peeve peeve peeve

[kaigou]

1. Get the names right. Go with the official decision, accept that Sunrise or Square-Enix or whomever gets the final say because, hey, they OWN the damn characters (if at least in part), and shut the hell up. It's Ed, not Edo, Al, not Aru, Heero, not Hiiro; Hilde, not Hirde; Relena, not Reylena or even Relina. (Although I must say that "Liza Hawkeye" seems far more likely than the official "Riza Hawkeye," but hey, there you go.)

Fandom-specific to GW: if you're going to insist on mispelling names that have had official spellings for almost a decade, at least be consistent. Prefer Hiiro? Fine, then stop misspelling Trowa's name the official way, and use the original, intended version, pre-butchered romanji: Trois.

2. Would of, could of. Please, stop. It's 'would have', 'could have', and I don't care if it's colloquial. Use it in dialogue, then, if you must, but in narrative, please observe the grammar of this language and stop making my eyeballs bleed.

3. The drug is H-E-R-O-I-N and the female lead is H-E-R-O-I-N-E. Confuse them, and you don't get bathos, drama, or even pathos, unless you mean that strange sense of pathetic enjoyment as I snort soda out my nose for the idiotic misspelling.

4. You will not win an award, not if I and the rest of the spellchecking world have any say in it, if you cannot even TRY to use a spellchecker.

5. Could we please kill the phrase, "the shorter man" now? Or better yet, fifteen minutes ago already? Every time an author says, "the shorter man", I think of that red-headed guy from Willow. And believe me, that's the last visual you want when reading smut. Really.*

6. Insert your own peeves here. Go on. You know you want to.




* this is why I hate some of my oldest fic. Yes, we learn from our mistakes, but do you really have enough time in your life to make every mistake just to learn from it? Save time, learn from mine. Just use the (accepted) character names and be done with it!

Comments

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

1.
Well, dammit, if they're going to insist on "Heero" then people ought to pronounce it properly: HEYY-RO, not HEE-RO. There's no such English name, or word, as "heero." If they want it pronounced "HEE-RO" then it should either be spelled Hero or Hiiro. This ties in to your point on Trowa, Quatre, Vignt-et-Un and Roku-hyaku Roku-juu Roku. But then I don't know why they insist on being inconsistent with the Anglicization of the Romanization of the Japanese in the first place.

4.
Isn't it funny how much easier it is to check one's spelling these days, and how much worse people's spelling has actually gotten?

"Go look it up in the dictionary."
"How can I if I don't know how to spell it in the first place?"

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

I can accept the butchered ones like Riza, Heero, and Trowa, only if I take them as Not An English Name -- let's not get into the absolute unlikelihood of anyone being named Five Wings (WuFei), after all -- but instead as The Way Those Idiotic Distribution Companies Decided Would Be Most Palatable For Western Fans.

(I remain baffled as to how they got Quatre right, and Trois wrong, when I would've expected it'd be Quatre and Trois, or Katorah and Trowa, if you went by the anglicized version of the Japanese pronounciation of French numbers. Ugh!)

Let's not get into the way they pronounce things in dubs, or I'll be here all night bemoaning InUuuYASHa and KaGOme and SasUkay. It burrrrrrnsss.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

The one that always burns me is NaROOto. But what can you do.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Yeah. CP was arguing for 'Hiiro' as what should've been teh official spelling. My theory is that they chose 'heero' for three reasons: a) to draw a thin bead on 'hero', b) to emphasize the long 'e' with a bit more emphasis than if it were spelled with only one 'e', and c) knowing that 'hiiro' would probably have caused bazillions of fangirls to not get the 'ii' combination and pronounce it HI-roe instead.

The notion of a bunch of fangirls screaming HIGHro! just makes my brain bleed out my ears.

Myself, I've never managed to get naruto pronounced perfectly, and I've even gone back and listened to the d/led eps on full volume. Sakura says his name like /naar-tou/ while Kakashi and Sasuke say it more like /NAH-rue-tou/. I figure if I get somewhere between the two, and kinda mumble at the same time, it's close enough for government work. Sigh.

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

Put the emFAHsis on the first silLAHbull and you'll be most of the way there.

[windsorblue.livejournal.com]

6. Insert your own peeves here. Go on. You know you want to.

How about, still spelling Hilde's last name wrong even after you started a thread on the list asking how to spell it correctly? Or? Spelling the title of your own fic wrong. Or! Responding to feedback with something along the lines of "I should get wasted before I write more often, lol!" No. No, you shouldn't. Truly, no.

Okay, I think I'm done now. ^^;;

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

I tried to respond to that one, but I think something's whacked on my elist subscription and I can't reply. *checks* Oh, no, it did finally go through -- and look, I got accused of being in a bad mood and flaming!

Cripes, that wasn't a flame, that was a single burst of a fifty-cent lighter compared to the power of a true flamethrower.

*rolls eyes*

[hinotori.livejournal.com]

About 2, 3 -- OUCH. Need duct tape. Brain is trying to escape via ears.

For 6: Fangirl Japanese is BAD. Do NOT use it. Random Japanese (French/ Spanish/ German/ etc.) does not make you sound cool, it makes you sound like you're desperate to fill up the dialogue and unable to come up with something witty in English. (Note: correctly used foreign languages are acceptable, but please, don't overdose on them. Also, stick to ONE system of romanisation -- oh OR ou OR oo, but no mixing them randomly. Shi/shu OR si/syu. Etc. Etc. Argh. Shutting.)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

That one system of romanization bugs me, too, even in published works. While I really did like Secrets of Jin Shei, the fact that half the quasi-Chinese names/places were in pinyin, and the other half in Wade-Giles, really got to me at times. Sometimes it's Xing, sometimes it's Hsing, and I'm going, PICK ONE. I also noticed in some cases, in Hard Rain (a thriller about an American-Japanese assassin, and otherwise neatly and sharply written), there was sometimes a variance in the romanji.

Then again, the fact is that in published works, the percentage of the audience who actually has a clue is probably quite low -- so I'd guess that the editor & copyeditor went on a case-by-case basis, trying to pick what looked right this time, in this word, and what looked right for that word. I'd prefer that they be consistent, too, but I can understand their reasons.

Unpublished fanfic, written for an audience of whom the vast majority probably watch/listen to the fansubs, are a different matter. Huge numbers of people in the various anime-based fandoms either have pretentions of knowing/comprehending some amount of Japanese, and that's the last time I'd recommend varying your spelling/style out of personal preference. Don't confuse the learners any more than necessary.

Actually, Hard Rain was a rather interesting book in that it had copious amounts of Japanese. I never did figure out whether it was a lot of the author showing off his (actual) language skills, or a skillful and efficient way of communicating when the character's in Japanese mode versus American mode (and he does have a subtle difference in characterization whether he's trying to be Japanese versus trying to be 'American', which I thought was a nice touch). Still, it was a great deal more Japanese than I expected, but the translations were always either immediately following the foreign line, or were implied by context and/or response.

Plus I couldn't help but enjoy the one time the character's listening to French, and he can't quite figure out what they're saying! ;)

[leorising1959.livejournal.com]

Re #6: Just my one little usual peeve: it's "try to," not "try and."

Tell me one more time that your character is going to try and do something, and I'm going to try to shove a large, pointy, unlubed ampersand where the sun don't shine. Grr.

Okay. Done now. Thanks.

^_^

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

There are some things I can forgive in dialogue, like "try and", for instance. (I cannot, however, forgive "would of" in any area, if I'm honest, because it's a misunderstanding of how we say would've -- would uv, and is not the same as actually, really, saying would of as a mis-speaking.) Then again, I can also forgive "can I ax you a question," an old Virginian accent mis-speak.

Uhm, and something else. Just had sushi. Brain is pleasantly numb now.

[okaasan59.livejournal.com]

When it comes to spelling and grammatical errors I have too many peeves to name. I can't believe how many badfics I used to read. Now if I come across any errors in the first paragraph, I delete it. If it contains more than one fanon cliche in the first couple of paragraphs, I delete it. If it hasn't caught my interest within the first page, I delete it. This holds even for authors I know and otherwise like. I'm getting really vicious in my old age. It's fun.

Oh, and happy birthday. ^_^

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Same here. First sign of "braided boy"? Delete. "Perfect Soldier" (especially in caps)? Delete. Safe house? DELETE, DELETE, DELETE. And if Quatre offers anyone TEA, I frickin' FIRE BOMB.

Hey! Birthday? What is this birthday you speak of? *whistles nonchalantly*

[miyabiarashi.livejournal.com]

For 6? GW fandom so far, but could we stop constantly referring to the boys by their nationalities? Seeing stuff like, "the braided American" or "the Latin man" (I nearly typed 'laconic Latin', but I think that has yet to be used) gets old reeeeeeal quick. And I'm pretty sure that's not how people think of each other after they've been together after a while.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

BRAIDED.

That alone drives me bonkers, and I know otherwise good readers who fall for it (though I can forgive the ones, like Mal, who use it when they're writing parodys/outright-comedy). But you can NOT be braided, until you're a frickin' CONTORTIONIST. Your hair can be braided. Your clothes can be braided, though that might make them hard to wear. But you, yourself, as a person, can NOT be BRAIDED.

Guh.

Second to that is the obsessive use of Duo-using-nicknames, when I cannot, even once, recall him ever calling anyone by nickname in the series. He doesn't even use honorifics -- Quatre says "Duo-kun," and Duo simply says, "Quatre, Heero, Wufei," even calls Howard simply "Howard" -- Duo and Heero and Wufei all drop the honorifics. I think Trowa does, too, for that matter.

As I understand it, that's pretty striking in its absence, but I can't recall now the implications.

[windsorblue.livejournal.com]

"Banged Boy". To which my inner Trowa wags his eyebrows lasciviously and says, "Okay - just tell me where you want me."

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Why is it that Trowa and Duo seem to get it the worst? Duo the former prostitute, and Trowa the former rape victim? Is there something about being in the middle that causes things to short-circuit in fangirl brains? Maybe the fact that counting past, oh, say, ONE, and therefore having to juggle more than two personality characteristics causes the writing process to spontaneously combust and so the fangirls protect their limited neurons by sticking so closely to the stereotypes, and the especially horrendous ones, at that?

Please, dear powers that be, someday, find a way to instantaneously remove all duo sufferitis and trowa sufferitis (and hell, any sufferitis, since quatre, heero, and wufei get it, too) from the web. Etc, etc, and so on, please apply to any other fandoms as needed, forever and ever amen.

Oh, and the cutting fics, please, and the drug addiction fics, OMG, don't get me started.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

At some point spelling was a major hot button for me in FMA, but for the most part I've given up and only go into a rage when someone gets smug and condescending about defending an incorrect spelling. "Gracia? Who's Gracia? Could you possibly be referring to Hughes' wife Glacier? It helps if you learn how to spell, you know."

Mind you, I don't think people in the audience quite realize how much the "official" spelling is decided by trained monkeys, or else how the hell did we end up with "Risen Pool" as the name of their home town when it is almost absolutely supposed to be Riesenburg?

Katakanizations are a pain and a half.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

I really think the "translators" sit around and think "dumb it down to second grade level," but then, I think the same damn thing and I'm writing for actual adults (if not mentally), so I can't really blame them for picking something that might "make more sense" to those stupid americans. Even if I find it somewhat insulting at the same time, because my other rants on this journal probably make it clear (including this one) that there are, sadly, a LOT of stupid americans.

Yeah, Reisenburg makes more sense. Risen Pool doesn't. Liza makes more sense. Riza (a name I've never heard in my life) doesn't. But! At some point, I guess I just take the attitude: look, this is the official versionl. It doesn't HAVE TO MAKE SENSE, because, newsflash, they OWN it. Just use the official version and shut the fuck up kthxbai.

Sheesh. Glacier. Uhm, yeah. NOT.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Except that Glacier IS the official spelling. Woe.

Actually, I think a lot of the problem comes from the fact that the level at which the American and Japanese companies interface is nowhere near the level that actually knows what's going on. So you get Peon A, sitting around in Viz's basement, looking at the town name and scratching his head. "What the heck is this?" he says. "Rizenbul? Reeces Bull? Rizen Pool?" He calls up Bandai, and is answered by his counterpart, Peon B, in the basement there. "Is the correct spelling for the town name Rizenbul or Risen Pool?" asks Peon A.

Peon B has no idea whether or not this name is supposed to mean anything, and no idea how it would translate into English, but it's his job to answer stupid questions from the American side, so he puts on his best official manner and says "Yes, Risen Pool is correct."

"Uh... okay," says Peon A, and rings off. "Risen Pool it is, I guess."

And thus, an Official Spelling is born. Or so I envision.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Glacier.

*boggles*

Shows you how out of touch I am with that fandom. I hadn't realized.

Your explanation is the only way anyone got Risen Pool and Trowa out of Reisenburg and Trois, I think. A buncha damn peons.

[maaya1x2.livejournal.com]

Hee-chan, or the phrase "Heero, my hero" depresses/amuses me so much.