Have you ever copied a fan fic or story over to an editable format and made corrections or annotations? I haven't done so with fan fiction but have been tempted to more than once. I have made annotations or comments to actual books though.
I have seen a few good fics that had relatively minor errors that individually could be glossed over (and easily corrected without changing any of the plot or feel of the story) but as they accumulated become annoying. It is not just grammatical and spelling errors but minor things from the actual work. Characters making out of character statements or actions are the most common but I find myself being annoyed by extremely minor details that really shouldn't bug me far too often.
Here are some examples of extremely minor details that recently (as in the last few days) bugged me:
- A character's canon eye color is stated to be one color but the fan fic has the eye color be different. In this case it stood out because the original work made mention of the eye color repeatedly.
- Statement about two characters both being the same age within days when the original story stated clearly that one character is 10 months older than the other.
- A character is shown to always have a clean room is even shown to be upset by a dirty room and compelled to clean the room even if the character has no reason to do so being stated in one single throw away line to always have a messy room.
- A character shown to care about their physical appearance wearing many different (some of which would have been extremely expensive) articles of clothing stated to always wear rags.
- Statement about the ease of an attack or defense (to the point anyone could do it) when the canon story stated and showed that that it is difficult for the majority of people and the ease in which the character was able to do it in the original story was to portray how good that character was.
4 comments:
What series and characters are the examples taken from?
It doesn't really matter for the post but
1. Harry Potter - Eye color is mentioned as green a lot in the books would even have accepted the eye color of the actor that plays him in the movies but the mentioned color was completely different from both.
2. Harry Potter again. Hermione is stated to be 10 months older than Harry not a few days younger like the fic I read had mentioned.
3. Ranma. It is shown that Ranma's room is always clean (we never see it messy) and that he really dislikes messes to the point that he will stop what he is doing to clean it (for example Miss Hinako's apartment).
4. Ranma again. Ranma does not wear rags. In the manga we see him wear fairly expensive silks, Cheongsams, Kimonos, Tuxedos (more than once), occasionally a gi, a few really expensive dresses (like during the martial arts dining story arc, etc.) We see him complain about his clothes being damaged and about it getting dirty. We also see him get upset when people didn't seem to find him attractive (for example on the hot spring island) and he went into competitions because he felt people slighted his/her appearance (one of the reasons he went on a date with Kodachi and the competition versus Tsubasa).
5. Fairly common in multiple fandoms can't recall the specific one that I was thinking about at the time of writing the post at this moment.
Number 4 makes me wonder why Ranma would have been all that bothered the way he was by having to pay the large bill to the Picolet's family?
While the manga is not always consistent the answer that seems most likely is that at that particular time cash was short for some reason. Though really considering the clothes Ranma and Akane wear, the fact Ranma and Genma both will steal, that Ranma has worked to get cash on occasion when short on it (like when Mousse was carrying it and left accidentally left it at home), etc. paying off the debt should really have only been a nuisance not a real problem. There probably were other reasons beyond the financial debt at play (possibly culturally, though it could be in part because Ranma very thrifty with his money - shown to be happy when saving money, shown to bargain prices down, and shown to be sad when having to spend money).
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