What are your fan fiction gripes?

Discussion in 'Fan Town' started by OtherCat, Aug 27, 2016.

  1. Charlie

    Charlie I got no strings to hold me down

    That one was super hard for me as a kid, and speaking honestly I actually say those words the exact same way? (I'm kind of surprised to hear people pronounce them noticeably different)
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2018
    • Agree x 3
  2. KingStarscream

    KingStarscream watch_dogs walking advertisement

    I can pronounce 'affect' and 'effect' differently, but I also pronounce 'affect' in two different ways depending on whether I'm talking about the verb or the noun.

    That said, the only reason I really know the proper difference between 'affecting change' and 'effecting change' is because it was one of the questions that came up in a particular reading comprehension standardized test I took a couple times in elementary school. So it's hard for me to hold that one against people.
     
    • Agree x 6
  3. Aondeug

    Aondeug Cringe Annoying Ass Female Lobster

    I only pronounce them different in certain contexts. Specifically when I am talking about someone 'putting on an affect' or the like. Otherwise they sound the same.
     
    • Agree x 5
  4. shmeed

    shmeed plant me

    it sounds the same for me too
    theres a little bit of a change in the bunching of the tongue from effect to affect, but it doesn't change the sound of the words in a very noticeable way
    it's also a super pain in the ass distinction
     
    • Agree x 2
  5. garden

    garden lucid dreamer

    this is a lesser-known one so i try not to be too judgmental but ever since i took a Discrete Math class in my freshman yr of college, fanfic writers mixing up “discreet” and “discrete” drives me up the wall

    (discreet: subtle, circumspect
    discrete: individually separate and distinct.)
     
    • Agree x 5
    • Informative x 5
  6. applechime

    applechime "well, you know, a very — a very crunchy person."

    MM. YEAH THAT ONE IS FRUSTRATING..... u can't just stick it in a word-replacer extension and call it a day, either, for obvious reasons
     
    • Like x 1
  7. shmeed

    shmeed plant me

    oh! the compliment/complement divide is like that.
    complement: accompany
    compliment: say nice thing
    a few letters off, sounds exactly the same

    stuff like this is why high-level proofreading is a specific job that you train for
    I also wonder on a linguistic level how long it would take for a difference like that to die out and become irrelevant in a language, bc it feels like that's what's slowly happening in these cases
     
    • Agree x 2
  8. spockandawe

    spockandawe soft and woolen and writhing with curiosity

    my trouble is that i like discrete, as a word. I loath loathe discreet. It's UGLY. Look at that -eet just dangling out at the end there when it COULD be wrapping up in a much more aesthetically pleasing -ete manner. OUTRAGEOUS. UNACCEPTABLE. I use the right version of the word when it comes up, but I resent using it
     
    • Witnessed x 9
    • Agree x 4
  9. Aondeug

    Aondeug Cringe Annoying Ass Female Lobster

    i never thought of discreet as ugly until now and not i can't unsee it. fuck.
     
    • Agree x 2
    • Witnessed x 2
  10. applechime

    applechime "well, you know, a very — a very crunchy person."

    tragique
     
    • Agree x 5
  11. Charlie

    Charlie I got no strings to hold me down

    I really only ever see the word discrete applied to a meaning that it doesn't belong to, then, it feels like? Because I've always seen discrete used in place of 'subtle/circumspect'.

    Or, if people have been using it rightly, maybe I just assumed it was a typo because I didn't know discreet was a word and one that looks pretty ugly to look at.
     
    • Like x 2
    • Agree x 1
  12. garden

    garden lucid dreamer

    yes, this is my experience as well. i’m not sure i’ve ever seen “discreet” used for “separate/distinct,” but i see “discrete” used for “subtle/circumspect” alllllll the time and it drives me bananas

    (likely because, especially in fiction, “subtle/circumspect” is a concept that people are going to write about more than “individually distinct.”)

    i wasn’t really thinking about how discreet looks as a word until now. i do prefer how discrete looks but unfortunately “discrete” is way more likely to irritate me on sight just because there’s like a 90% chance it’s being used wrong whenever i come across it online.
     
    • Agree x 2
  13. Verily

    Verily surprised Xue Yang peddler

    Tbqf, discreet math sounds kinda awesome?
     
    • Agree x 4
    • Winner x 1
  14. TheSeer

    TheSeer 37 Bright Visionary Crushes The Doubtful

    Would "discreet math" be cryptography?
     
    • Winner x 7
    • Agree x 1
  15. Wingyl

    Wingyl Allegedly Magic

    probably??? or other Secret Math
     
    • Agree x 2
  16. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    It's a specific thing horses do - chewing on things when they're restless, or impatient (or bored). Most commonly it's seen with horses who are bridled, so they're literally champing at the bit because they like stimming with the bit.

    I'm just imagining the Bizarre Bazaar, from the Myth-taken series. (I...don't remember if that's actually what it was called, but I think it was by Robert Asprin? And the protag was a teen apprentice to a wizard, who died really early into the first book because of bandits - right after he'd summoned a 'demon' (that turned out to be an old friend who's a dimension hopper, and who comes from Perv; there's a running joke about whether the residents of Perv are called Perverts or Pervects) and bound him to not use any powers. So the demon is now semi-powerless for the next couple decades, which means he can't just bounce home and wash his hands of all of this. So instead he has to teach the protag how to use magic properly, while also teaching him how to run cons using his magical powers so they can get money.)
    Anyways: the Bizarre Bazaar was a whole dimension that was just...a marketplace. Anything you wanted to buy? It'd be there, somewhere. Anything you wanted to sell? Someone would be interested in taking it off your hands. You could rent booths or offices, and get them set up so you could travel from the Bazaar to a different dimension and back. The whole series was very high fantasy meets sci fi type of thing.
     
    • Like x 6
    • Informative x 3
    • Agree x 2
  17. Lizardlicks

    Lizardlicks Friendly Neighborhood Lizard

    so you want to... YEET the -eet >.>
     
    • Winner x 9
    • Agree x 3
    • Like x 1
  18. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    yete
     
    • Witnessed x 8
    • Winner x 6
    • Agree x 2
  19. Aondeug

    Aondeug Cringe Annoying Ass Female Lobster

    cursed
     
    • Agree x 3
    • Like x 1
  20. winterykite

    winterykite Non-newtonian genderfluid

    ANOTHER PERSON WHO HAS READ THAT SERIES HELLO -waves-

    jsyk i had to double check your username because i was very confused when i saw aondeug agree in the post below when i thought it was by them in the first place.
     
    • Like x 3
    • Agree x 1
    • Winner x 1
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