At least three times Harry mentally refers to Pansy as having a face like a pug but there is no further description or reason given for this opinion. Rita Skeeter, on the other hand, describes her as 'pretty and vivacious'. Pansy might not be all that bad looking but Harry thinks of her as unattractive because of her behavior.

 

Hmm. I looked them up, and true enough, there's two girls who appear in HBP/DH and are listed on the wiki as the Carrow twins...but as far as I can tell they're not named on screen and only get credited as Twin 1/2, so I'm not sure where them being Carrows came from. Still, fair enough, my bad.

 

Considering we're talking about potential pairings for Harry, his own appreciation is quite a bit more important than Skeeter. And of course his opinion is tainted by his dislike of her, just like Rita's article is biased by the fact that she wants her readers to agree with Pansy and find Hermione ugly and evil. Plenty of fanfics (starting with all the Harry/Pansy in existence) make her pretty and explain away the pug-face comment, that's not the problem. The thing is there isn't in canon a Slytherin girl seen in any kind of positive light (beauty being a part of it), so writers jump on the blank slate to make her what they want for their cross-house romance.

 

Some slash pairings I have never liked.

I never get into Draco/Harry. I just, can't. At all. I know it is the most popular slash pair and possibly the most popular pair in HP fandom, but I think my...not quite dislike, but "don't really care" about Malfoy stops me from being invested in this couple. I guess I find Malfoy highly overrated, hence I don't care to read about him with Harry or anyone.

I don't care for Sirius/Lupin too much either.
Never got to whole Sirius/Lupin thing, as James always seemed to be the one Sirius liked the most and by quite a bit.

The worst slash pair by far that I've come across though is definitely Harry/Dobby.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy

 

That's definitely not a strawman pairing that people only write ironically.

 

I'm glad that nobody here is so uneducated or uncivilised to criticise Ron/Fleur and Harry/Rita Skeeter. Carry on chaps.

 

11 year old Hermione with Hagrid.

Has anyone else noticed that all the really fucked up fics on AO3 get an extremely high amount of views?

Edit: Considering the life span of Wizards age difference gaps wouldn't even be a thing in the wizarding so all these terrible pairings with a 20/30/40 year old difference could actually happen in the wizarding world.

 

Dude, thats like me saying my least favourite het pairing is Ginny/Venomous Tentacula. It may have been written once, but never as a serious pairing. Its never worth criticising crack fics, because they're written to be weird and stupid.

 

Why would you want to pair Harry up with a miserable old hag?

 

Because magic (and having a literal million fics already tread through all the safe ground) can make anything possible, if you just have the imagination.

 

You know I actually found the couple of Harry/Skeeter stories quite hot. Skeeter giving reluctant BJs for story leads is a pretty decent lead in for a smut story.

 

I hear the complaint that Daphne is just a blank slate/ nothing character all the time, and it's so 1head.

Allow me to educate.

We know for certain that she's definitely posh. We also know that she's quiet and doesn't attract much attention, obviously because she's above the petty squabbles of children.

When I input those two key data points into my Characterisation Algorithm we get...

...



Peasants.

 

I'd never seen Rita stories so gave it a google. The things you see in this fandom, maaaan.

Talk about a minefield of a results page.

 

I know this douche is banned now, but I'd just like to point out that he spent an entire thread ranting about the immorality of Harry/Tonks, yet likes reading Harry/Voldemort. Carry on.

 

I think that most of the pairings when looking at Snape are done with "Young Snape" in mind. I feel like it just makes it way creepier to think about a fifty/sixty-year-old Snape and Hermione. Most people like ideas more than they like actual characters.

In most fanfiction, Hermoine is a knockout that every guy at Hogwarts is attempting to go deeper than a grave on. In canon, she's a pretty average chick. The reasoning for her being hot in fanfiction is obviously because Emma Watson plays her. Similarly, though, I feel like the way that they're portrayed in the movies also turns people off of pairings as well, Bonnie Wright being the most obvious example.

Then there's Lisa Turpin, Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Daves who are for all intents and purposes the same character because of how little we know about them. Though common fanon ideas indicate that Lisa is a more comely and down to earth character, Daphne is a blonde bombshell that is very hard to please and likely to make whoever that gets stuck with her's life a living hell akin to marrying Hermione, and Tracey is anyone's guess but is usually outgoing more times than Nott.

 

At the end of the day the answer to terrible pairings is: 'A Person Is Smart; People Are Dumb'

Sure there are some pairings out there that were written as a one-off trolling piece (you will find absolutely any pair if you search hard enough... from Harry/Dobby to Hermione/Trelawney), but looking into the "most liked" pairings I'm simply disappointed.

I can see the appeal in some. Harmony makes sense from a certain perspective, best-friend-turned-lover is a thing people "in the friend zone" might be interested in. Fanon-Ginny/Tonks is sometimes used to embody the ultimate Cool Girl Trope which is always popular. Harry/Named-Blank-Slate-Character can be twisted however the author without the lack of traction that OCs can bring.

Sometimes it's all about the fic being written with Harry as the stand-in for the author accomplishing his smut fantasies. It's like Twilight, but for dudes, with Harry being the ultimate stand-in that every guy can relate in some way (much like Bella is supposed to be for girls everywhere). You can put virtually any terrible pairing in romance/smut fics in this category, whether regular or slash.

Nowadays I don't particularly care for any specific pairings (no OTP for me)... as long as the author convinces me and doesn't hammer his own ship forcefully down my throat, I'm okay with it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I'm probably a lot more lenient than I should be with slash-pairings than contrived non-slash pairings but sometimes I like being able to relate to the main couple (hey, a lot of people dislike Harmony because they could not see themselves with a Hermione-type, so I'm not really the exception here lol).

I don't usually like huge age gaps, and it'd take one hell of an AU for me to understand certain pairings though.

Gay dude here, and I'm with you on that one, don't see the appeal at all (lmao at your comment about meth!)

I get that enemies-turned-friends is a thing, but I don't really get either of those as pairings either. Harry/Some-slytherin make sense... you can totally spin a rival-to-lover from someone who's totally a "future death eater", but Harry/His-Parents's-Murderer would not happen except in very AU worlds. I also don't see Harry going for any Death Eater.

Meh... I've read my fair share of them (Voldy ones moreso than Harry/Bella), and most totally suck as opposed to the gems that only majorly suck. I've certainly read a few I liked way back when, but I would not read them again (90% sure that current self and teenage me have very different standards).

 

I'd like to point out that Harry/Voldemort are the perfect couple (soulmates and all). Really, this thread should be discussing literally every other pairing as disgusting.

 

Huh, I don't think I've ever considered or seen this. It...could work.

Hm...

 

I recall a fic from 10-15 years ago where house elves were actually 'high elves' (whatever that means) who had been cursed by dark magic. Harry had some sort of magical power to cure them, and of course they turned into hawt elves that wanted to bone him. I can't remember if Dobby was involved, but I'm pretty sure Harry ripped off Winky's tea towel.