A bit of a meta-pet peeve.

When people refer to attitudes which Harry has both on ffn and here in their forum conversations as "submissive" or "dominant". There's something so grating about this.

This is motherfucking Harry Potter fanfiction. We're authors who can speak in fifty shades of grey, not amateur BDSM porn writers.

Yeah. Uh... something like that.

 

You do know that submissive and dominant are not just words for kinky porn people? It's a type of behavior.

 

Which is why this is a pet peeve and not an actual complaint

Don't judge a man by the porn he watches. Judge him by the porn he makes.

 

Judge the man by fanfiction he inspires.

 

And not the fanfiction he reads?

 

Making porn.
Inspires....

A lot of fanfiction is like venereal disease: One person writes some half-assed smut fic that caters to their personal kink -usually written with as much finesse and actual knowledge of the sex act they're describing as a middle school kid who just happens to have seen a lot of pop up ads- and suddenly hundreds, if not thousands, of people are spreading their own equally half-assed versions of the same damned thing.

In their cases, I wouldn't call it inspiration so much as infection, and in some cases you can never get rid of it: It's literary herpes.

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Hmm, been a while since I've posted my own peeves, rather than reply to others'. Time to drop the Hate-bomb.

People who say one of the following, when they really mean the other.

slogging/sloughing
no less/nonetheless
apprised/appraised
averse/adverse
scarper/scamper (We're talking about running away, here, not fuckin' scampering like a god damned bunny rabbit!)
in case/encase
rapping/wrapping
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As hard as it is for me to fathom, there are people who can't seem to figure out the difference between "In" and "On". :|

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People who write "murder" when they mean "murderer". You'd be surprised how often that happens.

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People who can't figure out the whole single-consonant versus double-consonant thing. You know...

scaring/scarring
staring/starring
raping/rapping (yikes)

And so on.

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The term "pet pleasures": It sounds like a story about molesting your housecat.

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Stories with "Emerald" in the title. We've reached the allowed quota, and if we keep making them, I'm certain there will be U.N. sanctions or something equally ineffec- dire. From now on, a Harry Potter story can only have 'emerald' in the title if it's followed by 'city', the story is a crossover, and there are god damned munchkins involved.

And, it's not a Wicked songfic - Don't do this shit, people; have some self respect.

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On a tangentially related note: All the summaries that now use any variations of "Are people born *, or do they have * thrust upon them?" because the author listened to/saw Wicked, and decided to steal that line.

More than likely, they felt compelled to get it out of their head because, with no ideas of their own in there, it was rattling around and driving them crazy.

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If your Harry Potter story has 'Prince' or 'Princess' anywhere in the summary or title, you can straight up fuck yourself. Delete your story, then fuck yourself, because the law of averages dictates you are an insipid hack.

It's bad enough when people refer to Draco as the Slytherin Prince: It's stupid, but at least it makes some sort of sense, since Draco probably thinks he's royalty.

Then there's the Daphne bullshit. Sorry, but when you are totally invisible, excepting when your name got mentioned at your sorting, you are not even remotely in the running for an asinine and wrongheaded nickname like Princess, as though it were an official position in the school, like Head Girl.

Furthermore, referring to Hermione, of all people, as the 'Gryffindor Princess' is the very height of stupidity. If you have done this, then your story is bad and you should feel bad - both for your lack of perspective, and utterly poor taste.

It should also go without saying that, as much as Harry has been shit on, ignored, and otherwise avoided, he's not going to be gaining any sophomoric titles of high school nobility any time soon, either; so, don't do it.

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People who write entire chapters (or very nearly so) in italic and/or bold print. From Hell's heart, I stab at thee.

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Hogwarts is NOT in England, it's in Scotland. How hard is this to figure out?

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People who are so incapable of forming a proper sentence that they can't even remotely manage to write something the way a human being would say it, whether it's dialogue or narrative text. I've seen shit out there that makes Yoda-speak sound like the height of normality; after all, even his speech patterns follow easily discernible rules. These are people who would fail a Turing Test.

You know: Sentences that aren't sentences... especially when they're in the summary. For fuck's sake, people, read that back to yourself. Oh, did you just now notice that it's complete fucking gibberish on a level that even a schizophrenic off their meds would think is crazy?

Try this actual excerpt from a summary on for size:

"She's caring love and a desperate pain and on her way after Voldemort's downfall, her life becomes a living hell. Certain things must be experimented in order to comprehend what life means."
​

What? Clearly the thing they decided to experiment with was sentence structure. If their next experiment doesn't involve proofreading, then I hope it also involves not writing.

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The phrase- The very concept of "Trigger Warning".

Grow the fuck up. Even as uptight as 'the people in charge' are in the U.S. about what you can and can't show on TV, they usually leave things at a simple, generalized, "Mature Content" warning before the show and move on. Rate your story honestly; then, if there's something potentially objectionable in there, say, "By the way, slash/Mpreg/rape/Snape Adopts And Molests Preteen!Harry But It's Okay Because They're My OTP" and then move the fuck on.

Placing the vague phrase "Trigger Warning" in your summary helps no one. It just forces anyone who might somehow still be interested in your story to open your first chapter, where you may or may not have actually elaborated on your mysterious and unhelpful warning.

Brilliant: Force the reader to read the first chapter of something you suspect they may find offensive, so that they can discover whether they'll be offended.

Not only is that the kind of backwards logic that makes your average Seuss book look like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, by comparison, but it will attract the kind of uptight, conservative, asshole who WANTS to be offended, so that they can bitch at you for it.

When I see the phrase "Trigger Warning" anywhere, my brain automatically translates it as, "Warning: You may be an oversensitive wuss with entitlement issues, who thinks the world should bend over backward to avoid inflaming your emotional hemorrhoids."

Besides, you know what they say about vague disclaimers.

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Oh, you say your story centers around an OC with a name that's the same as your online username? Get off the internet; you're embarrassing yourself, and everyone who is aware of your existence.

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People who delete unfavorable reviews, while only leaving the reviews of the air-headed, tasteless, sycophants who gush about how great their story is. They're very fond of accusing anonymous reviewers of cowardice (and even non-anonymous reviewers of hiding behind a computer screen in an oblique version of 'Say that in real life and not online!'), but that strikes me as somewhat hypocritical, since they can't seem to summon the courage to leave legit negative reviews up for everyone to see.

It's as though they believe that the deciding factor in someone thinking their story is good, is whether there are good reviews - as though a mountain of good reviews exerts some kind of peer pressure that makes people like your story.

No. I'd guess the number of people who read a story based on the FFN reviews is relatively small beside the people who read based on a summary, pairing, or what they assume will be the subject matter. I'd say having a lot of reviews attracts more readers than having good reviews, because people will be curious how you got so many readers... but they still might not actually read those reviews before they read your story... so it doesn't matter whether the reviews are all kissing your ass or not.

If your story is good, people will like it, unless they are unreasonable twats with shit taste. By that same token, if your story is crap, people will dislike it, unless they are vacuous twats with bad taste.

Hiding accurate, but unfavorable reviews only shows that you're a delicate flower who prefers to delude yourself into fantasies of skill and excellence that simply are not true, all with the help of your equally sad fan-club.

It's just so pathetically meta to be living in a fantasy world about your writing of someone else's fantasy world, that you fantasize is your fantasy world. :facepalm

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Scenes where characters who should know better and have a lot to lose (Snape, Umbridge, Lucius, Dumbledore) just up and cast an Unforgivable on Harry or someone close to him, with little provocation (because it's almost always over some minor slight, as opposed to ruining their evil plan or something), in front of witnesses.

Seriously? Who casts a guaranteed life-in-prison curse on someone because of a mild insult or similarly tame provocation? Even movie!Lucius was alone with Harry and a house elf when he tried to whip out the ol' Killing Curse.

It's not even like the author can use blind rage as an excuse, because this kind of shit usually comes out of nowhere, and for the most asinine of reasons. Hell, even Draco should know better.

This is a hallmark of a godawful, poorly-written, story, and seems to rear its ugly head most often in bash fics, where the writer just keeps stupidly whaling on the characters they hate, with the same level of purpose, wit, self-awareness, and finesse, as an idle chimp, furiously and relentlessly whacking away at its pud.

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The way people will follow up the word 'slash' with the battle cry 'don't like/don't read' in their summaries: Because they think the slash is the only reason you wouldn't adore the digital diarrhea they wrote, as opposed to other reasons like, oh, it reading like a steaming pile of shit that was written by an enthusiastic but not-quite-up-to-the-task third grader.

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(Somewhat canon/movie peeve, too.) Why would Filch side with Malfoy Jr. or Umbridge? He's a squib!

Those people are the kind of pureblood supremacists who are embarrassed by Filch's kind, kick them out of their families if not the entire Wizarding World, and are generally inclined to make squibs miserable. If anything, he should hate everyone with magic, or at least sympathize with those favoring equal rights over pureblood supremacy, rather than skulk around playing toady for people who wouldn't deign to let him lick their boots, if their toes were on fire.

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When people write "brokered no argument" instead of "brooked no argument". Why am I seeing this so often?
Yes, I know: Because I read fan fiction.

BROOK (Verb): To tolerate or put up with.

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Fics where the author mentions a guy (often Seamus and/or Dean) reading "Playwitch".

Okay, this is an obvious reference to Playboy magazine. But, wait...
PlayBOY = photos of naked women
PlayGIRL = photos of naked men
Then, wouldn't PlayWITCH = photos of naked wizards?

Oops. I think there are some people out there who need to pay a little more attention to what they're writing.

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People who write tremendously long and self-indulgent posts in the peeves thread. Really, who do these fuckers think they are that they just assume people want to read their hour long rant on writing that is almost bad by definition?

It's like diving into a septic tank and then complaining that you're covered in shit, as though it was somehow all a surprise.

Don't be that person. Seriously, shut the fuck up already. :awesome

 

Now tell us how you really feel. :awesome

I found your post ROFL mate.

 

Magical cores, wards, "why didn't they just use a gun on Voldemort?", making harry learn some obscure martial arts that the author saw on the internet and thought that it could be soooooo kewl!?!?! and finally a bit of a weird one:

Why do all these authors have Harry - when turned evil - stay at Hogwarts? I mean seriously it's a school full of wizards who are on the opposite side, headed by the leader of the opposite side, and monitored by a ministry on the opposite side; go and hide somewhere that doesn't need you to smile and wave at people who'd be hauling your ass off to Azkaban if they found out what exactly you plan to do with those eight litres of cow blood and some inane magic circle that the author ripped from Dresden Files.

 

For the same reason Harry shouldn't use a gun or some obscure martial arts to deal with Voldemort.

 

Really? I think running away from the place that teaches in favour of everything you're against is a bit different from learning Ju-jitsu to punch out a DE, or magically becoming insanely strong by virtue of owning a handgun. I'm not saying run right off the bat, but when !!EVILHarry!! is actually shown as being evil, why does everyone just shrug and carry on, doing little more than glare ineffectually at him. Where's the cause and bloody effect people.

 

Cause: Harry's 'his own man' and tired of ineffectual and manipulative headmasters.

Effect: Harry is now badass (Evil) since it's obviously the correct choice to forfeit all morals and crush all those who disrespected Harry before. (But not always his blatant enemies, like the guy who killed his parents and keeps trying to kill him or his followers. Not even all the nameless students who keep turning against Harry, just his former friends.

 

B-but the WEASEL FAMILY WAS PAID TO BE HIS FRIEND AND STEALS FROM HIS VAULT!

 

Classic Bumbles, amiright? And he merely had to pay them with condoms.

DEFECTIVE condoms, because Stumblemore is quite the prankster.

 

That's a terrible cause and effect, evil Harry wouldn't be badass, he'd be a half broken wreck desperately clinging to anything that could keep him alive against voldemort, not murder happy.

 

I think you are joking but in case you are not that is sarcasm so clear and cut that it doesn't even need tags.

 

I was joking, it's hard to tell through the internet.

 

Severus Snape.

 

This one at least has excuse of this;

 

I always get a kick out of that gif. Harry looks like he's saying, "Pop!"

"Pop, pop, pop: Making dark lord bitches drop!" :fire

 

Indeed, been on both sides of it and by this point I figure it is easier to clarify than to guess.