part 353 whalers on the moon

[aphanon_meme]

We've been here over a year now! I can hardly believe it! Dreamwidth's been pretty good, I'd say, with almost no downtime to speak of and all that! Anyway... how is your spring going? Or I guess it's almost summer, isn't it? Hopefully it's been well! I've been catching up on work and new movies, all very exciting stuff, I'm sure.

Enjoy part 353!

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Comments

Elements of good fanfics

[(Anonymous)]

What do you consider necessary for a good fanfic? Can you forgive some mistakes if something else is handled perfectly? You can be Hetalia specific or talk more generally.

Re: Elements of good fanfics

[(Anonymous)]

That the characters are kept IC is a must for me. I can forgive a highschool/Coffee Shop/Anything else AU as long as it's kept IC.

Re: Elements of good fanfics

[(Anonymous)]

While they aren't the most important to me, spelling, grammar and formatting are the first things I see when I click on a fic, so they need to make a decent first impression or otherwise I'll give up on the fic almost immediately.

For Hetalia fics, I absolutely need some humour in order to really love a fic. I don't mean that every fic has to be a comedy (actually, I love, love angst), but I get really bored when an entire fic is 100% serious business because in my eyes, you can't really write the cast in-character if you take out all the wackiness from canon.

On the other hand, I'd much rather read a serious business moping fic than a fic that has poor attempts at comedy.

Re: Elements of good fanfics

[(Anonymous)]

Correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I've backclicked out of a lot of fics that would have otherwise been fine, but the problem was that they were punctuated incorrectly, or there were so many typos that it looked as if the writer hadn't even bothered to run it through an auto-spellcheck.

For Hetalia specifically, that the characters be a reasonable interpretation of current characterization is important. This can be difficult with characters that have very little characterization, but for ones that have been in several strips illustrating different time periods, there is no excuse.

Re: Elements of good fanfics

[(Anonymous)]

Good characterization and prose. It's a shame they so rarely go together. If a fic is really well written, the characterization tends to leave me wanting more and feeling that the story would have worked better as original fiction. And when the characterization is great, the way the story is written usually feels super amateurish. Could it be that a lot of people are good at one but not the other?