Rowling can go fuck herself with her improper declension.

 

Oops, lol. My mistake...

@Fatality - It is really semantics as you said, but that's why it's a pet peeve. It just annoys me because it is me I guess.

 

The list of peeves already pretty much covers everything that could possibly piss you off other then specific citations of fics from FF.net

Most of all out of any already listed my main are: super! rich! Harry and ridiculous magical inheritances when he turns 16. Well that and OCs. There are over 200 characters mentioned on a semi-normal basis throughout the series. Why create someone that will just turn into a Mary/Gary Sue?

 

You've clearly got to read about The Santi's Calypso in Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived and make an informed decision about liking good OCs.

 

I've just got a new one: naming the Sorting Hat.
Just call it The Hat, for the love of Gods.

 

Pointless character bashing, or demonizing a character so he or she is prime bashing material.

 

You hate OCs? There are quite a few decent fics involving OCs as main characters. And the use of characters only mentioned by name (Daphne, Tracey, etc.) is barely different.

 

I shamefully admit to Ron-bashing stories being a guilty pleasure of mine...

Please DLP-gods don't smite me!

That said, in a serious story I agree. Some bashing is okay, but it needs to be controlled, well contrived, and help us understand the character.

Vampire!Harry. Does anyone know of a good one?

 

Lord Anarchy wrote a not-terrible one for one of the more recent contests (April? May?). But as for a full-length story... no, not really.

 

That's what I thought... also a full length Evil!Harry is pretty tough to find.

Huge goddamn inheritances are my personal bane right now. Can't they find a better device than giving Harry a ton of money? I mean, that's fine if there is a decent reason, but man that pisses me off. Not just "by the way the Blacks and Potters were filthy rich with economy-crushing amounts of wealth."

 

I never would have guessed, seeing your sig, that you might like a bit of the Ron-bashing...

If this is your peeve "right now," then you're obviously reading (a) old indy!Harry stories, (b) totally shitty and unimaginative new stories, or (c) both.

 

Blood Bound is the only worthwhile story I know.

 

Short chapters. Chapters should be 5,000 words at least.

 

Let me rephrase that.

Since the majority of OCs turn into Mary/Gary Sues and/or self inserts it has become a major bane of mine in my choice of fanfiction is then severely limited. I will not disregard a story just because it has a main/secondary character OC; but I do tread cautiously.

@Carmine It isn't any different. I know this and it was my mistake for making such a general claim. Of course there are great fics out there with OCs I will concede this point as a few of my favorites have them.

It's just that after having read well over 10,000 stories in the last 10 years I have become jaded and cynical to the point of if I see the words OC especially in a pairing I will most likely skip over it unless something else in the summary catches my attention enough to ignore it.

 

I kind of disagree with this. I don't care how great the writing is, if you have a 10,000+ word chapter, you're just begging the reader to get tired and start skimming.

On average, for novels, chapters are less than 3,000 words. There's a reason for that. It's less daunting for a reader if they know there will be some type of conclusion after a certain number of pages/words - even if it's only a chapter conclusion. If the reader thinks, "Shit, I have to make it another 7,000 words before the next chapter," then they're likely to quit the first chance they get (read: whenever they get tired/bored).

Also, shorter chapters give the illusion that the story is moving faster, which is important since people tend to lose interest very quickly.

Of course, when it's fanfiction and you never know when the author is going to release the next chapter... sure, you want to see a mammoth 15k word epic. But if you had the whole thing written out before you started posting on ff.net, I'd personally say that 5k would be the upper limit for chapter length.

 

I agree. The word count of chapters in Dresden shows how well this works. Obviously it's different for fanfiction, but if the author had written 15k words, I'd prefer to see it in two back to back updates.

Another peeve that's recently started to really grate is perspective changes in the middle of scenes, especially action or important dialogue scenes. It disrupts the flow of the writing for no real reason, and some authors believe it to be representative of a good writing style.

Protip: It isn't.

 

I agree - my writing naturally flows into approx. 4k word chapters, which is why the first two chapters of Thunderstorm are bizzare (for me) at over 6k each. But to be honest, anything less than 3k per chapter in fanfiction just strikes me as lazy, unless the author has a reason for it, like nmb.

 

I guess this is canon (?), but "dodging" spells.

Spells physically manifest themselves as beams of light. And light travels at 300,000,000 m/s. I get that it's magic and all, but the physics of this are stupid enough to jolt me out of whatever I'm reading.

By extension . . . as a half-trained wizard has an infallible six-syllable killing mechanism at his disposal, large-scale wizarding battles should take thirty seconds to end up looking like No Man's Land on the Somme. This shit where everyone but two expendable minor characters walks away at the end of an engagement is preposterous -- and one reason that I forgive DAYD so many of its faults.

So all depictions of wizarding warfare that aren't chaotic and bloody guerrilla endeavors, I guess.

This is why I've never been able to get through more than forty pages of Dune.

 

I was always under the impression that spells are referred to as light just to make things more simple. And as you say, it is magic, which pretty much shuts the door on that discussion entirely. Physics doesn't take magic into account.

 

I always assumed dodging meant anticipating the spell, not necessarily dodging a light-missile. After all, magic might travel that fast, but you still have to speak the incantation and perform the wand movement. That should give someone enough time to dive behind rocks, or run away, etc.