Fanfic Pet Peeves

[iamdragonrider]

Oh dear. You actually used the phrase "limpid blue eyes"

But you forgot to have Sam tell Jack that she wanted to have his babies.

[Skydiver]

well, can't have it all

he did have quivering lips though

[iamdragonrider]

sometimes, when you write stuff deliberately 'bad' it's called 'crack!fic'

such as this
http://www.jackfic.net/emeraldcity/c...naswooness.htm

So, is crack!fic not just deliberatly writing bad (in order to use as many dried up overused cliches as possible) but trying to write well (enough) while deliberately placing the characters in bad, out of character, or implausible situations, simply for a bit of humor?

[Skydiver]

kinda. it's a way to have fun with the cliches.

I would never, in a 'normal fic' use 'limpid blue eyes' or have daniel's lip quiver.

[iamdragonrider]

I see I think. There seems a fine line between placing the characters in an unusual situation for humor purpuses, (making the guys shop for maxi pads for an incapacitated Sam) or writing in things that are overused in poorly written fics (making the characters cry over stupid things, like breaking a nail, or running out of coffee...) as a bit of a joke.

Maybe not so much as a fine line, as a grey area perhaps.

I'm just curious, since most of my stories are humor based, and generally revolve around uncharacteristic situations. Like rewriting certain fairy tales, SG1 style, or showing up in the gate room nekid, or Daniel rescuing his coffee mug from a flooding office...

I've always just thought of them as humor... but they might also be called crack!fic. Afterall, if i'm understanding correctly, crack!fic is meant to be humerous.

[Skydiver]

for more of people having fun with cliches

http://community.livejournal.com/samjack4evah/

they are sam/jack orientated though, so if that ain't your cup o tea, might want to give it a pass. Crack!Fic/ClichedFic isn't pure sam/jack. I think there's a thriving atlantis clichefic community as well, i'm just not part of it.

cliches have grown over time, and really, ideas only become cliches when everybody and their brother jumps on the bandwagon and uses it...like daniel being so whumped he can only say j'ak.

It's one thing when people use the cliches for fun, but another when authors - usually new ones - write the cliches and don't realize that they're writing cliches. I write a cliched/crack fic and get people telling me how horrible it is, i can laugh. I know it's bad. But for some, they don't realize that they're writing a cliched fic, and when they get told that it's bad, they take it personally and are hurt by it

[Mousie]

Like the 'Artifacts' incident. Haven't seen it for a while but ages ago one author wrote a scene with Jack saying something about Daniel's rocks, to which Dan replied "Artifacts Jack, not rocks" or something like that. A few other authors picked it up and ran with it and all of a sudden it was hard to find a fic without it in. It got really annoying. Everyone though it must have been on the show because it was in so many fics. It became Fannon.

[SamJackShipLover]

Ohhh, I read something on LJ a while back. It was a bunch of stuff, that people consider canon but was actually fannon. I think it was mostly about Sam (using Holy Hannah ALL the time, her father calling her Sammie, stuff like that). It was fun to read and the person who wrote it really worked it out with examples. But, I don't think I have it bookmarked.

[jasminaGo]

Ohhh, I read something on LJ a while back. It was a bunch of stuff, that people consider canon but was actually fannon. I think it was mostly about Sam (using Holy Hannah ALL the time, her father calling her Sammie, stuff like that). It was fun to read and the person who wrote it really worked it out with examples. But, I don't think I have it bookmarked.

Also Daniel living on just coffee, Jack calling him Spacemonkey all the time (that one annoys me like you wouldn't believe, he said it only once FCOL!!!). Sam calling Hammond "Uncle George", even tho on the show Sam didn't even know he knew her dad before "Secrets". And the list goes on and on...

[Alipeeps]

'mary sue' fic, i won't even read them. If i see anything like 'sam's long lost sister' or 'jack's daughter' or 'daniel's sister' joins the team and.... I just back away. Not my cup of tea.

Yup, me too. Nine times out of ten you can tell from the (badly-spelt) summary that the sister/daughter etc is gonna be a Mary Sue so I just steer clear.

I never got the "Mary Sue" stigma. It is, in fact, one of my pet peeves when it comes to fanfic criticism. I'm fine with long lost sisters, daughters and what will you. I've read some good stories written in this vein. We all write from within ourselves, anyway, and every character is at least a little bit us whether we want it or not. Write yourself in all you want- as long as you make it good. If you can make a character based on yourself believable and interesting- more power to you.

Sadly, MOST long-lost sister/daughter etc fics *are* poorly-written Mary Sues. It's a genre of plotline that is inevitably popular with emo adolescents (though not always - some of those responsible are old enough to know better! ) writing wish-fulfilment fic. There probably are some good stories in this genre out there with well-drawn, believable OCs who aren't spunky, wise-cracking teenagers who everyone immediately accepts and loves and who have unusual names (usually with lots of K's or X's in them) and unsuspected talents and end up being better than the team at just about everything they do and save the day when the team is unable to. It's just that the genre is so replete with just that type of OOC, annoying badfic that I see the word daughter/sister etc in a summary and run screaming!

1) Consistent bad spelling, grammar and/or punctuation. I can tolerate an occasional typo, but I am absolutely not willing to compromise beyond that. Writing is a matter of language. If you have issues with language, you should not be writing.

Precisely. What really bugs me is that I very much get that you only improve your writing by practising but a) if your writing is - technically - THAT bad, it's not really ready for "publication" and b) very often I see writers responding to concrit about their poor spelling and grammar with "it's just for fun", their attitude being that spelling and grammar don't matter. Well, they do. They're the fundamentals of language - not an optional extra. If you're writing just for fun and can't be bothered to spell etc properly then keep it as a fun hobby, don't publish it and expect people to be bothered to struggle through reading it.

Womble, I find that many language errors can be traced to writers who speak another language. I check their profile if I encounter continuous errors just to be sure. If the story hooks me anyway, a word to the writer to seek a beta (or offer to beta) is warranted. Sadly if this isn't the case I will still advise beta help and see if the writer is able to deal better.

Sadly, I find that most aren't non-native speakers. As a student of languages, I can often tell, just from certain phrasings and grammatical structures etc, when grammar issues are because the writer is not a native-English speaker. The majority of poorly-written fic I see is by native speakers who either have never been properly taught grammar and spelling, don't understand it or who (sadly, I fear, probably the majority) simply can't be bothered to use it properly.

In my experience, the cause of bad spelling is usually that the writer is either very young or very poorly read. I am myself not a native English speaker, and my early English stories were problematic spelling wise, but never THAT problematic. It helped that I had a wonderful beta reader.

Precisely. Most non-native English speakers actually have a far better grasp of English grammar etc than native speakers, because they've had to actually go to the effort of learning and understanding it! A lot of the badly-written fic out there is from very young writers (which explains not only the poor spelling and grammar but also the OOC, emo nature of many of the storylines!); it's the kind of stuff that in years gone by teenagers would write for fun and maybe show to a friend or two but never "publish" but now we have the internet, they can stick their awesome story idea on ffnet and sit back and wait for the "OMG! Yor so gr8t!" reviews to roll in.

Character assassination. Okay, you don't like character A, but don't turn him/her into a total ***hole to make your favorite character look better. Unless you can work along something like the SG-1 "Shades of Gray" where Jack was a jerk to everyone but he was undercover...

This is a major peeve for me. Fics where the writer's fave character bias is so obvious it's painful and every other character is written OOC to fit the rose-tinted slant they want to give their fave. A sub-genre of this that I come across time and time again is the Woobie!Rodney fic (particularly in post-Duranda fics) where everyone is sooooooo mean to poor, precious Wodney, who, despite all his bluster, is really a poor, fragile flower who's tender ego is shattered by the heartless behaviour of the people he thought were his friends.... *sob*... so he hides his PAIN and suffers in silence () before nearly losing his life in a reckless, selfless act of sacrifice to save his uncaring friends, who then finally realise what a wonderful, special person he is and how awful they've been to him and are overcome with guilt - GUILT! - as they hover regretfully around his infirmary bed while he hangs onto life by a thread!

[Skydiver]

Precisely. What really bugs me is that I very much get that you only improve your writing by practising but a) if your writing is - technically - THAT bad, it's not really ready for "publication" and b) very often I see writers responding to concrit about their poor spelling and grammar with "it's just for fun", their attitude being that spelling and grammar don't matter. Well, they do. They're the fundamentals of language - not an optional extra. If you're writing just for fun and can't be bothered to spell etc properly then keep it as a fun hobby, don't publish it and expect people to be bothered to struggle through reading it.

Yeah. i will NEVER tell someone 'your fic is crap, stop writing', because it's not crap. Just not to my taste. However, i also never give concrit to anyone i don't know. Because, i've run into situations where telling someone 'umm, sorry, siler isn't a major, he's a sgt' gets turned into 'they flamed me!!!!!'

no, i didn't flame you. And you've obviouslly never been flamed or you wouldn't be misinterpreting things, but whatever

This is a major peeve for me. Fics where the writer's fave character bias is so obvious it's painful and every other character is written OOC to fit the rose-tinted slant they want to give their fave. A sub-genre of this that I come across time and time again is the Woobie!Rodney fic (particularly in post-Duranda fics) where everyone is sooooooo mean to poor, precious Wodney, who, despite all his bluster, is really a poor, fragile flower who's tender ego is shattered by the heartless behaviour of the people he thought were his friends.... *sob*... so he hides his PAIN and suffers in silence () before nearly losing his life in a reckless, selfless act of sacrifice to save his uncaring friends, who then finally realise what a wonderful, special person he is and how awful they've been to him and are overcome with guilt - GUILT! - as they hover regretfully around his infirmary bed while he hangs onto life by a thread!

Rodney is obviously the Daniel of SGA. Because that's what i've run into a lot in sg1 fic and why i read very little fic written by folks whose preferences i don't know. And i avoid authors that i know from experience interpret daniel as the 'poor retiring delicate little innocent flower'

cause, that aint' the daniel that i see. And, often, paired with 'poor widdle...' is 'vilify someone to make 'poor widdle' the victim'.

some people enjoy it, and good for them. I just dont'.

I've also run into fanon turning into canon. In fact, there was one fic of mine where, in end game, when sam talks the NID baddies out of firing a missile full of symbiote killer at a planet, in my fic, i have her doing it because ishta's people had taken refuge there.

it's pure fanon. Yet i've had people contact me, wanting to know where that's said in the show. Someone was writing a 'sg-1 facts' book that she asked me to proof and she had it in there as fact, and it was just fanon.

it's an example of how something in a fic can become 'reality' because some see it that way. Just like Sammie, holy hannah, space monkey (i hate that term) and other bits of fanon that have overtaken fic to the point that people think they're canon

[silly sally]

Yeah. i will NEVER tell someone 'your fic is crap, stop writing', because it's not crap. Just not to my taste. However, i also never give concrit to anyone i don't know. Because, i've run into situations where telling someone 'umm, sorry, siler isn't a major, he's a sgt' gets turned into 'they flamed me!!!!!'

no, i didn't flame you. And you've obviouslly never been flamed or you wouldn't be misinterpreting things, but whatever



Rodney is obviously the Daniel of SGA. Because that's what i've run into a lot in sg1 fic and why i read very little fic written by folks whose preferences i don't know. And i avoid authors that i know from experience interpret daniel as the 'poor retiring delicate little innocent flower'

cause, that aint' the daniel that i see. And, often, paired with 'poor widdle...' is 'vilify someone to make 'poor widdle' the victim'.

some people enjoy it, and good for them. I just dont'.

I've also run into fanon turning into canon. In fact, there was one fic of mine where, in end game, when sam talks the NID baddies out of firing a missile full of symbiote killer at a planet, in my fic, i have her doing it because ishta's people had taken refuge there.

it's pure fanon. Yet i've had people contact me, wanting to know where that's said in the show. Someone was writing a 'sg-1 facts' book that she asked me to proof and she had it in there as fact, and it was just fanon.

it's an example of how something in a fic can become 'reality' because some see it that way. Just like Sammie, holy hannah, space monkey (i hate that term) and other bits of fanon that have overtaken fic to the point that people think they're canon

Holly Hannah and Space Monkey are canon So is Sunshine

[jasminaGo]

Holly Hannah and Space Monkey are canon So is Sunshine

But they were used only once or twice on the show. In fics those terms are used in every other sentance, like they are inseparable part of the characters. Jack calls Daniel spacemonkey once in canon and suddenly in fanon it's their secret code name or Jack says it all the time just to annoy Daniel or whatever...

[silly sally]

But they were used only once or twice on the show. In fics those terms are used in every other sentance, like they are inseparable part of the characters. Jack calls Daniel spacemonkey once in canon and suddenly in fanon it's their secret code name or Jack says it all the time just to annoy Daniel or whatever...

Well, the fics are not about canon or else we'd never see any fics where Sam and Jack get together, get married, have kids a.s.o.

[Skydiver]

space monkey was used once
holy hannah twice i believe by sam, once by jacob.

how about jack calling daniel 'danny boy' every other sentence? He's done it a couple of times to tease daniel, but not all the time.

in Daniel HC fic, one cliche is, poor wounded daniel choking out J'ak. What? one syllable is too much to say

Or, how about cracked ribs ALWAYS turning into pneumonia?

or Jack's tolerance for pain being such that he can - with a broken collar bone - being able to toss sam or daniel over his shoulder and carry them home??