Way to go, Russano. You've completely failed to understand the idea of the book.
The difference between being fat and short is rather obvious, so that is a fail argument.

For the record, I'm 6'3.

 

For the record, I was only being half serious. It really wasn't something you were supposed to read and go; "What a well constructed argument! I agree!"

I mean this is the pet peeves thread. It's a pet peeve, not really necessary to bring people into the agreement group.


My point was this; A main character who is short reduces my empathy for that character which reduces immersion with that character.

Whenever I read a story, I liken myself to the main character, almost like a self-insert. I like that main character and root for him and want him to succeed the way I would want to succeed. Various attributes of that character change that around in various ways. When your main character is stupid or doens't study and seem to care about a supremely awesome magical world it reduces immersion. It's why I like fanfiction that corrects that.

One reason I didn't like Game of Thrones all that much was I found it difficult to latch onto a main protagonist. They killed off or drew the story away from that person everytime it happened. Wheras in the Name of the Wind, my favorite book, we spend the entirety of the story with Kvothe and I can really really latch onto the attributes he has as a main protagonist.

It's the same way in stuff like battle manga too. I empathsize wtih Goku, Luffy, Naruto. I tend to latch onto the main character, and i don't like reading something where I can't. It's one reason why I like Fairy Tail less. It's more of an ensemble piece. Natsu is kind of the main guy but not really as much as other "main" characters, plus he's an idiot.

I don't like reading abotu female protagonists as much as I do male. I can read them, but they are automatically lessened by the very nature of being a female lead. I don't care what the height of my female character is because I never had that insertion in the first place. I tend to split my focus between the female character and whoever the main love interest is.

Height is just the main trait that bothers me for whatever reason. Fat to a lesser extent although thats really rare in this genre. Other physical traits canmake a difference also. Anytime someone gives Harry long hair for instance. I fucking hate that, why are you giving him a pony tail all of a sudden. I empathize less with long hair then I do short, just to a lesser extent then I do short people.

Then there are some traits that don't matter at all, like hair color. I could care less whether you make someone have black or brown hair.

It's the very definition of a pet peeve. It's something that bothers me personally and is less a flaw with the actual piece, and its a minor quibble at that.

That's why I said no offense; so you don't read it and go waaaaah you hate short people to a rant that was hardly super serious.

and Zeelthor - There is an obvious difference in real life. Of course. But in fiction, from an authorial perspective, there isn't. You can write it however you want. In real life people can only "grrr stupid ginetics!" But in fiction you can go "grrr stupid author."

Not sure what you mean I fail to understand the idea of the book. I wasn't aware that height mattered at all in Harry Potter. Is there some symbolism to Harry's height that I'm missing?

Or maybe you were talking about the Black Prism? Something about overcoming challenges or how fat people need love to or something? Then yeah probably missed that. But that doesn't bother me in the least, because I don't read books for symbolism, I read them for entertainment. Symbolism adds precisely zero to a story for me, and often times the results of going symbolism will detract from the story for me. Like leaving me with a fat protagonist.

 

"I fucking hate short people! Fat people too!
No offense, it's just my pet peeve!"

No wonder everyone now thinks you're an asshole.

You could have written all that in a far less inflammatory manner.

 

I was being facetious. I assumed it was so ridiculous nobody would take it seriously, even with the added disclaimer. I was even typing out "The government's probably going to euthanize all the short people soon anyways."

People who hate short people? Those people don't exist.

I don't hate short people. I just don't want my protagonist to be short. In the same vein that I wouldn't want to be short. There are a ton of things in this world that I have zero problem with but that I wouldn't want to be and that I would find less appealing in a protagonist. Black for instance. Or gay. Or a hundred other cultural things. Now, the reason I don't say I hate all black people facetiously is because those people are out there and its an actual problem. If there's some crusade against short people going on somewhere, then I apologize for being ignorant of that.

If I had said, I don't want to read about a protagonist with 11 fingers, and that people with 11 fingers aren't real people anyways, I woulnd't expect you to get up all offended with "whoa whoa this guy hates 11 fingered people! WTF! I would expect you to realize it wasn't serious.

I was even typing out "The government's probably going to euthanize all the short people soon anyways." Would that have made it ridiculous enough that you would realize that I wasn't serious or would it just make you think I hated short people eve more?



But yeah this is probably one of the worst derailments in DLP so go send me a pm if you have a problem. Otherwise just ignore it, and if you now thing I'm a complete asshole, then oh well. Oops.




and back on track with the thread. I've had to cancel out of a few fics recently because of people using "The Greater Good" crap wtih Dumbledore. It's so clearly the exact opposite of what his character believes in canon that I really can't slog through it. It wouln'dt be a problem if they kind of just changed him to believing that, but most of the people who do manipulative Dumbledore actually think he likes that Greater Good crap.



edit: On second thought, on a second read through I notice that that line in the 1st post didn't quite come out the way it was in my head, and I can see where its offensive and how it wouldn't be read as facetious. My bad, I'm sorry. Though the stuff about not liking a short protag.

 

...All I'm getting from your posts is that if a main character isn't as close to you in appearance/attitude as possible, you can't empathize with them and you don't like the story as much.

On topic; My biggest pet peeve at the moment is when, for whatever reason, one of the main characters knows during first year that Quirrell is being possessed or that he's evil, but when they try to tell any adults about it, they are subsequently ignored. Dumbledore knew something was wrong with Quirrell; that's why he asked Snape to keep an eye on him. I'd think that if someone (especially Harry) came up to him and told him that he "saw Quirrell drinking unicorn blood" he would at least look into it.

 

Empathize with them less. Height a disordinate amount. But yes thats the gist of it. Vapid and shallow, but a pet peeve nonetheless.

I agree about the stuff wtih Quirrel. Dumbledores my favorite character in the series and most of the time he's written atrociously. You read situations, like the stuff with Quirrel, where Harry comes to complain and Dumbledore just completely writes him off something. Like "Come dear boy, surely don't believe a teacher could do something like that?". It's completely at odd wtih both his character and what we know from canon.

More than any other character, except Harry, the writing of Dumbledore can make or break a fic.

 

So you're saying you prefer to insert yourself into men rather than women?

 

Yes, and the more they are like me the better. Almost to the point where it could be considered a form of masturbation.

 

Man The mischievous part of me would really like to put you in an enclosed space with an angry feminist / SJW for an hour and see what comes out of it. (Think about it -- privilege-checked to death!)

 

Pet Peeve: Sloughing through too many damn posts about height in the Pet Peeve thread.

Minus Bill Door's post. Gotta appreciate anyone that wrap up a page and a half in just thirteen words.

 

Odd, my main way of empathizing with characters is through reasoning behind actions(either logical or emotional), situations they live and then personality/goals. Physical traits never ever enter my mind...

In topic, a pet peeve of mine is people confusing for want of nail fics and AU ones. Plenty of decent stories that started out as the first one then suddenly become the second for no apparent reason at all.

 

Anything that resembles nutritional potions or magical eysight corrective kills me a little in the inside. Truthfully anything that is a horribly disguised attempt to make Harry in UltraHunk! Harry.

Also Ron and Dumbledore heavy bashing. All the attempts I saw made them looklike retarded Dick Dastardly copycats. And in Ron case, a retarded belching food black hole. And sometimes woman hitter.

About eyesight, I have 4.0 myopia and 1.0 astigmatism, I'm not even close to the Mr. Magoo shit that some people do to Harry. If he has like 7.0 or above, that would make him really blind, but also that would make impossible to he become a good quidditch player.

 

Hum... Isn't he nearsighted only and a low one at that? I may be confusing too much with fanfics since it has been years since I have read the books and the last one I remember more from reading fanfics than from my read but I never got the impression it was actually something that really impaired him. Been using glasses since forever and it only got worse over the years(by now I think it is 4 myopia and 2 something astigmatism, can never remember those) so plenty of experience there.

Since he can actually find his glasses without them I would say he doesn't have much trouble.

 

Fainting for fuck sake how many times a character can faint, pass out etc.?

Writers think themself clever when they write a chapter which ends with Harry fainting but really they are just morons who don't know better.

 

He fainted for ten minutes!...
...
So I take it he has severe brain damage then? :facepalm

 

Summaries that suck. God, I hate this so much that nowadays I'm sort of uneasy about running a filtered search for stories on FFN, because you have to sift through heaps and heaps of awful shit until you find a story that's remotely worth the hassle... By the time you find one that looks half-decent your mind is already poisoned by all the thousands of bad summaries.

"Sorry, I suck at summaries, the story's better" Fuck you, no it isn't. There's no way I'm clicking on that if you say this in the summary.

"What if...?" What if you found a way to illustrate your point of divergence that sounds a little better than the first-ever formulation of it that came to your mind? Then you wouldn't suck as a writer, as you do now. *clicks red X*

"Warning: abuse, rape, incest, zoophilia and self-harming! Read and review!" Put this shit in a goddamn author's note, not in the summary. You have a character limit, use it well.

Speaking of the character limit, it does not excuse calling Dumbledore "Dumbles" or stupid shit like that. Fuck you and that's all there is to it. Have some respect for your characters.

Obnoxious formatting in summaries; all caps. Stop raping my eyes kthx

Misuse of pairing tags; example: John/Jane/Jack when what you actually mean is John/Jane and Jack/Jane, rather than a threesome... In some particular cases the mental image you get from that is quite unpleasant. Also, Brangelina-style portmanteaus of the characters' names. Please, just... Stop with the "Honks", the "Dramione" and especially with the "Snarry". :|

... I don't know, it may be that the only kind of summary that doesn't make me rage is a tasteful selection of a representative sentence in the story. That way you're giving readers some insight into whether you can actually write, and at the same time it's not quite as grating, even if it's shit.

 

- I actually prefer when they put stuff like rape warnings in the summaries. That way I know not to read that story. Imagine all the time you save not clicking on terrible secret bestiality fics.

- Snarry always makes me think of some weird British slang for someones genitals rather than being a "pairing". Like some old hairy loose vagina or something.

- A representative sentence? That tells me basically nothing about the story. I hate those, might as well have no summary at all. If I need to see how someone writes I'll go look at how someone writes.

- I've always thought FFN needed longer summaries. It's really difficult to write an interesting plot synopsis or hook that has all the information you want. Thats really where all the Indy! or Grey! or whatever shit comes from. Needing to condense your summary =(.

- I hate people who write terrible summaries with missing capitalization and things of that nature. It's such a tiny thing - Just a single shift key difference and it can completely stop me from reading a story.

 

Stories where Harry and his friends all rush off and have kids when they're 16 or just after the war ends.

I'm not sure why this annoys me so much but it does.

 

Isn't that canon? Hard to say since the epilogue only part that I actually remember was how much it said that nothing changed at all but IIRC it was fifteen years in the future so they did rush...

 

Their kids are all on the train, so none are over 17, and the epilogue is 19 years later, so they waited at least two years.