Discussion Fan Fic Pet Peeves?

I agree with JediGaladriel about grammar check. Today the stupid thing told me to add a comma, so I did. Then it told me that my sentence was wrong, I had used a comma incorrectly. So I took it out. Etc., etc.

 

I find my grammar check is more concerned that I described a character as a (gasp!) man, which might be considered sexist. I have to dig out style and grammar handbooks if I wonder about a comma.

 

Fics devoted entirely to the worship of someone's (or several someones') physical perfection. (Note I say 'entirely' because I don't really have a problem with one or two chars being the snobby perfect Mama's girl/boy in the class - they do exist in real life after all - and hey, this is a future in which medical technology can erase scars and replace body parts with cybernetics. Why not have a comparable level of plastic surgery?)

The peeve part comes in when every other paragraph is all about praising the beauty of a character from one viewpoint or another. Quite, quite sickening after the second paragraph (sometimes even only after the first). I can also predict the plot (or at least a major element of it) after that point: The observer (party #1) and the observed (party #2) are going to fall in love. A third party will have also made the same observations as party #1 and will try to butt in on their territory to possess the god's wet dream incarnate. All this strife will serve to make party #2 vulnerable in some way or another, or prove party #1's good intentions toward party #2, and after some cliffhangers, this will all lead to declarations of ever-lasting love and hot bunny sex.

(As a sidenote, I have no problems with hot bunny sex as long it isn't the sole point of the story and the rest of the fic is merely trimming. After all, lust *is* a powerful motivating factor, and I can always skip that part if I don't feel like reading it, but it's kind of hard to skip when that's pretty much the story itself.)

In other words, that sort of set up is pretty boring. The fic starts reading like a thesaurus on every possible word that might have been used in relation to physical beauty. It is nearly impossible for me to empathize with any character that is so otherwordly - there is absolutely no variety. If everyone must be a god or goddess, I want to see a reason for that. Does their culture support selective breeding? Do they tamper with genetics? Are they the upper crust of society that devote most of their resources to plastic surgery or gene therapy?

I happen to like the character foibles, whether external or internal. I'm of the opinion that these 'failings' are what puts life into a plot and character. It gives me something to compare other elements in a fic to that isn't such an extreme 'black and white' - I'm a huge lover of shades of grey...but, I think I've already gotten the point across. Three paragraphs earlier.

<eyes the 5-page paper above, winces, and slinks back into her corner>

 

So Dragon, you hate Mary too, eh? But I agree, I think it would really be refreshing to see an OC that isn't drop-dead gorgeous and who doesn't magnetically attract everyone one in sight. I'm really careful about my OCs, because they play a big role in my current story. I have three in particular who could very easily turn into Mary Sues, which is why I make sure they cause plenty of screw-ups. Now don't get me wrong, it's not like my characters bump into walls at five-second intervals, but they don't get everything handed to them on a silver platter, and they don't attract every other character in the story. In fact, only one of them is what could be called beautiful, though I consider her to be more of an exotic beauty than a prom queen beauty, seeing as how she is an alien. But I enjoy reading stories about a character who isn't radiant and doesn't always has a clever comeback. I want to see a character stumble every now and then, it makes him/her more believable, and easier to relate to.

Alright, enough with my ramblings, you can get on with your lives now.

 

Mary frightens me. I'm always on the lookout for her. I gave one Force-strong character a big ugly scar on her face and a tendency to consider herself incapable of doing things even when she's eminently capable, so I hope that balances against the fact that, scar notwithstanding, she's beautiful and people are drawn to her... but I'm never quite sure. Another one is beautiful, but, erm, a bit supercilious. The third is a boy, and I really sometimes see Gary Stu in him. I'm worried about that one because I so far haven't put much in the way of faults in him, unless total lack of ambition is a fault.

That said, I actually think there is sometimes a point to dwelling on beauty for its own sake. The prequels dwell a lot on beauty, and the reason is that it will be corrupted and turned ugly. Taking time to appreciate the beauty makes its corruption later more painful.

 

OK I can't stand Mary Sues either (I used to write them all the time when I was a little kid cringe!) but what about a character who's supposed to seem Mary Sueish and so perfect that it gets annoying, in the story? Just wondering, I have one like that in one of my fics....

 

I suppose that depends. Is the perfect thing driving the othere characters crazy?

 

I find my grammar check is more concerned that I described a character as a (gasp!) man, which might be considered sexist.

Yeah, and you can't say 'girl' either, even if the character is three years old.

 

And it tells me to say "Monarch" instead of "King". Who goes around saying "I bring greetings from Monarch Steve."?

Oh, and spouse instead of wife. It just doesn't sound right to me.

 

I had to turn my grammar check off eventually because it kept "automatically fixing" my spelling. This included character names and once got me into an awkward situation involving a character name transforming into something . . . vulgar [face_shocked]

 

Goodness gracious, I've never had it do that. I think that it can be set to "informal"--it sounds like it's correcting for business use.

 

You can set your grammar check to custom configuration. I use it to turn off the political correctness checker. Also, there should be a list of auto-correct words that you can edit so your character names stay untouched.

 

well i'm pretty much a newbie to all this but one thing that does annoy me is when 2 people are having a lightsaber duel or are shooting like crazy at eachother and its really intense, then one character says something totally irrelivant.
A short senteance in a break in the fighting like when vader is trying to turn luke in the empire strikes back and ROTJ when luke is hding, or when yoda comments about Dooku when their blades lock, this i don't mind as it is part of the story or gives the reason for something.
But if your trying to kill someone your really going to be going "Oh blast i hope character X is ok"

Anyways about Mary/Gary stues i used to do this alot, and probably still do sometimes. now i tend to have a good event happen to a chracter, but make sure it is some how countered by a bad event later on. For example: a jedi cuts through a door with his lightsaber to free character X but while he is doing this he gets shot in the back or leg or something and then I bring this up again later when he is trying to run away or climb something he either can't do it or struggles to do it.

just the opinion of a newbie

 

FWIW, I've already posted on the "discouragement thread," and please know that nothing contained herein is meant as newby-bashing or an attempt to intimidate less-than-confident authors. My opinions only--YMMV.

That said--I have two pet peeves. One of them is bad names. I can't suspend my disbelief if I have to trip over an excruciatingly bad name in every other paragraph. Bad names come in several forms:

1) Weirdly onomatopoeic or otherwise inappropriate-sounding names. For instance, "The Dark Lord Woolamaloo," or "Jedi Master Pippy." (Yes, I know Count Dooku and Yarael Poof are canon, but George's crummy names don't count. I'll forgive him anything).

2) Unpronounceable names. "Cjm'y Z'twl!x E Ptldf" looks like an alien name, all right. I'll believe you if you tell me that humans can never hope to pronounce it. I won't even try to read it.

3) Unusual Earth words with awful connotations. EU authors are the ones most guilty of this. Cases in point are names like "Bathos," or "catamite" for a fuzzy little critter.

4) Earth names with distracting cultural resonances. These are usually thinly-disguised trendy names, like Al-Kaitlyn. I just cannot think of such a name as belonging to anyone but a mall-crawling 8th grader with braces. (Earth names that are so old and well-worn that they're "invisible" are actually fine with me. I'm okay with Jain or Mairi, and possibly even Jane or Mary. Those names are like rocks and trees--definitely part of the Earth landscape, but so ancient and common I can imagine them in the GFFA).
______________

My second pet peeve is emotionally scarring fanfic. Please understand I am not bashing newer authors who aim for high drama and miss. That's not emotionally scarring. Nor am I complaining exclusively about people who don't label "adult" or character death stories properly, although this can be disturbing. I also understand that one person's squick is another person's thrill--once again, your mileage may vary.

True emotionally scarring fic is a kind of bait-and-switch routine performed by a basically competent author. You find yourself trusting in a confident authorial voice early on in the story. You suspend your disbelief; your psychic defenses drop. Perhaps you forget that you're sitting at home at your computer.

Then, when it's too late: Wham! You get hit with something really, really, unnecessarily disturbing. There must be no foreshadowing of this event earlier on, and it must not be truly integral to the plot. It's just there--like a flasher at a dinner party.

Everyone has their own experiences with this sort of thing, these are mine:

1) Sudden, mind-bending cameos and crossovers. For instance, in the middle of a story series and for no apparent reason, Obi-Wan's ship drops into the Star Trek universe and he begins a questionable relationship with Captain Picard.

Another example (which actually happened to me last night, and which is the proximate reason for this entire rant): I was reading a fic which I will refer to as a "romance," and when I say "romance," I mean that romantic feelings were only tangentially involved. Anyway--the fic's header mentioned something about a "surprise," which I paid little attention to at the time. Two-thirds of the way through, this "suprise" was revealed as the sudden "romantic" appearance of Jar-Jar Binks.

Now, I don't consider "surprise" to be an adequate description of this situation. I think that fic should have had a huge banner across the top that read: "WARNING: CONTAINS JAR-JAR." I may never be capable of "romance" again.

But anyway . . . I digress. Other emotionally scarring things:

2) Outrageous infantilization. 13-year-old Obi-Wan creeping into Qui-Gon's lap to have a good cry may or may not be over the top, depending on how it's handled. Alec Guinness' Obi-Wan from ANH creeping into Blue-Ghost!Qui-Gon's lap to have a good cry is emotionally scarring, IMO.

3) Unacknowledged sexual situations involving adults and minors. This seems to happe

 

ophelia, i totally agree.

 

I agree too Ophelia!!

I had to laugh at Darth Woolamaloo though... I sat there thinking "But that is a an actual word!!!!"

Kit

 

Hi everyone!

I must say that Ophelia's post is the funniest thing I've read on this forum! I laughed this afternoon when I first read it. I am laughing now tonight reading it the second time.

I don't know if the post was meant to be soooooo funny. But it is!

Thanks alot Ophelia!

-TinTin

 

tintin_milou wrote

<I don't know if the post was meant to be soooooo funny. But it is!>

It was supposed to be funny without making people feel like I was singling them out personally and mocking them.

I've been thinking about it, and I've decided that emotionally scarring fanfic comes about in two ways:

1) An author gets a "bright idea" and doesn't have the self-editing ability and/or discipline to keep it out of a story where it really doesn't belong

2) An author comes up with a potentially good story idea involving disturbing material, but isn't confident enough to commit to it completely

Something like "Trainspotting," for instance, works because it's committed to its disturbing subject from the first. From the opening monologue about herion, it's obvious this is a story about depravity--recovery from depravity, relapse into depravity, what depravity does to the friends and family of depraved people, etc. The film actually has a couple of interesting things to say about depravity. Therefore, even the "Worst Toilet in Scotland" scene, while agonizing to watch, is not emotionally scarring.

However, if you slapped 15 minutes of "Trainspotting" into the middle of "The Parent Trap" just because you were too embarassed to make an hour and a half movie about drug addiction--that would be emotionally scarring.

 

Ophelia, I liked your post. You had valid points.

I just thought I'd ring in to say something about grammar check. I don't know if you guys, (and girls), use this option or not, but grammar check is normally good for only a few minor things, IMO:

1) Checking lower-cased letters at the beginning of a sentence.

2) Pointing out if you've missed a word.

Frankly, I find the best way to edit your story is to print it out, and read it on paper. Possibly even read it out loud. You'd be surprised of all the little details you missed. It's not the same as skimming it on the computer.

Grammar check works for people who don't have a clue how to put more than a few sentences together at a time, (no offense if you do use it--that's just been my personal experience). Most likely, very few of you need it.

 

Ophelia wrote:
Then, when it's too late: Wham! You get hit with something really, really, unnecessarily disturbing.

LOL, I agree. This reminds me of those "torture" fics in a way. I have a hard time believing those, because I think the authors too often rely on the overused torture ploy just to create angst in a story when they can't come up with something more original. "How can we get Qui-Gon to suddenly cry and doubt his abilities as a master? I know, we'll have someone torture Obi-Wan..." It's like forced or false anguish, or something.

Of course, for every person like me, there are ten that love the angst this stuff creates. So no one take it personally.

All said, I'm not totally against the "thrown in there from out of the blue" fics, if it's done well, and serves a purpose.

 

On the matter of torture fics... am I hallucinating, or didn't admin decide several months ago that they were to be considered rated R, and therefore not board-appropriate? Or have these been significantly toned down?

 

another pet peeve. when staring out as a writer, getting people to actually read your work can be a torture. espicially when the first thing you post is an original series. i don't know whether people hate the idea or original characters or just the idea of an original series.

this series that i have, is like two years old now and hasn't really developed a following. i'm not worried about it as much anymore, but i want to continue the series.

 

People, people! Just got back from a F.F. site and whoever wrote there needs serious help.

1. Obi-Wan Kenobi will not dance to a song by Sting.

2. He does not shave off his beard for no reason. There's has to be a reason for that.

3. I doubt Obi-Wan Kenobi's birthday is November 8, 1963. When the opening says "A long time ago, in a galaxy far,far away" that doesn't mean the '60s. The 1960's wasn't that long ago if you think about it.

4. No, his mom will not come to his birthday party and give him a dvd player.

5. And Anakin will not give him a leather jacket, so don't put it in. They're not on earth!

Just some pointers. If you want the fic, go to google and look up Star Wars fan fiction. It's far down the list. Can't remember the site cuz I was just cruisin. And ranting

 

I've lost count of the fics I've seen there in which there are popular Jedi nightclubs and partying padawans. C'mon! This is essentially a religious Order, for crying out loud! There may be some rebellious ones who go to a club now and then (probably having to sneak out to do it, and facing punishment later--after all, being a Jedi "requires the deepset committment, the most serious mind," as Yoda tells us in ESB), but a party place made to cater to them? Not!

 

Ack, the general missuse of Jedi drives me insane!