Fanfic Pet Peeves

[EmmaPeel]

That is hilarious, because that is EXACTLY what everyone writes about Daniel: he overworks himself, doesn't sleep or eat and has to be dragged to bed or the commissary by the others. I don't read J/S, so that means I don't read 99% of the Sam-centric fics. So I didn't realise people wrote the exact same personality quirks for her....funny, I have never read one that describes Jack or Teal'c like that!

They also often write Janet as getting angry at Jack for letting Daniel get sick/run down, as if if were Jack's responsibility to make sure Daniel eats enough, gets enough sleep, etc. It just makes me laugh. If Daniel doesn't have it together enough to know that he has to eat and get enough sleep, he shouldn't be on the team.

I also have to laugh when writers write Daniel as some some of intergalactic sex magnet. It seems that all people, including aliens, watch to have sex with Daniel and barring that, they want him to be their sex slave. A bit of projection there I think.

[Crichiel]

I understand your comments here, and I'm not trying to start an argument, but Sam and Pete barely knew each other when he did that security check. In "Death Knell", Sam commented that the device she and Jacob were working on had only been discovered a "month ago" (when Daniel was in Central America in "Evolution"). After Evolution came "Grace", then "Fallout" (on Jonas' planet), and then "Chimera". While we don't actually know when Sam and Pete met, that's less than a month that they seem to have known each other, and I don't feel he had any right to do any kind of check on her background, regardless of being a cop. Even though they had spent the night together, that doesn't give him any right to check up on her, especially after she's as much as told him her job is classified, top secret, etc. Just what about "classifed", "top secret" doesn't the man understand? Hello, ... she's in the Air Force with a top secret, classified job. That right there should have stopped him checking up on her, and absolutely nothing gave him the right to do that. Sorry - but this is a "rant" issue with me.

And now, ... back to your scheduled "pet peeve" thread ...

No argument forthcoming here! I know I am in the minority on a lot of my pet peeves. I think I need to just move on over to the Heretics Unite thread! My biggest heresy being, I don't HATE anyone or anything on the show. I like or dislike things, but not enough to try and change what happened in a fanfic, stop watching the show, or attack the writers for not writing to my specific tastes (absolutely NO offense intended, I am not saying that anyone here does these things, or is wrong if they do).

So, I don't like Pete, but I certainly don't hate him or think him a bad person. I get from a story point of view why they had him look into Sam's background. I also don't like Jack/Sam and hence don't read J/S fic, but I understand why they tried that storyline out in the series. I would get rid of every Jaffa-centered story ever written, but I know there are a lot of viewers who like them. I would love it if every episode was a team-of-four off-world adventure with lots of action AND character development, but I totally get that they don't have that luxury on tv.

The coolest thing about fanfic is that you can make the show exactly what you want and don't HAVE to worry about Neilson Ratings and keeping sponsors!! As writers, you write what you like. And as readers, you read what you like.

[Skydiver]

Character bashing would be another good warning to add.

ah, but they're not bashing, they're just writing em as they see em

[Khentkawes]

I actually read a story once that had a warning for "character bashing." In the author's notes, the writer said that the story contained bashing and that "fans of X probably shouldn't read any farther."

The problem was, that got me curious. So I read on. And was very sorry. It wasn't even minor bashing. Literally two of the characters agreed that character X should be dead because no one would miss X. I just had to wonder what the writer was thinking.

The problem with having warnings for "character bashing," however, is that different people have different definitions of it. I've read stories where a character was severely criticized for a specific reason that was necessary to the plot, or over a specific incident that happened in a specific episode (usually in an episode tag). And that usually doesn't bother me. I know that the characters aren't perfect, so I don't mind authors who want to address the mistakes that a character has made. But the story I mentioned above, went way beyond that in my opinion. Still, what I see as valid addressing of a character's flaws and mistakes, some people see as bashing. I think it all depends on the degree, and how OOC the characters become. Also whether it's just bashing for no apparent reason, or if it has some purpose. which is all somewhat subjective anyway...

For me, over-the-top praise is almost as bad as out-of-character bashing. Both are types of poor writing because they fail to portray characters as what they really are: flawed human beings with strengths and weaknesses who each have their own unique motivations and perspectives.

[SGLAB]

Very true ^^ I think I've unfortunately gotten too sensitive in the way certain characters are portrayed.

[Khentkawes]

Very true ^^ I think I've unfortunately gotten too sensitive in the way certain characters are portrayed.

I think most of us are a bit obsessively sensitive about character portrayals. It's part of the nature of being fans, right?

Especially when it comes to our favoritest character (I know, favoritest isn't a word, but it makes sense in this context, since so many people have more than one "favorite" character). If I'm honest, then I have to admit that I'm more sensitive to bashing of my favorite character, and more likely not to mind when my favorite character is glorified to the high heavens in a fit of idealism. That's the wonder of biases. Knowing that you have them might help you see things a little clearer, but the bias is still there.

[iamdragonrider]

It;s not always orange juice, but he definitely doesn't drink alcohol... or milk.

Seriously? I know I usually see him drink juice or water over alcohol, coffee or soda, and vagely recall some rationale he gave about the alcohol, but when did milk come from? (guess we won't be seeing any Jaffa milk billboards!) Of course, there were a lot of Teal'c things that weren't Jaffa things. Like the hair, and extreme fomality and emotional mask.

Was pete a jerk? sure. did he 'spy' on their stakeout? yeah. was he a wife beating, abusive manwhore?

no.

Pete fell in the plot hole of getting him to the stakeout without explaining how he got there, thus he MUST be a stalker.

Pete was just poorly written and - imho - the victim of too many of the writers satisifying their 'geek gets the girl' fantasies. he wasn't evil.

And i respect more the ship writers that just let him be human than i do the ship writers that villify him to have jack rescue a poor bruised and abused sam

I personally blame the writers myself for Pete's failure. Did they want fans to hate him? I see no reason he had to run a background check and follow her to the stakeout to get clearance, considering the number of times that Sam's work has followed her home, or escaped the SGC. There had to be way better ways for Pete to inadvertantly end up finding out about Sam's secret life, though I understand that they wanted to portray her difficulty (and anyone at the SGC really) in being able to lead a life outside of the SGC. Therefore, the rather bitter breakup, followed by the snooping.. but I think they just should have found another way.

And speaking of poorly written lets villianize and kill pete fanfics, I have a vague recollection of one I started to read, and stopped, but I may be mingling several mangled stories... Basically Pete wanted to surprise Sam or she forgot he was supposed to be there, and she shoot him because she's just got back from an awful mission and is on a hair-trigger. I quit reading because of course, she calls Jack, and I think it turned into let's hide the body it's ok Sammie baby Jackie poo is here.

Umm. K.

Just not my cup of caffinated beverage...

Oh, and Sky... Geek gets the girl? Sam's a geek too, but a differnt sort of hot sexy kick your ass but i'd rather be on a deserted island with some of the top scientists in the world than with the latest hunk from hollywood.

[McClance]

However, when an author starts to cross three or more series, it starts looking a bit dubious. I think it would be rather difficult to do all the main characters justice, and the more series in the crossover, the less likely it is the reader will follow all if any of the crossed storylines. Personally, I think those with multifandom crossovers are just shooting themselves in the foot.

I've got one of those in progress right now. I've got Star Trek, Babylon 5, FarScape, Stargate, Dragonriders of Pern, and my own Universe.

However, I don't have every major character from each of the series. Indeed, the only regular character I have from B5 is Ivanova. And, from Stargate, I only have Thor and, for a few scenes, Kvasir. From ST and FS, I feature the majority of the characters, but I only really focus on two from each for most of the story.

So far, I haven't had any negative criticism.

But I can't condemn crossovers, because I really wanted to write a SG-1/Dragonriders of Pern crossover, but I was afraid McCaffrey's lawyers would come after me, her work being on the restricted list. I also had a friend, who knew someone that sewed little dragons for selling, and made the error of calling them fire lizards, and got sued. She changed the name to something along the lines of winged flying flitters of no particular origin or something like that...

She doesn't mind if you write stories set on her worlds. As long as you respect them.

There are a lot of people and various forums who have posted McCaffrey fanfics. And, I've posted several crossover stories involving Pern--the one mentioned above and another relating to it. No one has come after me yet.

As long as you don't officially publish them so as to make money off them, your safe.

[Skydiver]

all they needed to do to get pete to the stake out....have daniel intro him to sam instead of mark. then, after pete storms out, he feels bad, goes to talk to daniel, sees the van, his cop instincts tell him it's a stakeout and he hangs to see what's going on

that's all they needed.

there are some authors that take pride in bashing a character. Jonas especially, was a target, kinda akin to how keller has been received.

I have no idea if there is keller bashing fic out there, however i do know that, in its heyday, jonas death fic was a popular genre

so you do have the people that deliberately set out to bash a character, and then those that honestly don't realize that they are bahing.

On the other side of the coin, so some readers anything but 'omg, so and so is so great' is seen as bashing, even when it's not

[Pitry]

Seriously? I know I usually see him drink juice or water over alcohol, coffee or soda, and vagely recall some rationale he gave about the alcohol, but when did milk come from? (guess we won't be seeing any Jaffa milk billboards!) Of course, there were a lot of Teal'c things that weren't Jaffa things. Like the hair, and extreme fomality and emotional mask.

The Changeling. "I prefer not to drink lectose at any temperature" or soemthing like that

Sigh at hcaracter bashing. Obviuosly I get not likign all characters etc, but if there's a character I don't like I would probably try and either minimise their presence in the story or find an excuse to not write them completely. Writing them OOC just cos you dislike them is.... I dunno. A petpeeve of mine?

[Mousie]

[COLOR="Green"]

And speaking of poorly written lets villianize and kill pete fanfics, I have a vague recollection of one I started to read, and stopped, but I may be mingling several mangled stories... Basically Pete wanted to surprise Sam or she forgot he was supposed to be there, and she shoot him because she's just got back from an awful mission and is on a hair-trigger. I quit reading because of course, she calls Jack, and I think it turned into let's hide the body it's ok Sammie baby Jackie poo is here.

I either stopped reading that or a similar one, I think he was actually attacking her so she shot him, called Jack who then disposed of the body and called some friends in to clean up her house on the quiet so there was no evidence!

[silly sally]

I either stopped reading that or a similar one, I think he was actually attacking her so she shot him, called Jack who then disposed of the body and called some friends in to clean up her house on the quiet so there was no evidence!

Actually Pete was NID is that one and she killed him in self-defense...

[KatG]

Seriously? I know I usually see him drink juice or water over alcohol, coffee or soda, and vagely recall some rationale he gave about the alcohol, but when did milk come from? (guess we won't be seeing any Jaffa milk billboards!) Of course, there were a lot of Teal'c things that weren't Jaffa things. Like the hair, and extreme fomality and emotional mask.

If I recall correctly there was something in an episode where Teal'c refused to consume what he referred to as bovine something, which is what he called milk.

I personally blame the writers myself for Pete's failure. Did they want fans to hate him? I see no reason he had to run a background check and follow her to the stakeout to get clearance, considering the number of times that Sam's work has followed her home, or escaped the SGC. There had to be way better ways for Pete to inadvertantly end up finding out about Sam's secret life, though I understand that they wanted to portray her difficulty (and anyone at the SGC really) in being able to lead a life outside of the SGC. Therefore, the rather bitter breakup, followed by the snooping.. but I think they just should have found another way.

I actually don't have a problem with the background check. Yes, Sam said she was in the Air Force and that what she does is classified, but Pete is a cop, and she could have been covering something up, so in this day and age especially a background check is not that unusual. However, once he had it ran and found out that she was telling the truth, he should have dropped it.

Being at the stake-out took it too far. There are numerous ways they could have done it without making him look like a stalker. Sky's suggestion of him being Daniel's friend instead of Mark's would have worked, as well as him hearing something on a police scanner about a stake-out or something going down on Daniel's street and not knowing it was related to Sam, showing up to offer his help and getting caught in the middle. I'm sure there are other ways too, but apparently TPTB were too lazy to come up with a good explanation. *shrugs*

[iamdragonrider]

She doesn't mind if you write stories set on her worlds. As long as you respect them.

There are a lot of people and various forums who have posted McCaffrey fanfics. And, I've posted several crossover stories involving Pern--the one mentioned above and another relating to it. No one has come after me yet.

As long as you don't officially publish them so as to make money off them, your safe.

Actually, when I first started writing SG-1 back in '04, I published first on FF.net. When I read the fine print, Anne McCaffrey was on the short list of forbidden fandoms to write in, including crossovers. A year or so later, someone sent me a link to a sanctions Pern site, where you could join and post stories, or "role play" but there was a page of rules, formost that while you could write in her "world" you could not use any of her characters or dragons. You also had to be an active participant for some time in order to get a Dragon. I never got involved.

However, in the last year or two, restrictions have been lifted. She is not longer on the banned list at FF, and there is a message on her site explaining the reason, you can now use her characters, but she does ask you as a grandmother, to play nicely with her children.

Good luck with your crossover. I don't mean to critisize them, just don't usually get into them if it's more than two, usually because I don't follow them all, or the author is working too hard to draw too many completely unrelated fandoms together and it loses site of the story just to have thier favorite characters together from different shows. But I have enjoyed the occaisional crossover, even ones where i didn't follow all shows involved.

Actually Pete was NID is that one and she killed him in self-defense...

ACtually I thought she was just on a hair trigger-and it was an accident, which made the cover up seem even less likely, and therefore irked me more as being waaaay OOC. If Sam killed someone, whether in self-defense or accidently, she'd not go to any lenght to hid it, nor would Jack help her dispose of the body. (If it was NID, they would have told at least the general I would think) But i would not be surprised if there was one in Pete being NID. Maybe in the end they found out he was NID when they searched him or something... but maybe I just hit the back button too soon

I actually don't have a problem with the background check. Yes, Sam said she was in the Air Force and that what she does is classified, but Pete is a cop, and she could have been covering something up, so in this day and age especially a background check is not that unusual. However, once he had it ran and found out that she was telling the truth, he should have dropped it.

Being at the stake-out took it too far. There are numerous ways they could have done it without making him look like a stalker. Sky's suggestion of him being Daniel's friend instead of Mark's would have worked, as well as him hearing something on a police scanner about a stake-out or something going down on Daniel's street and not knowing it was related to Sam, showing up to offer his help and getting caught in the middle. I'm sure there are other ways too, but apparently TPTB were too lazy to come up with a good explanation. *shrugs*

You are right about background checks not being all that uncommon. I mean, people google prospective boyfriend/girlfriens all the time, I know one of the girls at work googled a guy she'd gone on a few dates with for long enough time to start thinking about getting more formal in the relationship, and googled him to find he had a myspace page with pictures of him and a girl and thier kid/s, and he hadn't mentioned the fact that he came with baggage. There was some debate about how long before one should be obliged to disclose that sort of info.

And I know someone that was dating a guy, knew he had a criminal record and he'd told her it was something, but she felt suspicious, and had a PI investigate, and found out he was actually a convicted sex offendor specifically not allowed to have contact with minors. For that matter, there are an awful lot of people not trusting thier partner that hire a PI to investigate thier signifigant other. Pete already being a cop had no need to hire a PI. Of course, once he got the background check, he should have known that she was telling the truth that her work was classified on the highest level. Only government would do that, making her either truthful in saying what she did was classified, or she was in the witness protection program, and therefore, pete should have quit, and accepted it and moved on to deciding if he could live with it or not, rather than following her and potentially exposing her cover and therefore endangering her.

I don't know if Daniel beig the friend would work that would imply Daniel had a life outside the SGC too But yeah, there a dozens of ways that would have made Pete less of a stalker, that still would have given him access to the SGC.

[iamdragonrider]

I actually liked the idea that Sam had a boyfriend and life outside the SGC, and I wish they'd handled Pete better, but probably, no matter how he'd been written, hardcore S/J fans would have if not outright disapproved of him, would have found the need to kill him off, utilizing Carter's "black-widow curse" to do it somehow.

There's an awful lot on that variation. Pete killed in the line of duy, Sam accindently killing him, accidents, etc. Unfortunately, most of these variations on "Pete must die!" have Sam turning into a quivering pile of mush that Jackie poo must come and rescue her, making her realize she didn't really love Pete, but loved Jack instead. So isn't it a good thing he ended up dead?


And I agree about Jonas too. I have found few Jonas friendly stories, or stories set in that season that didn't want to kill jonas for taking away Daniel.

I haven't read much Atlantis, so haven't seen the Keller fics, but I did try to read some when Sam was in charge season four, which pushed back my desire to bother. Season four Atlantis Fic seemed firmly set into two categories. Kill Sam! because she took away Elizabeth (or have her screw up royally) Or Jack and Sam carry on long distance relationships. When I looked for at lantis fic, I wanted to see how Sam was getting on with her new role. I wanted to see her and Rodney, because I loved the tension and interplay from SG-1. I wanted to see her growing as a leader, and getting to knw those under her command, becomin friends with John, Teyla, ronon, rodney. But it seems that the bulk of fans just wanted to continue S/J or wanted to kill her off so Weir could come back, regardless of the reasons behind the character's departue. (I have found a few good good ones, but IMO they are far too outnumbered by the other two categories)