Precisely my point.

I do what I can.

 

Warlocke, I think all your pet peeve posts should be read to the tune of this song.

 

That's like saying getting stabbed in the stomach is 99% better than having your balls sawed off.

 

Dumbledore's insistence that no one in the Order should talk to Harry while he is being guarded at the Dursleys, and Harry never questioning it. Even after the fifth year.

When Harry is the only one in the whole world to have a magical animagus form, that too multiple. He is a pheonix, he is a dragon and so on.

No respect for Voldemort. They keep calling him names like Moldywart, Moldypants or Tommy boy! I mean the guy is a Dark Lord...

 

Derogatory nicknames for the enemy is actually a time-honored tradition. Especially common during WWII.

 

It doesn't fit in the HP universe very well. Also if you're going to have a derogatory nickname pick something that doesn't suck.

 

At least make it sound like it wasn't made up by a five year old.

 

Gotta agree there.

Referring to him as "Tom" is enough of an insult, really.

 

I'm partial to "Riddle" when it comes to Harry insulting Voldemort. "Tom" is too familiar, which works best when coming from Dumbledore as they have somewhat of a history. For Harry, "Riddle" flows better, in my opinion, and still acknowledges Voldemort's Muggle roots while also distancing Harry a bit from him.

 

This may well be Peeve Day for me. Here's another one.

The collective obsession with "ships", or the idea that a story is defined by its romantic plot arc. What are you, people? 15-year-old girls? Where's your pride? I understand why the occupation of shipping is prevalent on FFN where people in fact usually are 15-year-old girls, but on male-dominated DLP it makes no apparent sense. (The main difference seems to be that stories popular among guys feature power and dominance themes alongside pairings - another preoccupation people usually grow out of.) So someone posts a story, or story link, and its summary; okay, ask people, but what's the pairing? Who cares? It's not an important question unless and until the pairing in question actually appears in the story. Either the genre is romance or the main ship isn't, or shouldn't be, what could be called a premise of the story.

Sure, a novel-length fic entirely without romance either features a very select set of very busy asexual characters or is missing something essential about the human experience. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about treating these girls as genres unto themselves. This makes for woefully undeveloped female characters, absurdly idealized romances (notice how all the seducing is effortless, or how the relationship doesn't go through rough patches, or how the two characters usually have no other partners besides each other?), and a failure to integrate the romantic arc into the larger plot, assuming there is one.

The bulk of this problem, I suspect, is due to vicariousness as a motivation for adding romance to a story. It is a poor and juvenile one. Authors servicing themselves or like-minded readers rather than the story and its quality is a bad approach for writing romance. Heck, most of the stuff I write or enjoy would probably be nightmarish to actually live through, but it makes for a better reading experience than masturbation material.

Not to mention that people occasionally forget that non-protagonists are also capable of falling in love and getting together.

---

Completely unrelated aside: as a non-native English speaker, when I first found the phrase "pet peeves" a long time ago (and it was in the context of DLP), I initially assumed it had to do with petting the poltergeist Peeves, and was like, "what the actual fuck..." :facepalm

 

Because we have no interest in reading a story if an exceptionally retarded pairing is going to be the center of attention - and, even if the story isn't a romance story, I can expect a few chapters dedicated too it.

I would like to know before hand if the story is going to feature Harry paired with Snape, or Malfoy, or Voldemort so I know damn well not to read it.

Anyway, I guess I wouldn't care if the fandom wasn't 90% dominated by slash, and that another 5% involves enemy pairings, but it is.

 

I actually really like pairings and think they're extremely important to a fic. However, they come second to most other things and the bulk of a chapter should not be covering forced drama. It needs to be there, but it's best in the background.

 

IIRC, It's partly due to connection between certain ships and certain tropes/characterisation, so it helps you to weed the things you don't want to read about. This of course isn't always the case, but unless it's an author known to be good, or it's rec from someone you know, the chance is quite great that certain ship = certain Harry.

For instance, "Harmony" :facepalm often means Harry playing second fiddle to Hermione, general mugglisation of the story (less magic), "Wizards are just stupid". Or Harry/Daphne is often giant flag of Indy!Harry.

 

Congratulations for missing the point entirely. There is still a world of horribleness left when you move the bar at least high enough to exit the realm of "Drarry" or "Snarry" abominations. Slashers are only one breed of fetishists that I was speaking against; notice I said "girls as genres unto themselves". It can well apply to Harry/Fleur or any other pairing which you might inherently like. The point is, if you're framing it like that, treating relationships as individual entities whose presence is necessary and tantamount to that of a character, this is gratuitous and therefore bad. Work with characters, not with trite preexisting story templates.

 

Pairings should come naturally from the story, not be arbitrarily decided at the beginning and artificially inserted in their place.
The only acceptation is romance stories, a genre with almost no good stories in fanfiction. The few good stories do get a pass for arbitrarily decided parings though.

 

Any mention of six-pack abs is an immediate red flag

 

Hermione turned to admire the new student. He had a long poneytail hanging down to his waist, biceps that protruded through his Gryffindor uniform and, when he stretched to grab a book off of the top shelf, the females around him gaped at the sight of his well-defined abdominal muscles, perfectly shaped into a washboard of sexiness. He was familiar in a way that she couldn't place; she tried to recall where she had seen him before, but the voice in the back of her head that usually gave her answers to important questions was suddenly howling, screaming that the boy was walking toward her and that she had better say something before Madame Pomfrey came by and found a shivering, wet blob on the library floor.

As he approached, he gave her a smile; to her surprise, and orgasmic pleasure, the boy's mouth was filled with gleaming white teeth that even her parents, practicing dentists, couldn't hope to replicate. She was strongly reminded of someone she had seen on the telly.

"Hey, Hermione," he said, his voice a whisper. "How are you?"

"How did you know my name?" she managed to studder, all the while scolding herself for being twelve again. After all, she was sixteen now, and should never experience anything resembling embarrassment again. "Do... do I know you?"

"I'd hope you do," he chuckled, "we've spent five years in the same house."

Then it hit her: dark hair, brown eyes, slight lisp...

"Neville?"

 

LMAO, did NOT expect that.

 

Would have been better if they were 11, not 16.

 

That reminds me: 11 year old characters who, for various reasons, don't act like they're 11. It's one of the reasons I can't stand Methods of Rationality: that War Game thing alone would have made a Game of Thrones character scratching their head.