What 'gets your goat' about fanfiction?

[Anni]

I have a serious question for the fanfic readers about the things that really aggravate you about fanfics - terrible grammar? Inappropriate punctuation or perhaps no punctuation? The use of netspeak? Bad spelling? Or perhaps inappropriate use of words like 'they're' and 'their'? Do you hate Mary Sue/Marty Stu characters or do you feel they have a valid and believable place within fanfiction? (Can a Mary Sue/Marty Stu *be* believable in any shape or form?)

Perhaps the sometimes astonishing sexual pairings of characters makes you cringe and want to throw your computer at the wall, whilst screaming "I can do better than that you moron!". Or perhaps you feel that way about 'ship'! Anything at all that has you sighing and reaching for the back button on the browser when you've either read an entire fanfic or just a few lines and decided that whoever it is perhaps shouldn't give up their day job!

Please let me know, I am about to embark on a project so my question is serious. I realise that there have probably been umpteen threads about this, but I honestly don't want to start trawling through. Or perhaps someone in the forums knows exactly where I might find relevant threads that I can go to.

Any help would be appreciated!

[angelle myst]

I think typos, bad spelling/grammar, net-speak are my number one gripe about fic. There's just really no excuse!

Another one is bad characterization, especially of the main characters. We all get it wrong a little sometimes, but when i read stuff with Saint!Daniel in or Evil!Jonas etc (but especially these two) then i just can't bring myself to finish the fic.

Also when a fic is set in a perfect world and you can automatically spot the happy-ever-after coming on the horizon it's just really unbelievable and unimaginative.

Good luck with your project

[Highlander II]

Anni - can I just raise my hand and cry "all of the above"??

Grammar and spelling and punctuation are my biggies, along with characterization and plot. Mary Sue / Marty Stu - eh, well, depends on the story - b/c a story can have a great plot and a M/S character and still be good, but it's the blatantly obvious, over-the-top M/S's that annoy me.

I'm not a shipper or slasher in any of the fandoms that I read / write / participate, and don't generally 'seek out' specific pairings - unless I'm just curious to see what people have written.

However, b/c I feel the need to qualify this - sort of, the biggest reason I'm *not* a shipper is b/c of all the bad fanfic. I've noticed an overwhelming lack of 'build up' in 'relationships' between characters in 'ship fic. I have no idea why authors fail to build the foundation before throwing two characters together, but they do. Slash authors, generally, build this foundation and make the pairing more believable. Does this mean that there isn't any bad slash fic? Uh, no. Does this also mean that there isn't any good ship fic? Again - uh, no. It just means that 9 times out of 10 when I grab a ship fic and start to read, it's like walking into the middle of something and not knowing how you got there, but about 7 out of 10 times I grab a slash fic, I don't feel that way. (Not scientific data here, of course. I haven't done a formal analysis.)

Mostly, anymore, I stay away from ship fic and only read ship or slash fic that comes highly recommended from people I know w/in a fandom. B/c I'm just too darned lazy to sift through all the bad stuff to find the good stuff.

[coffeecup]

what gets my goat about fan-fiction------- is reading a story and finding out Tealc is sent somewhere else or he visiting his family or one of my greatest pet preeves.......he ain't even mention.

THANK YOU FOR READING MY RANT

[Anni]

Hi guys

Sorry I've taken so long to reply to any of you, so firstly for those who answered thank you very much. I also posted this query on Gateworld and Our Stargate and got very much the same sort of replies from everyone. I have got everything together and have started writing a piece entitled The Official Fanfic University of Stargate or OFUS. Camilla Sandman was the first to do this and hers was about Lord of the Rings and is called The Official Fanfic University of Middle Earth.

This premise is not the same as the Stargate University which already exists and which is a more serious (so to speak) Stargate venture. This piece of writing is aimed at fanfic writers outlining all of the worst aspects of bad fanfics. It's meant to gently poke fun at the writers and hopefully those who read it might find something there that they recognise in themselves.

The students are all 'made up' characters from my imagination, however the staff of the university and the teachers in the piece are the actual Stargate characters themselves, including all races and species and definitely including the Goa'uld. The idea is that the students are condemned to attending the university/boot camp on the grounds that they have committed various fanfic 'crimes'. Not everybody's crimes are the same and they find that they have to attend remedial courses such as Anatomy 101: Physical impossibilities, sexual and otherwise, or "The One dimensional enemy: How to create baddies that don't suck". In the 'essay' they have to pass the university courses in order to be allowed to write fanfics. If they fail, they are bound under threat of torture to never write Stargate fanfics ever again.

One of the real life people I have involved is Annette, who I know won't mind me putting her in as Mrs Short - In charge of Manning and Records. I can't ask her because I think she might not be back from holiday yet (I got a postcard from her the other day). If she is back and reads this, then I have immortalised her in a sort of parody.

I can post the first couple of parts if you want to see what it's all about, just let me know and I will, but ultimately it will be uploaded to Fanfiction.net along with the Official Buffy and Angel Fanfic University and OFUM.

Thanks again to those who did bother to reply. I am so busy trying to create a second home in Canada it's taken up all my available time. I fly out there on 1st October and will be pond hopping for a period of about six months, perhaps longer. However I will still be online and able to access the forums.



PS Edit Note:

You might not believe this, but I just tried to say university/c*um bootcamp meaning University c*um Bootcamp using the Latin word for with which is c*um, and the automatic bad language blaster replaced it with asterisks. I know what meaning of that word is being objected to, but it makes me wonder about language today. Are we really so sad that we can't tell the Latin word for 'with' and the word for something that a man produces? ROTFLMAO.

[angelle myst]

Sounds like it's a lot of fun to write and research! It would be great if you could post some here or give us the link at FF.net when it's up there, i'm very interested in reading it

[Hatshepsut]

Interesting question, Anni.

What aggravates me about fan fiction?

#1 Irrational and unnecessary departure from reality, unless there's a solid cast iron explanation for same.

Okay, this is *science* fiction which by its very nature goes beyond 'normal' reality. However, the boundaries of scientific knowledge are mostly beyond the the experience of 'the man on the Clapham omnibus', so fanciful extrapolations don't come across as being obviously impossible.

Human behaviour, on the other hand, unless affected by scientific modification, is well within the understanding of every reader. Yes, humans do behave irrationally from time to time, but there are usually reasons/motives for it. If these aren't apparent, then some explanation is called for.

N.B. I don't have a problem with 'ship so long as it's clearly marked as such. That's the nice thing about fan fiction. You can read the stories you do relate to and avoid the ones you don't. No one's twisting The Reader's arm.

#2 Failure to do adequate - or indeed any - research.

For instance, if someone has been seriously beaten - bones broken, internal injuries etc. - he isn't going to be dancing the night away 48 hours later. Same goes for emotional trauma. And resorting to a sarcophagus that amazingly happens to be handy is just plain lazy.

#3 Failure to read through a fic. before posting it.

If it isn't interesting enough for the author to re-read at least once before posting, what makes him/her think anyone else would want to read it? If unsure about spelling, grammar, sense, or readability in general, the use of a beta would be a good idea. The odd typo. here and there is excusable - nobody's perfect - but if I need the services of a translator, I'm not likely to read very far.

Example:

I'm not sure if this belongs with #2 or #3 (or both), but some time back, I read a fic. in which Daniel took a sandwich and an iced drink to Sam who was too busy working in her lab to join the rest of the team for lunch.

Four and a half hours later, those ice cubes still hadn't melted... If it was that cold in Sam's lab, why didn't Daniel take her a nice hot coffee?

#4 Practical considerations (lack of).

Not everyone possesses 20/20 vision. Some websites don't allow the reader to change the font size - and usually those are the ones that use a really minute font. Others use font colours that either disappear into the background or dazzle the reader.

It doesn't matter how good a fic. is, if it's going to give me eyestrain and a headache, then I'm just not gonna read it. Sorry.

HTH.

Best wishes,
Hatshepsut :wave:
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[Lonewolf89]

The biggest problem I have with fan fiction is when the writer doesn't separating paragraphs. It causes such a hassle when reading. So much text jumbled together is difficult to wade through. That's often why I don't read fics.

While both spelling and grammar mistakes are a peeve of mine, if the story plot and writing style are good they can be over looked.