Rugi
Third Year
Norberta's Chief Cook and Librarian
Posts: 33
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Post by Rugi on May 23, 2009 12:49:36 GMT -5
Got a very general pet peeve which just recently occurred to me. I really dislike it when a chapter of a story ends with plot-options for the readers to vote on. It annoys me no end - I don't want to decide what's going to happen next - I want the author to do that.
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Post by Mirabelle on May 23, 2009 16:03:21 GMT -5
I hate that too. When I see something like that, I always want to say, "Give me the story you wanted to write, don't write me the story you think I'll read." If I wanted that responsibility of plotting, I'd write my own fic.
One of my peeves is this idea that the entire Weasley family drops everything and camps out in the waiting room whenever a Weasley baby is going to be born. They're close but babies can take a long time, waiting rooms are boring, and they all have better things to do (such as take care of young children or work) than to sit and stare at the walls or each other while Harry or Ron comes running out to give them progress reports every hour.
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Post by birdg on May 23, 2009 16:52:34 GMT -5
I always think people like that must have never been around for one of their close relatives giving birth. When my niece and nephew were born, I wasn't there and neither was my brother. We didn't need to be.
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Post by queenie on May 24, 2009 2:12:01 GMT -5
And because of course the entire Weasley family all lives in one town, a short walk away from each other.
And don't forget that when the little, perfectly dry and quiet and healthy baby opens their eyes, they have Harry's beautiful green eyes, or Hermione's perfect brown eyes, or babies have blue eyes when born. Ahem.
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Post by dancingpony on May 25, 2009 11:43:06 GMT -5
My biggest pet peeve is failure to properly check a story for errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling, word usage, etc.. I understand that an occasional error won't be caught by a writer or his/her beta . . . but too many of them make a story unreadable, even if the plot and characterization are good.
Second: I don't read much fan fiction anyway, but I won't even consider stories with non-canon or slash relationships. It seems (just from looking at story summaries) that hundreds -- if not thousands -- of Harry/Draco stories are drifting through cyberspace. Hello??? How can anyone possibly justify that relationship?
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Post by queenie on May 25, 2009 19:27:18 GMT -5
True; my brother knows next to nothing about Harry Potter, and yet I described the good ship Harry/Draco to him, and his reaction was, "Sister, is there anyone in the HP books that has died?" "... well, yeah, Cedric Diggory." "Cedric Diggory has a better chance of coming back to life than Harry and Draco do of becoming a couple."
Well, sometimes non canon ships can be fun. I still think Harry/Luna could have worked, and I'd like to read a good fic written pre-HBP that explores that. If Draco had been the Magnificent Bastard that fanon imagined him to be, and not the pitiable young man that canon revealed him to be, then Draco/Ginny could have been an interesting ship to work out.
But then again, this is the girl who reads Link/Zelda, Link/Malon, and Link/Midna fanfic (for Legend of Zelda) and only asks that something be well-written.
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Post by dancingpony on May 25, 2009 21:16:11 GMT -5
Draco and Harry have about as much a chance as . . . hmm, let's see . . . how about Draco and Winky? Wouldn't they make an adorable couple? I can just picture it. Draco sneaks into the kitchen for a late night snack . . . he sees Winky sobbing over her butterbeer . . . their eyes meet and lock . . . bingo, love at first sight!i
I'm not saying that non canon pairings can't be interesting, but there has to be something in canon that, well if not supports it, at least doesn't make it seem totally ridiculous. I did write a short piece once that put Luna and Colin together, just for fun.
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Post by Chocolatepot on May 26, 2009 11:34:52 GMT -5
Non-canon pairings don't annoy me, but I hate the attitude you see sometimes that non-canon pairings are inherently more fun or creative or whatever. You don't see it as much anymore, since the canon pairings seem to have mostly died out of the fandom, but it used to be obnoxiously prevalent.
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Post by birdg on Sept 24, 2009 4:22:34 GMT -5
I'm bored and have decided to commit egregious acts of thread necromancy all over the board.
I've run into it a few times recently. Usually I just roll my eyes at how desperately edgy they're trying to be over a children's book. My problem with a lot of non-canon pairings is it feels like the writer is beating me over the head with how ~omg subversive~ they're being by pairing up two characters who don't like each other to have loads of kinky sex. I'd be willing to read Bellatrix/Hermione or Lucius/Draco if it actually had a plot that didn't revolve around BDSM and had at least an attempt at convincing characterizations.
Anyway! My pet peeve is the crappy way female characters are treated in fanfic. Which is less a pet peeve and more an all-consuming hatred but we don't have a thread that would fit the subject as well and I don't trust myself to start one that isn't snarky.
But really, it astounds and depresses me how female characters are treated. Most gen fic revolves around male characters. A lot of slash, if it doesn't outright ignore female characters, presents them as evil manipulators trying to steal the men away or just inferior and boring compared to men. They are not equal and could not ~understand~ the male characters the way another male character can. A lot of het has the characters in the sort of rigid gender roles that wouldn't be out of place in a lame sitcom - Ginny the nagging housewife and Harry the clueless husband who doesn't know how to cook or clean despite the Dursleys using him as a house-elf. Or the women are written as passive and bland and inoffensive as possible and there to mother the male character or help him through his manpain. And femmeslash barely even exists so why bother mentioning it.
It's sad that its women writing this.
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Post by vegablack on Sept 25, 2009 9:49:07 GMT -5
Yeah for thread Necromancy.
Usually I just roll my eyes at how desperately edgy they're trying to be over a children's book. My opinion exactly.
I hate the treatment of women in fanfic. Even in slash there has to be a character taking on a very stereotyped female role. As if that female gender role was such a requirement we have to have men taking it on if there's no woman around. (and no I'm talking about the mechanics of sex.) That depresses me. The writers are so proud of how edgy they are too and they just fall into the same traps everyone else does.
The gender norms make me laugh some times. The writing has to fit some prewritten cliched ideal. If sex is involved the girl is portrayed as less experienced even when both characters are the same young age. If this is not true it's seen as something wrong. Even though girls are a lot more likely than boys to have been involved with an older more experienced partner at an earlier age. I'm actually a conservative person who rarely writes even implied sex, but I find all this funny. Obviously there are exceptions.
Don't even start me on the blatent double standard applied to the behavior of males and females.
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Post by birdg on Sept 25, 2009 14:38:32 GMT -5
Oh, yes. Things like this are a large part of the reason why I don't read much Harry/Draco anymore. Aside from the fact that Draco always seemed very much like your average (douchey) teenage boy, I've always pictured him as being a chauvanist and probably wouldn't be down with taking Potter's name (lol so much no), bearing his magical mpreg babies, wouldn't weep openly or be ok with being the perpetual damsel in distress.
Oh, definitely. It goes into what I mentioned about people writing the relationships they think the characters should have rather than the ones they liked would have. Along with being less sexually experienced, female characters are often turned into bland, romantic ideals who do nothing more but support the male character rather than have their own story. See St. Hermione The Always Just and Watered-Down and De-Fanged!Ginny* and Manic Pixie Dream Girl!Luna.
*Sometimes I think part of the reason Ginny is so unpopular is because she's harder to fit into some bland ideal. Luna is serene and accepting of many things if not everything, Hermione does have high ideals and is mothering, not just supportive. There's something to work with when it comes to twisting their characters. Ginny doesn't have as much to work with other than giving the impression of being fun but often, girls aren't supposed to be fun. They have to be the reliable, understanding ones. Fun is for boys.
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Post by vegablack on Oct 5, 2009 10:24:35 GMT -5
I can't stand the phrase the golden trio. Who would use this phrase outside of fandom? Certainly none of the three would ever apply it to themselves without sounding like twits.
Why would the other students use it?
Here is a rule in writing: the minor characters do not know they are minor characters. They are the heros of their own lives. You shouldn't have them sounding like they realize they are the Rozencrantz and Guildenstern of the story, even if they are.
I hate the term Griffendor courage, another fanfiction term that gets used by characters in fiction all the time. In real life who would talk that way?
The only person who should ever be refered to as a prince is the half blood prince himself or a member of the Muggle Royal family.
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Post by starsea on Oct 5, 2009 16:10:00 GMT -5
I can't stand the phrase the golden trio. Who would use this phrase outside of fandom? Certainly none of the three would ever apply it to themselves without sounding like twits. Pfffbwhahaha. There is no way that Harry or Hermione would ever refer to their group as the "golden trio" because Ron would fall about laughing and if Ron ever used that term, the twins would jump on him even quicker than usual. I don't know. I can see Malfoy using it (MAYBE) as a term of disparagement but you'd have to set it up really carefully.l Perhaps this is how Rita Skeeter refers to them in her exclusive tell-all account of the Year of Camping. ;D
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Post by Mirabelle on Oct 5, 2009 23:47:51 GMT -5
Agreed on both Golden Trio and Gryffindor courage. Or when a Gryffindor calls the Slytherins the snakes.
I also hate it when Ginny has no cooking skills whatsoever. I highly doubt Molly Weasley would not have taught Ginny something about cooking.
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Post by birdg on Oct 6, 2009 4:01:12 GMT -5
I agree with startsea that I could see Malfoy using "Golden Trio". "Look who it is, St. Potter of the Golden Trio!" And maybe even Rita Skeeter post-DH but any member of the Trio themselves? No. Or anyone else in a non-mocking way? No.
As for the prince thing, if we're talking about Draco the Prince of Slytherin, I think we can blame that on Cassie Cla(i)re. It's ridiculous and my best guess is that it comes from the stuff about the Blacks practically being royalty and Harry's snark about Draco "holding court" at the Slytherin table. And, of course, the need some Slytherfen have to worship Draco.
Also my pet peeve. Hermione calling Ron, "Ronald" or chiding him on his language or - better yet - chiding him on his language while calling him "Ronald". I %^&*#@! hate that. For starters, real!Hermione never does that. That's Emmamione from the movies. Real!Hermione chided Ron once for his language, back in POA and that was more because what he was saying was directed at a teacher. Likewise, she only calls him Ronald once and that's when he returns and she starts hitting him and swearing at him.
And aside from having a shaky basis in canon, I hate the way it makes Hermione sound like a nagging, uptight shrew and Ron is the idiot child she has to keep in line. I can understand people who ship H/Hr or D/Hr writing the R/Hr relationship like this but even R/Hr shippers write them this way! Why?
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Post by Mirabelle on Oct 6, 2009 19:11:00 GMT -5
You said it yourself--the influence of the movies. I think movie!Hermione is a nagging shrew, at least she is in PoA and GoF, and do I really need to get into Kloves' version of Ron?
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Post by siriusgirl on Dec 15, 2009 21:48:55 GMT -5
Snape with a goatie? I know it's been drawn but to me it just looks so . . .stereotypical. Almost like Jafar in Aladdin.
Any fic that violates what we know in canon. Including violating canon ships.
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Post by Mirabelle on Dec 15, 2009 23:15:00 GMT -5
Know what's just as bad, or even worse, than "golden trio"? The term "silver trio" to refer to Ginny, Neville, and Luna.
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Post by vegablack on Dec 16, 2009 2:21:33 GMT -5
Ugh! That is awful in so many ways. Demeaning and absurd, it makes even less sense. Today I just saw a reference to Harry and Ginny as the golden couple. Ugh again!
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Post by siriusgirl on Dec 16, 2009 11:35:13 GMT -5
Ugh! That is awful in so many ways. Demeaning and absurd, it makes even less sense. Today I just saw a reference to Harry and Ginny as the golden couple. Ugh again! The trios are equally important! I mean Neville is just as much as Harry, maybe more.
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