So much hate, so little time.

 

Shoehorning in Snape - that is to say, suddenly making him the star of the story instead of focusing on the actual main characters.

Snape sympathizing - back when I still read mentor!Snape fics, I was reading one where Harry is sent to Snape's for the summer after 5th year. Harry says something that sets Snape off and Snape uses his legilimency to make Harry relieve seeing Sirius die over and over again (I think for an hour). All the other characters act like Harry was wrong for getting Snape mad, even though Snape has been a cunt to him for years. Harry tells Lupin and he just brushes it off. Everyone essentially tells Harry, "we know snape psychologically tortured you but it's not his fault". I immediately stopped reading here because I knew he wasn't going to see any repercussions for his actions.

changing characters' appearances - Hermione's not a supermodel, stop making her one. Snape's an ugly fucker who doesn't give 2 shits about his appearance, and unless he injects himself with veela blood he's staying that way. Also, he's sallow, not pale. And for the 1000th time, Harry has BLACK hair, not brown.

changing major traits - I read a fic where Hermione went back in time and was with the Marauders (please don't ask) and as they are hexing random people and being bullying cunts she barely scolds them. I'm sorry, who is this person and what did she do with the real Hermione Granger?(In this same fic Hermione is described as being beautiful, so it probably was an oc masquerading as her) The Hermione from the books would NEVER just sit on her ass and be like "wait guys, stop" as while this is happening.

 

When an Author is obviously including themselves in the story either with main characters they alter in every way or made up characters that serve no real purpose in the story.

I once read a HP/Percy Jackson Crossover that explicitly says was written by two authors that just so happens to have two female characters that are Harry's BFFs for no real reason that ultimately serve no real point to the story besides being awesome.

 

The Dumbledore Virus.

This is when rampant Manipulative!Dumbledore bashing and Indy!Harry wank spill over onto other 'wise old mentor' characters.

If you see an Indy!Harry pissing all over Yoda, Gandalf, Aslan, Professor X or, as on the occasion that brought me to post here, Eru fucking Iluvatar then you have found a definite case of the Dumbledore Virus.

There is no known cure. Simply accept that the story is doomed to descend into the pits of retardation and pants-shitting idiocy. Do not become attached, do not try to save it. You cannot. Within just a few short chapters Harry will be monologuing about how everyone but him is evil and/or stupid. The characters and nuance of the story will devolve into repeated shouting matches between the 'good guys' and the 'manipulative Dumbledore stooges'. The primary conflict will be resolved early on with boring ease and whatever the author thinks counts for panache. Despite this the story might stagger on for many more chapters as more 'stooges' find themselves under the search-light of Harry's justice. Finally the story will die a slow death choking painfully on its own accumulated shit as the author comes to realise that, actually, all they've done is take something beautiful and ruin it completely in their adolescent desire to prove themselves superior.

By the end, no-one will mourn its passing.

 

That was beautiful

 

That was great.

It's a real shame that such a thing stems from such a great character though. Dumbledore truly is an amazing character who's been unjustly shit on by the fanfic community. To their credit it seems to be difficult to write him well. Then again maybe it isn't and people just aren't trying, I really don't know.

 

Snape/Lily stories and Maurader era stories that involve Harry becoming a Marauders in their 6th year. Let's be honest guys the Marauders were a group of close knit friends that know each for years and would do almost anything for one another.

Some random kid that shows one year from graduation isn't going to become friends with them even he does they won't be the same.

Harry going back in time to before the Marauders 1st year I've only read one story that pulled that off. Most of them it usually involves Harry giving Padfoot a bone or Harry giving Moony the pork or in some sick cases Harry giving Prongs his prong.

 

Yes. Too bad that 'almost anything' did not involve not killing the rest of the group.

 

I was talking about their school days before Peter became a little bastard.

 

If we're talking about "Harry in Marauders' era" stories, then:

- The mysterious potions accident that sends Harry back in time. I mean, adding one fish eye too many can make a cauldron explode, and you'd have me believe that when Snape's cabinet falls on him it makes a perfect potion? :facepalm

- Lupin smelling who he is. Or James/Lily/anyone or their cat getting "a strange feeling that they can trust him unconditionnally". The guys were in the middle of a bloody war where you didn't know who was an enemy. The new student who pops up in 6th year and is mysteriously good at Defense and fighting with magic (and speaks Parseltongue) won't be trusted.

- Harry ending up having any role in his parents getting together.

- Any misspelling of the word "Marauder".

 

Ah, that reminds me.

It's been awhile since I risked reading any marauder era fic, but most that I've seen tell it like there always were three friends - Sirius, James and Remus, and the fourth one is either barely mentioned or always on the sidelines of the action.

To top it off, if a time traveler is involved, he can easily get Sirius, James and Remus on a secret, not tell them about the future because plot wants so, and still convince them that including Peter into this is a bad idea. Somehow.

And after that, history doesn't change.

 

You know those stories that just refuse to explain shit, then after a reviewer comments on it the author pulls some kind of bullshit out of their pants to justify it

 

Stories where Harry purposefully goes back in time, stays there and doesn't change anything. Does he just feel like watching his loved ones suffer? Lord fucking Voldemort is out there killing people and is killing off the Order one by one. Why does Harry always sit on his ass and pretend there's nothing he can do or say to help?

Even worse, time travel fics where Harry has plenty of time to waste by going to Hogwarts and befriending Snape, but he can't be bothered to drop a few hints about horcruxes to Dumbledore. "Yeah, I could be out there stopping Voldemort but I find that I enjoy being taught things I already know".

(I'm pretty sure Flitwick and McGonagall aren't going to be teaching better material in the 70s than they do in the 90s. Class material improves over time, and I don't see a reason they would choose to stunt their students by not teaching them useful spells, especially since the both believe the dark lord is back. The only subjects I can see Harry actually learning in are divination (we never hear anything about the old teacher being a fraud) and Potions (because the teacher isn't biased against him).)

 

I think this is getting to the point where it needs a TVTropes page.

 

I imagine it falls under the Ron the Death Eater trope. It's just a more specialized usage.

 

Speaking of which, Fics that replaces nuances and grey characters with "I'M RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG, BECAUSE I SAID SO". The caps were deliberate, since in such Fics they usually are dumbed down to Harry basically shouting at everyone how completely awesome and right he is.

 

And then he's for some reason shocked when someone doesn't believe him.

 

I would love reading a fix where Harry storms into the Great Hall, calls Dumbledore out on believing in "the Greater Good," and promptly get ignored and shunned by everyone for being an attention-seeking, idiotic douchebag, and for being so dickish as to imply Dumbledore was in any way like Grindelwald.

Or, for that matter, a Manipulative!Dumbledore Fic where Dumbledore is actually intelligent, evil, and a legitimate threat.

 

Travel of any kind by potion is a peeve of mine, whether it's time travel, dimensional travel, or just, "How'd I end up in Stoke on Trent? Oh, isn't the façade of the railway station just lovely!"

I know some people might take the attitude that, "Magic is magic and logic need not apply, so why should a potion be any less likely to enable time/dimensional travel than a mystical artifact or ritual?" but I'm guessing the fact that they'd only make that assertion -and, indeed, even have such a rationalization occur to them at all- after they've been pressed by reviewers who think they're a moron for 'potion accident time travel' is proof enough that this device tends to only be used by the lazy and unimaginative.

Potions, to me, already seem ill-suited for travel through time/space already, but an accidental combination?

If anything, I'd only buy a potion being used in such travel if it involved some kind of magical circle being anointed with it before a ritual. In that case, it's just an extra piece of magic being used to 'grease the wheels' of the runes, circle of stones, or what have you, and get the magic going.

Maybe that's just my logic refusing to allow me to believe in the 'magic doesn't have to follow any logic' idea but, come on... a little more effort. At the end of the day, the only logic I need in order to make my assertion, here, is that more often than not 'potion time travel' seems to be a plot device used by bad writers, lazy writers... or twelve-year-old writers. After that, whether magic need not follow logic is beside the point.



Edit: Welcome to a new peeves thread, everyone.