Author puting an AN in the middle of story just so (s)he can suggest a song.

Idiots.

 

A personal pet-peeve that probably isn't shared on this forum: overly long fight scenes.
If it drags on for too much time I will start to skim it, because I want to get back to the story and character development. If you write 5k or 10k words on just one duel, you're wasting your time - at least for me.

It often feels like DBZ back in the day when one fight dragged on for half a dozen episodes.

It also seems very unlikely that two combatants are so perfectly evenly matched that it takes ages for one to get the upper-hand. It's acceptable if there's character development going on at the same time (for instance the fights between Luke and Vader in the original SW trilogy) but otherwise it's just tedious (the fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin in the prequels).

 

Don't forget about:
- where / were
- know / now
- cannon / canon
- should have / should of
- any misspelling of a spell or a name from the books (because it takes that long to google it)

The list could go on and on... There are days when all I want to do is this.

 

My newest pet peeve relates to the writing of teenage sexuality. I've been noticing this more and more recently, and yesterday it hit an extreme with "Effects and Side Effects" by Phoenix Dawn, a genderbender Harry fic.

Basically, I'm getting pissed off with so many people writing teenagers as having some kind of inborn sense of propriety based on conservative American social mores. If I see the phrase "I'm too young to date" one more time I might scream. No teenager ever thinks they're too young for anything. Nor do they deliberately pace themselves when it comes to sex, if they have found a willing sexual partner and have a mutual desire to have sex.

To be clear, I'm not talking about teenagers who don't want to have sex - few as they are. What I'm talking about are teenagers who want to have sex (or engage in some kind of sexual behaviour) and have the opportunity to do so, but don't, saying something like "I'm not ready" or "I'm too young". No. If you're not ready to have sex, then you don't want to have sex in the first place.

I'm not sure if authors do this to artificially prolong unresolved sexual tension, or if they do it because they're adults and squeemish about writing realistic teenage life, but it's getting really annoying.

Related to this pet peeve is the writing of a really pathetic Harry.

There's a scene in Effects and After Effects where femHarry and Daphne are making out, and Daphne squeezes Harry's boob. Harry, though he enjoys it, runs away and cries (something he does regularly in that story for the mildest things. Once he ran away and cried just because someone said the word naked. Most pathetic Harry ever) on the basis of "not ready" bullshit already discussed. The worst bit, though, is that Daphne talks about how wrong it was for her to do that, that all their friends agree, and that Harry stays mad at her for a while. Just complete bullshit.

They both enjoyed it. They don't have any external social convention like Christianity that would impose on them some sense of it being wrong. What exactly are they referring to when they say that they're not ready? Nothing in the character's minds, but rather something about the author. When these characters say "I'm not ready" what's really happening is the author is breaking the fourth wall and speaking to the reader directly, through the mouths of his characters. "I'm not ready," said Harry, actually means "The story isn't ready, or I don't like writing that," said the author.

If you don't want to write 15 year olds having sex, then don't write them having sexual desires in the first place - JKR style. Just write a Gen fanfic. But please, enough of this "I want to have sex but the author says no" crap.

/rant

 

I have the strangest boner right now.

 

I bet some of those stories are written by someone - likely teenage and/or raised in a conservative family - trying to come to grips with their own sexuality through fanfic. So writing a no-sex genfic is probably not an option for those people; they want to write that silly moralistic awkwardness.

 

Another one is loose when they mean lose. Which annoys the hell out of me when it's supposed to be some really emotional scene, like just for an example, some big romantic scene and the characters say "I don't want to loose you," or something like that. Or sometimes in the middle of a battle and the bad guy says "You will loose, Harry Potter!"

It always seems to pop up in important moments and it just ruins that moment for me.

 

New peeve: Authors trying to write a language that they don't speak, and then getting pissy when someone corrects them, because they've just thrown it into Google Translate and been like 'Oh Google wouldn't lie to me. Of course this is the right wording, with the right vocabulary, and doesn't have an English word in the middle of it that I won't see because i'm too goddamn lazy to check through my work and refuse to accept that i'm not actually the Shakespeare of my age.'

Pricks.

 

Lol, it wasn't until I read fanfiction that I understood what my French and Spanish teachers were saying to my class for all those years. This is exactly what they meant XD

 

@Taure I blame chastity porn and the culture that spawned it. Some of today's teens are really fucked up by the dissonance between what their parents and educators say and what they feel and see around them (never mind what they see on TV). Between abstinence-only sex education, "all sex is rape", douchebag culture and terrible romance portrayal in media, it's difficult to blame them.

 

Pointless smut and sex. Yes, hard to believe, but Harry randomly banging say, Lavender Brown in the Owlery, a story does not make.

The misuse of 'nor' and 'or'.

The usual their/they're/there variation rule (lose/loose etc).

 

I had to read that ten times before I realized that it meant "might as well". Now, I know that colloquially, it's pronounced "my-nuhz-well," at least in my dialect, but are there dialects out there that devoice that "z" to an "s"? Are there dialects out there that pronounce "minus" as "minuz"?

HOW THE FUCK DO YOU EVEN MAKE THAT MISTAKE!?!

 

Because, usually, the author is a fucking idiot.

 

New pet peeve: Review whore authors. It's really irritating when people hold their chapters hostage for reviews. It makes me want to hit something.

 

Actually, I think Harry randomly banging various girls in odd places like the Owlery is a good idea for smut fic. It's definitely more interesting than anything else that is usually used as a plot in these kind stories.

 

Here's a peeve of mine. People who write ground as floor. I'm not talking about the forest floor, or the floor of a room.

No, the characters are out in the open, presumably in the middle of a field or meadow or what have you, and the author decides to write "The punch sent him to the floor" or some such bullshit.

The word 'ground' is not a taboo. Neither are any of the other words that could've been used there, such as 'dirt', 'earth', or 'grass'. IF IT'S NOT A FOREST, AND IT'S NOT INSIDE, IT IS NOT A "FLOOR". IT IS THE GROUND.

 

Which leads to another peeve, some authors really need to pay attention to their timing AND setting. In this case, I am almost certain the hypothetical author has never had a pet bird because if the owlery has, let’s say, 76 to 124 owls, then that floor is probably covered in bird droppings, in which case I really hope they stayed off the floor. I might be a little generous with this number. I have never seen an actual owl count so I am estimating 8 - 12 owls per year with about 20 - 40 school owls.

But back to the point, some authors could use a good lesson in either plot development or transitioning between scenes. I am not just talking about sex scenes either.

I say plot development because that has to do with timing. JKR did not have Harry go around destroying the horcruxes without knowing what they are on a simple whim based on how important the items were to Voldemort and then learn what the items really were. I have come across many badly written stories that lacked pace and seemed rushed and the order of events was based on how high the author was at the time. Sometimes it is to the point that it is written as Harry and a female character introduce themselves to each other, screw each other, and then Voldemort dies within 3 or 4 paragraphs. There is no drama, no sense of time, no emotion, no setup between events, etc. It reads more like a check list than a story; this is a story that is being made, not a pre-flight checklist for a shuttle launch. For all we know, they did all the actions in the same place, with the same group of people. With the ways some stories are written it seems that Lord Voldemort was on stand-by on the sidelines, waiting to be brought in and killed, while the two (or more) go at it.

Hell, there are three chapters right there: CH1 - they meet, CH2 - they screw, and CH3 - Voldy dies. Now fill in the chapters by repeatedly answering the 5 "W"s (and the single "H") and you might have something resembling the makings of a story.

The other one I mentioned is not paying attention to the setting and is usually due to bad or non-existent transitions between scenes. We have all come across stories that felt rushed because the writer puts every major event as a sentence or two in a larger paragraph. There is no conversation during or between these events, and if there is, it is minimal and badly formatted. If the characters are changing their location without any events in transit, you need to start a new paragraph and/or make sure the readers know what is happening. If the roster of characters completely changes because you have gone to a different location to write about the actions of that group, you need to start a new paragraph and make sure the readers know what is happening. If an event begins that cuts off another event, you need to start a new paragraph and make sure the readers know what is happening.

On another note about transitioning, if you are in a setting that has not been used (In FanFics, this generally means the first time in a "canon location" or in a location the author invents), feel free to describe them to MODERATE detail. I place emphasis on moderate because some authors need to learn to allow the reader to use some imagination in the setting. Here is a short list of the things some readers do not care about unless it is a plot device in the story at a later point: the exact detail of everyone's clothing, the exact detail of their surroundings, or the exact details of a particular design pattern on clothing or in the settings.

I think I'll stop here since I am breaking out TVTropes links. It is kind of funny that this post was suppose to be an owl poop, sex, and dirty laundry joke and turned into an actual mini-rant.

 

Quoted for truth.

It would take repression born of an upbringing/brainwashing by some very mental parents to produce a teen that analyzed their sexuality to such an extent as you see in the kind of stories you mentioned.

That 'I want to but I'm too young' business strikes me as the kind of stuff you'd hear out of one of those squeaky clean looking student council types in a local newspaper interview, talking about their 4.0 grade point average, and the virtues of clean living... and you know they're either the sort of weird fugitive from a sociological experiment who signed a chastity pledge to their daddy, or they're a smirking liar who's going off somewhere to bone their boy/girlfriend directly after the interview.

If they want to, but are too nervous, too worried about pregnancy, too scared of parents, or what have you, that just boils down to a simple, "Don't want to (for various reasons)." in the end.

"I'm too young." is never a consideration. I could only see someone saying this to an adult, because they think that's what they want to hear, or because they've been programmed to.

Of course, in addition to those motives, some don't want to write it because they aren't good at writing sex scenes... ignoring the fact that you don't have to write Tab-A in Slot-B 'lemons' to show that a character has a sex life. A lot can be implied with emotionally/romantically descriptive language, versus anatomically/mechanically descriptive language. Not to put too fine a point on it, something that reads like an impressionist painting, rather than an engineering schematic.

Barring that, one can simply imply build up -> fade to black -> imply aftermath.

And, sometimes, that might just be the better choice, regardless of how expertly the writer could describe every aspect of a sexual encounter. It's all about using your discretion and making what is the appropriate choice for your individual story.


Others might play this 'want to but I'm too young' game with their story when they're thinking about the social ramifications of writing such scenes, worried what other people will think about them or assume about their personal character for writing it... then make the typical accusations.

Bearing that in mind, I can see why some people err on the side of caution.

I guess it's just easier to cast aspersions on 'nobody' fanfic authors, since you don't hear too many people accusing established authors like George R. R. Martin of being a possible molester, just because 13-year-old Daenerys gets gets married off to a barbarian and conceives a child with him.

Spoiler

Or, later, breastfeeds baby dragons, but that's beside the point.

Even if the fanfic author does end up writing such scenes, later in the story, they want to at least be seen 'protesting' a bit, first.

Ironically, actual teen fic writers tend not to have this society-enforced fear, but often suck at writing sex scenes. Witness the proliferation of illiterate slash and dramione, written by people who aren't even out of middle school. They're definitely thinking about it, and have few compunctions about writing it.

Sadly, sometimes, they also suck at writing any kind of scenes, whatsoever. :|

Makes me wonder, though, how many of them worry that their parents will catch them writing it. :awesome

In my experience, people tend to pronounce it as "mightuz-well".

I won't dispute that there are people out there lazy enough with their enunciation (I am with quite a few words) to sound like they're saying "my-nuz-well", but I think the misinformation often comes in when someone grows up hearing this and simply doesn't have the vocabulary yet to understand exactly what they're hearing; they get as close as they can with the words they're already familiar with, and keep this misconception throughout their life, never giving any thought to how it just doesn't make any grammatical sense.

It becomes an idiom that doesn't have to make sense, perhaps because, on some level, they think it's a 'saying' of some sort, not a normal grammatical construction.

Of course, anyone who actually does learn language from someone pronouncing it minus-well, is going to say it the same way, until they are corrected (and give a shit that they're wrong).

The character of Lavender Brown holds no interest for me. Regardless, though, Harry shouldn't be banging anyone in the owlery.

Think about it. Unless there's a house elf watching that room 24/7 (and a house elf witness is a turn off all of its own), that floor is filthy. The walls, too, probably, so a stand-and-deliver up against the wall, isn't even a safe option.

Bird. Shit. Everywhere.

Plus, they're owls, so count on owl pellets, bones... and feathers full of lice/mites, perhaps.

Even if the floor is enchanted to be self-cleaning, what's stopping an owl from just up and shitting on you or coughing up a moist pellet full of indigestible rat parts, mid-coitus?

Yeah... sexy.

I've seen, first hand, a girl get shit on by a low-flying bird; it was not boner-inducing by any stretch of the imagination (as if there were any doubt). :facepalm

I've noticed this, and it is annoying!



Septonyte: Welcome to DLP. It's a bad idea to alter the font of your entire post...

Which I didn't bother reading, because you altered the font of your entire post.

 

Amusingly, a large chunk of his post was about people not understanding that the Owlery would realistically be covered in bird shit...although I'm sure you could invent a spell for that.

 

One need look no further than anything I've ever written to see this used. Not only did I feel the details weren't needed or important, I was fairly sure I wouldn't have written a sex scene well and in any case, the before and after was the point, not the during.

Same here - I skipped the whole of his post.