I've never seen or read Jojo and have no interest in it, but "And then it got gayer" sounds like a pretty apt description of the plot from what I've heard.

>there's TONS of fics but a terrifying amount are stuff like "x reader" and hopping on the transgender trend
Oh no, not this. Transgendered characters can be fantastic when written correctly, because there's a lot of potential in the struggle to feel like you really belong in your own body... but in most fics, that's not how they're written. In Western fics, it really just smacks of trans fetishism, "I have to put in a trans character because representation!" and/or "I want to genderbend X character, but I don't want to seem problematic, so I'll just say they're trans instead." And it always happens to characters that show absolutely no signs of being trans in canon, too...

Coming from a fandom where your self-insert can marry anyone you choose, I don't have a problem with the concept of character/reader fics. But most of them make the characters into different people personality-wise, push their relationships with others aside to focus on the reader, use too much headcanon etc. so they're really painful to read. And to be honest, they make me cringe a little. :|

i never had any interest in it, i tried watching it AND reading it about 3 times and gave up each time but now that i'm watching it in "only japanese" (jp audio + jp subs) it's a loooot more standable. i guess half of why i couldn't stand it before was just the translations. and it's at the perfect level for me right now; a lot of words i don't know but not an insane amount that makes me want to instantly give up. the second season has a smarter main character and a much less "completely random shit" style of plot too, so i started enjoying it more around there. now i'm on the ep where i KNOW the main character crossdresses (i see it in the preview pic)....

i like writing stuff like an unexpected character being transgender or so-and-so is asexual or something BUT the fic is done so that it actually fits in with canon. if we, say, see the character naked in canon or something then it's a no-go.

i have the same problem with ex. giving people random mental disorders; if by all appearances they're 100% fine in canon then i'm not about to give them something that would "break canon" unless, say, dr. so-and-so gets diagnosed with a terminal illness during my actual fic (not a pre-standing condition). though in general, when i do write (which isn't often at all anymore sadly) i just tend to focus on trying to get crazy/minor pairings to work out and don't add anything extra because that's enough of a challenge by itself haha!!

I haven't been liking fic in the past 5+ years; riiiight when all these tumblr people started overrunning every fandom i found myself in i completely lost interest. If I'm reading from an old fandom or a fandom that happens to be full of people who write in the "old style" (aka. they've actually read fiction in their lives and seem to be writing for fun, not to be cool) then I'm fine, but i just can't read these new modern types of fics and they certainly don't make ME want to write any... i don't mean the "quality" is bad, it's just that they read like they haven't put any of their feelings into it and don't even know what fiction is so they're writing a blog post instead, it's hard to explain...

Edited 2017-09-24 11:18 pm (UTC)

For me, it's just I personally can't stand the art style. What's it about? I read the Wikipedia plot summary, but it's pretty much incomprehensible to me lmao. So this guy has a foster brother who is a huge jackass and wants to take over the world or something? Also re: the translations, it's amazing how much a subpar scanlation or sub/localization can change your perception on a series :o

I like the fics that give characters mental illnesses, then actually have them display the symptoms of it AND also give good reasons why they would have said disorders. But those are pretty far and in between... so much English fic is pretty much "well X has ADD, Y is bipolar with OCD and Z is trans with PTSD and depression" when none of the characters have any reason to have those conditions in the first place. And then they proceed to say the character has X disorder but never show it with their writing... again, no problem with that sort of stuff if it's hinted at in canon or it suits the character... I just want a little more justification than "oh they don't act/look 100% like their biological gender, therefore trans" or "well they're super neat and organized, therefore OCD". That and better research/writing...

I really don't like what Tumblr has done to fandoms. I don't know if Tumblr is 100% behind it, but it seems like right when it started becoming the "hip fandom site" everything pretty much turned to garbage. So many people in my fandoms try to police what you can/can't write about, this character HAS to be this sexuality, these characters HAVE to get together, you can't put this ship in your fic because it's problematic/abusive/wrong. Ugh. I mostly just read Japanese fics on Twitter/Pixiv nowadays because it's starting to get so bad. I don't want to come off as "oh wow all Western fics are sooo terrible" because they're not, and there are bad Japanese fics too, but it's becoming harder to go through all the crappy English fics to find the good ones.

I kind of know what you mean with the blog post thing, and it is hard to describe. The way they're written doesn't evoke any emotions or mental imagery in the readers. Telling instead of showing, maybe? Like, X did this thing and this is how they feel about it. Don't just tell me what they did or how they feel, I want you to describe it! Make me feel the same way that character is feeling! Don't just say "this character is walking in a forest", I want more details than that. What kind of forest is it? Is it daytime, or can they see the moon through the trees? Do they enjoy the solitude of nature, or does being alone in the wilderness make them uncomfortable? Don't say "these characters are in love", tell me about how their hearts speed up whenever their eyes meet, they can't stop thinking about each other, their stomachs are tied into knots and their palms get sweaty, I want to be shown that they like each other and not told. Or something like that... I read a lot and have several friends who write, so seeing such bland descriptions of emotions and scenery gets on my nerves.

Sorry if this post doesn't make sense, I'm just hastily typing something up before work haha

It's just a big parody of the typical shounen genre that essentially skips everything except for the "intro episode" "train to level up" "mini boss fight" "real boss fight" "closing episode that opens up the plot for the next arch". So for example, a character's been cut in half but they're still alive for as long as the protagonist or evil guy talks. The gay stuff is... over the course of the episodes the fighting poses and costumes get progressively more suggestive (hugging, or like "sexy female models" only it's crazy muscular men; a few episodes ago I saw Tentacle Monster). And there's been 1-2 times so far where they've thrown in suggestive lines between (male) main characters.

So far I've seen two archs:

1. A mask turns the main character's evil adopted brother into a vampire, who then creates a horde of zombies; main character learns how to use "energy waves" as an attack, kills him and destroys the mask. Setting is 1800's England.

2. 50 years later another mask turns up; the creators of the masks (an ancient species of super-strong beings, weak only to sunlight) revive from being petrified and are looking for a jewel that will make them immune to sunlight. Main character who could already use "energy waves" even better than arch 1's main character from birth, has to train his waves and defeat the 3-4 creators. Setting is early 1900's America and Italy, mostly. No zombies to be found.

I assume that each timeline involves descendants of the original cast and that's why it gets so confusing. The second arch has the grandkid of the main character + the grandkid of a guy who accompanied him, but relatives of the other first arch characters haven't been mentioned at all.

Yeah exactly! It's like they're spurting out their detailed headcanon into a blog post and then publishing it as if it were fanfic. I've started reading pixiv fanfic recently but some are still waaay over my head! And no one writes in any other language I know *sniff*

I've also noticed that people are actually coming to comment on people's fics JUST to insult them now. I almost never saw flames in the past unless it was obviously a person who just hated yaoi or who was crazy about correct grammar/spelling or something. But now it's just like... really mean people, absolutely everywhere, who don't understand that this is a "by fan for fan" and "entertainment-only" kind of thing. My wife even saw one where a flamer thought that fanfic writers PAY people to beta read! I'd never gotten a flame in my life until the past 2-3 years, where out of nowhere I got like two in the same week.

I never got many likes / comments but recently even if I write for a popular series I get absolutely NOTHING. Meanwhile self-insert Tumblr crap fic has 3,000 comments. It's depressing...