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Das Sporking - TV Tropes

  • ️Sun Sep 01 2013

Das Sporking is a small sporking community originally on LiveJournal, before moving to Dreamwidth in 2017. It was originally a solo sporking community for Das Mervin, a LiveJournal user most famous for her breakdown of the Twilight series. Over time, it has evolved to accept sporkings from all of its members. The sporkings cover a range of fandoms and styles. This also includes professional works. There are currently a small number of active sporkers on Das Sporking.

This community is mostly known for being very analytical in its approaching to bad fiction, and for covering a variety of professionally published works as well as fanfiction. Jokes and snarking take a backseat to literary analysis, though they are far from absent.

It is also notable for being in depth. Most sporkings double the word count of the fanfics they are focusing on. A number of Unfortunate Implications that are glossed over in other sporkings of the same material, in particular Twilight (and its sequels) and Fifty Shades of Grey (and its sequels), are explored in detail there.

Notice: Please do not link directly to sporked fanfiction! This is to cut down on wank.

Das Sporking has examples of the following tropes:

  • Accentuate the Negative: Most of the sporks point out flaws in the work, and mock goofiness caused by them.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Raxistaicho refers to Zelda Queen as "Queeny," and, since the I'm Here To Help spork, Midoriri as "Riri."
  • Angst Nuke: Ket tends to explode. A lot. Especially when reading Fifty Shades of Grey. It happens so often that the community coined 'ketsplode' to describe it.
    • Ki no Shirayuki does the same, but into waka poems.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Christian Grey has many bad qualities but the final straw was when the sporkers realized he's a morning person.

    Ki no Shirayuki: Aside from that, why are you referring to Oda Nobunaga by last name and Date Masamune by first name?

  • Author Powers: How most sporkers force their special guests to read badfic. Also exercised by a handful of sporkers using the Keyboard of Power.
  • Ban on Politics: Mervin specifically states no political issues be discussed within the comm. Strict monitoring by the admins is done to ensure this.
  • Berserk Button: With a fairly diverse sporking crowd, different things set different sporkers off.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: The sporkers are all a nice bunch of people, even maintaining some politeness while sporking, but once in a while, such as when a Berserk Button is pressed or the story gets really bad... eesh.
  • Brain Bleach: Quite a few sporkers say that they need brain bleach after a spork. Some refer to Bleeprin and Bleepka, specifically.
  • Calling the Young Man Out: During the Twilight sporkings, it's vainly hoped that Charlie Swan will eventually get sick of Bella's selfishness and kick her to the curb. As a result, it's become a very popular storyline among Twilight spitefics featured on the site.
  • Character Catch Phrase:
    • Some sporkers have their own.
      • Raxistaicho's is "Standby, ready for more", used in his live journal cuts. Occasionally, "more" is replaced by something specific to the chapter.
      • Azralibrarian's is "Sweet Zaros."
      • Ki no Shirayuki's is "Drop your head and die" in regards to Sues.
    • Some sporkings have them, too. For a good portion of the sporking of a Spice and Wolf fanfiction, chapters were introduced with "Last Time on..." followed by a video clip of something parodying events in the story.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Many of the sporkers have shared their histories of abuse, bullying, trauma, or depression, usually to explain how a work is getting it dead wrong.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Every sporker has at least a moment of this.
  • Due to the Dead: Usually dead authors who are sporked are treated with respect unless they committed crimes in real life.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • In one of Mervin's chapters of Hogwarts Exposed, she brings in Sands to co-spork. Sands, who has never pretended to be anything but a misogynistic, violent asshole, is appalled by it, particularly the sexualization of children and objectification of women (which, amusingly enough, stuns him, since he never felt outrage on behalf of objectified women before).
    • Even Azula is horrified at the Fate Worse than Death Harry inflicts on the Dursleys in Partially Kissed Hero.
  • Everyone Has Standards: All of he sporkers have their limits on what they will and won't spork. Usually it's because a work is unspeakably horrific (Mervin even added the "Hogwarts Exposed line" to the comm rules, stating that anything that manages to be worse than that fanfiction is banned from being sporked there), although some sporkers refuse to do works on the grounds of them simply being boring (for example, this is why Mervin stopped sporking Child of Grace and Standing My Ground). Mervin herself holds the comm at large to several ironclad rules, including certain types of fics that are not allowed, namely the aforementioned "squick-fics", troll fics (on the grounds that they basically spork themselves), things that run the risk of breaking the "no politics" rule (such as The Turner Diaries), and real person fics. She also forbids making personal attacks/death threats towards the Suethors or their families. The only exception is Neil, who wrote the aforementioned Hogwarts Exposed and is hands-down the most hated Stuthor on the comm (though Marion Zimmer Bradley is quickly giving him a run for his money).
    • During the sporking of Partially Kissed Hero, Snape says that while he can be harsh with Harry, he would never go so far as to outright torture him.
    • During the Nobunaga-sensei sporking, Heshikiri Hasebe says while he isn't fond of his old master Oda Nobunaga, the latter still doesn't deserve to have his historical impact ignored to be portrayed as a bland harem hero who grooms children.
  • Fix Fic: A bit rarer than the Revenge Fic, but still there when they feel the rare sympathetic character deserves something better. When the sporkers get tired of watching Gwenhwyfar being repeatedly tortured by the narrative, they wrote a new ending where all thirteen Doctors rescue her and bring her to a hospital in the future, and that Gwen in the rest of the book is just Kamelion pretending to be her.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode:
    • A side series was started called "Writers Against Cliches", with the intent of deconstructing hackneyed tropes and concepts and allowing sporkers to write fics that play with expectations. More obliquely, the_whittler once sporked one of their own works (with permission), and at least one member plans to spork a bad sporking.
    • Sweettalkeress introduced her sporking of the Code Geass Lighter and Softer fic "Euphemia's Surprise" this way because it was so different from the works she had been sporking.
    • ZeldaQueen's sporking of How I Became Yours was the first sporking of a fancomic, both by her and on the comm (though she had sporked the first Twilight graphic novel on her own journal).
    • Ki no Shirayuki's translation-sporking of the Nobunaga-sensei anime cast commentary is the first sporking of foreign language material whose translation is provided by the sporker themself.
    • Azra sporked a series of RuneScape fan-quests, which were written in the style of walkthroughs rather than as stories. She not only tore apart their failings as stories, but detailed the parts that would be poor gameplay as well.
    • Raxistaicho's sporking of "A Journey Of Light And Darkness", which was actually a fanfiction he wrote some time ago and plans to revise. As a joke, he refuses to believe it's in need of snark until the protagonist shows up, hits him on the head and makes him forget he wrote it, leading to him commenting on how terrible it is.
  • From Bad to Worse: Played for Laughs in Chapter 5 of A Brighter Dark, where Azalin Rex finally escapes his prison in Darkon..into the sporking chamber.
  • Gamer Chick:
    • Several of the sporkers, but azralibrarian stands out most. Her knowledge of Final Fantasy is well shown during one of her sporks of a self-insert Dissidia fanfic. She also displays a good deal of knowledge of RuneScape during her sporking of a sloppy crossover fic.
    • Nix has made a habit of sporking almost nothing but things from The World Ends with You.
    • Ki no Shirayuki specializes in Onmyoji and Touken Ranbu.
  • Geek: Whether it be literature, TV series, movies, video games, and western or eastern animation, most of these sporkers are very devoted fans of their chosen fandoms. Sometimes unabashedly so.
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual: Ever since a joke made in the sporking of Chapter 12 of Breaking Dawn, people have taken quite well to seeing themselves through Meyer Goggles(TM).
  • Gratuitous German: "Das" is gender-neutral "the" in German.
  • Gratuitous Japanese: Some sporkers use this in their usernames and/or sporks, like ryina chan and Raxistaicho.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: Some of the group are this way, Mervin stands out the most.
  • Handicapped Badass: Gehayi is open about being mobility limited. It sure doesn't stop her from absolutely destroying poorly-written and researched work.
  • Insistent Terminology: Riffing Academy is a die-hard MSTie, and to that end calls his sporkings "riffings." His username may have something to do with him sticking to it, too.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: During the A Brighter Dark sporking, Azalin Rex mentions that another darklord, Vlad Drakov, was so spectacularly incompetent he was replaced by a woman—exactly what happened in fifth edition, where Vlad underwent a Gender Flip.
  • The Man Behind the Man: In RiffingAcademy's sporking of Pretty Cure Perfume Preppy, he makes reference a couple of times to an unnamed collaborator, whom he accuses of having suggested to the fourteen-year-old author to have included several story elements that are not appropriate for children. Because the collaborator is never named, it is impossible to be certain, but RiffingAcademy has strong suspicions that the collaborator was a pedophile, and just using the Suethor.
  • Mid-Season Upgrade: Midoriri, her sporking self being a Magical Girl Warrior, gets during a particularly-awful passage in Sailor Rainbow, trading in her Spork Wand for the Spork Staff.
  • Muggles Do It Better: A widespread reaction to the messages of Humans Are Morons, Humans Are Bastards, and Humans Are Ugly that so frequently appear in fics and books. Sporkers and members have decided that humanity, for all its flaws, can also be awesome.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Metaphorically. Most of the rules about sporking that involve yelling at the fic, not at the author, are turned off for the infamously nefarious Hogwarts Exposed.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • Gehayi and Ket Makura describe their invitation to guest sporkers Elsa and Anna of Arendelle this way:

      GEHAYI: I'm not going to say what it took to persuade the queen and princess of Arendelle except that it involved kittens, the Hubble Telescope, and Ket karaoke.
      KET: And a really bad clam. [shudders]

    • Ket also got a phone call from an unknown person halfway through the first part of the sporking of Fifty Shades Freed's chapter 9. It involved monkeys. She left immediately and didn't return until chapter 11 (which was actually several posts later). Other than being alarmed at the possibility of Merv bringing monkeys to spork with her, she hasn't discussed it.
  • Oh, My Gods!: Raxistaicho occasionally uses Morrighan/Morrigan with this trope. azralibrarian uses Primus (and Zaros); taekarado, Steiff; Man Called True, Celestia (and occasionally Torak). Ket Makura will occasionally thank "all the gods and angels."
  • Properly Paranoid: Ever since his first proper sporking featured one, Riffing Academy thinks that wolf-themed Stus follow him around. They don't hit all the time, but they're definitely a theme.
  • Rage Quit:
    • Once in a while, sporkers will simply give up on particularly bad works. Mervin occasionally "refuses" to do certain chapters of her own sporks and instead has one her common special guests do it for her.
    • An interesting variant happened with one story Riffing Academy tackled: while he finished the story as it was written when he wrote his sporking, when new chapters appeared he refused to do them. Raxistaicho picked it up later, doing the newer chapters.
    • After one of his flash drives (the one containing all the chapters) broke, Man Called True walked away from Frigid Winds and Burning Hearts when faced with the task of completely redoing several chapters's worth of sporking.
  • Relax-o-Vision:
    • Used occasionally by several of the sporkers. Raxistaicho does it most often both in his own sporks and comments to others, usually showing cute/fanservicey anime girls.
    • It pops up again in during the spork of I'm Here to Help; Midoriri gets her Berserk Button slammed and begins a colorful rant, only for Raxis and ZeldaQueen to quickly play a video with soothing music. They turn it off just as she's winding down.
    • The Mists of Avalon sporking preempts scenes of rape, incest, miscarriage, and other horrible things with cute pictures of kittens and puppies to help brace the reader for what's ahead.
  • Revenge: Ket's revenge on Mervin for exposing them to Fifty Shades of Gray:

    Ket: Be waiting, Das of Mervin. I shall visit you, like a terrible angel of punishment.
    Mervin: Well, you know, as bad as I feel about subjecting you to Fifty Shades, and all that jazz... *flatly* I sporked, recapped, and/or read every goddamn word of the entire "Hogwarts Exposed" series. I think I've endured ENOUGH.
    Ket: Not yet, my dear. Not yet. In fact, my retribution has already begun.
    Mervin: OH, FUCK YOU!!! *slams down the phone furiously with a loud bang*

  • Revenge Fic: This is a REALLY common response to canons with Unfortunate Implications and/or characters that are Too Dumb to Live (though it's called "spitefics" on the actual community). There were so many Twilight spitefics that Das_Sporking eventually created a spinoff fic comm for them. (The comm is now shared by fics for Fifty Shades of Grey and Feminist Fairy Tales.) Of these fics, For You, I Will, The Wedding Crashers, and Tough Love (Twilight) have their own trope pages.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Mervin is the Red to Hyde's Blue.
  • Rousing Speech: Mervin makes a pro-human, pro-Volturi one in the third part of the sporking of the Chapter 34 of Breaking Dawn to counteract the unnecessarily rebellious (the Cullens don't want to fight) anti-Volturi speech by one of the Cullens' allies since defeating the Volturi means there's nothing stopping other vampires (including some of the Cullens' allies) from eating and enslaving humanity.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here!:
    • Quoted verbatim by Midoriri before the twelfth chapter of Over The Rainbow, before she ate one of Mervin's coma-brownies. Malachite filled in for her.
    • Raxis managed this in the sporking of I'm Here to Help, via exploding. A Pokemon he specially trained to speak filled in.
    • From chapter 20 of Breaking Dawn, after Mervin mused at length on the fact that she'd been sporking the Twilight series for five years and wants to quit but—

      Mervin: I finished Rose Potter — I can finish this.
      Bella (narrating): Everything was
      Mervin: OH FUCK YOU, I'M GOING HOME!!!

  • Shown Their Work: Very much so. Mervin and Mrs. Hyde have expert knowledge about medicine, the latter even having her PhD in the subject. The pair of them also know quite a bit about the behaviour of "old money", being from that kind of background themselves. Gehayi is a freelance editor, and Ket Makura has enough experience in the realm of BDSM to help her take down the Fifty Shades series. And as far as canon knowledge goes, it's a rule that to spork a fic in a fandom, the sporker has to know what they are talking about.
  • Signature Style: Aside from the aforementioned analytical, in-depth style, the sporkers are a diverse lot, and this shows in their preferences and typical sporking material:
    • Riffing Academy tends to pick up stories in canons he knows that frequently have at least one Marty Stu in them and female leads, especially canonically powerful ones, getting Chickified a lot.
    • Sweettalkeress tackles stories that think they're Lifetime Movies Of The Week often, especially in the Pokémon fandom.
    • Nix and Azra seem to be a fan of color-coding everything.
    • Riyna-chan's spork comments are typed in blue, as it's easier on her eyes.
    • Gratuitous classical Japanese poetry is a staple of Ki no Shirayuki – she ends every of her posts (except tables of contents) with one and angst nukes into them.
  • Small Reference Pools: Defied. Sporking topics are fairly diverse amongst the community, and while there are some popular fandoms and sources of stories, there's a wide mix between Western and Eastern fandoms that have sporked fiction. That doesn't even begin to describe each sporker's own favored references, either...
  • Special Guest: Some sporkers use characters from other series to spork with them. Examples are Sands, Severus Snape, Leah Clearwater, Sam and Dean Winchester as well as Castiel, Harry Dresden and Thomas Raith, Fi, Nanoha... even Dr Wood.
  • Spinoff: In addition to the fic comm, Das_Sporking gave rise to Anti_bella, a LiveJournal comm that focuses on finding well-written female characters of every stripe and analyzing why these characters work well/are awesome. (On occasion, "anti-Edwards"—well-written male characters—have also been highlighted.)
  • Spit Take: Used as a running gag for the Sailor Rainbow sporkings, in response to Accidental Innuendo. It gets taken to unprecedented levels with Raxis joins Midoriri and ZeldaQueen on one chapter.

    Midoriri: The Powers To Be are going to have to send a janitor in here...

  • Stuff Blowing Up: Ket and Gehayi celebrate finishing Fifty Shades of Gray by blowing up Chris and Ana's property with a little help from Loki and Deadpool.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: One of the favorite results of the sporkers' spite fics. Which also makes such stories Deconstruction Fic.
  • Trademark Favorite Food:
    • Zelda Queen seems to have a fondness for chocolate. She tends to mix up I Need a Freaking Drink by using sweets instead.
    • Midoriri mentions drinking coffee in a lot of her sporks.
    • If Ket Makura is eating food, it's generally rice. She and ZeldaQueen often end chapters of Hush, Hush by going off for ice cream.
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: The comments on any given spork or recap are usually full of anecdotes and additional information.
  • Villain Song: Cherylbites wrote one to be sung by generic villainous powerhouses called "Onward, Sueish Soldiers."
  • Voice of the Legion: When The Riddler tries to get his hands on the magic keyboard at the end of Chapter Nine pt. 2 of Fifty Shades Freed, Mervin pops in to remind him who's boss:

    Mervin: YOU PITIFUL, INSIGNIFICANT FOOL. I AM THE BEAST, THE ABOMINATION, THE GOD THAT RULES THIS CYBER REALM.

  • Wall of Text: Riffing Academy's love of big words and writing stuff in general leads to big intros, big outros, and big paragraphs dropped in between shorter, snappier remarks. When other sporkers do it, usually something else is about to happen.

Das Sporking comments on the following tropes occurring in sporked works and has the following Audience Reactions to sporked works:

  • Accidental Innuendo: If one of these shows up in a sporking subject, expect it to be lampshaded and/or mocked.
  • Adaptational Nice Guy: While sporking "To Rule Them All", Master Ghandalf notes that while Sauron isn't being portrayed as a good guy, the author doesn't seem to grasp the true scope of his weight and presence, so he comes off as more like Azra's somewhat cranky but otherwise generic boss rather than one of the most monstrous individuals in the history of Middle-earth. This makes him an unusual example of this trope being caused by combination of bad writing and a lack of understanding of the source material.
  • Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: In "Identities," MG points out that since Boromir survived, Denethor's actions and characterization (which were more or less copied from Peter Jackson's Return of the King adaptation) don't make any sense.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • In Intertwined, Midoriri suggests that the Mary Sue, Kitten, is actually a sociopath who uses crocodile tears to get whatever she wants, and employs the Wounded Gazelle Gambit on a regular basis. It would explain, she says, why she can turn her tears on and off at will, and why she didn't start crying while being bullied until after she was threatened with punishment for hitting the bully.
    • In Precure Meet The Dream Traveler:
      • Midoriri and Riyna-chan have suggested that Blaze Akechi from Suite Pretty Cure ♪ Meet the Dream Traveler is either just a scrawny cosplayer with no power at all, or someone who was kicked out of his own world for being annoying but never realized it, instead of the badass the Stuthor claims he is.
      • Due to some very dark implications in the text and characterization, it's been theorized that Siren is not actually the "loving little sister" that the Stuthor writes her as, but is actually a victim of abuse at the hands of her Big Brother Bully, and is only acting the part of a sweet little sister so he won't hurt her or her friends. By extension, Blaze has also been speculated to be a domestic abuser.
      • Shadow "Blaze" Akechi from the third fic is already speculated, both by the sporkers and comments, to be a domestic abuser, stalker, and, once again due to some very dark implications, a child predator who is grooming Mana to be his girlfriend.
    • The comments for I'm Here To Help suggest that Emerald is not the Anti-Hero the Stuthor claims he is, but actually an insane conspiracy theorist with a hatred for any authority of any kind.
    • Man Called True has speculated that, in Frigid Winds and Burning Hearts, Luna (or "Moana" as he dubs her) is a sociopathic tyrant who just wants to depose Celestia, Twilight Sparkle/"Twilight Puppet" is her brainwashed maid, and Pinkie Pie is actually one of the clones from the Mirror Pool. He's also theorized that Captain Braveheart is a pony version of the Comedian from Watchmen.
    • Azralibrarian seems to believe that Juren, the "hero" in Of the Discovery of Magic, is not a knowledgeable, altruistic, wise youth seeking to help his village, but a lazy and selfish sociopath who is only trying to "discover" magic for personal gain and glory.
    • Fifty Shades of Grey:
      • Many members of the comm believe that Ana is a closet bisexual with feelings for Kate.
      • Gehayi also believes that Grey arranged for Leila to be wrongly committed to a mental hospital as punishment for her leaving him, citing his pride and controlling nature as evidence for this. Moreover, Leila was involuntarily committed for over a year, despite the fact that involuntary commitment of adults usually involves courts in the U.S., as well as proof that the person is not capable of caring for themselves and is an actual danger to themselves and/or others. The commitment is supposed to be reviewed by the court after a month or two as well. And as Gehayi points out, Leila's breakdown and involuntary commitment happened, according to what was overtly stated in the text, exactly when Grey found out that Leila's had married another man... two weeks after her wedding.
      • Thanks to a wonky timeline in Chapters 9 and 10 of Freed that makes it impossible for Christian Grey to have flown back from New York within the time allotted to him and Grey's outright fury toward Ana because she was NOT in the penthouse apartment when her armed attempted rapist got in, both Gehayi and much of the comm have decided that Grey is the one who arranged for the ineffectual villain to attack Ana. Even those who feel that Grey would prefer a (literally) more hands-on approach agree that someone whose loved one narrowly escaped from danger should be showing relief, not unholy rage and overt threats to "beat the shit out of" their significant other.
      • Since Ana has a great deal of trouble keeping track of time and remembering events from one chapter, paragraph, or sentence to the next, to the point where Ana's difficulties are even mentioned in the text, the theory has been raised that Ana has executive functioning issues—a learning disability.
    • In her sporking of "The Fox Princess", Midoriri speculated that Herve was actually doing what he could to help the hostages escape.
    • "To Rule them All":
    • "Identities":
    • the_whittler speculated in her sporking of "Jar of Hearts" that the Sue OC, Evianlyn, might be Autistic - socially inept, her father never let her go outside, easily riled up and doesn't like change, reiterates details most people would ignore and seemingly obsessed with how old everyone is.
    • The eponymous hero-god of Hero's Welcome is considered by Azrathelibrarian to be a selfish, willfully ignorant hypocrite who blindly idolizes Guthix while dismissing all other deities as irredeemably evil and their followers as slaves—highlights include how he doesn't seem at all bothered by being forced to leave his people, how he outright claims to be right all the time and know what's best for others, and his complaining about being embarrassed that his power is waning rather than fearing for what's happening to him. The fact that his alleged heroic feats are boiled down to stories told offscreen except for a single reference joke does not help matters.
    • In Partially Kissed Hero Harry isn't Harry with access to Voldemort's memories, but rather Voldemort in Harry's body with a thin veneer of Harry's memories.
    • According to Esme-Amelia, Sally Dunn is the setting's equivalent of an Abusive Parent.
    • In The Crown Of Thorns sporking, Raonar is interpreted as a manipulative, arrogant, power-hungry, terrible sibling, and Trian and Bhelen's hatred of him is perfectly understandable.
    • In Back to the Frollo, Greenery Gripes is fairly convinced that Danisha's friend Fern hates her and brought her to Medieval Paris with the intention of stranding her there so that she can get into trouble and be executed somehow. Given the fact that Danisha's a huge Jerkass, Greenery ends up sympathizing with Fern in this interpretation.
    • The titular Stu of Nobunaga-sensei is supposed to be a Lovable Sex Maniac and Chivalrous Pervert who cares about his harem targets. The comm instead sees him as just plain creepy with his pedophilia and less than favorable attitude about women and girls, extremely irresponsible for prioritizing fulfilling his perverted needs over the fact history is implied to have been messed up for him, as well as extremely annoying with the constant Character Shilling of him as a real leader and descendant of Oda Nobunaga despite lacking all the qualities of the actual Nobunaga and all-around not deserving of being called a real leader.
    • Zelda Queen sees Apollo Justice in The Opposite Effect (and to a lesser extent, Ema) as a freeloader who mooches off of whoever he is living with.
  • Artistic License – Geography: One of Mervin's biggest problems with Halo (the book by Alexandra Adornetto, not the video game franchise). The book is set in a small town in Georgia, but it's obviously apparent to anyone with even basic knowledge of Georgia that Adornetto, who is Australian, didn't bother doing any research and wrote a town that combined Australia with the little she knew of the American South. The result is an incredibly rich paradise with an economy that shouldn't work, where poor people apparently don't exist and everything looks like it came out of the Fifties.
  • Crack Pairing
    • Mervin ships Dean/Castiel and Snape/Sands. The first is possible, but, obviously, Snape and Sands are not even ''part of the same fandom''.
      • Then, at the end of one Breaking Dawn chapter where all Twilight sporkers assembled, there's a hint of one-sided Sands/Dean.
      • Mervin also ships Leah/Castiel, though a comment made in one sporking implies that the sporker Leah and the Leah that shows up in Mervin's fanfictions aren't the same version of the character.
    • The Sailor Moon sporking Over The Rainbow went wild with this idea because it could be worked in so well and the fic set itself up so many times for the jokes. Predictably, this led to Femme Slash jokes being made at every opportunity.
    • Ket Makura and Gehayi make a good case for Christian Grey/Taylor what with their Catsuit Tuesdays.
      • Some of the readers of the Fifty Shades of Grey sporkings have developed a fondness for Taylor/Leila, usually as a devious Battle Couple that's trying to bring Christian Grey down...one way or the other.
    • Nix seems to ship Joshua and Rhyme, who never meet in their canon universe. She also has admitted to shipping Beat and Joshua.
    • Shirayuki admits to shipping Mikazuki and Juzumaru, calling them "the epitome of elegance" and linking to a fanart of them in the Daimyo's Grandchild spork. These characters have exactly one special interaction in their canon.
    • Pan ships Finn with Leah for having similar backgrounds in-universe and out. They are not from the same fandom, though.
  • Designated Hero: Esme_Amelia considers Sally Dunn to be a spoiled brat who relishes in her mom's misery.
  • Double Standard: Rape, Sci-Fi: Among their many criticisms of the concept of imprints in the Twilight books is the fact that it essentially removes consent from the equation completely. Not only is an imprinted werewolf now completely unable to make hisnote  own decisions about his romantic and sexual relationships—once the imprint has formed he's biologically incapable of loving or sexually desiring anyone else but the girl in question, ever again. For that matter, it shouldn't be understated how the sheer level of social and emotional pressure the imprint brings to bear on the girls messes with free consent—there's ordinary but-he's-such-a-nice-guy pressure, and then there's the pressure of knowing you are a man's literal one and only chance to have love and children, and that you're literally causing him physical pain if you ever ask him to go too far away from you (and also he probably won't, because he sort of can't).
  • Dude, Not Funny!: Comes up in the face of tasteless jokes in the things being sporked.
    • During the I'm Here to Help sporking, Midoriri was appalled by a joke Emerald made about a 14-year-old Jupiter engaging in bondage.
    • Mervin points out that in Eclipse, two infamous parts - Edward stealing Bella's car engine and Bella being forcibly kissed by Jacob and then hurting her hand punching him out - were meant to be comedy. She notes, with no small amount of horror, that both wouldn't be out of place in a slasher movie.
    • Astra flips her shit over the scene in Pawn of Prophecy where Polgara laughs upon realising that Merel is pregnant by rape for the third time.
    • Azra has reacted with horror to a few "comedic" scenes in The Final Fantasy Wars, most notably during a chapter in which the generic OP horde misfires spells, causing damage to the base and setting Tidus' hair on fire—and are immediately praised for their skill.
    • Midoriri and ZeldaQueen are enraged and horrified by how Lydia's abuse of Mamoru/Darien is Played for Laughs in The Sailor Rainbow Series.
    • Ki no Shirayuki completely blows her lid and rants in ALLCAPS for several paragraphs at a Sue's horribly abusing a sword, up to and including putting him into solitary confinement for 2 weeks, one day shy of qualifying as psychological torture by the UN's standards, just because he refuses to be an Extreme Doormat and kiss the ground she walks on and couldn't save her family as an inanimate object while she also did nothing without such an excuse, that is treated like comedy by the narrative and viewed by other swords as Tsundere behavior and her way of confessing her love for him.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Mervin and Hyde's father. Mervin talked about him as an example of someone acting far older than they were to show that Bella does not fit this description. A number of people on the comms consider him awesome.
    • Despite the general dislike of the Twilight series, Leah Clearwater is a popular character amongst sporkers and lurkers, even getting a "Let's Shit On Leah" counter for whenever she gets mistreated and appearing as a guest sporker herself. She shall not be shat upon!
    • From Fifty Shades of Grey, both Taylor and Leila have become very popular. Many believe that Taylor is being blackmailed into working for Grey and is secretly trying to get him arrested. Leila, meanwhile, is seen as The Woobie for being incredibly broken, mentally unstable, abandoned by her husband and family, all the while being treated with contempt and envy by Ana.
      • Likewise, bodyguard Jason Taylor's young daughter Sophie—she's seven for most of the series, ten in the series' epilogue—has become popular, to the point where the comm is worried about Sophie's continued safety in Shadesverse.
      • As of Chapter 9 of "Freed", Ana's bodyguard Samantha Prescott has also become popular with the comm, with many members wanting to stick up for her after Ana treats her with disdain for being a black woman working as a bodyguard.
    • Lewis from The Fox Princess, mostly due to being the hostage who shows the most initiative and intelligence.
    • Baghrat from To Rule Them All, partly because he was one of the few orcs in the story to show signs of a personality beyond "generic evil minion," and partly because he seemed to be fishing for information about the One Ring. He was interpreted as a Bastard Understudy to Azra who sought to claim the Ring for himself.
    • Prince Maxon from The Selection for being a genuinely nice and kind person, something that tends to be very rare in works being sporked- especially for a love interest.
    • Ichika Oda/Oichi-no-Kata from Nobunaga-sensei for being the Only Sane Man among the cast, which otherwise consists of her pedophilic Stu brother and his harem of flat, sex-obsessed pubescent girls (and one boy).
  • Ethnic Scrappy: Lydia from The Sailor Rainbow Series is viewed by the comm's members as an obnoxious Irish stereotype reminiscent of Hibernophobic propaganda from less enlightened eras.
  • Fake Difficulty: One of Azra's big complaints about the 'Rangress' series of Runescape fan-quests is that their difficulty mostly comes from refusing to give the player any hints whatsoever (such as forcing them to run around talking to every NPC on Gilenor in hopes that somebody knows something, with no hint given as to who that somebody might be), having most of the quests take place in non-instanced versions of the Wilderness (leaving questers vulnerable to player killers), and saddling them with an unlikable flawless character in a particularly annoying Escort Mission. In terms of actual skill challenges, puzzles, and combat, it's sorely lacking.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple:
    • Ana/Kate (aka "Katana") for the Fifty Shades sporkings. Supporters will point out that many of Ana's descriptions of Kate sound romantic in nature and that Kate seems to care about Ana's well-being a lot more than Christian is shown to.
    • Bethany/Molly from Halo became this soon after the work's sporking began.
  • Hollywood Tactics: The presence of this in A Brighter Dark is repeatedly pointed out and mocked, especially Nohr's strategies, which only work due to author fiat.
  • Headscratchers: Mervin points out that, as a mechanism to increase the amount of baby werewolves, Twilight's imprinting system doesn't really make sense. No matter how much more likely the resulting children are to inherit the werewolf gene, locking people into one sexual partner for the entire rest of their lives undercuts any numerical advantage that might grant. As she notes, werewolves won't age provided they regularly shapeshift (and not shapeshifting every time you get upset is a skill that takes years to master, granting every werewolf a slightly extended lifespan by default), but imprintees are still normal humans, meaning a werewolf's perfect genetic match will stop being able to have children much sooner than he stops being able to sire them. Does the imprint break once she dies, freeing him up to have babies with someone else? Or does he also die of sadness once his other half is gone (thus drastically shortening what could otherwise be a very long reproductive span)? And what if the girl refuses and maintains her refusal, is that werewolf family line just a total dead end now? (The canonical answer seems to be "it's not a problem because the girl never says no", which takes us rather into the realm of Fridge Horror.)
  • Ho Yay:
    • In The Beast Within, it's noted that there's a good deal of this going on between the Prince and Gaston. The two constantly refer to each other as being "the best of friends", the Prince is upset at the idea of doing anything without Gaston with him, the Prince's fiancee is upset at one point because the Prince is ignoring her in favor of Gaston, and it later is shown that Gaston is staying in the palace while the Prince is trying to otherwise trying to have a private, romantic weekend with his fiancee. Several people have commented that the Prince/Gaston seems to be the real pairing of the book.
    • Mervin is completely convinced that both Carlisle and Edward Cullen are gay and started out in a homosexual relationship when Edward was first turned to be Carlisle's "companion". The general lack of affection Carlisle shows Esme lead her to conclude that Esme is kept around as The Beard.
    • In ZeldaQueen's sporking of "The Fate of House Tula", she points out that Gury and Ganondorf seem... unusually close, especially considering Ganondorf doesn't really need Gury's help for his plan. She further says that Ganondorf seems like he's about to give Gury a Love Confession at one point, and that he takes it far too personally when Gury refuses his We Can Rule Together offer, almost like a jilted lover.
    • Scipiosmith claims that a lot of the interactions between Lightning Dawn and Harkin come off as being flirtatious or otherwise filled with sexual tension.
    • Female version:
      • Bethany/Molly from Halo. One of the biggest sources of fuel for the pairing involves Molly getting up from a hot tub in front of Bethany, completely naked, while Bethany describes Molly's well-toned body.
      • The Sailor Rainbow stories have heaps of this, leading to a Running Gag of replacing "luck" with "femmeslash."
      • As pointed out by some of the commenters, Azra from "To Rule them All" can very easily be interpreted as having a thing for Galadriel.
  • Hype Backlash:
    • Discussed, but ultimately averted for The Whittler's take on The Fault in Our Stars.
    • Played with in the case of more well-known fanfictions sporked, such as the Abuse Cycle or The Draco Trilogy. The sporkers choose them because they genuinely think they're terrible in their own right, but their fame (and not in a So Bad, It's Good way) makes it more noticeable and tends to have the sporkers trying to figure out just why the works are so popular.
  • In Name Only: The crew considers Chrono Cross this.
  • Informed Wrongness
    • "Identities" tries to paint Legolas as being wrong in regards to his suspicions of and hostility towards Morwen. The problem is that Morwen spent literal millennia as an agent of Sauron (who is also apparently her father), and the Fellowship knows this by now. Her attempts to convince them she's changed also come off as mighty weak. The closest she comes to offering proof that her change of heart is genuine is saying she'll give intelligence against Mordor... something that she never actually does. So in the end, Legolas doesn't come off as unreasonable for being the only one who doesn't easily forgive Morwen, but the Fellowship's Only Sane Man.
    • Unlike canon, where he's The Resenter, Libraryseraph sees Trian's mistrust and hatred of Raonar as understandable, since Raonar is publicly dismissive of Trian and much more popular, and Trian has every reason to suspect Raonar wants to be heir.
  • Lady Mondegreen: A Running Gag in Master Ghandalf's sporking of "Identities" is the suethor accidentally creating new characters (Araorn, Boromi, Moe, etc.) with her misspellings.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Several works sporked qualify once the sporkers notice Fridge Horror...
    • In the 9 fanfic Rebirth, Alice is the only human left in a post-apocalyptic world with dirty water, poisoned air, and highly-limited resources. While it's true that at the end of the source material the world had rain again and there was hope, it's pointed out in the spork that it would not have made everything better overnight...And again, Alice is a teenage girl who willingly left her parents and world for this place; even if she survives to a ripe old age, there is no one to procreate with, so the earth is still going to be without humans when she dies.
    • I'm Here To Help: Emerald completely erasing from reality an entire world/timeline, including all of the men, women, and children. Even worse, poor Sailor Mars has to see that it's coming for her too in the second before it erases her.
    • The Precure Meet The Dream Traveler series has the Gary-Stus grooming and abusing underage girls while everyone else in the fics just stands back and lets it happen. The abuse victims have no escape.
    • Mervin's analysis of just what would happen to humans in the world of Twilight if the Volturi weren't there to keep order. As she notes, the Illustrated Guide makes it canon that the Egyptian and Romanian covens once had incredibly massive empires founded on them brutally murdering anyone in their way and which involved humans being kept as slaves and food. Both of those groups see absolutely nothing wrong with what they did and, in fact, are eagerly awaiting the fall of the Volturi because the Volturi are the only ones keeping them from doing the same thing all over again. That's not even going into how virtually every vampire besides the Cullens and Denalis (who themselves cause countless human deaths and don't seem to care much) kill and eat humans with reckless abandon, again only keeping themselves in line because of the Volturi. If the Volturi weren't around, the human race would likely go extinct very quickly, and that's if humanity doesn't collectively firebomb vampirekind back into the Stone Age first.
      • Similarly, her analysis of how imprinting works for werewolves—you are genetically forced to love a certain person because she's a good genetic match for you. It doesn't matter how old she is; if your imprint says that toddler will grow up into a suitable mate, by god you're in love with that toddler. It doesn't matter if you love someone else and are planning to marry her; imprint says no, that emotion is gone. Any personality trait or interest of yours that might keep you from hanging out with her and catering to her whims 24/7? Gone. If she wants to hurt you, you can't stop her—in the text this is played for laughs as mere childish antics, but if the imprint forces you to let a little girl beat you over the head with rocks, who's to say it won't force you to let her stab you or something? Imprinting destroys whoever you were before and rewires your entire personality towards the single goal of carrying on the werewolf gene...and you won't even be allowed to realize what's being taken from you. No, you'll be forced to enjoy it.
    • All the horrible things Harry does in Partially Kissed Hero, which are justified because they're happening to bad people (read: people the author doesn't like)
    • Nobunaga-sensei, in which members of the titular character's harem get possessed by the ghosts of their sexually dissatisfied ancestors who selfishly use their bodies to seek gratification for themselves, overriding their consciousness and disabling their ability to consent. Especially horrifying is the way the possessed girls will be turned into raving sex addicts if the Stu so much as touches them as long as the ghosts still hang out in their bodies, their own feeling about the matter be damned.
    • Esme Amelia pulls no punches in pointing out how horrifying the world of Growing Around really is despite the author portraying it as a utopia; kids are given important jobs with no education, wild animals run amok, people permanently lose their rights upon reaching adulthood and children have the legal right to abuse them with there being no adult equivalent to CPS, adults are likely pressured to have kids as soon as possible, the elected mayor can do whatever they want to the loser, etc.
  • Only Sane Man: In the sporking of Halo, it's noted that Ben and Bianca are clearly the only sane people in the entire book.
  • Revenge Fic: On the other hand, they positively loathe crossovers that appear to be written only so the author can “prove” their favorite series is better than one they hate. This is the main reason Harry Potter and the Invincible TechnoMage and The White Devil of the Moon got sporked, being seen as needless attacks on Harry Potter and Sailor Moon respectively.note  Not all bad crossovers are sporked for this reason, but it is the most common.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Master Ghandalf takes To Rule Them All to task for its poor sense of scale, pointing out how it dramatically underestimates numbers (claiming 10,000 orcs is a large army for Mordor), time (implying the War of the Last Alliance happened over the course of a single day) and distance (Azra travelling around Middle-earth unrealistically quickly, especially without the advantages of the Nazgul).
  • The Scrappy: All sporkers tend to have one for whatever fic they're working on, and often they are a major reason the fic is being covered in the first place. In addition, many have personal ones they bring up even in unrelated sporkings for comparison's sake. Due to the Twilight Sporkings, Bella Swan and Edward Cullen are brought up in this fashion many, many times. Clary and Jace from the The Mortal Instruments sporkings are similarly loathed. Christian Grey and Elena Lincoln from the Fifty Shades series are thoroughly despised as well, in addition to literally every “heroic” character in The Mists of Avalon.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Wanderer literally quits sporking in Real Life Thousand Shinji after a couple terrible moments, leaving Leliel and Libraryseraph to do the last few chapters.
  • Shipping: Sporkers often make their preferred ships known throughout their sporkings, although not so much that the sporking becomes a Sporker Filibuster.
  • Single-Issue Psychology: In the Fifty Shades of Grey series, all of Christian's problems stem from his having been abused and poor until the age of four. Gehayi and Ket, both survivors of childhood abuse, take it to task. The comments similarly rip the flimsy excuse apart, often calling attention to the fact that Christian's mother is not given the same treatment despite being abused for far longer and not behaving nearly as badly.
  • Strawman Has a Point:
    • In his sporking of Identities, Master Ghandalf points out that despite Legolas' suspicion of Morwen/Rana being portrayed as a flaw with him, he's actually entirely justified in being suspicious, since he knows for a fact that she's an agent of the Enemy. It doesn't help that she spends more time whining about Legolas not trusting her than she does showing that she can be trusted, and she apparently doesn't fully turn against Sauron until after she gets caught in an explosion at the Battle of the Hornburg.
    • In her sporking of TDOMCM Libraryseraph points out that Harry is a conqueror who is unifying the wildlings into a fighting force and who possesses magical powers like nothing seen in Westeros before, and therefore all the characters treated as in the wrong for mistrusting and fearing him are the only IC and sensible ones.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: Mervin and Hyde's "dead herrings" are this—instances in which an author will try to throw out a Red Herring by having the characters, often completely unprompted, strongly insist that a certain thing won't happen, but the specificity and intensity of these denials just makes it very obvious that thing is exactly what's going to happen. Eg, Bella's repeated insistence at the beginning of New Moon that Edward will certainly not be leaving her behind in Forks when the Cullens move, he's definitely including her when he says "we"/"us", she'll be gone any day now and definitely not staying in Forks much longer so she better take all these pictures to remember, etc, pretty much ruins any surprise in the reveal that Edward is in fact leaving her behind.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • In her sporking of "Meet the Corellians", Esme Amelia says that Han Solo having to raise a child during his smuggler days could make for an amazing story, but the fic in question just wastes all the potential.
    • Once Sauron is defeated by the Last Alliance in To Rule them All, Master Ghandalf notes the numerous things Azra could be doing while awaiting his return (going to Angmar with the Witch-King, infiltrating the Dúnedain as a spy, etc.) instead of just sitting around in Barad-dûr (which makes no sense, since it should have been demolished following Sauron's defeat).
    • While sporking Identities, Master Ghandalf notes that a lot could be done with exploring the ramifications of Boromir surviving. However, since the suethor seemed not to understand the effect sparing him would have on the plot, not only is nothing of the sort done, new plot holes are created. He suspects that the author only spared him so he could be paired up with Eowyn's OC cousin Anwyn.
    • What Yuki and her guest sporkers feel about Nobunaga-sensei.

    Ichigo: And if this man is the reincarnation of Oda Nobunaga, I'd expect this show to be a more thrilling and intriguing adaptation of the real Nobunaga's life and endeavors into a modern setting. I didn't think the creators would ignore this more appealing route in favor of making a plot solely concerning the protagonist's selecting from various women who all inexplicably love him.

  • Too Dumb to Live: A common Berserk Button of sporkers.
    • tuckerofterror lampshades an instance: "You magical guardian who has let me get away with this for the past year, suggesting you're powerless to stop me, whose only proof that he's not just a normal guy who's certainly not hiding behind that vase is his own word, you."
    • rc88 was deeply displeased by a damsel in distress cutting off the tracking device which had been placed on her and yet keeping it in the car with her.
  • Unexplained Recovery: In the Identities sporking, it's noted that Haldir is said to have died in the Battle of the Hornburg by the narration, but he's later established to have survived, something which is never explained.
  • Viewers Are Morons:
    • Sporkers tend not to appreciate being treated like this by the fics they spork. In particular, Mervin ran a "Hand-Holding" count through Twilight, for when Meyer sat down and outright spelled out for her readers what was happening.
    • The "Belladonna Poisoning" count for the Fifty Shades sporking—given when E.L. James' plots, characters or writing bear a striking resemblance to Meyer's work—counts egregious hand-holding as a similarity to the Twilight series.
  • Villain Protagonist: Azra from "To Rule Them All" is considered a very poor example of one by Master Ghandalf. As he points out, she's not sympathetic enough for the audience to feel for her, nor is she impressive enough for them to want to she how she'll pull of her schemes.
  • Worst Aid:
    • Pointed out in Chapter 9 of Ganondorf in my Crawlspace when Annie is giving CPR to Ilia, who is still breathing.
    • Mervin criticizes the Cullens' idea of medical aid, from sewing up a slashed brachial artery in the kitchen with unsterilized tools to, later, simply bridal-carrying a very ill and fragile Bella around instead of using a stretcher or simply keeping her stationary in their new home clinic (which, while still not as good as a hospital, is still much safer than moving someone so critically sick). Mervin and Mrs. Hyde are also not amused with how often Carlisle discusses Bella's care with Edward, rather than the patient herself, particularly when it comes to her pregnancy. Carlisle only tells Edward how lethal the pregnancy could be, and, even worse, only tells Edward that the safest course is to terminate—Bella only finds this out because she forces Edward to tell her. The sporkers point out it really seems like they weren't planning to tell Bella about this major surgery she'd be undergoing until she was actually on the operating table.
  • The Woobie: Destiny in particular (the Designated Villain of the Harry Potter badfic The Impossible Wager) deserves some mention. Poor girl got kicked out of her role by Justice, was betrayed by her older sister Fate, and can barely do anything to stop it due to a game of Chance.