Fair enough. I'm at the "extreme neophyte" end of the spectrum where it was less than a year ago I was thinking, "wow, Nightmares of Futures Past had a cool premise; I wonder if there are any other stories like that?"

 

I find this interesting.

I got into fanfiction reading quite late, about in 2011/2012 period and I have to say that I never liked many of those fics that are considered "DLP Classics" such as Black Comedy, The Lie I've Lived or even Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived.

 

The discussion of Taure's list above - specifically if they are clichés and what they contain - is going on here: TaureBot's list of Fanfiction-Clichés: Discuss.

This thread, however, is only for posting clichés that make you stop reading something.

 

Seems like a matter of taste. I got in very late and enjoyed all three quite a bit. Part of it is just the newness factor, I think. TLIL was the first fic I read that took dueling in that direction, Black Comedy was the first humor-centric fic I read, and HPBWL was the first nonBWL story I read. So, right away you're kind of blown away by the concept (if you go into it with a clean slate) and it gets points for that.

Just out of curiosity, do you feel frustrated/aggravated by HP fanfic these days? Kind of a "nothing new under the sun" thing? It sounds like (from other comments you've made) that you still actively read it, and going by that list a reading session for you would probably be angrily clicking out of 99% of everything you read after 10 minutes. Which doesn't sound, you know, that fun.

EDIT: Didn't see the thread change until just now. Did I just post in the wrong thread IN MY OWN THREAD? What.

 

Nah. The thread just degenerated into a debate about how certain plotelements work. Sesc asked me to pull the not really related stuff out of the thread.

 

I wouldn't say frustration. I don't expect to find something readable, so I'm not frustrated when I fail. I actively read fanfic, yes, but mostly that involves reading a hell of a lot of first chapters and not continuing. Or first paragraphs, for that matter. Often I don't even get past the author's note, if there's the hint of something I don't like in there.

Sometimes I leave authors reviews describing exactly how their summary made me decide not to read their fic.

These days, I find a fic worth reading maybe once every six months.

 

I'd agree that it has been difficult to find new HP fan fiction worth reading. A lot of the fics I've really enjoyed are in limbo. As for new fics, I'm not even bothering unless they have 10+ chapters and even then its iffy.

I got into fan fiction through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (which sort of hit a high point for me and then began to derail so sadness) and then some of the DLP classics.

A lot of the things that some people may mind (custom wands, trunks that have whole villages in them, patronus that are mythical, etc), I enjoy.

However, things (cliches and\or peeves) that stop me from reading a story include:

1. Harry (or any other character) being excessively whiny or "boo hoo" aka

"Harry curled into a ball and cried soggy tears as the pain of the Dursleys beating thrummed through his soul and debilitated his already battered body. He thought of suicide and grabbed a spider from his cupboard and ate it hoping it was one of those venemous ones, he wasn't sure since the Dursleys took his school books and threw them in the trash so that Harry's teachers would hate him. Harry wished he could die. Every day, every second. Large tears, the size of emeralds fell from his eyes and soaked his clothes. He shivered in the cold, it was -22 degrees in the cupboard, the Dursleys were hoping he wold die of frostbite. No luck, something, the strange thing that allowed his hair to be a messy mop - forced his body to live even though his will was sapped. He shook a feeble fist to the sky, just let me die God he prayed. Let me join my parents. " And his wish was granted because angsty's only fun with a purpose.

2. Harems...I already discussed this somewhere with the peoplz who's thoughts mattered to me

3. Bashing fics that bash characters that I'm partial to (Sirius, Hermione, etc).

4. A quality to the writing... I have to find an example but some fics or books in general have this hard to get into style so no matter how cool the premise or how many rec's it's boring.

5. Clingy, jealous or otherwise sad sack Hermione or any other female characters. Actually beyond the initial Ginny hate the one thing I liked about her was she went out and dated other people and did her own thing.

6. Unnecessary pining for any one character

7. Fics that seem to come to a natural ending point within a good 20 - 30 chapters but then continue on for another 50 chapters with some new randomly inserted characters and random plot points.

 

Damn, that sucks. You started with some top tier stuff. You must've been disappointed when you started digging deeper and realized that 99% of it is trash.

I was lucky to start reading fan fiction way back in 2003 when I had no standards or idea of what good writing was. It took coming to DLP to make me into a fan fiction snob. Before that I would read any piece of garbage.

There are a ton of things that would make me rage quit a story these days (most of which Taure listed). If I had to pick one cliche that kills a story for me it would probably be the fics that have Harry as a fitness freak which eventually becomes karate, boxing, whatever other hand-to-hand fighting styles. The moment I read the author start describing 9 year old Harry with his miniature set of abs and how he gets up at 5 AM every morning and jogs around the neighborhood alone I click the X.

 

quoting because thumbs up is gone for some reason.

Reading a story of a conflict between Muggles and Wizards, and the Muggles aren't laughably curbstomped.

 

Marriage Law stories are a big NO (unless the main characters' reaction is overthrowing the government). I simply don't see the child soldiers who just won the bloody civil war agreeing to marry whoever the corrupt government decides.

 

That exact thought made me write my own story.

 

I've stopped reading stories that do that tired old thing where they put the title above the summary. Happily, it seems to have cut the number of bad fic I run into down to almost nothing. :?

Too fucking right.

The sad thing is that there are a ton of stories where magical cores get mentioned, even though it's completely unneeded in that fic!

They sort of got introduced for and were commonly used as a way to show why someone (Harry) was more powerful than other people, or to create a mechanic by which he could become more powerful or steal someone else's core to do the same, or to explain how he could remove someone's magic, or to explain (pre-horcruxes) why Voldemort survived (involving some jiggery pokery with him leeching off of Harry's magical core).

If you're not using any of those elements that hang on the idea of magical cores, though, there's no reason to mention them as being a thing... at all... ever.

Despite that, some people bring it up in their stories and then never address it again; they just name check it and move on without ever looking back. Why? What's the point? They just damage their story by even mentioning such a hackneyed and ill-favored story element.

RAGE!
lol, out of that entire list, this is perhaps the one that is most offensive to me.

Possibly because of how mind-numbingly ubiquitous it is.

Unless I miss my guess, #9 really only applies to juvenile Harry Potters, not adult ones who could reasonably end up on the Wizengamot.


Harry getting sodomized by Vernon. Over the top abuse by the Dursleys is usually indicative of a bad story anyway, but this is the top of the shit heap.

First off, it's so far beyond necessary that including it is just in poor taste. Secondly, it makes the author look like they are either just trying to play "Can you top this?" with the abusive guardians or are completely lacking in finesse and have no clue how to make Harry's treatment at #4 Privet Drive come across as bad, without resorting to crazy acts of sexual assault that are outrageously OOC behavior for the characters in question.

It's even worse if we're talking about a Harry who has already started Hogwarts, because even if there were a chance in Hell he'd have let such treatment pass without reporting it, as a small child, there's no way a Harry with access to magic would literally bend over and take it in the ass, rather than use magic to kick Vernon's ass and simply let the chips fall where they may. :facepalm

 

Wrong!BWL.

Whether Harry has a brother or a sister who is mistaken for being the one responsible for vanquishing Voldemort, it's so fucking awful I just stop reading that kind of shit.

Also, James and Lily neglecting Harry to the extreme, like where they forget to make enough food for him to eat, or just plain forget he exists. Now, don't get me wrong, there probably is a plausible way that his parents could neglect him, as neglect has many forms, but these kinds of extremes just bore me.

 

There are only two that I can think of that I don't even bother giving a go, the first being gender bender main protag fics, no matter how well written and how much acclaim they recieve I just can't do it.

The second, not a cliche per say but still prevalent in fanfiction, is interactive fics via authors notes and poll driven stories. Some authors generally want to write a story driven by others, maybe as a challenge to themeselves or just the pure mayhem of not planning anything. 9 times out of 10 it comes across as a thinly veiled attention/review seeking grab that I struggle with.

From what I gather there are some quaity fics using those two examples, some on this site, I just really can't bring myself to read them. My loss.

Outside of those it's the quality of the author and the execution of the cliche that determines if I continue reading or not, not the cliche itself.

 

I honestly don't get this and would be interested in your reasoning. I'm not a particularly big fan of gender-bends but it doesn't really factor into my enjoyment of a fic in the drastic way that it does for you.

 

By gender-bends do you mean AU stories where a character was born with a different gender or stories where a character has his/her gender somehow altered?

 

Either. Both.

 

Most of stories with physically abusive Dursleys would also have ultra-manipulative Dumbledore, whose only purpose in life would be to make Harry's life hell in every way possible. So any reports would probably be waved away, as Harry being raped would be somehow necessary for the "Greater Good".

(Although, Dumbledore knowingly ignoring Harry's neglect is canon. I hardly think he would condone physical abuse though.)

Harry and Sirius acting pathetically immature in front of the whole Wizengamot made me cringe. I cannot fathom how on earth would such immaturity make anyone popular; many of the things they say in that fic should invite ridicule, not make them popular with the ladies. If acting like a pair of mentally deficient baboons worked like it did for Harry and Sirius, I'm sure a lot more people would adopt that particular strategy.

Reading this makes me wonder : are there any stories that contain cliches you would normally take to be a story breaker, yet they inexplicably work in that setting? This is the case for me in Hogwarts Battle School. The story has the Headmaster micromanaging every detail in Harry's life (similar to most bad Manipulative Dumbledore fics) and Hermione being better than canon and striking a friendship with Harry against all odds and abusive Dursleys as well. Yet, very surprisingly, it works for me in that story.

 

Maybe Dumbledore, having grown up in the 19th century, and in the already not as advanced Magical World, simply considers abuse and corporal punishment normal? It's not as if anyone seems to care about what Neville went through until he showed his first accidental magic.

 

The magical world is not advanced?