The reason that type of writing is so annoying is that it's breaking POV. (Unless the story has been in Omniscient Third Person POV throughout, which very few modern writers use, or can write well.)

 

I would like to reiterate the already mentioned pet peeve of the trunk. Harry buying this magical ten compartment trunk which he immediately fills with: a library, a training room, an apartment (complete with Floo-compatible fireplace) and then gets like a dozen more for his friends...

It makes me want to do a Harry Potter/ Discworld crossover fic where Harry ends up buying Rincewind's Luggage. (Turns out the store owner kept it stunned to keep it from misbehaving.) Maybe just a oneshot. Starts out like every independent Harry stereotype. Gets a bunch of money from Gringotts to get set up on his own. Decides he needs a trunk. Bam. Suddenly he's got a misbehaving, time traveling, ass-kicking Luggage that doesn't listen to commands and is probably (read: definitely) smarter than he is.

Yeah. Fuck trunks.

 

No, the reason that type of writing is so annoying is not the format - it's that it crushes all the dimensions and potential out of characters and situations, the writer discarding their 2D carcasses like the serial killer of shitty stories.

I think Portus' frustration stems from what is simply bad writing. Many fanfiction writers are not, in the slightest way, imaginative. That's the curse of fanfiction, in the end - the average story on FF.net is just a rehash of a rehash.

This shows, particularly in circumstances where it's clear the writer gives no thought to the characters they just punish and discard. They don't think of how to make use of them, how to weave a web with them.

A good story - every good story - is about the interaction between characters. And that's why you can't just throw them away.

 

Dont forget the movie theater. I've seen several that had electrical outlets and built in movie theaters.

 

Chuck Norris joke are totally played out, but you get a thumbs up for making the Mrs. Norris connection, you damned dirty ape. :awesome

 

Really? Wow.

Even if the magical trunk was an exciting and new idea, how could that ever work?

 

mmmmmmmagic!

 

My biggest peeve - Harry has a twin and he isn't written properly. The twin exists for the sole purpose of being bashed and getting Lily and James bashed.

His parents abandon him in the park (orphanage, zoo etc) and he grows up on the streets and all while his spoiled brother grows up in the lap of luxury and cannot be bothered to train because of his fame and quidditch and goodness knows what. I even remember a couple of fics in which Harry has a twin and his parents actually abuse him while the twin (being the supposed BWL) gets all the love and glory. Leave the Sacrifices arc and similar good stories out, but the usual stuff in this genre is bad. Very bad.

Oh, and sometimes you get Neville as the arrogant BWL pretender. Which, though slightly better, is still puke-inducing.

 

Neville as an arrogant BWL is at least somewhat plausible, especially if he grows up with his grandmother Augusta, who seems like a real piece of work (The way she talked at St. Mungos during OoTP was a clear indication that she was a snobbish and arrogant bitch).

I agree, that stories where Lily and James live despite the fact that Harry or his twin defeats Voldemort are garbage. No-one, who writes a story like that bothers to create a proper explanation for the feat. The whole point of the survival in canon was that the willing self-sacrifice could protect others from almost anything. No toddler, without something like that would be able to stop a fully trained wizard no matter how many talents they might have in the future.

 

I hate people screwing up the timeline. Especially with random tech and music - like Dudley playing Final Fantasy X in 1994. Or Lockhart being a Bieber fan. Changing the HP timeline or messing up when muggle crap is supposed to be released without due cause makes me rage.

Due cause would probably only be a crossover or something when you need to do a timeline mesh. Like making HP ten years later so if someone fell into a mystical portal in Stargate's Atlantis, it is more conceivable that they might meet sixth year Harry messing around in the Chamber of Secrets without unnecessary time travel.

Still. NO CELL PHONES IN MY HOGWARTS. Operable or otherwise.

 

I share your pain. Any kind of Harry using some ipod, mobile, playing xbox,360/ps3 or having some big plasma screen is an auto fail. I never got the idea why people need to adjust the timeline to write crossovers with Stargate where I can't even define a timeline according to the TV show.

Which leads me to my dislike of most of the HP/Stargate crossovers which only purpose seems to be to retell the boring TV episodes with Harry in them without really influencing the story. As if the people who write these stories lack the imagination what it would truly mean having a magical being inside their universe.

 

Oh, samkar, I feel your pain. Crossovers which don't change events are my nemesis. I hate them. I hate them. Argh! They're a complete waste of words!

HP/Stargate, for example. Harry can do magic! The laws of thermodynamics are his bitch! You're telling me Carter can't come up with something paradigm-breaking for him to do?

 

That a majority of Slytherin!Harry fic's end up with him fucking Draco.

Shit like that should just be burned.

 

Harry Potter is secretly Harry Riddle, with some really stupid middle names. For example:

Oh, and I suppose overzealous use of colons and semi-colons.

 

God, that story can out-cheese a grilled cheese sandwich. :facepalm

 

I picked up a new peeve today. For those frustrated with cell phones and iPods for Harry, I offer the reverse anachronism; Founders (or their portrait/horcrux/recently revived clone) that sound just slightly more stilted than Dumbledore.

A thousand years ago a quartet of magicals founded a school. They were cool. They spoke (at best) like freakin' CHAUCER!

Unless Hermione's translating from Latin, they'll be virtually inscrutable without some 'translation magic', which didn't exist canonically as it would tend to dismiss the value of Barty Crouch Sr.'s 150 language mastery and give Minister Fudge no excuse for taunting the Bulgarian minister.

It's one thing for Sir Nicholas, the Grey Lady and the Binns to be up on modern English- while ghosts, they've been hanging around students for the intervening centuries.

It's a peeve- it doesn't have to be too rational.

 

Thousand or so years ago, each founder would of spoken a different language, because each came from a different area of the United Kingdom.

Since Godric came from Wales, he'd of most probably of spoken Welsh.
People think that Salazar came from Norfolk because it has a lot of fens (apparently), so he'd of spoken a Brythonic language.

I'm not sure about the other founders.

It's likely that they all spoke Latin as well, though.

It all depends on a) were the portraits isolated, or around people for a long time? If they were isolated since their creation, they'd still speak the languages that the original founders would of without change, and b) were they around people for a period of time (say, up to 500 years ago or so) but then isolated somehow? If that's the case, it's likely they'd of spoken 'olde English' or something similar.

Also, no such thing as 'Celtic runes!' No one has any idea what the written language of the Celts looked like, unlike Germanic/Norse/Gaelic.

 

Having written a founders era story myself, this is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome, despite it being a very minor detail. Its a matter of convenience verses authenticity. Its much easier to just write all their dialect in modern English. It's just easier to write, its easier for the reader to read, and the whole purpose of a story is to be a common medium of communication. We've all seen the year 4 stories with the terribly written Fleur and Krum dialogue. Not to mention I wouldn't know how to write a 1000 year old language to fit the times (its a lot more than just writing 'art' and 'though' all the time).

The founders also all taught at Hogwarts. That pretty much means in addition to whatever their original language was, they all had to know the same language otherwise teaching would be impossible. Much easier to write them the same. Dialects, even if written properly, don't always make the story better, or more authentic.

 

I would say the opposite is a pet peeve of mine. Authors thinking that since they studied Shakespeare they can give their Hogwarts-era fic a more realistic feel. When authors throw in a word or two it annoys me. When every sentence is written in 16th century English I rage drop the story and spend a long time writing a flame for the author.

 

A complete tangent, but... Do we actually know how long Binns has been around?