Fanfic Pet Peeves

[Skydiver]

IMHO, when you're writing dialogue...say the character's lines out loud

if htey sound stupid to you when you read/say them, they'll likely sound stupid to other readers

[Pitry]

Oooh. Petpeeve. AU's without a proper set up.

You know them. "These, these and these key events that ahve loads to do with character development in the past three season never happened. Instead, the situation is THIS. How did we get into this compeltely and utterly unlikely set up? Use your imagination, cos I can't be arsed to properly set up my story!"

.... sigh. In these cases, my imagination says it perfers canon

[Womble]

IMHO, when you're writing dialogue...say the character's lines out loud

if htey sound stupid to you when you read/say them, they'll likely sound stupid to other readers

Dialogues are tricky. You can't just copy the way real people talk, because 99% of real talk is meaningless, fragmented, contradictory and all over the place. Back in the uni, we did a few exercises with recording people's speech and converting it to scripted dialogues. Basically, you have to strike a balance between authenticity and efficiency. Tricky stuff.

Pitry- The out-of-the-blue AU are hands down the worst. I am generally not a fan of AU, but if it must be done, it must at least be properly motivated.

And speaking of setting things up, a related pet peeve of mine is when the author of an AU story does their exposition in the preface instead of in the story- "Okay, this is an AU story, such and such didn't happen but such and such happened instead". It's important information, alright, but why give it to me outside of the story when you can give it in the story?

[Skydiver]

well, they may feel the need to defend the au they've made up. to preempt any 'you can't do that, that's not how it was in the show!!!!!' crit by openly saying 'hey, this is how it is'

[suse]

sam and teal'c is the same way
There's a bare handful of people that write/wrote it

And Sky is the thumb and least least one finger of those people!

suse

[Skydiver]

yeah, so someone else needs to help me out and give me something to read!!!!

*stomps foot*

seriously though, i'd love to see some new fic, especially sam and teal'c friendship

[suse]

yeah, so someone else needs to help me out and give me something to read!!!!

*stomps foot*

seriously though, i'd love to see some new fic, especially sam and teal'c friendship

See, there's this site. It's about Stargate, but for some reason it's named after a city in Oz...

suse
<hiding from the noodle of DOOOOOM>

[gatechick]

I know fan fic is for the imagination, but I hate reading stories where Pete is an evil, woman beating guy. Yes I know that sometimes behind the nicest guy lurks an evil creep, but by all accounts on the show, Pete was not an evil guy. He was a nice, kinda geeky guy. And I hate when Sam is written as a cowering woman. It just doesn't fit with her character. When tortured she never cowed. So it drives me crzy when I see her being.. for lack of a better word, wimpy.

[JackandSamAddict]

I know fan fic is for the imagination, but I hate reading stories where Pete is an evil, woman beating guy. Yes I know that sometimes behind the nicest guy lurks an evil creep, but by all accounts on the show, Pete was not an evil guy. He was a nice, kinda geeky guy. And I hate when Sam is written as a cowering woman. It just doesn't fit with her character. When tortured she never cowed. So it drives me crzy when I see her being.. for lack of a better word, wimpy.

Ahh...this is my biggest fanfic pet peeve...I don't like Pete...but come on! He would never lay a hand on Sam...and if he did...she would take care of herself.

[hedwig]

Ahh...this is my biggest fanfic pet peeve...I don't like Pete...but come on! He would never lay a hand on Sam...and if he did...she would take care of herself.

Exactly. I'm pretty sure Sam knows defense moves that Pete never heard of or experienced and if he tried anything at all (unlikely as that is), she'd wipe the floor with him before he even knew what was happening. Which is why I so don't understand why writers insist on portraying Sam as a damsel who needs rescuing all the time, weak, unaware, gets taken by surprise, pretty much sits there and cries while whatever bad thing is happening ... is happening ... instead of defending herself. I guess a lot of writers just want to use it as an excuse to let Jack come riding to the rescue (or at least that's my impression in the majority of stories of this kind).

[Skydiver]

i sooo agree. pete would never abuse sam. just ain't in him.

and like you said, sam all too often, falls victim to being the 'damsel in distress' to make a fic work.

on the other hand, almost as often as pete is written poorly, we have evil plotting devious laira

getting sam and jack together with the catalyse of a betraying sig other is easy. try doing it without rewriting a character or assassinating them. that's a LOT harder

[Alipeeps]

I know fan fic is for the imagination, but I hate reading stories where Pete is an evil, woman beating guy. Yes I know that sometimes behind the nicest guy lurks an evil creep, but by all accounts on the show, Pete was not an evil guy. He was a nice, kinda geeky guy. And I hate when Sam is written as a cowering woman. It just doesn't fit with her character. When tortured she never cowed. So it drives me crzy when I see her being.. for lack of a better word, wimpy.

Ah yes, the ever popular "writing a character OOC in order to make them fit the story I want to tell/the ship I want to write". One of my biggest fanfic peeves ever. To me, the characters are everything - and if you're not writing them as recognisably the characters we see on screen (albeit perhaps in situations we've never seen on screen) then you're not writing fanfic, you're writing original fiction with characters who happen to have the same names etc as characters from a TV show. And I've no interest in reading that.

[EvilSpaceAlien]

I know fan fic is for the imagination, but I hate reading stories where Pete is an evil, woman beating guy. Yes I know that sometimes behind the nicest guy lurks an evil creep, but by all accounts on the show, Pete was not an evil guy. He was a nice, kinda geeky guy. And I hate when Sam is written as a cowering woman. It just doesn't fit with her character. When tortured she never cowed. So it drives me crzy when I see her being.. for lack of a better word, wimpy.

I agree, and another thing I just can't stand is fics that uses the word f**k in almost every sentence. I was reading a fic like that on fanfiction.net and I started wondering if the writer was either stupid or a ten year old kid that thinks it's "cool" to write that word.

[sbz]

I agree, and another thing I just can't stand is fics that uses the word f**k in almost every sentence. I was reading a fic like that on fanfiction.net and I started wondering if the writer was either stupid or a ten year old kid that thinks it's "cool" to write that word.

Oh, God yes. Swear words have their place and uses, there's no denying that. For emphasis, emotion, etc. Sometimes a character swearing can say more about a situation and their mindset than a paragraph of prose.

But if it's practically every sentence it just gets distracting and irritating. It loses its effect; it becomes a crutch. And in my experience it is young people who go overboard with the swearing, maybe because they think it makes their writing seem... older? Or better? Or becasue it's the thing to do? I dunno.

[Womble]

Oh, God yes. Swear words have their place and uses, there's no denying that. For emphasis, emotion, etc. Sometimes a character swearing can say more about a situation and their mindset than a paragraph of prose.

But if it's practically every sentence it just gets distracting and irritating. It loses its effect; it becomes a crutch. And in my experience it is young people who go overboard with the swearing, maybe because they think it makes their writing seem... older? Or better? Or becasue it's the thing to do? I dunno.

It's because swearing is a "macho" thing, or so some people think. If you're writing an action story and you want your character to look like a tough guy, having him swear like a drunken sailor can seem like a low-effort way to do it.

(Although to be fair, I've met quite a few people whose vocabulary consisted mainly of swear words and who could make good prototypes for fiction characters. Perhaps there's a degree of realism there after all?)