On a similar note, when every military character is either lily white or the epitome of eViLz Villainy. People in the military are just that, people. So, it'd help to write them as three-dimensional characters. The same holds true for characters who are Death Eaters (and have any kind of true screen time, such as the Malfoys).

 

A pet peeve of mine are fics which feature some kind of medical means of removing the Scarcrux -- bonus points if it's treated as just an extension of a typical 'dark curse removal service' or the like. Things like that completely trivialize the existence of the Scarcrux and also trivializes one of the core themes of the series. Harry was only able to get rid of the Scarcrux in canon through sacrifice and sacrificial love was of the core themes of the series.

Another pet peeve of mine are easily bandied about magical vows. People swearing by their magic left right and center. We don't even see anything like a Vow until the 6th book and taking a Vow is a serious and highly nontrivial matter. I'd also like to think that one of the main reasons why we don't see the Unbreakable Vow used so often is because it's notoriously strict in terms of interpretation and people can and have died through accidentally breaking the terms of the Vow -- it's a method of last resort, in other words.

 

Lazy naming has always been a pet peeve of mine, just scrolling through fanfic summaries and there are plenty of bad names of main characters for Genderbending!Harry, or Harry's sister etc. Then I see the names that are just lazy, like Aloe Vera Potter. Just peeves me that you'd even go forward with such a name, much less put it as the main character for your summary.

 

-100 Internet points if the removal procedure involves amazing first time teen sex for literal Power of Love.

I, ScottPress, the Horned Sovereign of the Holy Moose Empire, do so swear upon my life and magic that each time I read "so mote it be" in a fic, it makes me want to break things.

So mote it be.

 

We've discussed this before ScottPress; "so mote it be" is a historic masonic phrase that became used in the 20th century by neopagans as ritual greeting and term of affirmation to "Amen" which although literally means "so be it", it became a more religiously affiliated phrase.


I believe the first ever usage in a fanfic was https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1673400/1/The-Absinthe-of-Reason eleven years ago. After that people kept using it.

ABP:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11133321/1/Wizard-Oaths-are-Stupid

 

The only reason I never gave "A Long Journey Home" a shot is the name "Jasmine Potter" in the summary. It just rubs my name fetish the wrong way. Don't even get me started on "Hasan Castell" or "Rakesh Asmodeus". It seems that most fanfic authors have absolutely no understanding of the importance of names, and it's especially noticeable in a franchise like Harry Potter where names are so meaningful; instead, they just name characters with whatever word creeps into their mind first. Those names don't even sound cool or anything, they're just "placeholders", because apparently the authors don't give a shit about their character's name.

 

Pretty close, actually.

Amen is actually derived from Hebrew, with a basic meaning "to be firm, trustworthy, safe", and can also be find in Syriac and Phoenician (as well as Arabic) with similar connotations. It filtered into Koine Greek due to Hebrew/Aramaic influence, and we find it in what Christians call the New Testament in a similar context. "Amen, Amen, I say to you" literally is "Faithfully faithfully," or "trustworthy, trustworthy, I say to you." The idea of "so be it" carries a similar idea after a prayer, but not isn't fully encompassing.

Going forward, So Mote It Be and Amen are pretty much the same thing by the turn of the 2nd millenium, as can be seen in a writing of that time (Amen, Amen, So mote it be). It's only neo-paganism (as you said) that has now attempted to divide between the two.

And all of that leads to a major pet peeve of mine: fanfiction that attempts to build a history using neo-paganism. No. Just, no. Open a damn book or website and research. There was so much syncretism and other similar issues between Christianity and Paganism that trying to parse them out in a story leaves a horrid mess.

 

Obviously you're right, but I was simplifying the history of Amen because I was really only pointing out the neopagan appropriation. Also, your point about the syncretic connections is well-founded -- the language of English itself is filled with religious references that wizards use, albeit unknowingly.

 

Nevermind half my post, it was the anal-retentive part of me deciding to post.

Thanks, and yeah. Funny enough, the same is true in the other direction as well . . . days, months, all that stuff. Heck, the Jewish Biblical accounts are the same way. For instance, the Heb. word for Sky, SMS (Shemesh) is actually a Babylonian God. Language borrows back and forth all the time.

Maybe that's why I get so annoyed at the false division I listed above. On another note, another peeve of mine is people who don't bother checking out what really counted as magic in history, either.

 

Everyone and their brother knowing about horcruxes has always been a pet peeve of mine. Having Fudge and his secretary or even Sirius (who hated the dark arts so would definitely not know about one of the worst dark arts) gasp in horror when someone tells them about the horcrux (usually a time traveling Harry) really annoys me. These ideas usually go with the goblins being so horrified of Riddle having a horcrux that they immediately search all their vaults and give the horcrux up to Harry from Bellatrix's vault. Its just bad writing.

 

Absolutely. There's a reason it take them years to find out Voldemort made them. They're very rare and a well-hidden element of magic. In full-disclosure, however, I did have Veela know about them in my fic. But they thought them fiction. And, there was a whole backstory to why Veela knew about them.

 

I've been thinking a lot about looking more into this area. What would you recommend starting with in the field of what was historically perceived as magic or magical in nature?

 

Check out "Mimetic Magic." It's the idea that a person performs an act, and that act begins the curse or starts the consequences in real life. If you're familiar with the Bible and what the Christians call the Old Testament (Jewish Scriptures), think back to the prophets, such as Jeremiah putting an iron yoke on his shoulders to symbolize an iron yoke falling on Judah. Many believe they're using, or at the very least, copying mimetic magic.

Definitely look up the Magi of Zoroastrianism and the following spells to cast out demons both in that religion and throughout the Ancient Near East. Much of magic was control of spirits, rather than making things appear and disappear, or hitting people with curses/charms (On a side note, it's why I, as a Christian, have no problem with Harry Potter magic. It's not what's spoken of Biblically. John Constantine, however, is the type of magic spoken of Biblically, and why I will not watch it the tv show or read the comics).

Also remember that magic and religion were tied together (see prophets, above). Here's a syllabus with a number of books to reference concerning magic and the ANE, as well as ancient Europe. http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/nejs/syllabi/docs/2007fall/NEJS122a-ABUSCH.pdf

Here's a book by Brill looking at magic, medicine, and rationality. Warning, don't even bother trying to buy the book. I haven't looked, but Brill is usually a hundred dollars or more. (Just checked . . . yep, $175 US at Amazon). However, Google Books has the entire book online. .

And, here's a thorough Bibliography from academia on the topic.

Give 'em a look and then get back to me, I'd love to hear what you've found out. My familiarity with it comes from a biased perspective through Levant studies and specifically as it affected Israelite/Jewish history. So hearing a fresh perspective would be great.

 

That reminds me of that one old theory of HP magic, in which it was proposed that like the rest of the HP world, it was closer to Early Modern/Victorian fiction than fantasy, and that magic might work something like the system we see Prospero using in the Tempest. Or at least, the verbal incantations. I always liked the idea that maybe the spell was the name of some embodied or personified force of nature (not that I think that's what she was actually trying to do).

 

I was always under the impression that each wand was inundated with a language to understand, and Latin was simply the traditional language. And that wand movements were created in accordance with the type of spell used. So vicious spells had nothing more than hard thrusts, while harmless spells had fancier movements.

It could also be that since wands are semi-sentient, they can copy the knowledge of a spell by seeing someone else use it, and then if the hold of said wand were to use the same words and movements then their wand would cast it easier than if it had never seen the spell.

Could also be that the wand picks up on ambient magic, thus allowing Harry to cast Sectumsempra even without knowledge of what it did, but the wand itself already knew because of the ambient magic surround the Potions book of the Half-Blood Prince.

 

I've always been bugged by authors writing in accents (often French, but not always) for characters, ie: "Zey are saying zat zis little boy is to compete also" (which is actually the canon line from Goblet of Fire). It bugs me in fanfics more than in the original books, often because the roles of accented characters (ie: Fleur) get greatly expanded, carpet bombing the text with z's. Particularly in fics where Harry goes to France and literally everyone talks like this. At that point, the whole point of highlighting a specific person's phonetic speech is defeated by everyone being the same anyways.

It's a pet peeve because I can understand how it works and why it can be useful, but it still bugs me.

 

The overuse of z's isn't as bad as randomly dropping leading letters.

I've seen cases where the writer just seems to think that the way to make Fleur sound French (or, in a few cases, Hagrid sound rustic) is to select three words at random in a sentence and drop the first letter. Even when it makes so sense at all because the accent they are trying to portray has absolutely no reason to drop the sound.

I can't be arsed finding a direct example at this time in the morning but here's a lovely little taster:

"I am 'orry 'Arry, I do not know how to pronounce your 'ame."

"Hey, 'Arry, do yeh 'ow where I can find some 'onsonants?"

In my experience French-English speakers will either de-emphasize leading 'H's or, more commonly, over-emphasize them ('uman, vs he-yuman for human, as an example). I have never heard them drop an 'N' or 'S' from the start of the word.

 

When I first started writing Fleur, I was really bad at that. A single post in WbA solved that problem for me.

I'll still use it once in a while, mainly when she says Harry's name. Other than that, there's no real reason. Ah, except one. When you want to write two characters, one with a better handle on English than the other. I have a couple scenes like that where one mangles English a lot more, and has a much stronger accent.

 

So I noticed(mostly in Naruto) but power ups usually come with an incrase in Hair quantity. And then Nobody goes: "Dammit I just had my hair cut last week!"...

 

I've never seen DBZ power-up hair used in Naruto. Maybe it's a more recent thing.