I'm going throu the Blot's and Nonjon's big one-shot file of fuck-it's-hard-to-find-shit-here. It seems like they're kind of crack. Shezza's had a familiar ring to it, but that might just be from having read it before.


Back on topic thou: I had the misfortune of reading a decent lil fic that was fine up until chap. 2, when Hermione mentions how the older students were using linked books called Fbooks to chat and leave messages with each other. My totally resonable and immediate response to this was closing the browser, burning my monitor and putting my head into the wall.

 

Lesser men might have behaved irrationally.



My Current Pet Peeve: Fanfic writers... I haven't the wherewithal to narrow it down at the moment. :facepalm

 

Not sure if this one's been mentioned before in this thread, but I've seen it a few times lately and it never ceases to annoy me:

Dumbledore declaring Harry "The Boy Who Lived" right after he survives Voldemort's attack, as if that was some title just waiting to be applied to someone.

 

Adding on to that:

Dumbledore not being smart enough to notice the difference between a curse scar and a scar caused by some sort of random debris that barely nicked Harry's brother.

 

Petpeeve:

1) Binns is only capable of talking about goblin rebellions.

-He assigned homework on the history of Witch burnings in PoA and Harry complained about studying giant wars in OOTP. He is capable of teaching other things then Goblin Rebellions.

1a) Authors get new teachers to replace Binns because he's "only" capable of talking about goblin rebellions.

 

To be fair, he's hardly an effective teacher. It's such wide-spread fanon that most probably don't realize it's not canon.

 

You mean just like slash? Yea, thats totally an excuse.

 

I know it is a small mistake but considering what the thread is about...

 

This. This is why I read DLP, the moments of sweet, sweet hypocrisy.

 

Oddly enough, I have yet to read a story featuring a pet!peeves, aside from Browncoat I guess. I can't help but feel as like i've missed an opportunity.

 

Peeves is "male" and not distinctively handsome, by all indications.

Imagine if Peeves were female and reasonably good looking. DLPers would be all over that, sort of like we are with Daphne.

Just replace "ice queen" with "blue balls queen." ...on second thought, Peeves is fine as is. Yep.

 

Cue two thousand badly written Harry/Fem!Peeves

 

It's not really a fanfiction pet peeve but... how the hell can someone have over 4000 stories on their favourites list?

It's just...

 

Yeah, actually, that confuses me too. I've been reading for about 9 months (averaging something like 5-6 hours a day, to be honest) and I've probably only read about 200 stories. I have a hard time imagining that somebody has read more than that consistently for what, 10 years? I guess it's possible to have read 4000 stories if a lot of them are really short...

 

Drabble short, or they just favorite whatever they come across. Though, if your favorites list contains that many stories, are they really favorites at this point?

 

Well...I've been reading for a bout 7 1/2 years now, and I suppose if I'd favourited every fic I've somewhat enjoyed I may well have over 4000 in my favourites list...And as for them not really being favourites any more. It depends on what sort of reader you. Whether you might want to go back and reread them, whether if you go back and reread them you find you can't cause the writing is more shit than you remember.

 

Petpeeve: Adding numbers during the fic which are then explained at the bottom. I'd rather it was explained during the prose instead of breaking up the flow.

 

That can be annoying, but I think that it's technically acceptable...at least in certain types of text? I'm not too sure.

 

If it's used sparingly I don't consider it a problem. But when used frequently in every chapter it bugs the crap out of me.

 

If you think the reader doesn't know something, because it's something you made up (magic), not very well known (languages) or your readers are morons (...), use an expositional character and explain it in-story or let the narrator explain. JKR used Hermione, Austin Powers had Basil Exposition.

Using footnotes means either scrolling all the way down to find out what it means and then scrolling all the fucking way back up, searching for the point where you left the immersion. That or remembering what you didn't understand and finding out what it means at the bottom, way too late.