I suppose. . . However it seems hard to believe that you could get anything out of a fic if you know nothing about the universe.

 

I find people stumble on crossovers with something they know and get interested that way. Good ones generally don't require people to know all the stories involved to be enjoyable.

 

I mean... I've literally never read RWBY and I enjoy many fits about Jaune. In fact reading the source material probably wouldn't do a lot for me. The same with Xander fits from Buffy, except to help me pre-empt the story lines. Not having read the source has no bearing on me enjoying fanfiction about it.

 

Welp I guess I'll just have to try reading some fics and see how it goes.

 

Because some things are trash.

Take Familiar of Zero. The MC is the epitome of the "light novel guy" and borders on being a Sue. The plot is predictable and laced with harem hints. etc

However, the story has great fanfiction potential.

 

Overpowered house-elves. Just read a fic that said that an angry house-elf could wreck a group of wizards with little effort. People seem to think that because Dobby managed to blast Lucius, house-elves are basically OP wizards with broken spirits. I mean, they're not weak, but because one house elf got the upper hand on a prominent wizard (who was caught off guard), they must all be gods.

 

I almost brought this up myself the other day actually. Came across a story which featured the classic super Dobby who can do all sorts of easymode shit like erecting wards allowing Harry to practice magic in the summer and the like. Wow, so convenient.

 

It can also lead to getting into the original material, for me I read a great authors Harry Potter docs an then read their other stuff for Worm an that led to me reading Worm itself.

It's irritating when characters constantly say stuff together. "What?!" Ron an Harry chorused. Just stop that's only okay for Fred an George. It'd be alright if they didn't constantly do it for even long phrases an never have the characters acknowledge the fact they spoke at the same time. Just add in jinx or they glanced at each other or something. I don't get why people don't, not when it's a normal scene an not a serious scene or etc.

 

Also is Malfoy even that good of a wizard? Was he ever shown to be proficient with magic in canon? Because the three things that I automatically associate with him are: him getting blasted by Dobby, failing to wizard his way out of getting punched in the face by Arthur and not catching a bunch of teenagers in DoM.

 

To be fair neither did anyone else and Bellatrix is certainly not an unskilled witch.

 

I really hate Ravenclaw Harry. It has to be my least favorite house to put Harry into. The plot spends the majority of the time having him in the library studying where nothing happens unless there has been three studying/training chapters in between action. He is almost a male version of Hermione that has had all of her interesting characteristics removed. By that I mean any characteristic that makes Hermione into an actual human being, like being bossy or brave. It just turns Harry into this spineless sack pussy of a character.

I also hate how every Ravenclaw Harry I have read turns him into this dweeb who hates sports and no longer enjoys flying or Quidditch. In my experience the athletes were some of the best students at my school since they weren't allowed to play if they had bad grades and usually had lots of drive and ambition. The Ravenclaw's in the book were quite good at Quidditch also.

 

Yeah, I started reading RWBY too, but the ebook program they use has this bug where it flips between pages something like thirty times a second and if you try to stop it you lose your page number. I flatter myself that I read faster than normal, but it was just too difficult.

 

I think that has more to do with JKR's portrayal of Death Eaters as incompetent retards who get outsmarted by school children. The DOM bit is trickier since they couldn't just outright kill Harry and his friends.

 

You need to read An Unfound Door, mate.

 

What the hell is going on with the fanfics lately? The word counts are ridiculous.

Prince of Slytherin, for instance, just updated chapter titled "Prelude 4" and long 12k words, and in total has 45k – fourty-five fucking thousand words long - four preludes before year 3.

Another one of "sort of readable" ff.net favorites - Dodging prison, stealing witches - ends year one at 310 thousand words.

Is brevity not in style anymore?

Edit: also, removed bad math.

 

I don't think this is a recent development though. Shitty to mediocre fics have always inflated their stories with a huge word count.

 

Alhough, at PoS, he really does have an interesting plot going on all the time. Just that it's actually 5000 plots, which results in the word count blowing up like that. However, I'd also like this particular story to focus on less plots, or at least avoiding extensive detail (I mean, 20k words about the backplot of a secondary character? It was one of the best chapters, but it'd better be an exclusive One-Shot or something like that).

My current favourite pet peeve has got to be the fact that no one seems to be able to write an actually funny Ron Weasley (and by funny, I mean one I can laugh with, not that I can laugh about him).

 

I hoped I won't sound like I'm shitting on the story - I quite like it - but, any competent editor would cut that shit down to half. Quarter even. Remove plots or entire characters.

 

We can definitely agree on the fact that, in its current state, "HP&PoS" would be nothing short of unpublishable. As a fanfiction, in my opinion, it works, but never as a book.

 

Yeah, I wish someone wrote a Black Comedy'esqe bro comedy featuring Harry and Ron. I blame the movies for turning him into a joke instead of a joker.