Discussion What are your novel pet peeves?

I ask you, what are your pet peeves when it comes to novels?

If you don't know what pet peeve means, it's basically something you find annoying.
So, what do you find annoying in novels? Any genres or stereotypes you dislike?

I'll start first. My biggest pet peeve is when the FL is described as this almighty, strong, and smart woman but then turns into a dumb and weak lady every time the ML or the 2nd ML comes. It's sooo annoying!

 

When a villain owns the hero then let's him off just for reasons or some flimsy sympathy. It does not need to be a brilliant reason. Having an ally intervene or if the villain has a time sensitive objective is plenty.

 

When readers hear the MC's thoughts, and author decides to reveal something later that there's no way MC wouldn't have thought about before.

 

Mine biggest is about the same as your FL is suppose to be super strong and smart but constantly needs saving and is a total b@tch about it.
One of my others is when the MC gets self righteous about not killing. I mean I don't mind a MC that won't kill but when they remind you every chapter and say something like "I could kill no problem but don't want nightmares" or something stupid like that

 

I only read BG, but I dislike the trope in the entertainment circle. Like, all actresses/celebrities go against the MC. I know they serve to show that the MC is powerful in the end but the trope tires me. I'd just read the short ones nowadays, less than 70 chapters usually.

 

When clumsy becomes a personality trait.

Background characters with absolutely 0 brains. Like when authors write every single background character that's ever mentioned as some jealous gossiping schemer. Life just doesn't work like that, not everyone is hopelessly in love with the handsome guy in the office.

Also, this is more something that annoys me about authors then the novels themselves, but the amount of casual sexism is astounding. I swear every time I really getting into a good (Japanese) novel the author throws in a "the girls did X and the boys did Y" moment out of nowhere. It's just such a little detail but now that I started noticing I can't stop and it's ruined so many good stories for me.

 

On Chinese Novels - The Fat friend, 90% of the Chinese novels has this POS, they are useless and always at some point are used as the most telegraphed bait of all time. they don't bring nothing new or interesting.

On Japanese Novels - When at the Chapter 352 after the MC killed half a country, his girl got raped and mind fucked, he start to second guess if he should or not kill the villain

On Korean Novels - Time skips, it is always a roulette if they will do right or use it right. there is always the problem of the power scaling after the time skip, because or the MC is too strong and you lost the training arc and his changes or the MC is the same and the world changed but he didn't grow one bit, making you guess WTF did you do all this time

 

When some authors decided to upgrade a seemingly nice love story to a harem setting midway through.
I find it less tolerable if it became repetitive.

 

when a cute fluffy romance comedy bacames do filled with drama that it causes you to lose more baincells the more you read

 

hypocrite mc's... e.g mc kills millions of people, also mc "i'm going to kill you because you killed all these innocent people. you are so evil"

 

Immature/troll/wannabe-edgelord reader comments. I have seem to many comments form people about how "MC is an idiot" because he did not do exactly what the commenter "would do" in that situation, it is worse the amount of times that that decision would require reasoning skills that would make Stephen Hawking (R.I.P.) look like an idiot due to relying in info not legitimately available to the character, or live in a radically different society then the world of the story because the commentor is bringing their own real world situation into their thought process of what to do.

As to stories themselves :

• Nationalistic food porn (no the peasants do not eat bland garbage, and the only way other then religious bans they are not using all the local food sources to their fullest they can afford is if it is so plentiful there are never periods of famine or starvation, plus the foods you grew up with might taste better to you but that is because you grew up eating them and what you grow up eating affects your taste and preferences)
• Storiless smut, I am reading for the story, if I wanted smut there are better sources then translated novels.
• Smut for the sake of smut or for no other purpose to stroke the author's bonner. If it is in the story it should have a reason to be there. Smut does not automatically make a story better. I stopped reading L.K. Hamilton because her books went from good modern-ish fantasy, though with some flaws in its world building that only really appeared if you thought about certain parts of the story, to plot with smut, to smut with some plot to lead into more smut.
• Blatantly unworking worlds. It does not need to be perfect, but there should not be contradictions or conflicting rules/principals so blatant that the reader can not help by seem them if they look at the world beyond what the surface.

 

When the MC is always dragged into somethings, plotted against and a lot more.
I just like active MC who seeks trouble themselves and sought to improve themselves through competition.

 

Child Protagonist Slice of Life Novels that get a time-skip that makes the MC a teenager.

I don't mind it if there is a bigger plot going on that requires the MC to grow up in order to move forward (A simple example of what is okay to me, would be Otome Game Reincarnations, since you need the MC to grow up to reach the Otome Game part), but I sure hate it when the MC becomes a teenager via timeskip in a Slice of Life novel. I instantly drop it when it happens.

 

Stories with super strong MC from the beginning. it gets boring very easily. I want to see the whole MC process from a weak person to become stronger. and I want an even more "human" MC.

 

Slave "love interests". Doubly so if said slave decides to keep being an actual slave for some bullshit reasons after MC tries to release them.

 

When ml is on a date with mc and mc's got some cream or crumbs near her mouth and then ml removes the cream by his thumb and then licks it off and calls it "tasty" or "sweet".
I really hate this. It makes me cringe so much that I usually drop these types of novels.
And in kr novels about shaman things that mc actually doesn't believe in shaman but still goes for fortunetelling and shaman say some bullshit like she is destined to be destroyed if stayed together or get killed, it really gets on my nerves.
And when mc gets blisters on her feet after wearing heels for too long and then ml "gets down on his knees takes her shoes off and massages her feet."
And when some regretful male lead crap that ml actually wanted to protect mc by treating her like crap or some other sort of sob story like he was hypnotized or something like that. Like mls are usually without weaknesses and super handsome and super-duper strong but mc becomes his weakness and to keep her safe, he becomes cursed or hypnotized and then... mistreats her and treats her like shit. And when mc decides to leave him, he starts to cling to her.
And also trash ex trope in which trash ex cheats on mc and when mc starts to move on from him and starts flirting with ml, he starts to regret and tries to frame mc that she actually cheated on him.

 

My biggest pet peeve is when all the mls fall in love with fl for like no reason. All of them literally fall in love with her or get obsessed with her for the stupidest reasons. And whats up with the fl pretending as if she doesn't realise that they love her when it's so obvioussss and if they confess their love she avoids them for no reason at all and gives the worst excuses for how she treats them. I'm sitting there like "but she has zero personality , offers nothing, does nothing on her own and depends on you for everything, How is she independent and strong? where? ."

She gets them to "like her" and abandons them when they fulfilled her purpose and expects them to just understand when she lead them on for like 200 chapters.And of course the male leads have no backbone, low self esteem , no common sense , low eq that her betraying them or not reciprocating their love it's the end of the world and they have to destroy everything and everyone and they will completely give up on life and dedicate their life to darkness.

It's a kinda weird reaction seeing that throughout the novel they tried to portray the leads as being strong, experienced, brave , knowledgeable.That behavior goes completely against what the characters originally stood for and makes them out to be a bunch of cowardly and naïve weaklings that some pretty girl can actually turn them into that. It's annoyingly common

 

When they pamper (ugh I hate this word. It's so stupid. Reminds me of nappies) the MC excessively. I'm talking buying out entire shops, showering her with gifts, or maybe giving her a country or two. Like calm down man, when you said your coffers were huge, I didn't realise you were comparing it to the size of the sun. It's even worse when they literally cannot stand the MC being inconvenienced in any way possible, sometimes to the extent of belittling or punishing their other children for "distressing them".

* Spoilers are only examples, you don't have to read them if you want to. They're only in boxes to stop this from being too long

Spoiler: Example 1

For example, the ML's siblings once teased MC about her crush on ML (they were official at this point and the siblings had done it in a joking friendly manner the way you would with friends/family) and the ML punished them with weeding and hard labour just because "she felt uncomfortable at their comments"??? What???????

Spoiler: Example 2

MC's family whom she reunited with recently excessively pamper her for being the only girl in like 3 generations. Which is something I can kinda ignore I guess, but when the dad asks around for how much pocket money to give her, her aunts and uncles say we give our sons this much but because she's a girl, you have to give her as much as possible to make her feel rich, and it just felt really discriminatory to me. Like, I would understand if they say give her a little more, things for girls are more expensive anyways, let her feel a little rich to compensate her bad past, but they just straight up said you can't really trust boys on this and yeah girls should be made to feel like rich princesses, give her millions. Which was sad because I really liked her cousins they were nice and good boys

Another thing I hate is when they gatekeep MCs love interests, and straight up treat ML like an enemy, especially when ML is actually a sweet boy who has treated MC well. Like do you not trust that the MC is something more than an expensive glass vase that you own?? Come on man, she has a life outside of you, it's not the end of the world.

 

I don't mind writers using misunderstandings to drive a part of the plot. Misunderstandings can be funny.

But when you're using mostly misunderstandings to drive a romance plot, it gets quite obvious that you already ran out of ideas before you could even pick up any steam.

 

when the narrator narrates some interesting trivia about some characters life, can be a random side character