Fanfic Pet Hates

[Lace Neil Singer]

I don't think anyone expects that young teenagers will be great writers, but the only way they'll improve is to accept constructive criticism. I think that's what Lace is saying.

This. And I also said that adults are writing the worst badfic; while you can forgive, in a way, a 13 year old girl writing about her Mary Sue falling in lurve with Harry Potter, when it's a 33 year old woman who should know better writing the same story, then it's pretty bad. O_o As for accepting CC, it's really the only way if you're going to put anything you've written, drawn or programmed out in public.

I certainly don't expect people to just accept nasty, rude flaming, but if someone is just politely pointing out the flaws in your writing, then giving them a mouthful of abuse is not the way to go about it. Yes, it's hard to accept CC; when I first started drawing, as a personal example, my dad pointed out scale problems in the animals I drew and told me I should at least try and shade. I could have screamed back at him and told him to mind his own business, or I could have bitten my tongue and tried to do as he said. I chose the latter; and my art improved. Even if my tongue did end up resembling a doggy chew... -__-

[MystyGlyttyr]

I certainly don't expect people to just accept nasty, rude flaming, but if someone is just politely pointing out the flaws in your writing, then giving them a mouthful of abuse is not the way to go about it. Yes, it's hard to accept CC; when I first started drawing, as a personal example, my dad pointed out scale problems in the animals I drew and told me I should at least try and shade. I could have screamed back at him and told him to mind his own business, or I could have bitten my tongue and tried to do as he said. I chose the latter; and my art improved. Even if my tongue did end up resembling a doggy chew... -__-

Except then you have people like MY dad, who will "constructively" criticize your work no matter HOW good it is, no matter how much you try to do it the way they say you should, regardless of how careful you are, etc. And eventually you figure out they're just trying to wear you down to the point where you'll give up altogether and do something else...i.e., give up on writing and art and move into the "better" field of sciences and math.

That might just be me, though. It did work, though, as I finally gave up on the idea of being an artist. Now he gets the pro wrestler thing to deal with.

[Shards]

Here's my biggest annoyance with fanfic - when the 'real' writers don't go along with their ideas and then the fanfic writers throw fits. (I'm not saying fanfic writers aren't 'real' writers, just trying to distinguish).

Case in point: NCIS. I lurves me some NCIS. It's a great show with wonderful character development, the best dialogue on television, and an excellent cast. The new exec. producer Shane Brennan is doing wonders with the show - the plots and the character arcs. One of the things I like the most about the show is that the characters aren't all sleeping with each other!! And yet, these Tiva writers constantly whine "When are Tony and Ziva going to get together?!?!" The Tiva's are the most prevalent but there's also McAbby (McGee & Abby). And, Kate is dead. Been dead for four seasons now. Not coming back. So SHUSH!

Well, to be fair, and admittedly I'm not as far as you are into NCIS, but McAbby was a cannon pairing for the entire first and second season, and is hinted at as far as I've gotten in the third.

Also, Both with Kate and Ziva, Tony has had far more chemistry and natural 'pairing potential' than many, I would even argue most, cannon pairings in more mainstream shows of NCIS's kind. (Case in point, CSI's Grissom and Sidle had nowhere near the natural relationship Tony has with either girl).

Just playing Devil's Advocate.

[AdminAssistant]

Well, to be fair, and admittedly I'm not as far as you are into NCIS, but McAbby was a cannon pairing for the entire first and second season, and is hinted at as far as I've gotten in the third.

Only the first season, really. Once McGee became a Probationary Special Agent on Gibbs' team in Season 2, the whole 'McAbby' thing kind of fell apart. After all Rule #12 (I think) is "Never date a co-worker". Yes, they're very close friends, but they aren't a couple.

Tony, well, Tony IS charisma and charm, in a cute little package. (Grissom, on the other hand, plays with bugs. EW). But, I think they've made it VERY clear through Seasons 5 and 6 that Tiva is. not. happening. And, personally, I think Michael Weatherly will be leaving the series pretty soon. They just aren't doing enough with Tony right now - there's been virtually no development since the whole 'Jeanne' thing in Season 4 (I won't spoil it for you).

ETA: I always thought Kate had more chemistry with Gibbs than with Tony. Tony and Kate had more of a brother/sister relationship, to me.

[Shards]

ETA: I always thought Kate had more chemistry with Gibbs than with Tony. Tony and Kate had more of a brother/sister relationship, to me.

And how would you describe Ron/Hermione from HP?



As far as your idea that Tony will be leaving, I haven't seen as far as you have, but I doubt it. Tony may not develop, but in some characters, that's OK. In a realistic show, people are shown as people, not as subjects purely for our amusement, and the fact is, some people change, however, some do not. Some men never grow up, some men were never immature to begin with, and some people do develop over time. I have relatives in their 50s who still act like Tony does, and the fact is, he's a lovable character with a heavy following of fans, so I highly doubt he'll be moving on.

Also, in season 3, Ducky has made more than one comparisons between Tony and young Gibbs, which leads me to suspect that he's intended to be there until the series ends, as the next-in-line to the Gibbs position.

Then again, I haven't seen the recent episodes, or the 'new direction' you refer to when talking about their new director, so for all I know he's a development snob who will decide that a nice simple entertaining character isn't worth keeping if he doesn't come out with a new deepest darkest secret that OMG changes his entire personality every week, in which case, yes, DeNozzo will be bowing out, because I don't see him as the type of person to change in any way except for the vast jump in responsibility that I foresee when he takes over Gibbs' chair.

Just my $0.02

[Dreamstalker]

Back when I first started what is now known as the Fanfic From Hell (epic length, and somehow has resisted completion for 3 years now) as well as other short stuff that was mercifully lost in a hard drive failure, my character was a Mary Sue. Yes, I admit it. Although I respected canon too much to even attempt some of the violations I saw in my fandom, so I suppose my Sue wasn't near as horrendous as she could have been..

The way I fixed that was to use the same character in RPG where there were creation rules (character must have some personality flaws, certain abilities were absolutely off-limits for rookies, etc). Yeah, she died a couple times in various stupid ways, but the gaming-use route was a great way to refine things.

The friend who was my coauthor for a while on the aforementioned fic...holy Hastur was her character awful. The rest of us in the game made it a mission to see if we could get her to off herself either though direct action or snowballing stupidity. Name was Goldilocks to boot.

(Case in point, CSI's Grissom and Sidle had nowhere near the natural relationship Tony has with either girl).

Call me weird, but I thought that Grissom and Lady Heather had chemistry and would have liked to see that go somewhere sooner.

[depechemodefan]

HI! first time posting in fratching.

Anyway, there are fics that mix different shows/movies/books that can be pretty bad. A Buffytvs/HP fanfic can make sense, since both worlds deal with magic. It depends on the writer. There are two fics I've read that shipped Buffy and Harry. One was pretty good; Buffy wakes up and can't remember having sex with Harry. Another fic has Buffy and the slayers running a trucking company where the girls drive the big rigs and Buffy finds Harry hitchhikcing. Then the chemistry is off.

But then there is Buffy and Spike in Lord of the Rings. And not much happen; didn't care much for it.

Then there was this fanfic where Buffy ends up in a galaxy Far Far Away (Season 3 Buffy in TPM) where Buffy is pretty much a Mary Sue in the fic. She's smarter than Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, and she saves Qui-Gon from Darth Maul (I forget if she kills Darth Maul). I love BtVS, Star Wars (even the prequals) and Spike, so I don't hate this fic, but a more objective person might have howeled in disgust.

So fanfics that mix characters and make some/one char. into a Mary Sue isn't good. Or if the two (some fics have up to a dozen) diff. shows/movies/books shouldn't be mixed together because they have nothing in common or have no chemistry.

Another pet peeve is char. bashing. I might not like Riley (again, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but I don't want him to be a manipulative thug who beats up Buffy and tells her she can't be a Slayer.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Another pet peeve is char. bashing. I might not like Riley (again, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but I don't want him to be a manipulative thug who beats up Buffy and tells her she can't be a Slayer.

Agreed. I don't like Denethor in LOTR, however I draw the line at him being depicted as a rapist/child abuser. No no NO. -.-

[Bloodsoul]

You know, I always thought about doing a Dexter's Laboratory/Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki crossover fanfic/comic. Both have red-headed, short scientists, both have blond airheads... think it could work?

Not even the Lighhawk Wings can withstand the awesome fury of the Fanciful Unicorn.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I like to check out fanfiction. I don't write it. Most of my interest in it lies in trends, styles, the frequency and patterns of new fic hitting the net based on pop culture trends, etc. Sometimes I will actually sit down and read it, if it's well written. There's a few really nice works out there I've read start to finish in various genre.

Things I won't bother with:

"Songfics".

"Storys" where the author farts out less than a hundred words and then grubs for feedback. Drabbles are fine, but dont' sit there and poot out 15 seconds worth of writing then threaten to not finish unless you get feedback. (I do a writing blog, and I know how long it takes to write a thousand words. Someone needs to get up off their ass and start writing.)

Stories with no paragraph breaks or any real sentence structure. It's not that I won't read this, it's that I CAN'T.

Authors who inappropriately pepper their writing with what I call "non words" and pop culture references. If the "voice" of the writing would talk like that, fine. Then it's not a problem. But I don't want to hear how Legolas was "majorly" in love with someone or how much the music of the elves in Lothlorian sounded like Enya. Good GRIEF.

Any story where the description starts out "Two teenage girls from our world find themselves stranded in...."

I don't much like Mary Sues, but a friend wrote some and I read them and they were good. So I'm at least open minded about them (at least when I know the person is an okay writer).

Any story with a complete lack of regard for staying even remotely in character. Why not just write an original story if you're gonna do that? I find that extremely jarring. Not offensive, just...kind of pointless.

Any fic where I even suspect that there will be underage erotic situations. No thank you.


Back in the bad old days, when I ran various games, I had people write I guess what would be considered "fanfic" about my games (my games are EXTREMELY character driven, so players, particularly female players, really got into that aspect of it). Man. That was FUN. When we were running the LARP Allout Helter, we got some of that, too. We would actually give perks for players doing that. What a rush that is to have someone writing stuff about your world!

I told the husband "Wouldn't it be fun if my story blog got so popular people started writing fanfic about it?"

Then we looked at each and the same thought hit us. And we both said "Except it would all be slash." :-DDDD

[Lace Neil Singer]

By the way, not all OCs are automatically Mary Sues. So what your friend was writing was probably an OC rather than a Sue, cuz it didn't make you sick to your stomach. I have read quite a few fanfics where there's an OC who is written so well into the storyline that it's like they were put there by the author. ^^ I have also read fics with disgusting Mary Sues that take over the entire story and ruin it. -.-

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Oh, no, it was a Mary Sue. She said, blatantly, and with a little embarassment, "I wrote myself into a fanfic." And I said, "Oh, my God, you wrote a Mary Sue." and she said "Yeah. I wrote a Mary Sue."

Fortunately, she was very much realistically herself in the story, and it was more along the lines of a simple first person account of something than it was a typical Mary Sue. It was not over the top or even terribly corny.

I didn't think it was possible to write one that didn't make a person run screaming in nausea, but apparently, it is. However, that is the exception and not the rule.

[Sylvia727]

Mary Sues don't automatically make a story bad, they're just uninteresting characters. I have both read and written stories with Sues as background characters, who pick up pieces and tie up loose ends without getting any character development. I have also read series where a Sue from the first story is revealed to have hidden flaws, and thus character development, in a later story. One example from the top of my head was a teacher/mentor figure who provided a rock for the students to grow from. Dull, flat background character. In the fifth or sixth story, she has a student she can't connect with, and her perfect world falls apart at a touch, revealing how stressed she was and how much she hid that from her students. If the author had stopped at the fourth story, she would have remained a Mary Sue.

[Shards]

People here are using different definitions of the term 'Mary Sue'.

According to many authors, a Mary Sue is an author-insertion into a pre-existing universe, in which case well-written Mary Sues are possible.

However, according to other authors, and I suspect many people in this debate, a Mary Sue is a new character who is not necessarily an author-insertion, but is undeniably overpowered and has a decidedly boring/grating/inconsistent personality. Especially when their reason to be there is paper-thin at best. In this case, a well-written Sue is not possible.

[I8DaCookie]

3. Unfinished stories. Don't be lazy; finish the bloody story you started. If you don't want to write loads of chapters, then write a oneshot or a five chapter fic. Don't start a huge epic then leave it unfinished halfway thru, especially if it's well written and everyone is going to be annoyed cuz they want to know what happened to your character in the end.

Reading this reminded me of a fanfic I wrote years ago but never finished. I was two (planned) chapters away from finishing. The reason I never did was the chapters I had written were over the period of two weeks before I left for an internship over the summer where I had no computer access and no time for anything beyond the internship. When I returned, it was time for school.

I still have all the bookmarks from my research, the saved chapters on my harddrive and the outline. Maybe I'll finish it after a five year hiatus.