Keeping in mind that this is a list of pet peeves basically, which means personal preferences, not necessarily objectively bad clichés, I went through it and thought which of those have or will show up in my fics...

What if Potter Manor has been destroyed before it's brought up in the story? I can't say for sure that 5 will never happen, but is this just an aversion to Harry suddenly moving in to a palace-in-all-but-name, or a dislike of the concept of (Potter) manors in general?

Well, I guess I'm screwed there.

What if it's done by proxy? Harry technically has a vote, but leaves it to people who actually know what it's all about?

I have to agree to disagree here, because the theme in those three is basically "power corrupts". Which is a thing.

I'm aware that debunking someone's pet peeves by invoking RL examples is naive - it implies that the peeves only exist because they are caricatures of the real world. Peeves are just that - personal dislikes. However, I think there's an argument to be made that in some circumstances, education could be called training.

Training is most commonly used in fics in reference to the type of education that turns Harry into a battlemage badass. Is the peeve based on your dislike of the idea as a whole or its common portrayal in bad fics?

Well, I suppose I've taken some artistic license with that. Though in the most extreme case, I just have Harry be extremely proficient at apparition to justify his ability to literally be all over the battlefield and avoid having to use a shield.

I'm not sure about this one. What do you mean by magical genius? I completely agree that there's no way Harry becomes able to out-theorize Hermione over several months, let alone Dumbledore. But what if the rise in proficiency concerns only a single, specialized discipline? Again, is it a dislike of the idea itself, or just the portrayal in fanfiction?

I guess that's just a personal dislike I can't argue against.

 

Many people mention the apparent specialization and complexity of bureaucracy in the ministry or the amount of pro-sports teams as a reason to assume a much higher population.
I don't think that necessarily follows.

Magical society simply doesn't need many jobs that employ large numbers of people in our world, or only needs them in much smaller numbers. (For instance if construction is usually 5% of the population, but wizards only need 1/10th the time because of magic, then magical society only needs 0.5% of the population in construction.)
So what does everyone do instead? Well, a lot of young people play in sport leagues. Maybe half the population is in some form employed by the Ministry. Others just become independent researchers and write all those books we see in the library.

 

To all you people refering to elfs as sentient, I think the word you are looking for is sapient.

 

It's a dislike of the concept that manors existing represents. Manors are a holdover of the feudal system; wizarding manors imply that wizarding society has a significant feudal heritage. However, the feudal system was a Muggle system, because it was oriented around the Muggle monarch. While there are some wizards who would have walked in that circle, given the ratio of wizards to Muggles and the very low number of Muggle nobility relative to total population, there will be very few wizarding nobles indeed.

See above, feudal system. I'm happy for there to exist some skeleton of the feudal system in the wizarding world--just as it does in the Muggle world--but inherited direct political power is far more than a skeleton.

Wizarding and Muggle worlds run in parallel. It's fairly clear than the magical equivalent of classism ("Purebloodism") has been decreasing for a long time, just as the aristocracy has been declining for years in the Muggle world. We can see this in the way "mudblood" is considered a terribly rude word (equivalent to the Muggle "nigger") and in the fact that a Muggleborn has been the Minister for Magic (equivalent to Barack Obama becoming President of the US).

Voldemort's rise may have led to a brief resurgence among a powerful minority, but this was far too brief to change an entire political culture.

Any story that features a magical aristocracy of real power would be like a story set in the real world present day, but had somehow thought that segregation was still a thing in the US.

Further, on the topic of power corrupts... yes, it's a thing. But in the magical world, political power plays second fiddle to magical power. In many ways the latter determines the former. All too often a politically powerful Harry defeats a magically powerful manipulative Dumbledore with purely legal powers.

This is like walking up to a man with an army and telling him that the law says he has to do what you tell him.

In canon, the entire legal might of the Ministry was at best able to inconvenience Dumbledore for a few months... and in the end it turned out the whole thing played into his hands, because the moment they tried to close the legal trap and exercise their greatest legal power (of arrest), it turned out that their power was a flimsy slip of paper.

If you can't enforce your legal power via arrest and imprisonment, you have no power other than what people allow you.

My dislike stems from the fact that training inevitably means an acquisition of magical ability without a similar acquisition of magical understanding.

A moderate increase in proficiency in a single area does not equate to becoming a genius and as such clearly is not what I'm talking about (except where it does i.e. it turns out that this proficiency is sufficient to match geniuses).

If we were discussing this in a philosophy journal, sure. But that is not the common use of "sentience". People largely use it to refer to a level of perception of the world that is human-like.

 

I think that since the Wizarding World had been part of the real world until the split in 1690, a time when the feudal system was still the dominant social system of much of the world, the wizards are quite likely to have feudal roots at the very least. And since personal power plays an important role among wizards, as Taure just mentioned in the case of Dumbledore, I would even say that a feudal system would fit well. If you cannot count on the law being upheld by ministry employees you might very well look for a powerful Lord to protect you and your interests.

 

According to Wikipedia:

So, not really.

 

I addressed this point:

 

The definition of Sentience according to the dictionary is: "Having the power of perception by the senses; conscious." In other words it means self-awareness, the ability to perceive the difference between yourself and others as separate and react to the world around you accordingly.

The definition of Sapience according to the dictionary is: "Having or showing great wisdom or sound judgment."

 

I have to contest the point that there would have been very few wizard nobles. Wizards would have been very likely to be enobled in the (especially early) Medieval Age or the "Dark Ages" simply for their power - either as a reward for loyality, or by seizing land themselves. In a time where nobles would feud, and strength of arms often decided conflicts, wizards had a decisive advantage compared to muggles. I don't really see many ambitious wizards not seeking to become part of the nobility in those times. Their families might have lost their status or died out in the centuries following those more, ah, upwardly mobile times, but again, given the advantages of Magic, that's not that likely.

 

You seem to assume that wizards want to be nobles. I see no reason why they would want that. They don't need "land" to enrich and feed them or a bunch of muggles with swords and bows to protect them.

 

Yes but half of them are old as dirt. Some are older.

 

Nobility meant having power, status and money back then. How many ambitious wizards would have wanted to play second fiddle to non-magicals, bowing to them, deferring to them, just because those were nobles?

 

Fans with decades of loyalty are more likely to pay for the expensive seats, not less.

Quidditch is THE sport of wizards. The only wizards in the world not going were those too poor to afford it, too injured or busy to attend or (sniff) muggleborns who simply don't understand.

Oh, and Americans.

 

I think you've got the whole thing wrong. Nobility doesn't mean shit when you have a stick that can kill or control with a word. I don't see a single scenario where wizards ever defer to muggles even the ones that are noble. It might mean the world for a muggle to become a noble in those times but any competent wizard should have more power than most kings.

 

I think you do not understand. If wizards do not defer to muggles, then they are nobles by default if they can enforce that. Even if tehy were weaker than present-day wizards, lacking key spells and all, they would certainly be in the upper classes, which means nobility.

 

That's assuming they can be bothered to deal with muggles.

 

I do not think that many will prefer to avoid muggles, instead of lording it over them.

 

But why? Muggles are:

- Weak: They can barely defend themselves against each other, and their laughable excuses for powers are limited by those weird fizzicks things

-Frail: Average life expectancy of 60~70 worldwide in the canon timeframe. They die in car crashes, burning buildings, childbirth, falling from heights, head trauma by coconut, etc.

-Disgusting: A fic I once read did a great job of explaining this. The objective of a Cleaning Charm is just that. If you want something cleaned (save for Dark magic) then presto - it's done. No amount of Muggle sterilisation is going to trump reality-warping sanitation.

Why would the kind of wizards you're talking about want to spend any more time around such pitiful creatures than they have to? Other than killing them outright, but they serve no purpose. Wizards already dominate the magical world. They can 'lord it over' goblins, elves, centaurs or hags already: they fought the wars (and ended up on the better side) to 'earn' it.

 

I think you have quite a warped and also idealized view. You portray wizards as both scum of the lowest order, and yet somehow noble enough not to indulge in their power against humans, only about everyone else - most of those looking even more "disgusting" by your standards.