Discussion Fan Fic Pet Peeves?

I hate it when every Jedi breaks the rules.

"Dude, ya wanna break the rules?"
"Sure, let me go get my chick and then we'll split."

Take note of the code.

 

I'm just waiting for one to announce "Jedi Code? We don't need no stinkin' Jedi Code!"

That will be a new low.

 

Don't give them any ideas. Ack! OPPM again !!

 

I figure there is nothing I can say that someone isn't already considering... But I guess I should be more careful...

 

In terms of actual things I actively decry, there is really only one. I think my single biggest pet peeve is the failure to warn. If you think or know that there is something in your story which a part of fandom will find objectional, it's a good idea to note that in your heading or at the very beginning.

That said, I am known for my tolerance in real life, and my approach to fan fic is no different. There are things I dislike, and I'll list them in a moment. I'd just like to note now that I don't actually have that a problem with the fact that they exist. Hey, some people must dig it, or it would never be written. Lack of taste- and lack of intelligence- is at least somewhat relative.
Personal gripes:
*Earth-meets-GFFA. I've never read a serious one that's even half-way decent.
*Obidala.
*Really weird sex/slash situations(Padme/Jar Jar? Maul/Obi?)
*Silly stories that don't know they're silly. I laughed my butt off through a story about Anakin driving a handy van around Florida drinking Sobe, killing demonic ostriches and musing about how he wants to fix his daughter's hair like the pastries he's eating while Obi-wan befriended marshmellow salesgirls and complained about his credit card bill. It was silly, and it knew it. The problem is when very silly situations are approached with great seriousness. I'm not talking parody here, but actually serious treatment of that which is ridiculous. Lunacy shared is fun. Private delusions are not.
*really inappropriate clothing or accessories (navel rings on Obi? pink sundresses on Padme?)
*Extremely biased/distorted depictions of characters in stories that claim to go along with canon. This seems to be a particular problem with stories about Anakin and Obi-wan. Anakin was not an evil child. Don't make him one and try to pass it off as non-AU. The galaxy really is big enough for both of them.
*Illness-inducing sap. This may be the worst. I have a couple of examples in my head, and I won't even describe them. The horror.
*excessive grammatical or spelling errors. 'Suprise' instead of 'surprise' will not cause me to have a hemorrhage. No English teacher can afford to be so picky. There is, however, a problem when there are mistakes in every sentence.
*Lack of any sort of formatting which will prevent the story from looking like a single paragraph.

 

(Padme/Jar Jar)

I wish there was a ! Ewww! If someone makes one like that, please, please, please, warn me so I can thow up in advance!!!

 

Agreed. That is just scary .

 

I think I've seen one with Padme/Jar Jar. I read the summary and ran away very quickly, because I was afraid.

 

Yeah I'm usually pretty well indifferent to smut, slash, etc, like I'm not into it but I don't mind if other people do it but you sometimes get those ideas that are just really puke-a-licious. Yuck.

 

The worse slash ever would be Yoda and Qui-Gon Jinn. That's just nasty! I seriously doubt they were having a love afair and Yoda did not off himself because he died.

 

That is indeed terrible.
I have seen Yoda/Luke though.
That was kinda scary also.

 

Any slash involving Yoda and/or Jar Jar is just wrong.

 

i'm sorry, but i just couldn't but laugh at some of the pairings. okay, so some writers don't entirely understand slash and maybe take things a bit far...moving on

 

YODA AND LUKE!!! What? Was the author on something or something like that? No offense to people who have a fetish like that (population:0) but that's nasty and wrong!

 

Isn't that enough slash? Suffice it to say, bizarro pairings are, well, bizarro.

Next peeve?

 

Jedis instead of Jedi. I can't stand that! It seems like the author isn't even talking about Jedi would they refer to them as Jedis. That's definitely a pet peeve of mine.

Another would be pointlessly depressing stories. I don't necessarily mean character death, because that can be done well and have a point, but things that are just about how meaningless life is and how we should just all kill ourselves really irritates me.

And finally, when a new paragraph isn't created when someone else speaks.

 

Padme/Jar Jar? Luke/Yoda?

Those are wrong on so many levels.


Randomly messing up the plot and then saying "Well, it's an AU." AU should be to explore how a small change might affect things. Not a completely new story where the main characters happen to share names with the SW characters.

 

I don't like it when the author says the character's name too much instead of using pronouns.

For example: Bob went to the store. Bob bought some soda, and then Bob decided to go for a walk. Before Bob knew it, Bob was in trouble.

Okay, it's not usually that bad, but it happens!

 

I hate it when there are 2 guys talking and they go like this

He said "Hi." He turned and punched him. He then charged and the other.He, in response, kicked.

WHich he is doing what??

 

Agreed. It can go too far both ways.

 

When using pronouns, it must be clear which "he" is being spoken of!

 

My pet peeve "fix" for this problem is use of the phrase "the other," as in,

He wasn't sure what the other would make of it.

Other what????

It's gramatically acceptable, but the word use is just... blech.

 

I agree. People have to be more specific.

 

I had avoided posting in this thread, but I suppose I've lurked long enough. So, here are the things that drive me crazy - some may be enough to turn me off a story, some may not be.

1. Mechanical Errors
   
   

   If you've got too many of these, I will not be reading. I've plowed through a few stories before that were excellent, except for the fact that they really, desperately needed a good beta read. Please, do us all a favor. If you have trouble with grammar and spelling, get a beta who can handle mechanics well.




2. Characterization
   
   

   Maybe it's just me, but I see Star Wars as very much a character-driven saga. Yes, there are other themes, like a battle between good and evil, but it's unlike a story like Lord of the Rings, where the whole story is driven by a quest and the characters who are good stay good and the characters who are bad stay bad (I know, I'm generalizing, but for the most part, this is true). In SW, we get Han going from a guy who's just in it for money - which is arguably a bad trait - to a guy who is willing to risk his life for his friends. Vader, of course, goes from a man who will destroy an entire planet because it stands in his path to galactic domination to a man who destroys his chance to dominate the galaxy because of his love for his son. In a plot-driven story, the art is in how the characters change the plot - in a character-driven story, the art is in how the plot changes the characters.
   
   Okay, having ranted about something completely different now, allow me to get back on topic. If Star Wars is a character-driven saga, then the characters have to be changed somehow by the plot. This is not to say that you can sacrifice proper characterization for the sake of the plot. Mara Jade breaking down in tears just so you can have Luke comfort her is just as wrong as no character development at all. The plot still has to remain true to what the characters would legitimately do in such a situation - remember, in any story, character-driven or otherwise, the plot must bend to the character, not the other way around. But in the realm of SW, the character should (in my opinion, at least) develop somewhat. If it's an epic tale of an original character defeating all evil without learning a thing about himself, it seems a little boring.
   
   Which brings me to my next pet peeve.




3. Mary Sues
   
   

   Yes, I know that some contend that Mary Sues aren't a problem and that new authors shouldn't worry about it, but it's something that plagued me in my early writing days and still bothers me from time to time, so I think it's a pretty important thing. (In fact, it bothers me enough that I wrote a rather lengthy article about it for the fan fiction archive here at TFN.)
   
   As my first band director said, "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent." If you continue doing something wrong, like writing characters who have no depth (which is essentially what one definition of Mary Sue says), the habit is just going to be harder and harder to break. And I can almost assure you that if you write Mary Sues for characters, there are some people who simply will not read the story - a lot of people find Mary in her various forms to be extremely irritating and won't read the story at all once MS tendencies appear.




4. Titles
   
   

   For some reason, I'm extremely picky about titles. If you don't have a title, I'm not likely to read - it just looks like you haven't planned your story if you don't have a title that fits it already. *shrugs* Maybe it's just me.




5. Earth Objects, Phrases, and Clichés
   
   

   For no reason should Han be wearing jeans. 'Nuff said.
   
   American slang gets to me too, not to mention profanity - those phrases mean what they mean because they have a societal context. Julie wrote an article over at the archive on why profanity and slang don't work in the GFFA, and the basic reason boils down to the fact that the

 

To add to your note about characterization:

There is a place for a sudden, shocking break in known character, but the reason has to be clear. Anakin is not a crying type, but he is certainly set up in such a way that it would have been weird for him to not cry during Shmi's death, and of course the grief/anger sobs over the Tusken massacre--something we see at no other point in the saga--really establish the importance of the event and its fundamental impact on his psyche. If you build a character and follow the way that character works, there is a breaking point. The problem with bad characterization is when the breaking point is in an inappropriate place, eg, Anakin breaking into sobs in the nightclub because Obi-Wan yelled at him.

Of course, there are points of legitimate difference of opinion...

Vader, of course, goes from a man who will destroy an entire planet

I beg to differ (no surprise there)--Tarkin was the one who destroyed the planet, and Vader actually appears to have argued with him and lost ("I told you she would never betray the Rebellion!"--in the context of Tarkin not believing that she had lied to him, given the stakes he'd presented her with; this implies that the conversation was along the lines of, "You will not achieve your stated objective by your stated plan. It would... unwise... to proceed on this course."