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Pet Peeves in Fanfiction

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The Narrator said:
No need now. I finished a few minutes after I posted that.
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Well, it's probably still a good idea just in case you need it again. Most crawlers can reproduce the entire thing to a local folder structure to the point that you can basically browse the stuff like you were still looking at it online, it'll be more convenient for you in the future.

Chronocidal said:
Or putting your web-brower into "Reader Mode" (Usually F9 as the shortcut key)
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Just kill the javascript on the page with some browser extension or another, selecting text is toggled off in a pretty basic way. I use uBlock for that kind of thing, it's not very complicated.
 
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Arden said:
Well, it's probably still a good idea just in case you need it again. Most crawlers can reproduce the entire thing to a local folder structure to the point that you can basically browse the stuff like you were still looking at it online, it'll be more convenient for you in the future.
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I'll keep it in mind. Thanks.
 
The Narrator said:
Yeah, there is at least one favorite fic of mine that is, as far as I know, only on FFN. And the site doesn't allow you to copy or save the text in any way, so we can't even save a backup copy of those stories to keep them from being lost forever when the site finally dies.
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fanfictiondownloader is a program designed to take stories from FFN and save them as various file types.

I've actually used it to take a story, download as epub, and edit the story.
i.e. changing "the blonde" to "Naruto" making the story more readable.
 
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Blaflaix said:
fanfictiondownloader is a program designed to take stories from FFN and save them as various file types.

I've actually used it to take a story, download as epub, and edit the story.
i.e. changing "the blonde" to "Naruto" making the story more readable.
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There's a similar one for Royal Road. Ignore the whole "not under active development" thing, it works fine, I used it just a few weeks ago. It's very convenient for works that are about to go into early-chapter lockdown because the writer is trying to go self-published. Won't help you if the chapters are already gone, but on the upside, as long as you don't redistribute anything you've downloaded, you're legally completely in the clear for anything you grabbed before that.
 
There's also a plugin for Calibre. Though the use of cloudflare on ffnet means you need to use your browser cache to actually download the story.
 
Blaflaix said:
I've actually used it to take a story, download as epub, and edit the story.
i.e. changing "the blonde" to "Naruto" making the story more readable.
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Ino must make that confusing: "Naruto Yamanaka" and "Naruto kunoichi"…

(You are, however, correct that referring to Naruto as "blonde" is not just annoying, but also usually inaccurate. He's a "blond", with the exception of when using his orioke no jutsu…)
 
Arden said:
It's really more that most people don't care to know the difference, just like they apparently don't do for a lot of words that do, in fact, not actually mean the same thing.
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Yup: in they're opinions, any word will do — irregardless of weather or not it is correct for that pacific situation, or properly compliments the meaning or affect they want to insure…


Like the author who wrote and published an entire book ranting about the rampant misogyny in medieval times around witch hunts… because of misunderstanding a specific phrase which meant that the woman had been pardoned or let off without punishment, rather than (as treated in the book) that it meant she had been executed.

Which completely undermined and inverted all of the evidence/arguments put forth in the book.

Words have meanings; mix them up or substitute excessively with the wrong thing, and you're just going to NutriBullet the orzleblarg…
 
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Chronocidal said:
Yup: in they're opinions, any word will do — irregardless of weather or not it is correct for that pacific situation, or properly compliments the meaning or affect they want to insure…
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My favourite pet peeve in that regard are people who don't know the difference between "discreet" and "discrete," although the amount of times I've seen people unable to understand the difference between exacerbating something and being exasperating for their utterly pathetic grasp of the English language comes a close second. I'm not even a native speaker! I have like four years of actual, formal education to the tune of three hours a week! I shouldn't be better at this than people who literally grew up with the language. Ugh.
 
Arden said:
My favourite pet peeve in that regard are people who don't know the difference between "discreet" and "discrete," although the amount of times I've seen people unable to understand the difference between exacerbating something and being exasperating for their utterly pathetic grasp of the English language comes a close second. I'm not even a native speaker! I have like four years of actual, formal education to the tune of three hours a week! I shouldn't be better at this than people who literally grew up with the language. Ugh.
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It's completely normal that people that aren't native speakers are more familiar with the formal aspects of a language. Native speakers are immersed from birth and thus intuit things, while non-native speakers understand the language through a more systemized lens. Of course someone casually speaking is going to mix up similar sounding words- they hear them spoken way way way more than they see them written. If the words have similar meanings (like affect vs effect) you probably won't realize that they're slightly different until its pointed out to you. Hell, a lot of english words have different spellings not because they have different meaning but just because they're regional spellings. There's no way to intuit that discreet and discrete are different words but theater and theatre aren't. You just have to know ahead of time.
 
Arden said:
It is very easy if you've ever touched a book in your entire life. They're not uncommon words by any measure.
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You're like one step away from being ableist so slow your roll. I know plenty of people who are well read, smart people that struggle with spelling and definitions. People get them mixed up all the time, if people of various different backgrounds and levels of education are all getting the same things wrongs consistently, it's not because those people are secretly idiots, it may be because that thing is genuinely confusing.

But even aside from that it's such an assholeish thing to say. As if having dyslexia and other disabilities (or even just difficulties!) involving language make you inherently dumber, or less well read, or a worse writer. Seriously what a fucking mean thing to say.
 
Rule 3: Be Civil
Hologram Killer said:
But even aside from that it's such an assholeish thing to say. As if having dyslexia and other disabilities (or even just difficulties!) involving language make you inherently dumber, or less well read, or a worse writer. Seriously what a fucking mean thing to say.
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Wow. Call me a Nazi too, while you're at it, why don't you? Jesus. Is this how you react to every disagreement you have with people? "If you don't bow down to my opinion, you must be a bigot?" Christ.
 
I think the principle disagreement here may also be a result of speaking (and writing) different versions of English. British English isn't the same as American English. I reckon that most ESL speakers from Europe (IIRC? I apologise if I missed) learn the British form, which both has different words, and different meanings for the same words as American English speakers etc.

There is no difference between blond and blonde (where this started) here.
 
Astrid Fornhoff said:
I reckon that most ESL speakers from Europe (IIRC? I apologise if I missed) learn the British form, which both has different words, and different meanings for the same words as American English speakers etc.

There is no difference between blond and blonde (where this started) here.
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Yeah, fair. I learned British English in school, so that might have something to do with it. British English has stronger French influences, as much as they'd hate to admit that, and the distinction between blond and blonde is, of course, a French one.
 
Arden said:
Wow. Call me a Nazi too, while you're at it, why don't you? Jesus. Is this how you react to every disagreement you have with people? "If you don't bow down to my opinion, you must be a bigot?" Christ.
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You just implied anyone that confused extremely similar words for any reason, was stupid and needs to read a book. When I point out this argument is dogwater, and obviously doesn't account for dyslexic people you act like I'm a step away from calling you a nazi. If you want to say that people are stupid for spelling badly, maybe you should consider that the implications of what you're saying.
 
My take is that malapropers are often funny, even if they're unintentional, the longer the words your mixing up the funnier it is. It's just that it works better with a strong narrative voice to convince the audience that the malapropers are coming from the audience and not the character.

Honestly you're more likely to make people mad by getting regional/national vernacular wrong, so that might more be important to keep aware of than the ten billion synonyms and loan words our language has gathered up like a squirrel.
 
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One of these days as a joke I'm going to fix all the americanisms in one of Lauri's quest updates when betaing to see if they notice. :V
 
Astrid Fornhoff said:
I think the principle disagreement here may also be a result of speaking (and writing) different versions of English. British English isn't the same as American English. I reckon that most ESL speakers from Europe (IIRC? I apologise if I missed) learn the British form, which both has different words, and different meanings for the same words as American English speakers etc.

There is no difference between blond and blonde (where this started) here.
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While we generally start with BE here in Germany, in later years it's more likely to be a mix /depend on the teacher. Add in consuming media from both variants, either involuntarily through mandatory reading in school or voluntary through reading/watching/playing English media in your free time, and it can get messy pretty quickly.

Personally, while some differences are pretty easy to pick up, "ou" vs "o" for example, seemingly random word differences are rather hard to keep straight. I'm literally studying to become an English teacher, but don't ask me if I have to use "grey" or "gray" in which seminar*, or if I'm studying to become a primary school teacher or an elementary school teacher. Stuff like that I'll always have to look up.


*because of course we have separate mandatory courses for both British and American literature, so we absolutely have to write papers in two different variants. Though outside of specific cultural modules, we can generally chose which variant to pick, as long as it's consistent.
 
The Englanderish said:
One of these days as a joke I'm going to fix all the americanisms in one of Lauri's quest updates when betaing to see if they notice. :V
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If you promise to tell us about it when you do, we won't even warn them first.

Carrington said:
I'm literally studying to become an English teacher, but don't ask me if I have to use "grey" or "gray" in which seminar*, or if I'm studying to become a primary school teacher or an elementary school teacher. Stuff like that I'll always have to look up.
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Yeah, that kind of thing is a pain. I still have a tendency to mix them up basically at random, because there really is no difference aside from the spelling for most practical purposes.
 
Carrington said:
Personally, while some differences are pretty easy to pick up, "ou" vs "o" for example, seemingly random word differences are rather hard to keep straight. I'm literally studying to become an English teacher, but don't ask me if I have to use "grey" or "gray" in which seminar*, or if I'm studying to become a primary school teacher or an elementary school teacher. Stuff like that I'll always have to look up.
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grey vs gray is one of the absolute worst honestly. I can never keep it straight unless I'm using one of the spellchecks that actually cares about american english vs british english, I usually want to spell it the british way- probably Lord of the Rings fault, really- the first time and then second or third guess myself even after noticing.

And it's just a total one off where all the color/colour armor/armour etc examples are a broader pattern.

(hell, my browser's spellcheck is bitching about the ou spellings but not the grey/gray set at all. )
 
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