I'm a dude with a ponytail that reaches well below my shoulder blades, so I wouldn't even blink at seeing that length on a woman. And if properly maintained, it's no less healthy or attractive than shorter hair. I am constantly being complimented by women for my hair. It's, like, my only physical feature they like.

 

It's not the length of hair that bothers me: it's the way it's described:

1. Harry being given hair that's somehow feminine, like 'shiny' and 'wavy'. It's always a bad sign it's going to be a Slash.

2. Ginny's hair looking exactly like Lily's. First of all, they are described as having very different shades of red. Second of all, even if they did have the same shade of hair, so what? Other than that, Ginny and Lily look nothing alike. Saying Harry should base his dating choices, one way or the other, based entirely on hair color is ridiculous. My mom's hair is a dark brown, does that mean I should/shouldn't date Hermione since she has light brown hair?

 

I apologize if it's been mentioned, but pet peeve of mine has always been fics that make every year in Hogwarts have the same number of students as Harry's. Children born during the height of a decades long war (according to Philosopher's stone) are probably not a good basis for overall birth rates in peace time, even if the wizarding world didn't experience a baby boom after the war like ours did a couple times.
This bothers me mostly in years after Luna's for obvious reasons

 

I have read a fic that pointed out the difference and noted his year as being smaller than usual due to the war.

 

Quite a few fics do it to be honest.

On the other hand I wouldn't bother pointing it out unless it serves the plot in some way.

 

Sorrows

What I'd like to know is why in the English language people with orange hair are described as redheads.

Surely, there is a difference between orange and red?

Lily and Ginny are orangeheads

 

Orange is often one of the last named colours in a language (Reddit comment, no sources here). Actual article here.

Apparently red is normally the third named colour in a language, after white and black. We get red from PIE, through proto-Germanic, whereas "orange" appears after the fruit does. The linked article's actually mildly interesting, although not hugely in depth.

I'm sure Rin could give a better explanation, probably with a bunch of sources... But last posted in 2014

 

Well, the Mirror is hardly the most reliable source but it does tell us Lily has red hair.

Given that they use the same actors in the movie for the album and the Mirror it's reasonable that in the books she had dark red hair.

 

The movies are not canon, though.

But that's just beside the point, it's fairly common to call someone with orange hair "red haired". Which is weird.

 

Where did you pull Lily with orange hair if not the movie?

Or were you just doing it in jest to be the opposite of people calling orange haired people red-heads?

 

The latter. I know it's a stupid thing to be bothered about, but then again "Pet Peeves" eh?

 

This is why I can't stand the tagging system on AO3. If nothing else it does basically point out the highlights of the fic.

Additional Tags:

Time TravelFix-ItTime Travel Fix-ItAlternate Universe - Canon DivergenceCharacter Death FixCanon-Typical Violence, Regulus Black Lives, Teenage Dorks, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Family, Family Feels, Slow Build, Slow Burn, my pace is not a fast one, I have so many feelings about Regulus Black, Marauders' Era, First War with Voldemort, Potter Family, Angst, Slow To Update

I'm guessing there is going to be some angst in this fic.

 

Wooooow. Why so many repeats. "Slow build, Slow burn, my pace is not a fast one". What.

 

Shouldn't Archive of Our Own's tag linking take care of a bunch of those tags? In a lot of cases I'm a huge fan of the tagging system as it makes searching for fic that contains specific things much easier then on fanfiction.net, but, authors adding tumblr style tags isn't useful at all.

Some things that I've found annoying lately are:
1) When an author's political or social views are glaringly obvious because they've been so ham-fistedly added to whatever they are writing.
2) When an author finds religion and deletes everything that they have been writing.

 

This isn't really a peeve of mine but I want to ask. When you come across a fic or any piece of writing where a question mark is followed by an exclamation point "?!" does this irritate you or does it simply give you a better idea of what a person is saying?

 

It doesn't irritate me, but I guess it probably should as it's not really valid as far as I'm aware. I guess words should be used in some way to tell us the person is surprised instead.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang

Personally I'm not a fan. If I write a shouted question I will use a question mark and use a dialogue tag to make it clear that it was shouted. Or if you want to go the OotP route, all-caps.

 

Interrobangs don't really tend to add much to the text - you should be able to tell that whatever was said is a question, and the exclamation should be pretty clear too. In that way, I kind of feel they're like using "%...% means I'm writing in parseltongue" as a lazy shortcut.

That said, I don't hate them, and they certainly won't stop me from reading something unless used excessively. Or in a long chain ?!?!?!?!?!?!, even if that's normally only in parodies.

I do remember the interrobang mark in Barry Trotter (how I learned what it was called, and when it was used), but that really wasn't a massively interesting book, so I don't remember much else. I think Lon Measley had a hat with floppy ears on it, to hide the hole in his head?