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

[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.