fanfic peeve of the week

[buggery]

Because I'm finding myself with plenty enough to gripe about at least once a week.

It's in the details, people:

Lex's desk is glass, not wood; it has metal legs and no drawers; it's really more of a table. The chair behind it is neither padded nor leather. These things are clearly visible in numerous episodes.

Or is there another show people are watching that I've missed out on? From the number of stories in which Lex swivels his leather desk chair for a blowjob, or Clark fetches lube out of the desk drawer, or someone gets bent over his heavy wood desk and grips the sides of it, I'm starting to wonder.

Comments

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Well, to me, the props around Lex (Lex in particular, though the same can be said for other characters too) are part of his characterisation. The heavy wood desk and expensive leather chair are stereotypical of what a rich and powerful man would be expected to have in his office, and so Lex's choice of furnishings that don't fit the mold seems that much more indicative of his personal quirks.

I find the desk in particular fascinating, because it's transparent; between the glass top and the narrow, bare-minimum legs, there's no way to hide anything behind or below it. Even the back of the chair isn't solidly opaque, and I suspect there's both substance and style to Lex's choice of these furnishings.

Would it honestly not jar you if, in an otherwise well-written story, Lex was drinking from a bottle of Evian instead of Ty Nant, or worse, chugging a 40? How about if the pool table in his library suddenly turned into a foosball table? Or if he drove up the Kents' drive in a Mazda Miata? Sure, I could believe any of these things of Lex, given appropriate set-up or explanation, but I'm not going to accept them as fitting the Lex we know without the author convincing me why I should.

Is every single prop important? Of course not. But neither are all props unimportant, to be discarded or altered at whim for no discernible reason.

Characterisation-via-props aside, getting unambiguous and obvious details wrong is just plain lazy. I hope I never see a story where Jonathan Kent (in anything other than an AU) has a profession other than farmer, or the Smallville High sports teams go by the name Smallville Sharks, or the town is located in Louisiana.

And I'm firmly of the opinion that it's never the wrong time to make your stories better. I'm as guilty of letting little things get by me in my fanfiction as any other writer, but I'd hate to see all the good writers in Smallville (or any) fandom up and decide that they don't need to be bothered using proper English, spelling characters' names right, or respecting the laws of physics and anatomy, so long as they're telling a good tale.

I empathise and agree with those who are weary of the recent debates over style. I'm not on any of the mailing lists myself, in part to avoid just such pointless kvetching, so maybe I'm not as sensitive to the concept of meta discussion at this point as some of my peers. But there's a world of difference between me saying "I don't like stories written in X tense or from Y POV or with Z pairing" and me pointing out flaws of storytelling that are being shared by multiple authors, which, if addressed, would lead to more enjoyable stories for everyone.

Also? I'm just really, really anal.

Re:

[happyminion.livejournal.com]

Well, to me, the props around Lex (Lex in particular, though the same can be said for other characters too) are part of his characterisation.

I hope not. His couch is really ugly. *g*

Jack, you are going to miss out on enjoying a lot of stories like this.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Jack, you are going to miss out on enjoying a lot of stories like this.

If I actually deleted (or in my case, just didn't finish reading) stories that bugged me in some way, yes, I'd miss out on a lot. But I do my level best to read everything that's posted to an archive, personal site or blog, and of the 1,000+ stories Smallville has thus far spawned, I've only stopped reading 2 or 3 because they were so bad. (That's not counting stories so illegibly formatted I couldn't read them, but even those aren't enough to bump me into double-digits, IIRC.)

I can put up with a lot -- and as someone who notices every misspelled word and misplaced punctuation mark, I do, whether I'm reading fanfiction or mainstream publications -- while still enjoying a story, but that doesn't mean I don't get frustrated, or that I don't notice the same errors spreading from author to author. If nobody points things out, like the fact that one "reigns over" but "reins in" (to use a recent example addressed by someone other than me), lots of writers will never realise that they're making a mistake, and it will just be perpetuated.

And yes, the couch is ugly. (You're referring to the yellow leather one with the metal trim?) I haven't made my mind up what I think yet about why he'd pick such an ugly thing, or whether it's one of the furnishings that came with the castle.