I disagree about the passive voice. Let's borrow the bad teens and drugs from EC because I like bad teens and I like drugs.

The bad teenagers - they swung on the swings meant for kids, they rolled around the plastic safety mats of the playground with cheap sodas and cheaper bud and they sold. They sold to the young, the old and whoever else they could cheat. They sold to each other.

compared to

The playground was where drugs were sold. The swings had been colonized by the bad teenagers, the plastic safety mats were cradles for their amusement after they got high and the benches were witness to their petty theft - of the old, the young and each other.

If you'd like, take a look at the 'camera focus', I think the first nouns say it all. The teenagers vs. the playground. Sure, the word choice is different, but the flow of the sentences themselves contribute to it. Bad teens polluting a place that was once clean as opposed to a dirty place where said teens are part of the scenery.

Neither is particularly better (though the second was harder to write by far - quality control is impossible because direct "translations" or whatever will always favor one voice or the other). It's about what you want out of the scene.

 

"The playground was a hub for teenagers and their drugs. The swings had been colonized by couples; the plastic safety mats cradles for their stoned amusement; the benches witnesses to their petty theft. Theft from the old, from the young, from each other."

The problem with the passive voice isn't the shift of camera focus. In English, overuse of the verb "to be" tends to weaken prose, and the passive voice is inherently chock-full of it. Of course you could cheat like I did and drop the auxiliary wherever possible, but that makes longer passages even clunkier to read.

 

Okay, new pet peeve as inspired by the review I received this morning: people who read fanfics and, because they're so focused on their preferred fanon over canon, they completely misinterpret details you've written, blowing them out into utter nonsense.

The number of times in the past week I've had someone tell me my AU!Harry is showing Lily traits when he's showing more JAMES traits simply because they want Snape to fall in love with and/or adopt him is mind-blowing.

 

Disagreed. The passive voice has its place, but given the scene you're describing, the passive in conjunction with phrasings like “colonized”, “cradles for their amusement”, and “witness to their petty theft” seem overbearing.

"They perched on swings meant for kids or rolled around the plastic safety mats of the playground with cheap sodas and cheaper bud. There, bad teenagers always sold to the young, the old, and whoever else they could cheat, themselves included."

or:

"Perching on swings meant for kids or rolling around the safety mats of the playground with cheap sodas and cheaper bud, bad teenagers sold to the young, the old, and whoever else they could cheat, themselves included."

Depending on how relevant the teenagers are, you could make it even more concrete, getting rid of the ‘bad teenagers’ aspect entirely:

"They perched on swings meant for kids or rolled around the plastic safety mats of the playground with cheap sodas and cheaper bud. There, Dudley and his friends always sold to the young, the old, and whoever else they could cheat, themselves included."

[FONT=&quot]Admittedly there is room for improvement, but I like it more than the gathering of passive constructions you used. [FONT=&quot]Even going with your p[FONT=&quot]oint of camera focus, it's not the playground that's special, but rather the people acting in it[FONT=&quot].

[FONT=&quot]By the way, what I did is edit out most forms of to be[FONT=&quot]. There is a distinction to be [FONT=&quot]made[FONT=&quot], however, between the passive and just using be as a[FONT=&quot]n auxiliary to form[FONT=&quot] tense or as a main verb to express something existing/being there.

[FONT=&quot]"[FONT=&quot]The [FONT=&quot]plastic safety mats were cradles[FONT=&quot][...]" isn'[FONT=&quot]t passive. [FONT=&quot]"[...]where drugs were sold[FONT=&quot]" is. [FONT=&quot]Th[FONT=&quot]ough I agree that t[FONT=&quot]oo much of be can bog downt he prose. [/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]I guess it's a matter of taste when it comes down to it, b[FONT=&quot]ut I find[FONT=&quot] an overly passive voice to be boring[FONT=&quot] to read.[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]
[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT] [/FONT]

 

After reading several fanfics with this "lovely" feature, the one that stands out amongst all of my pet peeves in Harry Potter fanfiction would be Harry suddenly having long hair, and I've read a few where his hair goes down to his feet.

I don't understand what exactly is the appeal with having a long haired Harry, but I am almost certain it has something to do with Lucius Malfoy.

 

I feel that there should be some parody fic where Harry's stubbornly messy hair, now ridiculously long, ends up killing him.

 

Sap that I am, I occasionally read romance novels. This inclines me to sometimes read a fan-fic romance---in truth, more often than I care to admit---and I have come to the conclusion that shippers write the absolute worst love stories. In my experience, shippers expect the reader to share their infatuation with the object of their worship. A pairing makes sense for them, so it must make sense for everybody, right? So we have love-on-first-sight, or if the writing possesses some subtlety---a rarity in itself---on second or third. Any complications thrown in the way of the one true pairing are almost invariably artificial and contrived, often due to misunderstanding and circumstance, and never grow organically from more difficult-to-reconcile personal differences. Of course, shippers also tend to distort the characteristics of the members of their preferred pairing, so as to make them more compatible, which kind of defeats the entire premise, I think. Nothing can make a hypothetically exciting pairing more humdrum and bland than having a shipper write a story about it.

Now, writers who aren't shippers can in theory maintain the distance required to write a more believable romance, where the reader as much as the characters are seduced.

Another, more general peeve of mine---which to some degree explains why I don't really care that much for fan fiction any longer---is the insistence of some authors to stick unreasonably closely to the canon time-line, even though the introduced changes by all rights should have derailed the plot entirely. I don't know about all of you, but after reading the nth canon rethread, I start to long for some variety.

Even more generally, I feel too much fan fiction is just colouring within the lines. I mean, I think if a fictional universe rests on one particular storyline, one genre, or one character, it isn't worth writing fan fiction for.

This leads me to hold some beliefs that might be considered heretical on this forum. To wit, I don't really care that much about Harry Potter as a protagonist any longer. And I think most people reading HP-fanfiction don't really do either, given how wildly Harry's personality differs between stories. For example, in Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived by Santi, a story I generally like, Harry Potter isn't recognizably Harry Potter. I say, take one step further and do without the pretence, and write stories about any characters you like.

Anyway, end rant.

 

Well, unfortunately that is a core characteristic of the world of fanfiction.

While I ship certain pairings, I never find myself able to actually write a fanfic about the pairing itself. In fact, I find it more enjoyable to keep myself and certain stories of mine away from romance, since it brings little good to the plot and many stories that go that way are just like that for wish fulfilment.

---------- Post automerged at 23:36 ---------- Previous post was at 22:52 ----------

A late reply, but while I don't know about Britain, if you go to Portugal (I don't know if it happens in Spain), you will find people with names even longer than that of Dumbledore.

And it is extremely common amongst nobility/royalty to have long names. Here's the name of a Spanish prince:

Alfonso Maria Isabel Francisco Eugenio Gabriel Pedro Sebastian Pelayo Fernando Francisco de Paula Pio Miguel Rafael Juan José Joaquin Ana Zacarias Elisabeth Simeón Tereso Pedro Pablo Tadeo Santiago Simon Lucas Juan Mateo Andrès Bartolomé Ambrosio Geronimo Agustin Bernardo Candido Gerardo Luis-Gonzaga Filomeno Camilo Cayetano Andrès-Avelino Bruno Joaquin-Picolimini Felipe Luis-Rey-de-Francia Ricardo Esteban-Protomartir Genaro Nicolas Estanislao-de-Koska Lorenzo Vicente Crisostomo Cristano Dario Ignacio Francisco-Javier Francisco-de Borja Higona Clemente Esteban-de-Hungria Ladislado Enrique Ildefonso Hermenegildo Carlos-Borromoeo Eduardo Francisco-Régis Vicente-Ferrer Pascual Miguel-de-los-Santos Adriano Venancio Valentin Benito José-Oriol Domingo Florencio Alfacio Benére Domingo-de-Silos Ramon Isidro Manuel Antonio Todos-los-Santos de Borbón

 

To add though I have seen it done just about every way by this point the most usual is people taking a surname from mother and one from father so for example it would be Harry Evans Potter.

With marriage the most frequent is the wife replacing one of them with one of her husband's but simply adding it, not changing anything or the husband doing it are all common enough to be normal. No hyphen ever though.

 

Even when you spend time around twins you can still be caught off guard. Alcohol might have been involved but I've spent a few minutes confused which twin I was talking to on more than one occasion. If Fred and George intentionally play up their similarities I could see it being hard.

 

Let me amend my previous post. There is a place for passive, two places, actually. The first is when you want to emphasize someone's lost of agency. However, I'd suggest mixing it with active voice "So-and-so did xyz to me."

The second was highlighted earlier. It's a place or an inanimate object that is the focus of the scene (and again, a mix is better).

The blistering sun and blinding snow, corrosive chemicals and road salt long-since forgotten, the '67 Mustang had been subjected to it all; the princess aged poorly, until all that remained of her was the rusted frame and faded paint over the broken-down body. She'd been stripped of her roaring 390 inches of big-block bliss and savaged for her 9-inch rear end—her fenders were ripped apart and her back half hoisted on rotting stumps.

Standing before her in the glen with eyes closed, her whispers tore at my heart and set fire to my stomach. Yes, the princess has been abused, but she'll live once again.

Harry with long hair is pretty much a joke, unless it's symbolic of something else. In WAVC, I've given him longer hair symbolic of time passing, but also symbolic of his single-focused life with little hope beyond his one goal; such niceties as getting a haircut just isn't worth his effort or time.

 

It actually makes me wonder if those authors actually have hair (are they even human?). Wtf are you doing with hair down to your legs? It's hot, it's heavy, it's cumbersome, it gets everywhere, it's stupidly painful if it gets yanked on, just ugh.

I like the idea of him not bothering to get a haircut, though I can't picture his hair getting any longer than maybe brushing the shoulders. From PS we know he doesn't get haircuts normally, and that his hair manages itself (into an unruly mess, but it does manage itself) to a certain length. Coincidentally growing it out would probably help, the added weight would smooth his hair down a bit.

 

We know that many older wizards have long hair for what ever reasons; tradition, fashion, status symbol? Harry trying to emulate them makes certain degree of sense if you want to go to that direction.

I think the opposite end of the spectrum is a lot worse. Having Harry sport a "crew cut" hair makes me close a story immediately.

 

I can't think of a single wizard (or witch, though if I think of it I'll probably turn up someone) that's described with hair longer than waist-length/midback.

 

...Dumbledore?

 

Given that he's wearing robes, his belt is likely more of this than a belt used to hold up trousers at the hips. In other words, waist-length.

 

I mean obviously ridiculously long hair is ridiculous, but I thought we were thinking about hair that's long for Harry?

 

Oh no, the comment that sparked this mentions fics where he has hair that goes down to his feet. His feet! Why would anyone even...

Though on the whole I'm not entirely sure Harry can grow out his hair. I feel like he'd wake up one random morning to find it back to its original short-ish mess. Then again I have a headcanon that people's bodies have a certain...elasticity, and tend to bounce back to their natural states. So you'd have certain traits - messy hair, a big nose/ears, your height, etc - that just won't go away no matter how many spells or potions you use. It's the only reason I can think of for ugly witches and wizards existing, especially the wealthy ones.

 

Using slang/idoms in a setting where it shouldn't exist. The idioms more so than the slang.

Reading Splint, a LotR fanfic, right now and every now and then a word or phrase will pop out at me and interrupt my reading.

The most recent is in chapter 18.

Perhaps I'm in the wrong, my only knowledge of LotR comes from the movies years ago, but I don't believe the devil is a thing in universe.

 

The devil equivalent in LotR is Morgoth who will return at the end of the world.

---------- Post automerged at 15:53 ---------- Previous post was at 15:52 ----------

"Speak of Morgoth" or "Speak of the Morgoth" doesn't have the right ring to it.