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Pet Peeves in Fanfiction

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The Narrator said:
"Cyclopean" doesn't mean big. It means "masonry made of irregular stone pieces," such as that used by the Mycenean Greeks. Lovecraft described every goddamn building in his stories as "cyclopean" because he thought it meant big and scary, but it actually just meant that no one in his stories bothers to carve their stones into rectangles before they stack them up.
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This is not correct. One definition is massive irregular blocks or stones. And another is just massive or huge. So, while Lovecraft did overuse the term he wasn't incorrect in using it.

Source : Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, and even the wiki article about "Cyclopean Masonry"
 
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Vyslanté said:
It does now, yes, but did it during Lovecraft's time?
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Did "Cyclopean masonry" mean something else in his time? Do you have a source supporting that?

Edit: Also, the post I responded to was a claim about the current definition as well. Large, huge, or massive seems to have been a consistent feature of how "Cyclopean masonry" was described.
 
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Avernus said:
Yes; the Goa'uld were deceptive and manipulative; they were con artists from space, so one might as well call them "fake gods" without quibbling about definitions. Depending on how one defines "god" they were either fraudulently claiming to be gods, or gods that were frauds but they were definitely frauds either way.
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They should have just told their slaves that SG-1 was the Tauri's gods. Really would have curbed the revolt if they thought it was god vs god.
 
Worm-specific peeve: Leet is not some tragic Tinker who has 'the ability to build anything once' that he's squandering; he's a shitty knock-off version of a real Tinker. He has, as all Tinkers do, a specific tech tree that limits what he's capable of; he is also limited to only being able to safely build one of each item in that tech tree. He's also a petty spiteful thug willing to murder for money, which we see multiple times over.
 
Kadmus said:
Worm-specific peeve: Leet is not some tragic Tinker who has 'the ability to build anything once' that he's squandering; he's a shitty knock-off version of a real Tinker. He has, as all Tinkers do, a specific tech tree that limits what he's capable of; he is also limited to only being able to safely build one of each item in that tech tree. He's also a petty spiteful thug willing to murder for money, which we see multiple times over.
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Nah, it's actual WoG that Leet has access to the entirety of every tinker tech tree. It's just his limit of "only once" is per component. Meaning he can't reuse anything - no reusing a power source, no reusing a battery, etc. It's really quite ridiculous.

But yeah he isn't squandering it. His power is just an asshole that imposes impossible limitations.

(While he was only ever mentioned, Hero had the equivalent of the jailbroken version of Leet's power - the entire tech tree without the absurdly impossible limitation)
 
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Byzantine said:
Nah, it's actual WoG that Leet has access to the entirety of every tinker tech tree. It's just his limit of "only once" is per component. Meaning he can't reuse anything - no reusing a power source, no reusing a battery, etc. It's really quite ridiculous.

But yeah he isn't squandering it. His power is just an asshole that imposes impossible limitations.

(While he was only ever mentioned, Hero had the equivalent of the jailbroken version of Leet's power - the entire tech tree without the absurdly impossible limitation)
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Even taking that as true it doesn't mean he can build anything. He can build anything the Entities knew and deemed safe to hand out to test subjects, which is a distinction a lot of people just ignore.
 
Y'all are arguing about how shit works in Worm.

Shit works in Worm however WB's ass thought sounded cool at that point in time, or how it has to to justify an earlier fuckup of his.
 
ZhaWarudo said:
Assuming most of you avoid AO3 for the same reason as I do, and read fics where romance is secondary if it's there at all.
Then you'll get what I mean when I say, 75% of important female characters are lesbian lol. I don't think I've ever even read about a single male homosexual character. I don't want smut but some realism would be nice. As a straight guy, yeah lesbians are hot to see, but that's in porn. In stories I want realism, not smut or everyone being a lesbian(Buffy fics mainly but there is one Zero no Tsukaima I can recall). Too bad a lot of good stories are mixed with authors porn fantasies.
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Unfortunately for your sense of realism, lesbians are, in fact, real, so you'll probably just have to put up with them existing in fanfiction.
 
When a story is chugging along just fine, only to get a sudden diversion into a random slice of life dating sub-plot. MC adventuring around on a time limit in preparation for world ending apocalypse? Perfect time for a languid romance with random character that just happens to be googly-eyed for the mc. The whole thing is completely separated from anything else in the story, not even an attempt to interweave it as a new story element in the existing story. It just doesn't fit with the theme and flow of the established narrative dammit. It's like a record scratch mid third movement.
 
Valmond said:
Having too many gay people is bad writing? Really?
What is the maximum amount of gay a story is allowed to have?
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Your reading comprehension is lacking too apparently. It's not gay people, it's only lesbian, I haven't read about a single male homosexual in a decade of reading fanfiction.
Yeah, if 75-100% of female characters are lesbian, that's damn bad writing. We're talking about regular fantasy and sci-fi fandoms here.
 
I can understand somewhat the dislike some readers have for romance (especially if the author fails to make it feel natural), but many pieces of fiction add romance as "filler" because, frankly, romance can be in a story and not be a main focus. It can add character to a story emotionally or otherwise, and is an easy authorial tool to develop conflict semi-naturally. Also, many characters in fiction tend to be *young* and thus would naturally have an absurdly strong crush and throw everything away to pursue it. Young people tend to be stupid about romance.

As a personal pet Peeve, I absolutely hate the insistence of Sci-Fi and Fantasy writers alike using primarily bipedal (specifically obviously humanlike) species/aliens in their writing. It just stinks of laziness to me, though my loathing tends to fall off in cases where I can clearly see the effort put into the alien/species.
 
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Oh actually, I was just reminded of a pet peeve !

I suppose it might fall under 'author tracts' but like... there are some authors who write... okayish fanfiction, nothing really notable in the positive or negative sense but fine to kill half an hour with, but who insist on having a lengthy character introspective about how they cannot POSSIBLY be gay with a very thinly veiled 'you're all wrong !' at everyone who writes that character as such.

Which is like... why ? What do you care ? What is added to the story by spending a hundred to a thousand words on this ?

ZhaWarudo said:
It's not gay people, it's only lesbian, I haven't read about a single male homosexual in a decade of reading fanfiction.
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That is almost certainly a 'you' issue. Cause like... there's oodles and oodles of fanfiction, yes even fanfiction that isn't focused on romance, where the male identifying main character is gay or bi.

Most people who feel lesbians are 'overrepresented' in fanfic don't read those though, which explains why they never see gay men in their fanfic.
 
Also, ao3 has more M/M pairings than it has F/F pairings. You can, rightfully, complain that a lot of these are works made by fangirls or so on, and that "What if the two brothers from Supernatural boned down" is in no way good representation.

But the idea that ao3 lacks male-male content is kinda comical.
 
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Thread Policy Violation
Miho Chan said:
As a personal pet Peeve, I absolutely hate the insistence of Sci-Fi and Fantasy writers alike using primarily bipedal (specifically obviously humanlike) species/aliens in their writing. It just stinks of laziness to me, though my loathing tends to fall off in cases where I can clearly see the effort put into the alien/species.
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I understand the peeve though I don't share it. I mean it'd be cool to see actual aliens outside horrors, but Star Trek episodes tend to be about weird crystals and stuff. With the exception of species 8472, other non humanoid episodes tend to be weird, non reletable and forgettable. Anyway it's the fault of the originals, not fanfiction.
The Laurent said:
Also, ao3 has more M/M pairings than it has F/F pairings. You can, rightfully, complain that a lot of these are works made by fangirls or so on, and that "What if the two brothers from Supernatural boned down" is in no way good representation.

But the idea that ao3 lacks male-male content is kinda comical.
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x3 keep the combo of no reading comprehension.
I said I don't read on AO3, I avoid it like hell. I'm not interested in the protagonist being a male homosexual, especially if there is smut to scar me mentally. I'm saying it's not realistic that none of the side characters are gay.
 
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ZhaWarudo said:
x3 keep the combo of no reading comprehension.
I said I don't read on AO3, I avoid it like hell. I'm not interested in the protagonist being a male homosexual, especially if there is smut to scar me mentally. I'm saying it's not normal that none of the side characters are gay.
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You can't go, "I intentionally avoid seeing gay men and am not interested in seeing gay male protagonists, isn't it weird that I don't see them?"

Or rather you can, but it makes you look really silly.

Like, if you go out of your way to avoid queer people except in the kinds of fics written for the titillation of straight dudes... then you're not going to see a lot of gay male characters in it. :V
 
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Stop: Thread Policy Violation: Don't be homophobic
  • Staff Post
    • ZhaWarudo said:
    I understand the peeve though I don't share it. I mean it'd be cool to see actual aliens outside horrors, but Star Trek episodes tend to be about weird crystals and stuff. With the exception of species 8472, other non humanoid episodes tend to be weird, non reletable and forgettable. Anyway it's the fault of the originals, not fanfiction.

    x3 keep the combo of no reading comprehension.
    I said I don't read on AO3, I avoid it like hell. I'm not interested in the protagonist being a male homosexual, especially if there is smut to scar me mentally. I'm saying it's not realistic that none of the side characters are gay.
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    thread policy violation: don't be homophobic
    The thread policy explicitly says 'refrain from complaining about the orientation of characters in fanfics'. It's a dead horse and homophobia is not wanted on SV.
     
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