Pet Peeves

Hello! Since we're these days a little too busy to post reviews, we've decided to do another little activity – here, we've gathered all the Pokemon Fanfiction pet peeves of each critic. Enjoy the ranting – erm, I mean, perfectly calm and pleasant opinions!

Ivy (@RiverIvy)'s pet peeves:

1. Everyone Looks Like Models

I guess this doesn't apply only to Pokemon fanfiction, but it still is present a heck lot in them, and it drives me crazy with anger.

In just about EVERY (romance and non-romance alike) book I read, the protagonist is always. Freaking. Described. As extremely hot and beautiful.

"My long, shining cascades of dark pink hair blew gently in the wind as I made my way down the streets. My violet eyes blinked as I watched the cars roll by, and I pushed my tall, slender, finely curved body on as I-"

You get the point. SAME nearly always applies to the main character's love interest, which is equally annoying. And, of course, the bitchy girls, the jerks, and the villains all look like monsters.

I'm not saying that no beautiful people are allowed, especially if it's somehow part of what defines their role in the book, or if they have an actual modeling career. Two or three, okay, but for heaven's sake, what's the point of making the protagonist and all his or her friends flawless?

Heaven forbid any of the good characters be *gasp* average-looking!

2. Cliches

I can name a thousand. Here are just a few:

- MC (main character) is somehow rescued by their love interests in the beginning of the story and goes on an adventure with them *cough*every Gold and Silver fanfic ever*cough**cough* (not to say all of them are bad. Some are amazing, but just about ninety-nine percent of them are exact replicas of each other.)

- MC is forbidden to go on a Pokemon journey because their parents forbid them to (for no reason at all).

- MC is "the chosen one"; again, for no reason really (usually involves legendaries. Pretty much ALWAYS involves legendaries).

- MC encounters dozens of legendaries along the journey, for nor real reason other than "my character is so special!!1"

- WORSE: MC freaking CAPTURES dozens of legendaries along the journey, BONUS points if it passed by in a breeze (which it usually does).

- EVEN WORSE: MC starts off with a legendary (usually Mew. No idea why, it's always fudging Mew.)

- MC has an abusive Dad who's constantly drunk and beats her all the time (nearly always with a dead mother. Idk man).

- Very young characters are mature and very able to take care of themselves in the wild, without ever getting lost, hurt, hungry, thirsty, etc. (keep in mind, usually having little-to-no experience).

3. Eeveelutions

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Eeveelutions just as much as the next person – they're all cute, fluffy, powerful, and best of all, there's a variety to choose from!

But what Pokemon Fanfiction writers will never seem to understand is that they're FUDGING RARE. REALLY, REALLY RARE.

Unless you obtain your Eevee in a REASONABLE way (example: with Bill giving you the egg, like in the games) then blitch, there's no way at all you can get an Eevee as a starter or somehow obtain one along the way.

They always have freaking Eevee! Either they find them in the wild, or they "rescue" them WHICH IS CLICHÉ AS HELL.

I once read a fic that went like this: a girl was running away from home because their abusive father who beats her *cringes* who became like this after her mother dies *double cringes* forbids her from going on a Pokemon journey *triple cringe* so after she escaped, she was lost and hurt, and an Eevee literally, LI-TE-RA-LLY "came out of nowhere" and started licking her fingers, then somehow rescued her. *over 9,000 cringes*

EEVEE DON'T JUST ROAM OUT IN THE WILD YOU UNEDUCATED TEPIG AND THEY CERTAINLY DON'T "POP OUT OF NOWHERE". ARE YOU KIDDING ME? COULDN'T YOU HAVE AT LEAST USED BETTER WORDING THAN "POP OUT OF NOWHERE"???

*deep breath*. All right, sorry about that. Another thing regarding Eeveelutions: why do I always see shiny Umbreon? They're everywhere. I mean, why Umbreon out of all eight Eeveelutions, and do you even know how rare a shiny is? Do you even know what it means? Arceus.

4. MC Beats Every Single Trainer, Gym Leader, Elite Four Member, and Champion in a Breeze

Lord knows how many times I've encountered this. The title speaks for itself: HOW come the MC never loses? HOW!

The Pokemon world is *newsflash* HARD, in case you never knew. You have to spend hours and hours each day training Pokemon JUST enough so that it'll be able to get through the next goddamn route, and even then there's a high chance all those trainers would knock you out.

Plus, in stories, you generally have a plot centering on the events of the MC's life – this would obviously  take up his or her time, which means even LESS time for training hence a higher chance of being beaten.

Even worse is the typical scenario when the MC is fighting an all-powerful gym leader or champion, ALL the team is knocked out except for (usually the weakest) one, and then it goes all emotional and she screams, "I believe in you, Magikarp!!"

And then with that the opponent's entire party is knocked out, usually with the cheesy ending of the winner's Pokemon evolving.

Yeah. If you had ever played even ONE Pokemon game in your whole life, you'd know that battling doesn't work that way.

And the worst pet peeve of all...

5. "Sarcastic" Characters

WHY is that a huge majority of Pokemon stories I read have a lead character – usually female – who's "sarcastic"?

She has no other personality traits, no flaws, no deep past, no family, no interesting Pokemon or friends: she's just. Fudging. Sarcastic.

It's ALWAYS that they have no other defining characteristic, and have otherwise dull personalities besides "sarcastic".

Now, if ONE among several of her character traits is sarcasm, then fine, I'm good with that. But nooo.

What is so goddamn special about "sarcastic", anyway? It's not cool. It's not interesting. It's incredibly over-used. It becomes dull over time.

And the worst part? Lots of the time the MC ISN'T SARCASTIC AT ALL. She makes snarky remarks once or twice at the beginning, then – bam, no other actions to support her trait other than "she's very sarcastic" being mentioned countless times in the description and throughout the story.

I don't get it.

Scarlet (@Scarlet_Regnar)'s pet peeves:

I'm a pretty forgiving writer, as I often make a few mistakes while writing and struggle in some areas. But, especially when reading vast quantities of fanfiction like I have to do for the Pokemon Watty Awards, there are two pet peeves of mine (I have a lot more where these came from) that will almost always make me put a fic down.

1. A fic with a lack of formatting and the great presence of errors. I find it disrespectful to ask someone to read a piece of writing if all you've done is slap it on a page without trying to make it readable. I recommend trying to get a beta-reader to look at your piece before you publish it to help catch errors, but if you can't, at least try to run it through a writing aid program like Hemmingway or Grammarly or PaperRater.

2. Unoriginality. So many of the fics currently published today follow the same basic plots without doing anything to set it apart. If you take a look at my rant book, I even created Mad-Lib-Like templates that show some popular cookie-cutter plots that people use. My suggestion is to do something with your fic that make it different than the rest. One of my favorite fics, Speak Up by Mya-Latti, does this when she makes Red mute, and explores the difficulties of living your life with disabilities. Try a new pov, introduce a novel theme, go for the heart of your readers, hone your writing, make us laugh, make us cry. Show us that this book is a small part of your soul.

Thorn (@The_Dragons_Thorn)'s pet peeves:

Hello everyone my name is Thorn and welcome to my branch of the pet peeves article. This, as you should already know, Is where I will voice my top two pet peeves that come with writing on Wattpad, and now without further delay let's get started.

Let's start things off with my worst pet peeve. Overly expectant readers,now I know that we are all writers here but some of us are better than others,in my case there are a lot better writers on Wattpad such as @Dragons_Rose and my boss @RiverIvy. I understand that I am not the greatest writer I know my limitations which means that there is no reason to make me feel like a complete failure. If you don't like my work fine just go and read someone else's works, don't stick around just to be an ass.

Now let's move onto number two on the list, Ghost Readers. Come on do I have to explain what a ghost reader is? Really? Alright then. A ghost reader is someone who only reads books on Wattpad doesn't vote doesn't comment only reads. I get that some people can't always comment or vote but the numbers don't always add up.

X (@Darker_X)'s pet peeves:

1. Spontaneous characters. Maybe it's just my personality, but whenever I see someone recklessly heading into the heat of battle- or a fight- I just sigh sadly and sometimes whisper, "Why do they do that?"

2. When I'm concerned about the grammar. Don't get me wrong, it's always better to start with bad grammar than no grammar at all- but whenever I start noticing grammar hiccups, I get weary the more and more I see them. This is why I ask to always have a spell check before you publish your story. Or chapter.

3. When fourth walls break for no apparent reason. For example, there would be an author's note in the end, and suddenly this would happen:

Character: That is so meeaaaaan

Author: Nooooo it's notttttt

Character: It isssssss

Author: IT'S NOTTTTT

Character: *slaps Author*

Author: *stabs Character*

Character: *bites Author*

...and so on. NO. Unless you're doing it for the actual storyline- referring to God, for example- breaking the fourth wall is a very, VERY bad idea.

4. This might seem a bit overly harsh, and I really do apologize for the candor of it- Gold and Silver romances. A moment, please- you have Red and Blue, Brendan and Steven(just for an example), Lucas and Barry, Hilbert and Cheren, Nate and Hugh. Added to all that, you have Brock, Bruno, Falkner, Bugsy, Morty, Will, Lance, Brawly, Tate, Roark, Volkner, Aaron, Flint, Lucian, Cilan, Chili, Cress(this particular trio would make for a spectacular romance saga), Marlon, N, Calem, Grant and Siebold. That's an interesting count of 32 right there. Interestingly, I might've left someone, and this is just the number of guys. The girls list would skyrocket up, I'd presume.

And I've read enough Gold and Silver fanfictions to write a biography on them. Once again, I apologize. This is just to give you an idea.

Just think. All those left-out stories and ideas!

Ji (@Shaymin-)'s pet peeves:

1) When authors have grammatical errors in their work. This is probably one of THE most irritating things for me as a reader. I don't point them out in the comments or anything but inside I'm dying to just correct the mistakes. The difference between "your" and "you're" completely changes a sentence!

2) When there are too many time skips. The story can becoming confusing or just too basic. The characters just jump into things without being developed much and the story can become very tiresome. Of course they are necessary sometimes, but not every 17 lines.

3) When an author has a really similar story to another author. This is annoying because firstly, it kind of shows that they couldn't come up with their own idea so they're copying someone else, and secondly, it's like reading the same book twice. How many times can you read the same story over and over again?

4) When an author swears too much. Don't take this the wrong way - if it's part of the character and it really helps define them, I'm okay with a curse-filled story. However, unnecessary swearing and random f-bombs being dropped all over the place just takes away the polished tone of the story. It makes it more of a swear dictionary than an actual story as some characters spend more time swearing than actually doing anything.

Moonlight (@ForeverMoonlight)'s pet peeves:

First up - Overpowered protagonists.

I have like 15 legendaries but I'm actually just a normal amateur trainer who isn't even a champion! And I haven't lost a single battle and my Pokemon are all like super strong and awesome! Oh Arceus .-. Please no.

I understand that you'd love to have a cool character that people can look up to, but sometimes you need to tone down with the awesomeness, because when you overdo it, the character/s don't seem as cool as they could've been. They don't have to lose to every battle, but at least every now and then.

Secondly: Unrealistic events.

I just got stabbed from a super dangerous Pokemon, but after a couple days in bed I'll be totally fine! I mean, Pokemon are just small, cute creatures that can cause earthquakes and incinerate people! ^-^

.-. No. Just no. I get that this is a fanfiction, and it's in the crazy/awesome Pokemon world... Some drama is cool and helps develop relationships and characters, but at least make it more realistic. No one can heal that quickly - and have they even been treated properly? (Medicine-wise)

Third: Overused plots.

A character is going on a journey with two of her/his friends, and they defeat an organisation, then the protagonist becomes the champion. Hip-hip-hurray, I totally didn't expect that .-.

Really- at least add a little originality, you know? Like maybe they could have a phobia of Pokemon, or secretly want to be a coordinator- something like that.

Gren (@Grenineon)'s pet peeves:

1. MARY-SUE CHARACTERS

I have a passionate hatred for perfect characters in Pokéfics. They don't make mistakes, everyone loves them, their Pokemon are overpowered, and the worst part: they NEVER lose battles. Never. It's extremely unrealistic and unexplainable. Like, how the heck can a new Water type starter beat a trained Grass type Pokemon? HOW!? Their Pokemon are overpowered when they JUST received them, and they'll never lose a battle together—EVEN THEIR FIRST BATTLE EVER. Avoid making a Mary-Sue character in Pokéfics by:

•Giving them flaws (bad traits, phobias, etc.)

•Making their Pokemon realistically powered, basing their strength off of how much they've been trained and how long they've been with their Trainers.

•Having them lose most battles against Trainers that they'll obviously lose to, and even RARELY lose battles against people that they are capable of beating.

Please, do NOT make a Mary-Sue/perfect character in any of your Pokéfics.

2. HURTING POKEMON WITHOUT ACTUAL ATTACKS

I cannot express how much I HATE this. Have you ever read a Pokéfic battle where a typically weaker Pokemon is battling against a strong Pokemon, and then for the winning move, the weaker Pokemon uses its environment to hurt and knock out the other Pokemon? For example, a Ground type is battling an Electric type. The Electric type is obviously going to lose, but it sets off sprinklers (equivalent to Water attacks, I guess) and that alone knocks out the Ground Pokemon. Just... Don't even. I hate, hate, HATE whenever I read this in a battle. To avoid a livid me whenever I read your book:

•Only have REAL attacks hurt the enemy Pokemon.

•Never let a stinking pebble hurt a Pokemon (or any other thing in the environment.)

Nothing is worse than reading that in a Pokéfic.

Lostie (@LostSilverFangirl)'s pet peeves:

My first pet peeve in Pokemon fanfiction is perfect characters. Everyone has flaws, why doesn't your character have any? Where's their weakness(es)? No reader will be able to truly connect to a perfect character, and it's just annoying to see flawless protagonists or antagonists.

Secondly, I hate when it feels like every legendary shows up in a book. There are exceptions to this, but for the most part, it's just something cliche and boring. If it's something important to the plot, that's usually fine, but if your character goes and catches half the legendary Pokemon existing, we've got a problem.

Thirdly, I hate when people constantly switch PoVs. I don't like change point of view at all, with a few exception in third person (that basically being who is being focused on being switched), but the book will be fine with one point of view. In my opinion, if your book needs to focus on different characters at different points, use third person.

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That's all for today!  We hope you enjoyed reading this article.

-Ivy

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