It has been done well, but even in The Lie I've Lived you don't see nearly every spell's movement description in the middle of battle. A lack of knowledge of spells and people's desire for rule of cool has made it seem like spells are done as in the movies - to look cool, not to be canonically accurate. Even Jbern can't detail everything, but its bad writing to never even acknowledge a critical part of spells, and this usually bleeds over into other aspects of a story.

It also perpetuates the fan dumb conventions that have been mentioned. Lazy writing that never includes learning wand movements (which would be very important) in favour of shitty powerup #29853 also leads to people neglecting to type the name of a curse instead of the curse itself, and to mislabel spells, or only use the standard Stunners and Shield charm instead of imaginative spells.

This shit snowballs. Its one of those little things that if done right can immeasurably improve a fic, but when ignored can lead to the next crap story in a sea of shit.

 

Harry:
I'm looking for books about wandless/wordless magics, animagus transformations, or any special hidden book, to make the learning process easier/quicker, that is outside the normal learning process.
Oh and a time turner/time dilation field/time freezing wards/super magical room on par with the RoR, if not the RoR itself, that can do pretty much anything.

Naaah Don't worry about me training for 50 years or so, to catch up to Riddle, who was a prodigy by all accounts.. I'll train for 3 or 4 years and hope for the best, because i'm such a massive tool.

By the way, did you know that I or one of my random friends or that Mary sue girl, learned all sorts of contraception spells/potions, as well as other martial-aid spells/potions in secret, but that we can now take full advantage of? Why train in that short 3 or 4 year time period when we can have a harem going on. I mean it's not too far fetched to believe multiple women can actually not tear each other apart due to jealously and vindictiveness, while at the same time, being slavishly devoted to me and my quests.
And of course my massive fucking dick.

It's a pretty sweet plan imo. Either myself, a friend, or my entire hand-picked clique will spontaniously become elemental heirs of the founders and Riddle; He'll develop old-age senility and dimentia and i'll walk all over him and his clowns in black cloaks.



^ I think that sums up pretty much every bad Indy!Harry fic i've ever read.
edit: oh and chapters of my story, will end with Harry becoming unconcious after doing something "magically impossible". But oh well... That's Harry for ya!

 

Similarly for me it's "The Golden Trio."

Don't really remember it ever being used in canon, but it pops up all the time in fandom. Also, "DADA". Not discussing it in shorthand, but like "Hello I am your new DADA professor." inside a story.

 

It's been said before but there have been previous pet peeve threads. I don't think I'd posted in them, so here are a few of mine:

Zambinis and Weaselys.

Moldyshorts.

Private Drives.

Howler-addicted!Molly.

"Voldemort is just a name" or some derivation thereof.

Fred and George are always friends of Harry-- even when the rest of (or a significant portion of) the Weasleys hate/want to take advantage of him.

Saying the following: Gred and Forge; Greasy Git; Snivellus; Slimy Slytherins.

Wandless magic.

Power levels... and more.

 

"Malfoys never lose."

 

This may have been mentioned once, but I have to spell it out:

A pretty Pansy Parkinson. I don't care how much you want to elevate/redeem the Slytherins, Pansy is ugly. Like a pug. Hermione might be buck-toothed (at least in the early books), but she was called pretty at least once (coughYuleBallcough).

Pansy has always been ugly.

On a similar note, please stop making Malfoy some Adonis. Just because Tom Felton is good-looking doesn't mean that Malfoy is the next tween heart-throb.

 

Gred and Forge are mentioned in canon, I think.

Wandless magic...I think it's implied?

But yeah, 'magical core' and 'power levels'...that's just :facepalm worthy.

 

Wandless magic all the time. The only problem I have is when author say that only awesomely powerful wizards like Dumbledore, Voldemort and Harry are capable of it.

 

I'm sure that this has been mentioned, but my biggest peeve is when canon characters always have the same fanon characteristics. Like Susan Bones. Why does she have to have huge tits in every story that she's in? I've read countless stories where she's only mentioned in passing, and almost without fail, her huge boobs are mentioned.

Most of the shitty authors on fanfic.net seem to believe that physical characteristics are king, and yet they only ever use ones that they've read in other stories.

Daphne Greengrass? We barely get a glimpse of her in the books, and she always always always looks the same in fics.

Its the same way with all of those characters. It drives me crazy

 

I got to disagree with that. I have seen Daphne as a blue eyed blond, a brunette, a redhead and a fem!Harry in looks.

 

Maybe I haven't been reading enough fanfiction, but all my shoddy memory can bring up is a blond Daphne who has blue eyes and is called the "Ice Queen/Princess". At least in Harry/Daphne fics.

Damn, I need to read more fanfiction.

Related to this Daphne discussion, Astoria's fanon portrayal annoys me. Why is she always portrays as Miss Perky and/or Little Miss Spunky? Why does everyone portray as a ball of energy, at least when Daphne features heavily in the fic?

No American exchange students to Hogwarts, please.

 

That's always confused me as well; why always spunky/bratty?

Daphne Greengrass in my personal mental view? Plat' blonde hair, and either green eyes as vibrant as Harry's, or sapphire blue eyes.

 

Okay, let's get something straight regarding some secondary characters we know very little about: most of these characterizations were first established by the first fanfiction writers back in 2006 (if not earlier) and (this is the more important part) they aren't always a bad template to work off of, as long as you do something new with them.

For instance, I don't have a problem if I see ice-queen!Daphne (a characterization I believe was first inspired in Big D's gem Harry Potter and the News - older DLP members, please tell me if I'm wrong) in a newer fic (as I suspect to see in Sesc's upcoming noir fic Unatoned), but I also know he's going to take it in a new direction with great writing and added depth.

Similarily (and with a healthy dose of shameless self-promotion) if people decide to expand upon the unique personality base I created for Su Li (who was a blank slate character nobody really wrote or cared about outside the shittiest of harem fics (and I think she may have had a minor role in one of Vash's fics too, can't remember...) until I wrote Silence Game), I wouldn't have a huge problem with it if they take the character in a new direction that's interesting.

I'm just saying I don't have a huge problem with fanon-established character archtypes - they can be a good base to use. I just wish people would expand on that base more often.

 

In truth, I can handle occasional bad grammar, a cliche plot, poor character interaction, and any number of other flaws in a story. However, what I cannot tolerate is characters acting completely fucking illogically just because the author is to lazy to take the time to think shit through.

For example, today I was reading s shit fic for some reason. I actually made it to chapter three before Harry and Hermione took a Muggle to meet Ron and Ginny outside of the Leaky Cauldron. The three of them stop outside the Leaky Cauldron and Harry and Hermione say she can't see the building because she's a muggle. This leads to all kinds of retarded questions like 'what's a muggle' and 'why can't I see it?'

This entire scenario was set up so that said muggle could recognize that the Leaky Cauldron was hidden by a 'glamour' and to show that she knew how to see through it.

After reading this, I raged for about ten minutes and wrote a massive flame to the author for having his characters totally disregard logical actions in order to push a retarded series of events forward.

Bottom line, characters shouldn't suddenly act illogically for no apparant reason. Most of what pisses me off about the Harry Potter books stems from this as well. Harry's 'Monster in his chest' is a great example as it shows just how lazy JK was in building the Harry/Ginny relationship.

 

Not an older member but I will correct you anyways. Daphne in that story was described as a rabid psychopath that cursed people for looking at her. The story that mainstreamed the Ice Queen template you are describing was Harry Potter and the Marriage Contracts by Cell.

But this reminds me of a pet peeve. I can not stand it when authors take a few paragraphs to rant about the houses personality traits. This is a shitty way to characterize large groups of people that are completely irrelevant to the story. Trying to group large amounts of people to set behaviors based on one or two loosely defined personality traits pisses me off. Authors always fuck up the Ravenclaws when doing this too. If students get up a 6 in the morning so they can get in extra study time this shows them as hard working not intelligent. This is worse when this becomes the characterization for major characters.

On a side note when did Gryfindor an Slytherin become adjectives? I facepalm whenever I read a character use the phrase 'Thats so slytherin.'

 

I was just reading a story that did the following and it reminded me of how much I hate it and want to kill it with fire whenever something like it gets written:

"Hi, Professor Lupin," Harry said.

"Please Harry, call me Remus," Lupin replied.

"Okay, Prof-...I mean, Remus."

No. That never fucking happens. Ever.

There are only two acceptable replies to that type of request:

1) serious: "Okay, Remus."

2) cheeky: "Okay, Professor Lupin."

And it goes double and triple for anytime it makes Harry look like a pussyfooting idiot around the parents of whoever's house he's at this time.

 

I hate to break it to you, but IceQueen!Daphne was already cliché when I wrote The Game Is Afoot around the time Clell was doing Marriage Contracts.

The earliest popular story I can think of offhand with this take on Daphne is Jeconais's Perfect Situations, penned back in 2005, which predates Clell's by years. Between them, Jeconais and S'TarKan have probably started more tropes than anyone. It's a pretty safe bet that if the trope didn't start with him, it was at least popularized by him.

 

I almost never browse outside of FF, but was just stating that Cell mainstreamed the IceQueen cliche not that he was first. After that story was completed every author and their mother felt the need to write one and throw it up on FF.net. Where as almost none were in existence before then.

Is Perfect Situations worth reading? I have always found Jeconas's Fics too fluffy for me.

 

It's a little fluffy in places, but it's tolerable. I find it one of his better stories. At ~10k words, it's about the right length for the story idea.

 

Nutter!Daphne...heh.

You know, I don't know if anyone's ever done a true Nutter!Daphne story, where she's completely obsessed with Harry through no fault of his own...

I'll post a rough idea in the Plot Bunny thread.