniques and then improperly applied to swords where it wouldn't be practical. Not everybody's going to research these things. Some people just want their fic to look like a video game or shonen anime (spinning the weapon, leaping 20 feet in the air, doing a taekwondo kick or muay thai elbow when you could have just stabbed the guy, dual-wielding pistols and diving across a room, crossing blades and pushing against each other for 30 seconds while you talk shit to each other...)

There was one guy I collaborated with on a Halo fic a while back who wrote the most retarded actions. His Spartan got up on the roof of a pelican in flight so he could shoot a bunch of banshees down, somehow not just falling off while the pelican was dipping and weaving in the air to evade enemy fire... then when the pelican crashed, he wrote himself hopping out in front of it and stopping its skid with his bare hands, picking it up like He-man picking up a dinosaur or something. I asked him what normally happens in a Halo game when you stand in front of a moving vehicle. He didn't care. Rule of cool. I stopped collaborating with him.

Me, I hate rule of cool. But a lot of people disagree with my stance. They can do whatever they want.
 
Lavos said:
The fight scenes might be the worst. It's very clear especially with the sword fights that most fanfic authors don't understand how someone with a sword would fight nor did they take the time to watch actual HEMA practitioners demonstrate realistic sword fights/fencing instead of cribbing off of Hollywood's all style no substance choreography.
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I would say that they would be fine if they just got the basics good and stuck to them instead of trying to portray characters as swordmasters. Basics, combined with some unfair (usually superhuman physique) advantages, will provide nice results when applied properly

Moreover, there's no need to stick to HEMA. Most of the times I've seen someone try to apply that for a fic... Well, authors fumbled fighting sequences and used too much terminology for something that could be described much simpler

Edit: wording
 
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The inevitable maiming in historical SI's.
Be it the Anakin eye scar, loss of use of an arm, an eye being taken out entirely, I've noticed it always happens.
I don't care for it.
 
KaliYugaFan said:
As the designated gym autist of this website, I have been harping on this point (very publicly!) for YEARS now. It's very gratifying to hear I'm not the only one. As with many things wrong on the internet that I can't blame tumblr for, I blame 2000s chuuni culture; it really popularized this pathetic twig build as the ideal physique.

Additionally, in general I would say that Asian beauty standards (which a huge percentage of fanfic authors have internalized due to their media consumption) really don't prioritize lean muscle mass or physical fitness. They focus on things like having really clear skin, silky hair and a certain facial bone structure over being beefy and strong. This translates especially strongly when people are writing anime fics.

Thirdly, I think for a lot of authors, having a physically active AND visually impressive MC is somewhat threatening, as the authors themselves are oftentimes either some variety of unhealthily skinny, built like a gross potbellied skinnyfat goblin, or just outright hamplanet level fat. They want their MC to be able to do all sorts of cool things, but he still has to look like more or less an ordinary guy or else Mr. Writer is reminded that he himself looks like shit and would be better off spending his time lifting instead of writing.

All these factors combined lead to every 2000s and 2010s Naruto/Harry Potter/etc fanfic featuring the dreaded "runner's build" or "swimmer's build." They don't actually think their MC is built like a high-level distance runner or competitive swimmer. What they're really saying is "this guy can do cool stuff but he doesn't look like it, because I and my readers have paper thin egos and reading about a buff guy doing cool stuff reminds us of getting our heads shoved into toilets back in high school" or some such ridiculous variation.

TLDR it's all DYEL projection all the way down and it's never going to get better.
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It's been like a week since this comment was posted but looking back at the previous pages of this thread, I feel the need to comment on this topic.

One of the reasons as to why everybody goes for the skinny build is, as you say, due to japan's Beauty standard which are the way they are because of Murasaki Shikubu, the authoress of the tale of Genji, who wrote that the perfect male Beauty standard was that of an androginous pretty boy. Pretty much a Bishonen.

And since the tale of Genji is a work that still influences Japanese society to this day, You can get and idea why Bishonen and femboy builds are popular.

Now, the next división I want to make is generational. Because depending on the decade You can see there's a clear diference in the Beauty standards depicted in media.

As a man who grew up in the 90's watching a Lot of 80's media. To me there's a clear difference between Bishonen and femboy.

Bishonen a teenage boys that can have a face and hairstyle indistinguishable from that of a woman. But they still retain the body and voice of a man and do not shy from getting involved in bloody battles and can beat the shit out of you with their bare fists.

As it is the case of all the cast of Saint Seiya or Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho. Every single one of them are pretty boys who might have women faces.

But they take out their tops and you can see that their builds are not effeminate. Yes, they are lean but they do have muscles.

In fact, they have the same builds you can see from characters in boxing animes like Ashita No Joe or Hajime No Ippo. That is to Say, they have the builds of welterweight boxers.

This was the standard that Bishonens had in the 80's. Compare that to modern femboys. That not only have the face, but also the bodies and builds of skinny, flat chested women that the only way to differentiate them from one is by ascertaining if they have a dick.

As in the case of the gay cat in RE Zero or all the boys in Taimanin.

And if you start adding the existence of futas then might as well be no difference between them.

Now to continue with the topic of generational differences, since I grew up watching 80's action héroes movies. My standard on male héroes are those represented by Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme and Even Bruce Willis in their prime.

This is represented in Anime by Goku and other animes of the era like Fist of the North Star, Sakigake Otokojuku, kinnikuman, Baki, Berserk and the first three arcs of Jojo Bizarre Adventure.

I don't know what kind of movies or examples to aspire to did GenZ and Alpha grew up with. But if it was just Naruto with his rather wimp build, then I believe I can see why.

Then again. I've seen Bleach too and I wouldn't call the male designs in that anime as wimpy nor effeminate.

Which leads to my third point. Genre...

Because even today, you can find animes where the characters have classical masculine looks. And I'm not talking about modern adaptations of 80's animes like Baki or Bastard.

As I've said. Bleach is a modern anime and the male cast looks classically Manly in which you cannot call any of them femboys. So too series like Kengan Asura, Record of Ragnarok, One Piece (Where there's also a Lot of Manly characters like whitebeard, Garp or Zoro, though this one is also two edge as there's lots of androginous characters too)

But the point is, the themes of the anime also play a part. And since most of the Isekai genre revolve around MC's with Kirito-like designs and modern shonen is dominated by either Issei or Deku designs, then that also can explain the why of this issue.


Me, however... My idealized male body would either be Schwarzenegger during his Golden era or pretty much just Baki in the Modern Era.

Though as I said. Growing up watching 80's anime has Made me not see anything wrong with Bishonen characters, but only in the classical sense of the Word.
 
Lord_Indoril_Nerevar said:
Then again. I've seen Bleach too and I wouldn't call the male designs in that anime as wimpy nor effeminate.

Which leads to my third point. Genre...

Because even today, you can find animes where the characters have classical masculine looks. And I'm not talking about modern adaptations of 80's animes like Baki or Bastard.

As I've said. Bleach is a modern anime and the male cast looks classically Manly in which you cannot call any of them femboys.
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I love Bleach man, it's my favorite of the Big Three by a mile and I've been a huge fan of Kubo since the mid 2000s. All that being said, I want you to go look at the CANON heights and weights for some of these characters. Hell, you can even look at the heights and weights for DBZ characters too. They're all like 5'7 and 150lbs, because the average Japanese man is like 5'7 and 150lbs. The characters being drawn with visible abs and some decent vascularity in their biceps doesn't take away from the fact that they're all fucking tiny.
 
KaliYugaFan said:
I love Bleach man, it's my favorite of the Big Three by a mile and I've been a huge fan of Kubo since the mid 2000s. All that being said, I want you to go look at the CANON heights and weights for some of these characters. Hell, you can even look at the heights and weights for DBZ characters too. They're all like 5'7 and 150lbs, because the average Japanese man is like 5'7 and 150lbs. The characters being drawn with visible abs and some decent vascularity in their biceps doesn't take away from the fact that they're all fucking tiny.
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Then I say normal humans in that verse must be the size of Munchkins or oompa lompas. (That is to Say, everybody is Rukia-sized) Because Ichigo himself towers over every single member of the female cast and chad is even bigger than him. And Kenpachi and Sunshi are just as, if not much taller.

I think this is a case of anatomy taking a sabbatical like sometimes happened in old mangas like in captain tsubasa.

You just need to see the last manga panel to see what I'm talking about.

images
 
Lightbringer said:
Game mechanics into a fic.
It does annoy me but what annoys me the most is how I don't find a plausible solution for that.
At least when I am writing.
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Have the mechanics be a simplified version of the 'reality' of it as it were, like discovering in Skyrim the effects of eating Giant's Toe and Nightshade, are they actually consuming it or are they just distilling it and pouring a reactive agent on it to see what effect it has to see its effect, does the solvent turn purple for poison or start to congeal to signify paralasys
 
Lord_Indoril_Nerevar said:
As a man who grew up in the 90's watching a Lot of 80's media.
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I'm kind of glad I grew up in the 80s and didn't get into anime until I was in college. The first time I saw a bishonen I just laughed and made gay jokes. I remember there was one guy who was supposed to be a samurai hero who fought demons with his katana but he wore a pink dress all the time... Inuyasha, that's it. It took me a while to remember his name. I never took those types of character seriously, I was just like, "Okay, Japan is weird, but at least they have some cool cartoons (like Ninja Scroll)".

Learning that this all stems from an old Japanese epic written by a woman, I guess South Park summed it up best, when Stan asks his dad: "Why do Japanese girls get to decide who's gay?"

Lightbringer said:
Game mechanics into a fic.
It does annoy me but what annoys me the most is how I don't find a plausible solution for that.
At least when I am writing.
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I agree with that. I write a lot of stuff inspired by video games, and it's a constant headache trying to take the stuff that happens in the game and translate it into a realistic world of three dimensions where things happen in real time. Sometimes I have to do major modifications to canon in order to make it work. Like for example, how flying units in a Fire Emblem game will just park themselves on the enemy phase and can be attacked in melee (I scrapped that and rewrote battle strategy to rely heavily on archers). Or why town portals in Diablo wouldn't break commercial trade (because of limitations on distance, and the amount of mass that can pass through them). Or how anyone has time in the middle of a swordfight to drink a potion (magical belts that transfer the potion's healing magic into your body just by tapping on the vial 3 times). Or the concept of getting an instant full heal when leveling up, and then following a gameplay strategy meant to exploit that feature, like making what should be a suicidal attack, knowing that the XP you gain from the attack will fully heal you so you can withstand the counter-attack (I haven't solved that one yet).

But that's also part of the fun of planning out a new story for me, which is trying to wrestle with these gameplay contradictions and make them make sense.
 
Lord_Indoril_Nerevar said:
Then I say normal humans in that verse must be the size of Munchkins or oompa lompas. (That is to Say, everybody is Rukia-sized) Because Ichigo himself towers over every single member of the female cast and chad is even bigger than him. And Kenpachi and Sunshi are just as, if not much taller.

I think this is a case of anatomy taking a sabbatical like sometimes happened in old mangas like in captain tsubasa.

You just need to see the last manga panel to see what I'm talking about.

images
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Captain Tsubasa is absolutely hilarious for how bad the proportions are.
足球小將 (Captain Tsubasa) | European soccer players, Captain tsubasa team logos, Anime soccer team
 
I always took oversized proportions in Japanese art to mean that the artist is attempting to draw focus to one part of the image over the rest of it. It's sort of like how you'll see something cool in nature, like maybe a bird on a tree branch, and then you snap a picture and in the picture the bird is just a tiny red speck in a wall of green foliage... because your occipital lobe was magnifying the bird as being the most salient part of the image, but the camera doesn't know anything about what's important and was just recording the actual light rays. I think these manga artists are trying to represent the world not as a camera would see it, but as the human brain sees it in the moment..... and a lot of the time they go overboard, but it is what it is. IIRC the people who built the Parthenon were doing something similar when they architected the columns at slightly weird angles and relative proportions to provide better optics when you're walking in.
 
Something that's recently started to grind my gears: Aging up the cast.
Not growing them up, aging them up. Because in a lot of these stories, we're supposed to believe they're totally 18 or 21 or whatever the hell now, except their body doesn't change to accommodate that, the descriptions being, one-to-one, what you'd get in the anime where they're still teens. And even if the body is grown up, their minds are still stuck in full-on teenager mode, because again, the personality is taken from the source material AT BEST, meaning that you don't have a grown ass person, you just stuck a child in an older body.

I mean... Seriously, what's the point then? "Oh, they're totally adults, it's just they are physically and mentally underdeveloped?" Really? Is that really what we're going with? Is this just a thing we're doing because we believe a magical number on a piece of plastic or whatever the fuck their ID is made out of trumps the damn reason there's consent laws in the first place?
It's not even the "they're kids" thing, honestly, because let's be real, this is QQ, so I ain't even mad about that. It's the fact that this is taken as a blank check without any of the actual effort required to properly make this work at all.
 
Something Something Age is just a Number, Jail is just a Room Something Something.

A character will always be "x" age while the author will continue to grow older.

Trying to age up the cast to make it feel less awkward writing about a bunch of fictional teens while inserting as a relatively similar age is not the hill to die on.
 
I assume they do it specifically to avoid censorship issues on other sites, or as a habit developed while writing on other sites. Same reason as you'll see a bunch of VN games where the male protagonist lives with a "landlady" who's in her 40s and two "roommates" who are 2-3 years older and younger than he is (and he'll be 20 just so his little sis roommate can be 18, even though she usually looks closer to 15 or 16). And in-game you'll be allowed to manually change the name of the relationship they all have with you and what you call each other. All of this silliness started however many years ago when Patreon decided to ban anything containing incest.
 
Lightbringer said:
Game mechanics into a fic.
It does annoy me but what annoys me the most is how I don't find a plausible solution for that.
At least when I am writing.
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A few I've seen:

In Dungeon Life, it's an interface created by the God of Order, mostly to let everyone understand the cause and effect relationship between their actions and the results. He didn't create the "System"; he just created the interlace for it, and it looks artificial because it is.

The world was created as a game with living pieces by departed gods, and while the gods are gone the rules remain.

To incentivize desired behavior. Play the "game" and you get rewarded; don't "play" and you don't.

In Dungeon Core Chat Room the gamelike System (along with the chat room of the title) was created long ago by the gods (ascended mortals) to preserve and improve the world. Before the System the world was sliding towards multiple apocalypse, magic was both less available and far more dangerous, Dungeon Cores had something like a 90% fatality rate and existed in isolation, etc. One of the few examples I've seen of a System story where its intent is explicitly benign.
 
Oh boy, do I have quite a bit to say, so here is some I can think off the top of my head. I'm spoiling this so users in the future don't have to deal with my yapping while scrolling. Please note this my own opinion and biases, you're entitled to your own opinion and don't have to agree with me.

Scenes where a character says or does something another character doesn't like or want to hear and they tell them they 'hate' them out of pettiness, and the former just smugly states they love them to. Snarky and adorkable characters in generally annoy me, but this one really grinds my gears. Perhaps this is different for others, but even then I believe your should never tell a loved one you hate them, even as a joke.

Perhaps it's because I'm a little autistic and socially anxious, but another thing I never liked is where in order show how close and/or familiar two characters are to each other, the author has them looking at each other telling us they're supposedly having a whole ass conversation like they're telepaths. The millions of years of evolution and the invention and continued progress of language were specifically so we no longer had to rely on vague and often misunderstood facial expressions to communicate.

Quick glances and brief expressions are fine, but there's other ways to write discretion, it's called going into an empty room and having a private conversation. Are people too coomer-brained nowadays to have two characters alone in a room without some kind of sexual vibe going on? Also whispering is a thing, and people know when to mind their own business, so there's that.

Characters who growl or snarl when angry, because how is anyone is supposed to take you seriously and not think you have the ferociousness of a 5 year old? Glaring is overused, yes, but it's very effective in getting the intent across.

Not really a trope but I think it's prevalent enough for me to notice. Authors who don't bother giving descriptions when introducing any new characters to the story the current surroundings where a scene is taking place because they either expect everyone to already know or in forum sites like this one they just post an image and leave it at that. Describing a character or a place and letting the reader fill in the blanks and come up with their own interpretation is one of the biggest appeals in all creative literature.

Relying on the reader's supposed knowledge or images will massively hinder your ability to improve as a writer, especially if you want to write original fiction. It also creates a culture of laziness from the readers because they will expect an image and not know how to visual your own creative intention in their own way. Anyone who says they're tired of reading the same people and places being described is an uncreative hack who has never tried writing, so you shouldn't listen to them anyway.

In order to convey silence, particularly stunned silence, authors will use this "...", instead of just writing about the silence which serves the same purpose but much better. If a character isn't saying anything, there's no need for quotation marks if there is no dialogue being said, it can't be that hard. Ever since I noticed that it, infuriates me to no end and I want to yell at the author because it's so unnecessary. I am on my hands and knees begging people to please stop doing this.

I've been wanting to say this for a long time so be prepared. This is more for Worm but can apply to other examples as well, but it's whenever the story kills its own momentum and shifts over to a PHO react chapter just for the purpose fellating their own protagonist, especially after a big turning point in the story or a major story arc ends.

This one bothers me specifically not just because of my deep and systemic hatred for all forms of reaction content, but also because PHO is such a non-factor in canon. When I read Worm, I was honestly expecting for PHO to be included alot more, but before Greg's POV chapter, it only gets brief mentioning a few times at best. It's mainly a Ward thing, but apparently the community stopped ignoring that story for a second and just ran with it, writing it in a way that resembles an unholy abomination of reddit and twitter where a ton of important characters in the setting are on it and everything posted there is taken at face value.

In my opinion, where I very much could be wrong, it's supposed to be one of the many niche internet forum sites of that time period. But for some very strange reason I'm supposed to believe the opinions of Lubegonecold_1991, 88Hitlermybeloved88 (how the Empire and the other gangs in general are written is a topic for another time), and CapedickSuckerXxX on the protagonist and their actions are important enough to warrent pausing the story and hear them out? Who honestly gives a shit about these fake ass opinions, stop writing a reaction fic and get back to the story I want to read. PHO segments serve absolutely zero purpose to the story, nor does it advance the plot in any meaningful way.

No, Tin Mother isn't real, she is fanmade concept and certainly isn't Dragon, she has more important things to do. No, Greg isn't breaking the 4th wall and spouting crackpot theories that are actually true. In fact, in his chapter, it's shown he's a pathetic loser who shamelessly lied about being in BB when Leviathan attacked in order to get internet brownie points. And no, all the major heroes and villains and their organizations are not publicly known to be hanging around there and confirming or denying things, because again, they have better things to do then browse some internet forum. If you really want to make a PHO chapter, then that's fine, just put it under extras so I don't have to read it.
 
Deranged Degenerate said:
Oh boy, do I have quite a bit to say, so here is some I can think off the top of my head. I'm spoiling this so users in the future don't have to deal with my yapping while scrolling. Please note this my own opinion and biases, you're entitled to your own opinion and don't have to agree with me.

Scenes where a character says or does something another character doesn't like or want to hear and they tell them they 'hate' them out of pettiness, and the former just smugly states they love them to. Snarky and adorkable characters in generally annoy me, but this one really grinds my gears. Perhaps this is different for others, but even then I believe your should never tell a loved one you hate them, even as a joke.

Perhaps it's because I'm a little autistic and socially anxious, but another thing I never liked is where in order show how close and/or familiar two characters are to each other, the author has them looking at each other telling us they're supposedly having a whole ass conversation like they're telepaths. The millions of years of evolution and the invention and continued progress of language were specifically so we no longer had to rely on vague and often misunderstood facial expressions to communicate.

Quick glances and brief expressions are fine, but there's other ways to write discretion, it's called going into an empty room and having a private conversation. Are people too coomer-brained nowadays to have two characters alone in a room without some kind of sexual vibe going on? Also whispering is a thing, and people know when to mind their own business, so there's that.

Characters who growl or snarl when angry, because how is anyone is supposed to take you seriously and not think you have the ferociousness of a 5 year old? Glaring is overused, yes, but it's very effective in getting the intent across.

Not really a trope but I think it's prevalent enough for me to notice. Authors who don't bother giving descriptions when introducing any new characters to the story the current surroundings where a scene is taking place because they either expect everyone to already know or in forum sites like this one they just post an image and leave it at that. Describing a character or a place and letting the reader fill in the blanks and come up with their own interpretation is one of the biggest appeals in all creative literature.

Relying on the reader's supposed knowledge or images will massively hinder your ability to improve as a writer, especially if you want to write original fiction. It also creates a culture of laziness from the readers because they will expect an image and not know how to visual your own creative intention in their own way. Anyone who says they're tired of reading the same people and places being described is an uncreative hack who has never tried writing, so you shouldn't listen to them anyway.

In order to convey silence, particularly stunned silence, authors will use this "...", instead of just writing about the silence which serves the same purpose but much better. If a character isn't saying anything, there's no need for quotation marks if there is no dialogue being said, it can't be that hard. Ever since I noticed that it, infuriates me to no end and I want to yell at the author because it's so unnecessary. I am on my hands and knees begging people to please stop doing this.

I've been wanting to say this for a long time so be prepared. This is more for Worm but can apply to other examples as well, but it's whenever the story kills its own momentum and shifts over to a PHO react chapter just for the purpose fellating their own protagonist, especially after a big turning point in the story or a major story arc ends.

This one bothers me specifically not just because of my deep and systemic hatred for all forms of reaction content, but also because PHO is such a non-factor in canon. When I read Worm, I was honestly expecting for PHO to be included alot more, but before Greg's POV chapter, it only gets brief mentioning a few times at best. It's mainly a Ward thing, but apparently the community stopped ignoring that story for a second and just ran with it, writing it in a way that resembles an unholy abomination of reddit and twitter where a ton of important characters in the setting are on it and everything posted there is taken at face value.

In my opinion, where I very much could be wrong, it's supposed to be one of the many niche internet forum sites of that time period. But for some very strange reason I'm supposed to believe the opinions of Lubegonecold_1991, 88Hitlermybeloved88 (how the Empire and the other gangs in general are written is a topic for another time), and CapedickSuckerXxX on the protagonist and their actions are important enough to warrent pausing the story and hear them out? Who honestly gives a shit about these fake ass opinions, stop writing a reaction fic and get back to the story I want to read. PHO segments serve absolutely zero purpose to the story, nor does it advance the plot in any meaningful way.

No, Tin Mother isn't real, she is fanmade concept and certainly isn't Dragon, she has more important things to do. No, Greg isn't breaking the 4th wall and spouting crackpot theories that are actually true. In fact, in his chapter, it's shown he's a pathetic loser who shamelessly lied about being in BB when Leviathan attacked in order to get internet brownie points. And no, all the major heroes and villains and their organizations are not publicly known to be hanging around there and confirming or denying things, because again, they have better things to do then browse some internet forum. If you really want to make a PHO chapter, then that's fine, just put it under extras so I don't have to read it.
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A different way trope 4 manifests is that they do give a description of the character but then post an AI image of that which completely ruins whatever image I've built in my mind. And it's usually shit 99% of the time.After the first few times I just learned to ignore that shit completely

Also yeah PHO chapters suck because it's reading about how the characters actions have affected the city instead of, you know actually showing us that when they get into the next "event", interact with other capes or patrol. Also some fics try to be clever trying to tell us that fuckng empire capes as ppl who'd comment in such places
 
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