What the fuck? I can gladly say I've never read any of those.

 

So you generally hate shitty OC's. I think we can all agree with that.

World, I think there is a difference between training so that Harry can kill Voldemort in a straight up duel and giving the one person who can end the war a bit of self-defense training to avoid being slaughtered by the legions of murderers after him.

In canon, Harry was always going to need a dues ex to kill Voldemort - doesn't mean it still wasn't negligible to give him some training to defend himself or escape from Death Eaters

 

I think I found my biggest pet peeve: when for one reason or another, Harry changes his appearance. If the main character suddenly has different hair color, eye color, doesn't need glasses, I really can't think of him as Harry Potter.

Edit: in this fic I'm reading now, they changed even his name. Time to hit the red X button.

 

I don't think I've ever read about a rugby-playing Mr. Granger.

However, a zillion fics out there say he's a former member of the SAS. That way, he can slaughter a small force of death eaters who attack his home, looking for Hermione, with nothing but a knife and a sneer. Then either he or one of his former SAS buddies can train Harry and his friends.

It's worse when they change his name.

I want to read about Harry, not some douche author's idea of a really cool OC name.

 

The name changes normally really annoy me, but they can be pulled off if the Author can give a good enough reason.

'Dan' being in the SAS just annoys me. In fact, using Dan and Emma annoys me. My current one (slowly being made better than the steaming pile of shit it was) features Danielle and Emmanuel Granger. Just because I can.

 

Given JKR's naming scheme (see Harry's middle name, Draco's, Sirius', Ginny's, etc as examples), there's a good chance that either Hermione's mother's name is Jane/Jean, or that she has a paternal/maternal relative called Jean.

Just conjecture on my part, though.

Also, changes to Harry I can tolerate if there's a logical explanation for them, and if they're pulled off in a convincing manner, with the effects affecting his upbringing/situation.

Harry suddenly growing several inches and becoming a miniature Arnold S' during his summer break isn't just a simple "Oh, Harry, big growth spurt you've had there!"

 

The phrases "Merlin's pants", "Merlin's saggy testicles", "Merlin's beard" piss me off especially when adults use them. Canon or not, it sounds ridiculously juvenile.

It's one of the things I like about Awaken Sleeper which instead uses "Deep magic" and "Merlin's might" instead.

 

Using 'Oh Merlin!' in the same way people use 'Oh Jesus!' works, I reckon. But nobody (to my knowledge) says anything along the lines of 'Oh Jesus' scrotum'. So 'Merlin's saggy balls' just does sound childish.

However, when used along the lines of 'Circe's cuticles', I don't mind. I think, as the body part is completely non-sexual, it works. It isn't a child trying to be all big and clever for using the word 'pants', or 'balls'.

Though cursing on 'Merlin's blood' worked surprisingly well, the only time I ever saw it. 'Merlin's might' was a brilliant one too.


A new one - incompetent aurors. For whatever reason, Harry is being arrested. But instead, he manages to fight off twelve fully trained police officers!

Balls to that. He's good, but not THAT good.

 

Dan as "The Dentist" could be a Dexter like sociopathic serial killer teaching Harry how to deal with his problems

 

I use "Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ" every chance I get. My wife just rolls her eyes.

However, my favorite is one that's been stuck in my head since the first Batman movie had Michael Keaton as Batman and Jack Nicholson as The Joker: "Jesus Marimba" (pronounced as "Hay-soos") I don't know why, but it makes me happy to say it. My kids are saying it now, that's how much I've done it.

As long as it's alliterative, I don't really have a problem with it. IIRC, Hermione's use of "Merlin's pants!" in DH was because a friend of JKR's had dared her to put that in.

He's not that good. I'd like to see a one-shot wherein Harry - say, just post-HBP - is acting like a douche about [insert b.s. reason here], and back-talks someone like Kingsley or Moody, who proceeds to wipe the floor with young Harry. Bonus points if said Auror adds in sarcastic and "helpful" hints, saying it's a "teachable moment." /awseome

 

I'm getting tired of people treating Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw as lesser houses and sometimes flat-out forgetting they exist. Griffyndor and Slytherin aren't everything, guys!

 

Hufflepuff needs a lot more love. I am currently bouncing an idea for a Dark!Hufflepuff!Harry around, but I can't quite get it right...

 

If you do, definitely post in it the next month's contest. More entries = win.

Also, yeah, I'm up to write a Hufflepuff!Harry down the line. Though he'd probably the same, only with yellow and black colour schemes instead of red and gold. Hmm.

 

Snape and/or Luna as extended characters.

For the most part, people can't write either. There's not a recurring theme I found for Snape, he's just badly done normally, and excessively so.

Luna is normally either just messing with people's heads, has 'full mage sight', or is a seer. Very rarely is she just a young girl who likes to believe.

We see a lot of love for both Snape and Luna in fanon. And they can be great characters when written well. Unfortunately, there isn't the same amount of canon details for either as other popular characters (Harry, Hermione, Dumbledore, etc), but there is more details there than compared to tertiary characters (Quirrel, etc). This means we've only seen a portion of the character.
I'd like to hope that Luna wouldn't blame everything on Nargles or Snorkacks. Or Stubby Broadman. She solves (or attempts to) runic crosswords. She painted her ceiling. She dueled DEs in the MoM.

Snape is more than a vindictive git (although I dislike the character). He's incredibly intelligent - (assumingly) creating spells and modifying potions in or around his sixth year. He's a half-blood, and yet was (presumably) either inner-circle, or not red-shirt level in the DEs.

I just feel people waste Snape and Luna most of the time, pressing them down into mean-git and mental-sexpot (nothing wrong with that one though), when there's a helluva lot more there that could be used.

 

You might enjoy Harry and the Hobgoblins by Respitechristopher, Thaumologist. It has a canon compliant Luna who is very clever and who isn't a seer/druid/whatever.

 

*adds to current list of things to read (is at about 25...).

Thanks for the rec, Pers

 

I'm really annoyed with the fact that all the time travel to Riddle's era at Hogwarts fanfictions I read either include no Blacks or just shitty OCs for that family. There were four different Black family members attending Hogwarts at the same time as Tom Riddle, it can't be that hard to use one of them instead of making up original characters.

 

Valid point, but keep in mind that nothing is known about those family members besides their names, so they might as well be OCs anyway. It's the same as the argument for the use of Daphne Greengrass in lieu of OCs - and there's essentially no difference.

 

I understand that, but I believe it would be better if they made up a personality for a character we know only the name of rather than create a whole new one. Especially since a lot of times these authors fail at picking names (I can't forget this one story where a Black OC had a Japanese name).

 

If they set up a decent backstory for the OC (and their origins), I've got no issue. But let's be honest, that hardly ever happens. I can second the point about name!fail, having facepalmed enough times to break my nose at bad OC names.

Another peeve is the sheer amount of times parseltongue is spelt 'parseltounge'. It's by far the most common spelling mistake I've seen in fanfiction, and it really gets on my nerves, along with 'Occulmency'.