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What Ticks You Off?

I'm really bored, and there hasn't been much discussion lately, so i'm going to try and get some angry ranting started. That's fun. (Friendly, tasteful angry ranting. Not the bad kind.)

I want to know what ticks you off. Specifically, what's something writers do in fantasy stories (be it ideas, character development, writing style...anything that goes into a book) that you CAN'T STAND. Cliches you hate. Character types you're tired of seeing. Writing style gimmicks that make you want to pull your hair out. Trends that need to die, like, yesterday. Most of all, the expectations that have basically swallowed the entire genre in one gulp and no one dares to question.

It's my theory that we all have this one thing that really, deeply bothers us, in the fantasy genre--and in fact it's part of why we write. I know that a lot of my motivation to write fantasy stories comes from the need to subvert the things that i can't stand in books i read.

I'll get some things started:

-Fantasy being all European based and about white people! (and when it's not, a thin veneer of another culture is painted on to give it this aura of spice and exoticism, instead of actually trying to step outside the culture you're part of and, i don't know, BE ORIGINAL?!)

-Being able to tell how a character is feeling by their eyes! I. HATE. THIS. SO. MUCH. "I saw the pain in his eyes." "Anger flashed through his eyes." "His eyes lit up with happiness." "His eyes darkened." "The look in his eyes told everything." I have NEVER seen a person's eyes actually change color based on their emotions. Neither have I ever looked into someone's eyes and seen *insert emotion here* 'in' them. What is that even supposed to mean? What is it supposed to look like? I have seen characters conjecture about how a character is feeling and then make life-changing decisions based upon it JUST BY LOOKING INTO THEIR EYES. Do a person's eyes actually show emotion? I typically read people's emotions based on their voice and body language. I mean, my eyes look greenish when i've been crying, so i guess there i something to be said about it, but...

-Main characters always being completely gorgeous and when they get scarred, it only makes them look cooler! Weird special eye/hair colors! Maybe this is just a YA problem, but in YA is is completely epidemic. It shouldn't be surprising, since teenagers are generally so obsessed with ideals of beauty. But all the same...Purple eyes? Gold eyes? Even green eyes shouldn't be as prevalent as they are, only 2% of the world's population has them. Also, not once have i read about a female character in a fantasy book having her face scarred. Fat characters, old characters--nonexistent (except the old mentor or the old healer/wise woman.) Disabled characters? They only exist to be disabled and smile weakly and create pity.

-Elves and dwarves! I know lots of you write about them, so no offense, but i just can't stand them.

-People peppering their story with every mythical creature that exists, pulling them completely out of context! TvTropes calls this the Fantasy Kitchen Sink, and i LOATHE it. Every creature every dominant culture has ever made up, re-purposed and thrown together into one story.

-"Strong female characters!" Basically everything the phrase "strong female character" encompasses drives me up a wall. In an effort to make female characters 'strong,' often they have no feelings, can beat up thirty guys at once, are seemingly unable to love or care for anyone, and say rude and snarky things all the time. The alternative seems to be weak, weepy females ready to melt onto the bronzed pectoral muscles of the nearest guy. Our ideas of strength (and women) are screwed up.

Come on, join in. Ranting is good for the soul.
 
-Being able to tell how a character is feeling by their eyes! I. HATE. THIS. SO. MUCH. "I saw the pain in his eyes." "Anger flashed through his eyes." "His eyes lit up with happiness." "His eyes darkened." "The look in his eyes told everything." I have NEVER seen a person's eyes actually change color based on their emotions. Neither have I ever looked into someone's eyes and seen *insert emotion here* 'in' them. What is that even supposed to mean? What is it supposed to look like? I have seen characters conjecture about how a character is feeling and then make life-changing decisions based upon it JUST BY LOOKING INTO THEIR EYES. Do a person's eyes actually show emotion? I typically read people's emotions based on their voice and body language. I mean, my eyes look greenish when i've been crying, so i guess there i something to be said about it, but...

Hah that's a good one. Do you know what I think it is? People have been hammered over the head so hard, so often, that they are supposed to show not tell. Can't say, "He was happy." So the faux-show: "His eyes lit up with happiness." (With the added bonus of an active verb.)

Well okay, eyes are the windows to the soul, right? I think I have seen anger, happiness, sadness in eyes, lots of times. But maybe it's just a shortcut in the way this is sometimes used. Truth is, I've never been bothered by it, that I can remember.
 
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skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
The eyes thing doesn't bother me either. We don't just read eyes, we read the entire person. It's the little muscles around the eyes, the set of the mouth, the angle of the head, the posture of the body, all of that feeds into it, but humans naturally focus on the eyes. So the whole of the read gets compressed into "his eyes smoldered" or whatever. Ain't no thang.

I confess I find little to rant about in writing. That's not to say there aren't things that put me off; it's just that my reaction is much, much worse than getting angry. I close the book.
 
Ok, I'll add my own.

When some lower level brute or bad guy—a jailer, a henchman of the villain, a thug on the street, an enemy soldier—having gained the advantage (usually as captor) is shown to be bad by making crude sex-related threats. What he'll do to the MC. How he'll do it. With slobbers and licking his lips and a half-sneer, half-smile and a meaningful look—he's someone who will probably do it given the time and opportunity.
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
*coughs nervously, as I am guilty of a few of the things Dragon hates*

What I can't stand is:

- People being described in the third person with awkward descriptors rather than their name or pronoun, during sections from said character's POV. Ex. "Aimhirghin raised his pipes to his lips with a sigh and played a summoning tune; the blond Fae prince was craving company."

- Characters pining after love interests who are CLEARLY bad/dangerous for them (*cough*BellaSwan*cough*) even when they are told such in no uncertain terms.

- People always slicing open their palms when they need blood for a ritual. Palms have a crap-ton of nerve endings and the skin, muscle and bone are constantly stretching, moving, pulling. That's just a recipe for pain and hindrance. Why not pick something like the back of one's arm instead?

- People being able to stand and walk on prosthesis immediately after amputation (yes, I'm looking at you, How to Train Your Dragon movie!). That stuff takes TIME.

- The idea that a character having any form of disability automatically equates to "this character is helpless". A disability should by all means impact how the character acts or sees the world, but they should have strengths in other areas (and not simply magical powers that negate the disability altogether).

- Races / species that are homogenously evil.

- The idea that if a woman enjoys feminine things like dresses, she can't be badass. And vice-versa.

- Female MCs whose only "flaw" is being clumsy.

That's all I can think of for now... there may be more in the future.
 
Slavery. I hate reading about it in Fantasy Books. Slavery is Bad, I already agree with you. You have nothing new or interesting to say on the topic. Just stop. I put down Mistborn after page 7 because of this. May memory of this maybe different from reality, but from my POV the MC says to a slave "Have you ever tried *not* being a slave." I couldn't read past that.

I also hate elves and dwarves as fantasy races. Elves are just pretty humans, dwarves are just short humans. Everyone tries to put their own spin on these guys when they should just make something new.
 
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-Characters whose only flaw is having a short temper. A temper is to the Gary Stu (alternatively named the Marty Stu) as clumsiness is the Mary Sue.
 
Slavery. I hate reading about it in Fantasy Books. Slavery is Bad, I already agree with you. You have nothing new or interesting to say on the topic. Just stop. I put down Mistborn after page 7 because of this. May memory of this maybe different from reality, but from my POV the MC says to a slave "Have you ever tried *not* being a slave." I could read past that.

I also hate elves and dwarves as fantasy races. Elves are just pretty humans, dwarves are just short humans. Everyone tries to put their own spin on these guys when they should just make something new.

Hey, my book contains slavery *sniff*

The inclusion of slavery in societies is pretty realistic, actually, since it existed in some form in practically every major civilization. What bothers me is when "good" civilizations don't have slavery and other civilizations do to show that they're "bad" and "evil."
 
Hey, my book contains slavery *sniff*

The inclusion of slavery in societies is pretty realistic, actually, since it existed in some form in practically every major civilization. What bothers me is when "good" civilizations don't have slavery and other civilizations do to show that they're "bad" and "evil."

The part that makes it bad is when all the white characters turn to the audience to tell me that they hate slavery.
 
In some of the fantasy m/m books I've read, there's the use of slavery and/or torture of one of the romantic duo to create a sort of helpless-needs-rescuing dynamic, amped up x100, and the other partner in a near hysteria trying to rescue him. I've quickly grown to hate this common plot point.
 
*coughs nervously, as I am guilty of a few of the things Dragon hates*

What I can't stand is:

- People being described in the third person with awkward descriptors rather than their name or pronoun, during sections from said character's POV. Ex. "Aimhirghin raised his pipes to his lips with a sigh and played a summoning tune; the blond Fae prince was craving company."

- Characters pining after love interests who are CLEARLY bad/dangerous for them (*cough*BellaSwan*cough*) even when they are told such in no uncertain terms.

- People always slicing open their palms when they need blood for a ritual. Palms have a crap-ton of nerve endings and the skin, muscle and bone are constantly stretching, moving, pulling. That's just a recipe for pain and hindrance. Why not pick something like the back of one's arm instead?

- People being able to stand and walk on prosthesis immediately after amputation (yes, I'm looking at you, How to Train Your Dragon movie!). That stuff takes TIME.

- The idea that a character having any form of disability automatically equates to "this character is helpless". A disability should by all means impact how the character acts or sees the world, but they should have strengths in other areas (and not simply magical powers that negate the disability altogether).

- Races / species that are homogenously evil.

- The idea that if a woman enjoys feminine things like dresses, she can't be badass. And vice-versa.

- Female MCs whose only "flaw" is being clumsy.

That's all I can think of for now... there may be more in the future.

I agree with you on every point here, so don't feel bad :p

The races/species being homogenously evil--this is so the MC's can fight and be badass and fulfill the reader's hero fantasies without bringing up moral conflict or any of the reality of war and killing. Just laziness, really.

DONT DISS HTTYD IT IS PERFECT AND TOOTHLESS IS MY BABY okay you have a point here. This makes me think of another:

-Heroes healing from wounds supernaturally quickly without any lasting effects from the injury! I hate reading about characters getting serious, life-threatening wounds, getting arrows pulled out of them, getting stabbed in the shoulder...and then they heal in like a week and are just the same as before. It seems to me that with medieval technology levels wounds might never heal properly. I've read books where a character gets a wound and a week later it's like the wound was never there. Even a minor cut takes a week to fully heal.
 

glutton

Inkling
-"Strong female characters!" Basically everything the phrase "strong female character" encompasses drives me up a wall. In an effort to make female characters 'strong,' often they have no feelings, can beat up thirty guys at once, are seemingly unable to love or care for anyone, and say rude and snarky things all the time.

Mine tend to be able to beat up thirty guys at once, but I don't like the overused no feelings/rude and snarky stereotype. It often makes them come off as insecure tryhards trying to come off as tough instead of badasses who are truly confident in themselves.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
The objections so far are almost all about plot devices. DragonOfTheAerie (whose monker significantly collapses to DOTA) started out talking about specific writing devices.

I have yet to read any book written in the present tense that did not drive me nuts, nor could I find any reason, earthly or unearthly, why it could not have been done better in past tense.

I can accept first person, but if that's combined with present tense, the author has exactly one strike left. They usually take a called third strike by page ten.

Stories in which the author decides arbitrary, non-phonetic spelling, coupled with the flagrant abuse of punctuation, is the sweet spot of originality. On my tombstone it will be written, "he died from a surfeit of hyphens"

Stories in which the author decides to play Fun with Dialog Tags. This includes the bizarre sub-species that uses no dialog tags whatsoever. I don't mind you want to be clever, just don't do it in my fantasy novel. If I want e e cummings, I know where to find him. toujours gai, archie

Harshest of all is this: beautiful language. I long for it. I pay cash money for it. But its tricksy, it is. Get it right and you sweep me off my feet. Get it wrong and you drop me on my head. And I cannot for the life of me explain how to do the one or avoid the other.
 
There are some exceptions, but as a rule:

I hate extended dream/delusion/psychic voyage sequences.

I hate extended flashbacks.
 
-Basically all flashbacks longer than 2-3 sentences! The ones that are pages long that come right at the beginning make me want to set the book on fire.
 
Oh. I hate that one.

-Main characters having modern viewpoints on things like slavery, even if no one around them does!

Ah, but there are many examples of people in the real world that were, shall we say, advanced for their time on views like slavery, Alexander Hamilton springs immediately to mind and he was very much in the minority.

In any event, I hate it, hate it, when an MC flagrantly violates the law in front of like all the witnesses and there is no repurcussions for him. No bad opinions, no arrests, no warrants, nothing. It drives me up a wall.

The other thing I hate is when something is set in the real world and the person just blows it on their research. (No dear hypothetical book that is not how a gun works).

Finally, and this is big for me, ham fisted reference that doesn't fit within the world. (Looking at you Inheritance with your raxacoriphalipatorious bs.)
 
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glutton

Inkling
My personal peeve would be female characters (often the secondary 'lead' after a male MC) who are introduced as being awesome, but then fall to the wayside and lose relevance.
 
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La Volpe

Sage
-Fantasy being all European based and about white people! (and when it's not, a thin veneer of another culture is painted on to give it this aura of spice and exoticism, instead of actually trying to step outside the culture you're part of and, i don't know, BE ORIGINAL?!)

Well, I don't think there are that many that focus solely on European culture anymore these days. But it's not like fantasy based on other cultures are more original. All ideas are already taken. It's what we do with them that matters, no?

-Being able to tell how a character is feeling by their eyes! I. HATE. THIS. SO. MUCH. "I saw the pain in his eyes." "Anger flashed through his eyes." "His eyes lit up with happiness." "His eyes darkened." "The look in his eyes told everything." I have NEVER seen a person's eyes actually change color based on their emotions. Neither have I ever looked into someone's eyes and seen *insert emotion here* 'in' them. What is that even supposed to mean? What is it supposed to look like? I have seen characters conjecture about how a character is feeling and then make life-changing decisions based upon it JUST BY LOOKING INTO THEIR EYES. Do a person's eyes actually show emotion? I typically read people's emotions based on their voice and body language. I mean, my eyes look greenish when i've been crying, so i guess there i something to be said about it, but...

Eh, no. The eyes are one of the most important parts in reading emotion. In fact, you can read off emotions pretty accurately based on the eyes. The eyelids moving, the eyebrows, pupil dilation etc. If I could pick only one spot to look at to judge emotion, I'd choose the eyes. It's not about colour changing (I don't think I've ever seen anyone mention that in a book).

- Characters pining after love interests who are CLEARLY bad/dangerous for them (*cough*BellaSwan*cough*) even when they are told such in no uncertain terms.

While this is pretty annoying to read about, it's pretty realistic too. People do really stupid things when they're in love.

- People always slicing open their palms when they need blood for a ritual. Palms have a crap-ton of nerve endings and the skin, muscle and bone are constantly stretching, moving, pulling. That's just a recipe for pain and hindrance. Why not pick something like the back of one's arm instead?

Agreed. Slicing your palm is not a smart move.

- The idea that a character having any form of disability automatically equates to "this character is helpless". A disability should by all means impact how the character acts or sees the world, but they should have strengths in other areas (and not simply magical powers that negate the disability altogether).

A few people mentioned this, but I don't think I've ever read that in a fantasy novel before. Am I just reading the wrong (right?) ones?

- Races / species that are homogenously evil.

Evil is a subjective term. One person's evil is another person's good. Ergo, a race of orcs might seem evil to humans, but they probably don't think of themselves as evil. So having the entire race (on average, since I'm sure there'll be outliers) be seen as evil by the protagonists isn't all that far-fetched. In fact, it's pretty natural. A very different culture will have very different values etc.

Slavery. I hate reading about it in Fantasy Books. Slavery is Bad, I already agree with you. You have nothing new or interesting to say on the topic. Just stop. I put down Mistborn after page 7 because of this. May memory of this maybe different from reality, but from my POV the MC says to a slave "Have you ever tried *not* being a slave." I couldn't read past that.

Slavery/oppression of a class is probably one of the most common occurrences in the history of mankind. It'd be pretty weird for a culture not to have any history of slavery or oppression. And most fantasy books are set in the age where such things are more common (i.e. widespread poverty, frequent battles and wars between countries, and conquests).

-Happy enslaved creatures. I love a good dragon riding story, but I can't stand it when dragons willing become the servants of humans. No, having a dragon get to choose who will be their rider does not make it any better. Try replacing "dragon" with "slave" and "rider" with "master" you'll see why its so screwed up. Dragon's are awesome creatures, they shouldn't willingly give up their personal agency.

Are we talking about intelligent creatures here? Or normal, run-of-the-mill creatures? In the case of regular creatures/animals, it's pretty common, especially if they have a pack mentality, that they might thrive on having a hierarchy. E.g. a dog is happier when it has an alpha in the pack telling it what to do. And a human can take that spot. But even without this, taming is a pretty refined and effective art, especially if years of breeding has domesticated said creature.

If we're talking intelligent creatures, there is still a pretty good chance that it would go without too many hassles, specifically if the creatures are trained like this from birth. They don't know any better. Though I'd expect a larger margin of rebellion, depending on how much freedom they're allowed.
 
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AElisabet

Scribe
I agree with a lot that has already been said, but here is my take on some of the most common "peeves" that I share with others:

European Based Fantasy: Honestly, I love a good European based setting, one that really understands what drives European mythologies and/or the medieval world, or that puts an interesting spin on it. Tolkien, GRRM, and Naomi Novik's recent novel Uprooted I think are all examples of this. I don't think I could ever get sick of European based fantasy.

On the other hand, I get really agitated at poorly done European based settings. Just using a vaguely medieval setting for the backdrop of swords and castles without any respect, exploration, or new insight into the sources peeves me.

And two sub-peeves are poorly done pseudo-norse/viking settings and superficial "Churches". These things can be done well, but often they are not.

So-Called 'Strong Female Characters': I love great, complex female characters, of all kinds. But rejecting dresses, marriage, babies, and girly things does not automatically equal strength. Some of the bravest things I have ever done include getting married and having children. Love requires strength and courage.

While I love a well written warrior woman like Brienne of Tarth, I hate rejecting "girl things" and/or family life as a cheap shorthand for "strength" in a female character.
 
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