Oh, another one: when the characters repeatedly and insistently call another character by a nickname not in canon, especially because its usually not even close to their real name and/or too cutesy for the people calling it to use
Do you mean it sounds fake because the claim is implausible, or it sounds fake because the dialogue is stilted? Because both those things are true.
omf. And that's not even a particularly hard to research thing, either - you can find that out by reading any recipe (which will go "after the cake has cooled, apply frosting") or by watching any show about baking. Masterchef and Great British Bake Off are particularly good for that, actually - there's explanations about why you need to let the cake cool (it's because the frosting will literally melt off the cake, and this is a thing for any baked good that needs frosting or icing applied to it - you have to let it cool first, or the most you'll get is a sticky glaze as the rest of it drips off), and suggestions about how to cool things down faster if you need it done in a specific time (blast chiller if you're in a professional restaurant or on a competitive cooking show (like Masterchef or Cutthroat Kitchen); sticking it in the fridge or freezer might work for a more mundane solution).
I...think it's just Ron who calls her that, isn't it? And even he doesn't do it all that frequently - just if he's feeling particularly affectionate, or trying to get her into a good mood, as I recall. (...now I'm paranoid that I've messed that up in my fic. Buuuut that's what beta readers are for, and I will worry about that when it's time to edit. If I start fussing about what I did or didn't fuck up, I'll never get the damn thing written at all.)
I thought he only called her that once, and that was "mouth too full of potatoes to pronounce a hard H"? But that was in the earlier books, so if he called her Mione in Deathly Hallows I very likely forget it. And they've had decades together. He has all rights to decide "You know what I need to give you? A pet name. That would be affectionate."
I vaguely recall him using it a couple other times throughout the series. If he used it in Deathly Hallows, I don't remember; I've blotted large chunks of that book out of my memory, and probably replaced it with Hemostuck and I suspect I'm the better for it. I think he used it when he was trying to get her attention to ask her out to the Yule Ball, though - which is what I meant by "trying to get her in a good mood".
There are to be fair a few cases with glaze-type frostings where that is the point, but i doubt the author meant an angel food cake or so forth
@turtleDove @missoyashirou Yeah, it's not unreasonable to write Ron using it occasionally, but I've seen some fics that use it SO MUCH (and not just with Ron @.@) that it tends to bug me.
This one might not bother anyone else, but in Hetalia again, having the nations have exactly two older nations as parents. No nation in the history of the world has ever arisen that neatly, and from canon it doesn't seem likely to me that the nations reproduce sexually at all. The British Isles would need at least five parents, Korea would need at least three, the Americas could potentially have hundreds.
I would like it if people could tag background ships AS background ships. The reason I say this is that there are some ships I really, truly, absolutely, to the depth of my being, hate. And when I read Harry/Draco, I cannot enjoy it if I get slapped in the face with Ron/Hermione (unless the background angst is about their ugly messy divorce in which case sign me up).
My biggest problem, actually, with the whole gender headcanon thing right now is that the children on Tumblr like to write Fiddauthor and Fiddlestan with trans!Fidds. All of these characters were born in the 1950s and the relationship usually takes place in the 70s and 80s, yet these kids do not do any research about what it was like to be FtM in the 1970s and early 1980s, so you have all the baby's first soapbox annoyances combined with the fact that no, absolutely not, it was not a matter of "let's just get you a binder, don't worry, only assholes will refuse to acknowledge you as a dude, everyone knows better". I have always been convinced that part of the reason those two (Fiddauthor; canonically I doubt Stan and Fidds ever met before Stan moved into the shack) did so many sketch-ass things for the government was that you could be totally blackmailed for having a gay relationship back then and lose your funding and all kinds of gross shit. I was a child when these characters were adults. I'm really glad things are not like that any more, but I can't read stories about the 1970s where people are acting like they would today and stay invested in them. If you are going to write gender headcanons great, but if you want them to be good stories and they aren't set in the present day I feel like you need to take that into account somehow. Not everyone was an asshole about stuff like that back then, but nearly everyone was clueless about it and someone like teenage Stan would have no fucking idea what a binder even is. I mean it's not too hard to figure out from context what it means, but he would never have even heard the word before if he hadn't known somebody else trans and out before. You couldn't just go on the internet and order one and not just because the internet didn't exist yet.
You also have to not mind all the traumatic rape scenes as it seems the hero/ine of every series gets one. Note, this may have changed; I won't read L@ck@y any more.
I read quite a bit of Lackey when I was a teenager and I don't think a single one of the villains in any of her books I read wasn't sexually predatory in some way.
Stuff like that is why I refuse to write rape scenes in anything but porn. "Instant angst, just add rape" is a repulsive trope in my book.
