As for the modern pop culture references, those too annoy me when out-of-hand. I do like seeing them in bits, because if "Sherlock Holmes" is still remembered in 300 years there's no reason "Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter" won't be as well. But when it's something more obscure, there has to be a good reason for why and how the characters discovered it. I doubt the average Starfleet ship has the "Spice Girls" movie in its database, for example.
Define "obscure." Tom Paris is into 1950s black and white TV science fiction serials. Personally, I'd like to expand his 20th century interests a bit. I can totally see him relaxing in a holoprogram with Red Green, Harold, Rick, and the rest of the guys at Possum Lodge.
True, but you probably would see Casablanca in its database or Star Wars.
Why? Just because we consider these movies to be among the best, it doesn't mean future societies will like them. After all, Shakespeare is now considered something that's considerably more "cultured" than it was during the original runs of his plays. Back then it was considered entertainment fit only for coarse commoners.
One of my pet peeve apart from Mary Sues - Spock is the only Vulcan hybrid in the galaxy.
There was a series of stories that ran in the early issues of
In A Different Reality (a print 'zine from decades ago; I started collecting them in the early '80s) in which one of the new navigators assigned to the Enterprise is a Human-Vulcan woman named T'Marse (human father, Vulcan mother). They don't get together right away, but of course eventually realize that marriage is the "logical" thing to do - considering they've fallen in love. After T'Marse becomes pregnant, they resign from Starfleet and become independent researchers, with their own ship and crew. The stories take place over the course of several decades, and one of their children turns out to be basically human. Spock names him after McCoy, saying that "'Leonard' was the most Human name I could think of." McCoy isn't quite sure whether to be insulted or proud.
And yes, I am so sick of people demonizing main characters just for being part of a canon pairing they dislike, or even just posting a *threat* to the pairing they do like. Both Seven of Nine and Janeway get this treatment in JC and C7 fics, and it's really obnoxious.
Equally obnoxious, in my opinion, are the stories in which Chakotay and Seven inform Janeway that they're a couple/want to be married and she falls all over herself in being happy for them and offering congratulations, and of course she'd be
delighted to perform the ceremony.
Sorry, don't buy it. It's out of character for Janeway, who kept Chakotay at arms length unless it suited her to lead him on. So any fanfic that's pro-C/7 and has Janeway being more distant is just fine with me.
On that list, bad grammar. But my biggest pet peeve by far is posting stories that are not finished.
I want to read a story, not a draft. Worse is when the story is either never completed, or takes a long time to get the next chapter. So I try to only read complete stories.
I remember once reading a story where in between Star Treks II and III, Kirk and McCoy traveled back in time and found themselves crossing over with MASH.
As dumb as that sounds, the story was actually really good. Surprisingly really good.
Then it ended practically in the middle of a sentence.
Imagine watching TWOK ending when Spock enters the radiation chamber. And that's it.
It was like that.
Agreed 1000%. There are some terrific stories out there on fanfiction.net, but they're unfinished and will likely remain unfinished. The only TNG story I actually liked on that whole site was a Tasha-centric one in which she and Worf became friends at the Academy and he even invited her to meet his human parents during an extended break. It was a really good story, up until the point when it abruptly stopped. I don't expect it will ever be finished.
I've got a number of fanfic projects in progress, but nothing is going to be posted anywhere until the whole stories are
finished.
As someone guilty of this sometimes real life gets in the way. In my case my the death of a close relative messed up my muse. Attempts to get back into fanfic writing by doing silly stories fell flat. I do feel guilty but if the creative juices are not there, then what can one do?
As someone said... post it when it's actually finished.
To answer the OP, the thing that will guarantee that I won't read a fanfic is when the author has a slew of spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, punctuation mistakes, and has no idea how to properly format paragraphs and dialogue. Posting a story unedited or even proofread indicates a lack of respect for the readers.
). Vulcans pretend they're uptight but really, they're party people.
