Discussion Fan Fic Pet Peeves?

Another ship is Obi-Wan and Satine. The few on ff.net are for the most part according to one of my sisters. Most of them are on the TCW page and 95% fics there feel like they were written by people that lied about their age to get an account there. I know of one person that did seeing that they admitting in a chapter that they were now the age you are supposed to be to sign up. Sadly it's like facebook, kids lie about their age to get accounts

Another thing that bugs me is when the author on ff.net says in the summary that they either suck/stink at summaries or it's better than it sounds. I am twice as unlikely to open the fic if it says that. Now if it says more inside and the summary is interesting than I will open it and read the longer summary.

I don't mind if the writer uses numbers like 34 or other numbers instead of writing it out but it annoys me when they use & instead of and.

 

Okay, this right here is my big peeve. Readers thinking they have a right to demand what an author does with their characters. No, no, annnnd no. Nobody likes what they're reading, they can go read something else. Or write their own version of whatever they want to read. The creative process doesn't work on demands from people who ain't paying.

In my case, I never wrote any EU related fanfic because I didn't like the books or couldn't get interested in the characters. Is it better to try and write a canon character when you don't understand them? You wind up writing them wrong, then you get yelled at for OOC. But then you get shouted down about NOT writing the "one true pairing" (whoever that might be, depending on who is reading). This is why I gave up writing SW fanfic. This is why I'm afraid to start writing it again.

 

I think the problem I had is I had regular readers who know I am a L/M 'shipper. So they are expecting L/M and by chapter 15 Luke is still married to the OC so they want me to get in gear because they KNOW I am going to have Luke and Mara knocking boots at the end fic because that is pretty much how all my stories end. By the time I did kill the character they were then upset because they liked the character. They still wanted L/M but they wanted a happy ending for the OC. I didn't know how that was going to happen.

 

So, you couldn't win either way? I understand that, especially when it comes to creating another fate for your OC. Anything that could be happy is probably going to come out, pardon the obvious pun, forced.

 

**** the 'one true pairing' idea. That's the thing I really dislike about what's going on with the new trilogy - people are screaming that heads will roll if the new trilogy 'tramples' the EU... kinda creepy in a way.

And as for the whole 'canon' debate - A wise poster once said 'you're arguing over the idea that one set of fiction is more real than another set of fiction...'

With the exception of the 'no LFL characters can be 'slashed' (which is fine by me, as idea that Luke and Han could be hot for each other even squicks ME out!) it doesn't matter - it shouldn't matter.

MY Luke is different from someone else's Luke - My Han, Leia, et all are different from someone else's - I did get a few 'curious' remarks about a story with a 'Ben Skywalker', so much where I was compelled to add an author's note clarifying that MY Ben was more like an OC, and left it at that.

I LOATH the idea that you would be afraid to write because of how other people may react - it makes me physically ill! The only person you should be concerned about pleasing is yourself, and your characters...

 

I have one troll over at FFN that when I see a review from him/her I cringe. This person likes this specific group of people in SW and if I portray them in any way non-heroic I get flamed.

What is funny is I have my characters in my ongoing fanfic say this group of people (that the troll adores) have been killed. I get flamed by my troll unmercifully after that chapter. But what he doesn't know is they are alive. Just because a fanfic character thinks something happened doesn't mean it really happened. Later on the character finds out he was lied to. So after all this flaming my troll is going to find out his precious characters end up the heroes of the story. I am sorry that is so vague. It is an ongoing story.

 

I got flamed by a fellow reviewer IN a review.

I said something that might not have been called for but the author had no problems and they flamed me for everyone that read the review. They got so mean I couldn't finish reading what they had to say about me.

 

I have seen that before...especially where an anonymous reviewer is making comments that are perceived as wrong. Because then you cannot PM them. People will jump in and support a writer. I remember one of my friends was flamed because Luke was upset that Mara died. The guy said she wrote him as a total non-masculine pansy. It wasn't like Luke was blubbering all through the story. He was upset right after it happened and was depressed for a while. I thought it was spot on, but this guy was upset and flaming away. The next thing you see is other people flaming the flamer in their reviews. But this was a case when the person had something bad to say in every review.

 

Some very good longstanding authors have discontinued anonymous reviews for such reasons. I guess that would be a pet peeve, that reviewers form cliques.

 

Now that FFN lets you delete anonymous reviews it is better. My troll is a registered reader, unfortunately.

 

Under 'account', there is 'block users', and some stuff to do - hope this helps, nobody needs a troll! Unless it is Yoda

 

Thanks! I was wondering if that was possible, but didn't know how to do it.

 

I could have mentioned that too. I just assumed it was an anonymous reviewer...

 

I wish...I could just delete the reviews.

 

Yay!

 

BLOCKED!!! WOOT! Now he is going to review me anonymously and sadly asked me why he is blocked. He really has no clue as to why I am upset about his reviews.

 

The person that flamed me was a member I believe and as far as I know they were never called on for their behavior towards me.

Luke mourning his wife is realistic since he is mortal. They had a deep bond and he felt it snap if memory serves me correctly.

Some OOC gets me unless it is pretty AU or they don't explain things well. Someone here wrote a great fic that had pieces of the lives of different Imperials and one of them was Piett's ex-wife talking about how their baby son had died because the antique bassinet he was in broke and Vader gave Piett Leave to everyone's surprise. They implied that Vader was sympathetic towards Piett since at the time Vader believed that his son was dead.


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This whole thing about canon characters and shipping is a huge chunk of the reason why I almost exclusively use original characters for main protagonists.

And when I wrote the main protagonists falling in love, it was completely by accident.

 

That's the best approach, unless there is some major use of canon characters in a story. But the original characters only approach really is the most healthy and functional...not always practical, but it saves on reviewer blast damage.

 

I get a kick when somebody complains my OC wouldn't do this or that.

 

Jedi_Lover, for one side, i agree that sometimes it was better to just erase those comments, but other hand erasing those reviews could only fuel more those people to rant what you write? Calling a review tyrant or something.

These people despite their... lack of faith in your writing, can be disturbing, they are regardless their review quality entitle to their opinion. Hang in there. I for one enjoyed your fanfiction and made me want to try in my writing a better Luke and Mara relationship.

 

If someone is harassing you in that manner, you have every right to ignore them using the features provided. Think of it as using the "ignore" feature on this forum.

 

Flamers. I remember I had written something over at fanfiction.net and was so proud of it. I posted it and the first review I got just went on and on and on about how 'horrible' it was and that 'this doesn't make any sense whatsoever you probably just wrote this in like 3 minutes'. Needless to say, I took the story down ASAP. I really thought it was good and so did a few other reviewers, but it really made me feel bad about my writing.

 

I got a review that made puzzled me. They said Fix. The.Ending. ________.

The ending was good. But they didn't tell me why they didn't like it.

 

There would not be a fix for it, unless it's a 'Find Your Own Adventure' sort of format - and you could take votes! But then, it would not be your story anymore ...