I'm aware many of the things have been discussed. I just haven't personally been around to discuss them and wanted to tell SOMEONE else my thoughts as I don't personally write, not creative enough to pull off a good story, and I won't pollute the world with something crappy.

EDIT: I resent having my actions called adorable.

EDIT2: I agree that not many good H/F fics exist, but I don't really count harem fics as H/<whoever happens to be part of that harem> pairing fics. H/F monogamous fics are very very limited (especially as I only read fics with at LEAST 100k words), of those, some are the best of any I've ever read. For how many fics there are total, the ratio of good to bad is probably one of the best.

EDIT3: Also when I said Ron was useless, that doesn't mean I dislike him. I guess he's not ENTIRELY useless, being a friend to Harry IS important. Over all he's a good guy.

 

I used to hate Ron's guts for being a retarded prick in DH, but I've since learned to disregard most of the stupid shit from that book and it allowed me to see Ron's good side again. I also used to think that Neville would have been a better best friend to Harry than Ron, but I reconsidered that as well. Neville takes five friggin years to enter his bamf stage, then we hear next to nothing about him in HBP... oh fuck him, Ron can be much more easily written as a badass sidekick. Go Ron!

I'm done now

 

Yeah I pretty much completely disregard book 7 and am happy to do away with 6 as well. The ONLY useful parts of those books was the horcruxes, the rest was all angst and filler. That's how I remember it anyway.


Also wow, I can't believe I forgot to comment on soul bonds.

There's two reasons I hate them, the first is definitely mentioned in this thread. The denial of choice. The very idea is offensive, it's not romantic to be forced by the gods themselves to fall for another person (or you know...many) and be unable to love another. Even worse is when failure to adhere to that bond results in some kind of punishment, II can only recall two. Death and emotional deadening. What the fuck.

The second is actually more important. By forcing a soul bond on people you are removing what is actually the most interesting part of relationships in fiction to read about. The pursuit, the will they won't they (however cleché, and however obvious the answer, it can be quite good to read). The development of the relationship between the two, whether they were friends, strangers, whatever, to begin with. Understanding WHY they're compatible instead of just being told they are.

All these things are way more interesting than just being told, hey, these two are madly in love and here's a lot of shitty sex scenes to go with it.

By doing that you're also essentially admitting to being a bad author. You couldn't think up and/or write a believable sequence of events leading to their relationship, so you just skipped it altogether. Wow, just wow.


EDIT: I must say though, I prefer stories with no Harry/? pairing at all. Not because I think pairings are bad, but because most of the time writers don't know what the fuck they're doing. Because of that I've found that some of the best fics barely even touch on a romance for Harry, and if they do it's brief and probably about him being unable to have a relationship at this current point in time. Harry always being the main character of course, we must obey the Potter Law.

Unfortunately these are hard to find as FFN doesn't allow you to pick one character then select AND NO OTHERS. I've been using a script to filter out all stories with more than just Harry listed as a character post search but it's very annoying, and even if they DON'T list another character, that doesn't mean there is no pairing, just that the author doesn't care to put it in the tags OR the A/N.

 

I remember coming across one Harry/Gabrielle fic, where Gabrielle chose to somehow bond with Harry, though it seemed to have no true effect, but she stayed silent on the matter. Now see, the thing here is that the effect of the Veela bond, a choice made by Gabrielle and not the usual excuse of 'her magic did it on her own', basically made Harry incapable of enjoying the touch of another woman, he couldn't feel anything, whether it was lust or love.

Naturally, there is no choice in the matter, because the silly bitch will go crazy or die, I forget which, if he refuses, and this being Harry he doesn't refuse.

Just once, I'd really like to come across a fic where someone tries to bond/bind Harry to them and he completely rejects them.

 

It's Veela!Draco for extra juice. link

 

Already got that in my follows and already read it, but thanks, I was thinking more of something less-crackfic in nature.

Edit: No, wait, I was thinking of another one, though I've read this one before, where Draco is actually a Veela-hybrid or something, he tries to bond with Harry, but Harry doesn't know about that shit, thinks it's some kind of love potion and gets Luna, Ginny and some third girl with him to resist the bond. The end of the oneshot is Draco dying in St. Mungo's because of the failed bond.

 

Please, no more.

 

I actually really really want to write this into my current fic. Probably won't show up until the 6th or 7th arc. Because HELL'S BELLS I very much hate the "O WE'RE DESTINED TO BE TOGETHER FOREVERRRRRRR" that a lot of authors fall into.

Also, Soul-Bond idea is in many published paranormal romance novels. And for some godforsaken reason, THEY'RE POPULAR. "O WE JUST MET BUT YOU'RE MY CHOSEN ONE. WHAT. WHY ARE YOU RUNNING AWAY. HERE LET ME TRAP YOU SO STOCKHOLM SETS IN" <= I don't get it. How is this in any way romantic?

 

It's not.

Which is why you see most fanfiction along this root using one of the following plot devices:

• manipulative!Dumbledore (and therefore, Dumbles!bashing) causing the link to happen
  
  
• a third, outside interference driving it (Veela magic can't work in water, because they originate as fire-elementals! So the magic takes over, rushes back, and overwhelmes the poor Veela who then bonds with Harry!)
  
  
• Veela magic itself demands the bond because it's predestined
  
  
• Veela magic creates the link when someone saves the Veela—playing off the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished) trope
  
  
• etc.

 

While we're on the topic of Veelas and all that nonsense, I'd like to express my intense dislike for the whole "Oh no, my Veela-Allure/Charm/Compulsion can't be turned off and this causes men/boys to physically assault me" thing. It just doesn't seem like a useful species trait, you might as well make it into a species-wide curse rather than just a side-effect of their inhuman blood.

 

That's even worse than the bond not being a choice at all. That's beyond manipulative. I'd refuse out of spite.

This made me laugh pretty hard, and actually sums it up pretty nicely.

Just because they're not human doesn't mean their traits have to be positive. Perhaps you could call it a curse. It does have the upside of being able to manipulate most men when they actually want to though.

EDIT: I should also add that it being a downside at all is actually very opinionated. There could be, and probably are, Veela that revel in the attention and subsequent power.

 

Hilariously enough the fic is called "Hope" and I actually got it from DLPs library. Here's an excerpt from it that aptly enough describes the thing:

Mind you, Harry's been nudged and pushed constantly towards Gabrielle by all those around him during the previous chapters of the fic. And he still goes for it because 'muh martyrdom'. Oh and she would go insane, not die, due to Mating before she was 17 years old.

 

I've got two more hatreds I've just come up with. I have so many of them.


Any use of the word certain in the following context, "A certain bushy haired witch.".

No, just no. It's like the author is trying to be funny, at the same time as being subtle. Neither of which is true, it's just annoying. Stop that shit. It caused me to form an irrational hatred of the word itself. It's not clever, and actually makes me want to close the fic, no matter how good it is.


The use of the word "meanwhile" to tie scenes together.

It's not that they're technically wrong to use it the way they are... But it just sounds bad when reading it back.
For example,
< 2 page scene comes to a close >
< new paragraph > Meanwhile, < new scene >.
It reads back like the author wants you to believe that the scenes are actually a single scene. When there's no reason to do that. Why not just start a new scene with a line break and say something like "While x was doing y, < new scene >".


I'm not sure if I'm correct to dislike that or not, but I personally hate reading it. It kicks me out of the atmosphere because it's so weird.

 

Hope... Odran, was it written by Jeconias? If it was it explains everything.

 

Yeah. I never encountered the writer before or any of his stuff, so I didn't know what I was getting into. I only kept reading up to this point and slightly beyond, before I gave up on the slim hope that Harry would laugh in her face and wait for her to go insane or at least arrange a swift death for her.

 

One can dream.

 

Jeconias was a popular author in the Harry Potter fandom some years back, he did not get on well with DLP if I remember my facts right. If you search the forum you should be able to find some threads where he and some of the members on this forum duke it out.

 

Is Warlocke included in this? Because his posts tend to thoroughly amuse me.

 

Damn, it was a mix up of authors, it was Kinsfire who was duking it out with people here on DLP, he and Jeconias were active in the same circles during the same time-period, so I mixed them up. Here is a link to the Kinsfire debacle.

Edit: Warlocke did not post in that thread.

 

You know what else I really hate? Reading a story that seems sort of familiar, but I'm not really sure if it was good or not. Only to get a few thousand words in and come across something that instantly makes me hate the story, while remembering that this exact same thing happened last time. It wasted my time not once, but twice, and maybe a third time in the future...