Unrealistic dialogue. I'm seeing it more and more recently, and am really getting pissed off with it. No contractions being used in casual conversation, all conversations lasting a large period of time with no lulls and everything said being important, no small talk ever between any characters, ext.

Also Bright Sparkly Happy Stories (better known as fluff) where nothing ever goes wrong and no-one dies and everything is happy ever after! uke:

I understand why people like them, they are just really not the sort of thing I enjoy.

Final Peeve I just remembered, unimportant deaths designed to make the villain look worse. "Ahmahgawd, he killed 200 people" doesn't pack nearly the same impact as "He's killed our friend, who was well developed and the audience didn't think they would die". It ruins the tension if no "main" character ever dies.

 

When fanfiction writers assume that Harry and Hermione would be perfect partners, but Ginny and Ron would be horrible.

I don't know about you, but I have no reason to believe that Harry would be any better in a relationship than Ron. Harry had way too many unresolved issues, and would most likely take them out on his partner, the same way he sometimes took his anger out on his friends.

And Hermione? She is as stubborn as a rock, is a control freak, and has a habit of belittling people. Oh, but let's pretend like she would make the perfect wife, and let's pretend like she is actually a reasonable person.

 

I'm of the opinion that easily half of such shippers picture Emma Watson and would rather ship her with their self-identified main character than a soulless ginger.

They then have to justify it and have to pull out all of Ron's assorted douchebaggery (or Ginny's lack of development/focus/mastermind potioneering/etc) while sidestepping the fact that Hermione was a relentless nag and Harry a massively repressed volcano.

I don't really see any of the Trio pairing well together, since they really do seem to need the last in the tripod in order to tolerate/mediate each other. And I can't really present an opinion on Ginny, since I still find her to be an OC JKR shoehorned into the group so as to make them all nicely paired off.

 

I actually thought for a second you were about to argue that Ginny/Ron would be a good ship...

 

Well they do have a lot in common...

 

Exactly -- I don't know if it's the fact the last Harry Potter book came out 8 years ago and the fans have been brainwashed by fanfiction...or perhaps them living in denial....

But all things considered, Harry and Hermione were pretty shitty social creatures, too.

 

Regarding Harry and Hermione's social flaws...

I'm thinking Harry gets over a lot his angst-related issues after Voldemort dies and the last bits of it go away once he feels he has a family for himself. A lot of his angst is tied to his hero/martyr complex and I suppose once he's accomplished his "goal" of offing Voldemort, he won't feel as beholden to go all lone hero anymore. And finding a place to belong would put to rest his familial insecurities. Also, dying might have made him mellow out some more. (He even offered an olive branch to Voldemort in their final battle)

The issue with Hermione is that she really needed a moment where she was dramatically and horrendously wrong and has to come to grips with it. That would go a long way to helping her right her near ironclad belief in her knowing the best -- on that note, I wonder why Rowling didn't explore that particular angle in DH. Harry had been pretty much bang on about Malfoy in HBP, where Hermione was very much mistaken. That would have been an opportunity for Hermione to apply some of her well-developed skepticism to her own views. (To some extent, her disbelief in Malfoy being a Death Eater was odd -- she suspected Malfoy of being the Heir of Slytherin on even less evidence)

 

I dunno, I remember back when I cared (like, 8 years ago?) the Harry/Hermione shippers were so annoying that it ended up putting me off completely, and to this day I don't think I've completed a H/Hr fic. Maybe now I'm older and wiser I should...

As for personal pet peeves, one that's been pissing me off big time lately as I've been trawling for decent length fics to read, is where characters become very close/trusting instantly. Such as literally going from meeting someone to, four paragraphs later telling them your deepest darkest secret that no-one else knows. I've came across it a bunch of times, and it's one of the few things that will make me drop a fic instantly.

I'm going to stop now, before I end up filling a few pages with things that irritate me in fanfiction and make myself angry.

 

1.
Harry Potter's angst is tied to his traumatic experiences since first entering Hogwarts. Every years someone tried to kill him, and every year, he dealt with stress that even most soldiers in war never do.

Voldemort dying won't get rid of the trauma Harry's mind has been dealt with, nor will it erase Remus, Fred, Tonks, Colin, etc., dying.

If anything, Harry Potter's angst only got higher after the war.

2.
J.K. Rowling has unabashedly said that Hermione is her self-insert, and like all self-inserts, their flaws are brushed aside and never addressed.

But let's be honest, Hermione is an incessant, control freak.

---------- Post automerged at 05:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:50 PM ----------

Her disbelief in Malfoy being a Death Eater was a forced issue that J.K. Rowling wrote into the story to create animosity between Harry and Hermione, the same with the Half-Blood Prince book.

It was put there for the sole purpose of burning down any bridges that would have Harry and Hermione as a potential couple.

It's the same reason Ron was made a prefect, and the same reason Harry started feeling monsters in his tummy.

 

I really hate fics that portray Gryffindors as bad people and bullies. They are always just trying to get Harry to date a slytherin Chick and it has always seemed an example of lazy storytelling. Up there with Dumbledore stealing money and Mrs. Weasley drugging him. The stories forget that the easiest way to hook Harry up with a slytherin chick is to make her hot and willing, he is a teenager.

 

In 2015 reading a summary like this:

Why? WHY?

 

Is that Nazi Germany Harry, fighting for the Heer?

 

It reminds me of all those stories where the writer wants Harry Potter to have sex with a lot of girls, so the writer comes up with some plot device like "Life Debts, Slaves, Sex-Ritual to Kill Voldemort, etc."

I mean, it's like the writers are unaware that, in real life, there are many people who have casual sex, and they don't need slaves to accomplish it.

Let's be honest, here. Harry Potter is a celebrity within the Wizarding world, and has accomplished more in his seven years in Hogwarts than most adult wizard combined. If he wants to get laid, the only thing keeping him from getting laid, is the author of the Harry Potter series who, for whatever reason, decided to project her own insecurities from her teenage years and kept Harry from taking advantage of his situation.

Sure, there are many people who grew up in relatively stable communities and homes, who happen to think growing up unloved will make someone sexually repressed, but those people are ignorant.

In reality, as I have seen throughout my life, and through personal experience, when someone grows up without affection, they grasp onto whatever affection they can find.

 

You're totally right. I mean, Harry is the fucking man anyways. Rich, handsome, quidditch star, who happens to be the biggest wizarding celebrity since Dumbledore. He'd be beating the ladies off with a stick, or a wand, seeing as it is Harry Potter. I feel like Vlad the Inhaler's Harry might be the most realistic.

 

Notice how both of J.K. Rowling's pet characters -- Harry and Hermione -- were pretty much the only two teenagers in the series who didn't have a normal dating life?

Pet characters usually get the projection treatment. And since she clearly stated that she was a nerd while a teenager, she projected her insecurities on Harry, by not letting him take advantage of those girls who, so reminded her of the girls that bullied her when she was young.

Reminds me of those stories written by teenage boys who keep the main character's love interest a virgin, and how "she was not as shallow" as all those pretty girls who dated jocks in high school. Nothing more than the projection of an insecure writer.

 

My pet peeve as of late is realizing that my fanfiction is riddled with little mistakes and they just won't fix themselves. I'll have to do it myself, it seems. I like writing, but I hate proofreading my own work. Gah.

 

Or even worse, reading back through a piece of work you were once proud of, and realizing now how much it sucks.

Another Pet Peeve: stories that begin well, have a good plot and story to tell, and literally fall so far off the wagon about two-thirds in that you have to stop every other sentence to mentally place commas so you can understand what's being said. It's even worse when it's an original piece of fiction.

 

When fanfiction writers pretend Harry was a perfect gentleman and Hermione was a perfect lady with manners.

For all the bashing Ron gets in fanfiction, he's the only one of the trio who hasn't shown sadistic tendencies, and he's the only one who has, if I remember correctly, ever apologized for his actions.

 

Perhaps you'd expand on that? When did they demonstrate sadistic tendencies? And the whole apology thing, Ron is the one that, multiple times, did things he really needed to apologise for. What did Harry or Hermione do that they didn't apologise for?

 

Harry Potter:

One has to be a sadist to successfully cast the Cruciatus.

In 6th year, the books explicitly says that Harry used Filch as a test dummy for spells.

I could probably name a few other instances, but I haven't read the books in some time, and I'm way too lazy to skim the entire series.

Hermione Granger:

DADA Contract
Engineering the gang-rape of Umbridge (not that she didn't deserve it)

____

As for apologizing? For Harry, I'm thinking his little temper tantrum in 5th year where he basically told Ron and Hermione that without him they were nothing.

And for Hermione? Hmm... well she never apologized to Harry for her bitchiness in 6th year.