Things you hate in literature

O.o Vampires are awesome D:

One thing I really hate is when the description is so lacking at the beginning that you don't know what's going on ten pages into the book.

I hate that too. Too many POV character's does it for me usually.

underrepresentation of people of color:

Tumblr Post with Cursing wrote:Because until I actually gave it direct and attentive thought, before I considered the ramifications of setting and characters and who could be in what stories, my ARTISTIC VISION and my creative process was hugely affected by the stories I’d been told my entire life. I did not imagine POC characters in fantasy stories, but I did imagine them in Sci-fi stories. Because I’d been told by the stories I’d been fed from early childhood that POC could exist in the future, but not in fantasy; fantasy was set in mythical whitelandia not really resembling Europe, and if POC were even mentioned they were from exotic foreign lands to the south and the east (and they were seldom characters, certainly never core characters).

I say this because I am tired of hearing writers say ‘well I just didn’t imagine the character that way! You can’t fault me for that, it’s my story and my inspiration!’

Your inspiration does not come from a perfect, unbiased void. Every story you tell is informed by every story you’ve ever been told, and you cannot divorce yourself from that. So if you want to be a thoughtful, aware writer who is writing the best, richest story you can write, if you want your creative process to be as free and uninhibited as it can be, you need to stop and think about what informs your creativity and whether or not it is, in fact, problematic as [fornication].

this goes for the lack of representation of non-binary folk, asexuality, bisexuals and so on; what little representation there is being token or we have a case of erasure -therefore problematic.

Oh oh oh I have a new one- any story that starts with a teenage girl at a parent/guardian's funeral.

I dislike love triangles. Sometimes they can be done interestingly but mostly they fail miserably.

I hate how usually the girl in the centre is portrayed as a 'normal girl' who doesn't usually attract attention from guys but then suddenly every male in her general vicinity thinks she is the most wonderful thing in the world. Then oh no! She has to decide between two of them! And then this suddenly turns her into the biggest douche known to man because obviously she can't just decide because the author wants to string it out for the entire novel. So instead the author makes the girl lead one guy on at a time and then randomly back off whenever she doesn't feel like it. It's awful. It short changes the characters and makes me instantly dislike them. /rant over

I also dislike the kind of mysterious main guy character trope. The guy who is dangerous and always tells the girl to not be around him because he's dangerous but then just KEEPS FOLLOWING HER AROUND AND TURNING UP RANDOMLY. Like 'Hey I'm dangerous and might kill you but wanna go for coffee?'

I'm sure I'll be back with other things

I hate it when there are no cats in a story.

There has to be at least one mention of a cat in every story, otherwise I am not personally satisfied.

I agree with all of you! The first hint of a love triangle is enough for me to stop reading a book.

I also despise books in which one character has all the specialness. If there's any sort of magic in the book, the character has either a) all the power, or b) the rarest or last form of said magic stuff. If there's one girl that everyone likes, she's interested in the main character (or guy if the MC is a girl). If the villain need a sacrifice to progress their evil plans, you can safely bet the MC is the only possible person for the gig.
Forgive me for not remembering the name of this book....or what it was about, but I remember really enjoying a certain book when I was younger because the strengths and weaknesses were more evenly distributed among the characters. Sure, some characters were stronger than others, but that's life. Thank you, unknown author!

-Sea-

I think I despise token representation even more than lack of representation in literature - even in fantasy, because elves, dwarves, etc. are often a heavyhanded stand-in for people of colour. For some reason, it feels worse that they have non-white (or non-human) characters in the main 'party', and they didn't bother to flesh them out or bring them past stereotypes. Same goes for LGBT, non-binary, etc.

I'm also tired of people getting racism wrong - seeing it as "oh, only really severe acts of racism are actually racism" - and not the little things used to demean people of colour, like the fact that very few faces of "beauty", models, etc. are people of colour compared to the sheer number of white people, or the fact that whitewashing exists in general. To take a person of colour from a book and make them white(r?) in a movie just doesn't feel right. I mean, yeah, I don't suffer from racism, but other people do - and it's definitely not cool to portray that incorrectly, and I think authors who don't even try to portray it correctly need a good stern talking-to. It's a real problem, and shouldn't have to be made worse by various flaws in fiction.

When my favorite character is killed off on page 863 because some stupid little blonde haired prince, who just so happens to be the bastard born from an incestuous relationship, want to make an example of traitors...

Damn it, @Spotswood! I'm reading A Clash of Kings!

(Actually, ignore this comment. I was being an idiot. Didn't realise you were referring to ----)

Ah come on though, @Spotswood, you have to admit, that was clever.

@Skins, I've started a new story where a cat features in the first chapter. Those who have read first chapter (@beckiw and @Sachiko) are insisting the cat becomes a secondary character. I'm working on it.

You know it's the best idea ever!

StellaThomas wrote:@Skins, I've started a new story where a cat features in the first chapter. Those who have read first chapter (@beckiw and @Sachiko) are insisting the cat becomes a secondary character. I'm working on it.

I love you.

I too have a cat. A talking siamese, to be precise.