This latest stunt, of

Spoiler

taking the trunk that was his mother's, just after he'd actually got it from Lupin, just after he got back to Hogwarts, is just too much, IMO.

I get that he can't go all indy!Harry on her, he can't just start blasting curses in front of everyone, but you'd think he'd have done something else to make the folk in Slytherin tow the line, given that he is knowledgeable and dangerous enough to be left alone for the most part.

Oh and I just remembered another thing, from the 38th chapter, that I was very annoyed with. Relevant bit in the spoiler, so beware, all ye who have not read it before:

Spoiler

"Weasley, five points from Gryffindor!" Draco said.

"What for?" Ron asked.

"For being in Gryffindor!" Draco said. Crabbe and Goyle, standing nearby, laughed uproariously. "And another five points because your hair is too red."

"WHAT!" Ron's face was flushing, now.

"And ten points from Gryffindor for being a blood traitor," Draco said.

Hermione stepped forward. "You arrogant prat!" she said loudly. "The Draco Malfoy I knew last year would never have been so awful."

Draco looked at Hermione contemptuously. "Twenty points from Gryffindor for being a mudblood."
Hermione slapped Draco across the face.

Before Hermione was able to slap Draco a second time, an act for which she had drawn back her hand, Ron and Neville Longbottom grabbed her and dragged her away. Draco was so stunned by Hermione's actions that he did nothing—he simply stared at her, holding his cheek with his hand, mouth open. Harry, Tracey and Theo slipped away quietly, lest they draw Draco's displaced ire.

While I grant you Malfoy had leeway with Umbridge, I doubt Dumbledore would allow this kind of bullshit.

 

One thing that I hate is how authors make characters act out of character just to create some sort of artificial tension to either make up for the lack of an interesting plot or climax or to try and hold a readers interest until they reach the 'good' parts of a story. If Harry is an arse-kicking no-nonsense taking wizard then I want to see him acting like one. I don't want him to act completely contrary to his established nature and putting up with shit that he ordinarily wouldn't for no justifiable reason.

 

One of my biggest Pet peeves as I have mentioned before, but think bears repeating, are how authors seem to have a compulsion to include Hermione in the pairing. It is especially visible in Harry/Luna fanfiction..

 

Definitely. Its the same with Harry/Daphne. Why do they feel the need to put Hermione in there? Can't there just be Harry/Luna and Harry/Daphne fics without adding her into the pairing?

 

Well, I've seen more Harry/Daphne/Tracy than Harry/Daphane/Hermione stories. I mean what's up with that? With that all you're doing is setting up Harry with two OCs rather than one, since we don't know anything about them from canon.

 

Lupin. Well, not Lupin per se but his potential. The man is a coward. There is no denying that leaving Tonks after the birth of his son to take care of his dead best friend's son, something he should have done many years before (let's forget Dumbledore for a bit), is a complete dick move. But he has so much potential as a character that it pains me to see him reduced to Sirius sidekick or, in worse cases, fucktoy. I mean, he has lycanthropy/AIDS, a mostly open backstory, a romantic interest, a son and those lost 13 years.

Lupin could be great but most of the time people just shoehorn him to be a lower budgeted Sirius.

 

I just stumbled across this in a fic I was skimming through and remembered how much I hate it.

 

In real life, whenever someone calls me "Mr." or "Sir" I immediately tell them to call me by name. I'm not some old fart.

 

In this case, it was Fleur's father addressing a young Harry with that.

 

Oh, well that's inexcusable then.

 

Why do authors have to try and be smart asses in their disclaimers?

"Duh I obviously don't own Harry Potter cos I'm not JKR LOL!"

 

Not as bad as when they have the characters give the disclaimers, and interact with them because that's so original and cool.

Author: Hey Harry, why don't you read the disclaimer.

Harry: Why don't you blow it out your ass.

 

Can't say I've seen that before. Though I have always found that people who don't write decent disclaimers usually white sub par fics.

 

When it was first done, it was actually kinda cool. We needed a little originality back then. Now it's just old.

 

Can someone explain to me why we even need disclaimers? If we're posting on a website called fanfiction.net, under a section that says Harry Potter, is it not self evident that we do not, in fact, own Harry Potter? Is there someone posting without disclaimers on FF because they are JKR, and the rest of us do not have that privilege?

 

I honestly don't know. It feels like one of the things that people do because they see other people do it.

We have to find patient zero and destroy him.

 

I did it because I felt like I should because everyone else did.

Then I discovered that fanfiction.net pretty much has a site-wide disclaimer on everything that's posted. In addition, if the evil lawyers did happen to decide to go after you, having a specially written disclaimer at the top of every chapter might actually be a bad idea. Basically it means the 'I didn't know I wasn't allowed to' attempt at mitigation won't fly.

So now I don't. Because who really cares?

 

Right?

If he feels so strongly about this shit, where was this pack mentality for the first 11 years of Harry's life?

Werewolves in HP are probably some of the most boring in fiction... for people who like werewolves. They have none of the cool abilities or control that make it so awesome to be a werewolf from Underworld, the Anita Blake series, certain types in the Dresden series, or even friggin' Teen Wolf (the movie, not the series, you tween shit-heels - Bwahahaha /curmudgeon).

They are more or less what werewolves were thought to be in real life, back when people believed in changelings, witchcraft, and wearing a codpiece: Terrifying, bloodthirsty, beasts with little to no control over their savage, carnivorous, desires, who will rend you limb from limb and eat you if they catch you in the forest, only to wake up the next day with blood all over their face.

That isn't fun or cool for people sitting around thinking, "Wouldn't it be awesome to be a werewolf!" However, it is truer to the traditional folklore werewolf.

HP Werewolves, in short: No cool werewolf abilities, no pack instinct, and (as far as Lupin is concerned) no referring to Harry with suggestive monikers like cub. Given how much time Lupin spends on his own, how resistant he was to having a wife, and even how sometimes he seemed even more the odd man out among his friends than Peter, I'd say he's much more of a lone wolf, if anything.

I think it's because Luna is so hard to write.

If you include another girl, particularly one with as much 'page time' as Hermione (the more you know about a character, the less you have to come up with on your own, after all), then it's just that much less dialog and whatnot you have to write for Luna.

Daphne is probably much the same as Luna, in one respect: Lack of screen time. Daphne has no personality or even a physical description, so in that regard you don't have to worry about being true to her character like with Luna, but you still have to come up with something on your own, out of whole cloth.

Also, some people just want to write a story where Harry is with more than one girl. Sticking him with Hermione is a natural for many fan fic writers, and if you want variety, you're probably looking for a sort of anti-Hermione for the other girl.

Hermione is perceived as a 'good girl,' so you want a bad girl. Hermione is muggleborn, so you want a pureblood, and so on.

For this, Slytherin is the obvious go-to house.

That leaves you with the following choices:

• Pansy: Has the perception among some fans as being Draco's sloppy seconds. Draco's. The only way that could be worse is if Snape or Voldemort had been having a go at her. Also, some perceive her as being physically unattractive. And, though I've seen more significant character traits written off with gossamer-thin excuses, she comes off as a 'mean girl.'
• Millicent: Most people interpret her few canon descriptions (from characters who dislike her) as meaning "Irretrievably ugly" and don't want to write Harry/troll.
• Daphne: Has the additional caché of being a popular fandom character... or at least one interpretation of her does. She's typically a black-haired ice queen.
• Tracey Davis: Whose name is constantly being written by people as 'Davies,' leading others to assume she's related to Roger. She basically has as much place in fan fic as Daphne, though Daphne has the benefit of having been (barely) mentioned in the books, while Tracey solely exists as a name and a few stats in the class list (or is she anywhere on Pottermore, now?).

So in many cases, Harry/Hermione/Daphne it is.


Admittedly, I have a H/Hr/DG (intended to be short) story on my hard drive, but I went with Daphne for that one because I already had plenty of stories with Pansy in them, and Tracey was in another. And, with the way I picture the characters, Daphne was the better fit in that instance (and Hermione was... a special situation).

Yeah, that seems to go against the notion of adding Hermione so she can do double duty: Adding familiarity and reducing the amount of writing you have to put into the OC.


I mean, I get that Tracey is usually portrayed as Daphne's friend, but... I've never had anyone tell me I also had to hook up with an additional girl when we started dating, just because they were friends.


Then again, I'm not the boy who lived, either.

I'm not even the boy who maintained a passable veneer of mediocrity.

 

Tracey is usually portrayed as a more Slytherin version of Hermione, though. Including being a Muggleborn or a halfblood or whatever.

Not even the Spice Girls?

 

This seems to be reappearing (even in above average ff):
- Bossy women with "full name means trouble"
- Bossy familiars for comedy
- Harry's (or sometimes even everybody's) hate of "wizarding travel" for… comedy?

sigh.