And the follow-up to this, and a personal annoyance of mine,
is the other numerous 'fanfic-conventions' that you never find
in normal fiction.  Flashback indicators aside, there's the large
number of dialogue/thought indicators: asteriks, tildas, etc...
Personally, I can't think of a single novel I've read that does so.

But many novels do use italicized words to indicate thought.  We don't have
that option in an ASCII world, thus the asterisks and so forth.  I think
they're an acceptable alternative.

Personally, I don't use such things to indicate thought.  I usually just use
dialogue with to quotation marks.

Then there's the occasional act of sheer laziness on the part of
an author: describing a character via episode or manga references (ie.
'she was dressed just like in that OAV episode where...').

My biggest weakness as an author is that I can't describe people very well.
:)  Fanfics are kind of nice in that respect; you can assume everyone knows
what the characters look like and you don't have to spend any time
describing them.  In other words, fanfics are great for lazy people like me.

Er, that's not to say that everyone who writes fanfics skimps on
descriptions.  Nicholas Leifker is one who excels at description.  Krista
Perry, too.

And... errr, well, I've ranted enough as is.  Who am I to
complain, considering how little fanfiction I've written lately?

<snort>  Who said you needed a license to complain?  ^_^  And as long as
it's on-topic, I think it's quite valuable here on the ML.  Sebastian
Weinberg, despite his own low fic production rate, produced a sparkling
essay on the dangers of self-insertion.

-Mike Noakes

-Richard