If he has done this (I'm not sure - can't remember), I've actually got faith in him to pull it off.

But only because I know he's a decent author.

 

quick question that isn't even close to relevant, has there ever been a fic where the dursley's attitudes are opposite of canon? The adore Harry for his magic, and shun dudley for not being magical.

 

Hmm, I haven't seen any myself. A lot have Petunia sickly sweet and kind and sometimes have Vernon act all nice and proud too. But they never treat Dudley badly, at least from what I've seen. At most I've seen them treat both boys as equals.

 

Another annoying peeve:

Harry's musical talent. I've read about guitars and pianos mostly. I think there was a Bagpipes!Harry in one story. What I wasn't to see is a Tuba playing Harry. Maybe one of those really big monstrosities that wrap around the body, a Sousaphone, I think, would be perfect.

That would just be freaking :awesome.

 

In canon, the purebloods pretty much failed at eugenics, but if they weren't so lame (or if they didn't kill most of their population, as I surmise must have happened) they might have used magic to achieve decent genetic engineering. They would study controlling inheritable traits to eliminate risk of squeebs, obviously. But then they would isolate the genes for intelligence, beauty, health, hand eye coordination, eyesight, perfect pitch, visual arts, composing poetry, learning many languages, etc.

I'm sure a novel about super-beings would be boring, but considering they have magic, the canon magical society is very dull. Or our POV is just terrible.

 

I found that something that truly bugs me, is the way that, in most stories, Snape always shows up just in time to catch Harry being slightly belligerent or whatever. I can understand a couple of times, but every time? That's lazy, hyberbolic characterization at its worst.

 

Hermione's parents names are 'Mum' and 'Dad' or 'Mr. Granger' and
'Mrs. Granger.' In times when they are referring to each other, their names are, 'Dear,' 'Love,' 'Honey,' or some other pet name.

This is the story of Harry Potter, not Hermione Granger. Who cares what the names of a couple of people who appear once in the whole entire series are?

 

I like Luna's patronus.

Rabbits are associated with the moon in many mythologies across the world. Her name means moon. She has a hare for a patronus. It's a neat little package.

Keep your eyes peeled for the rabbit and moon necklace (from Rowling) Evanna Lynch is wearing in many of her older photos.

I direct you to my thoughts on this.

 

Some new pet peeves of mine is Doormatt Dumbledore and super magical wizard semen.

 

I was disputing his choice of example because while Pettigrew's animagus form, the Rat, is possibly a reflection of his personality, his Patronus form doesn't on account of Pettigrew not having a Patronus in the first place.

Minerva McGonagall, on the other hand, has both an Animagus form and a Patronus, and both are cats. Likewise (though not mentioned in the books) for James Potter.

On the other other hand, we know that Patronus can change but Animagus forms don't. So if you have both and they aren't the same, the Animagus form is probably the better authority with respect to the "reflection of self" thing.

 

But then the animagus form has to be a reflection of the deeper personality traits that don't change after age 6 or whatever. People sometimes change a lot in later life. Religion, children, loss, etc. can sometimes completely change people.

 

I think most of my major peeves have been covered in this thread, but there are three that I didn't see. The first two were "cute" the first couple of times I saw them but have become really common in IndyHarry stories. This thread is a 100 pages long so I could have missed them.

First up is a Hermione related peeve. This particular one usually happens ins the stories where Harry gets his lordship/emancipation/whatever and Hermione is declared to be his future wife for whatever reason the writer makes up. Suddenly, like overnight, they become masters of pureblood law and Hermione is suddenly the biggest "Bitchy Sue" you can imagine and walks all over everyone she can and the writer says it is okay because the "Potters are perfect." It's sometimes bad to the point that in some fics they, usually Hermione, bind others to "House Potter" for things as small as looking at them the wrong way or stating an opinion against them. They usually do it in the Great Hall half the time and the make a giant show of it and it is simply to degrade and bash the poor recipient. On the other end of the extreme spectrum, they just have all the person's (or their family's) money/land/other valuables confiscated for whatever random reason while they brag, with Hermione explaining the logic behind the entire event loudly enough for everyone withing listening distance to hear. This tactic has become a tool for authors to bash characters they do not like and is a very transparent tactic at that.

My second peeve takes place in the same story setup but with Harry. In a lot of IndyHarry stories Harry seems to threaten everyone and their mother with a "Blood Feud with House Potter," and they always back down. Now writers of this crap need to think logically on the following question, "what is a blood feud?" To me it sounds like two or more families going to war, you know, that thing where people legally kill each other. The fact that in most of these stories Harry is the last of his line and usually still very young (sometimes in his 1st year) and threatening this to full grown adults is something preposterous. The actual response to a kid threatening to go to war with you is to tell them to "Do something with/to Themselves," and come back when their balls have dropped, at least that would be my response (and the actually wording would get me banned). Most of the adults he threatens with this seem to be the guys fighting for Voldy, so they would probably tell him they accept the feud and kill him on the spot. I really want to see a story where one of these adults accept then the rest that were previously threatened also accept and they all ally against him. When he is not threatening adults with this, he is threatening the families through their children (usually the Junior DE's).

The big problem with these two is that they seem to happen in every chapter to the point that each chapter is basically a template with a randomly chosen character or family to be bashed. Also, the change from ordinary students to Ubur-couple with Mary-sueish tendencies always happens too fast. I know it is fiction but at least be realistic about the time that has elapsed, a few years at the least would curve this to a realistic rate of personality change. Also, on the timing, the chapters usually seem to be either a day-by-day or a "few chapters a week", so doing this every day quickly becomes tedious for the reader.

Now my last peeve seems weird at best, but if you are going to do anything with math, please make sure you didn't flunk the subject. I say this mainly to the money Harry seems to get in most fics, attaching 30 zeros to the end of a random number and saying this grew from an interest rate of X over Y-amount of years will be checked by me because I am a Math Nazi. Yes, I did just admit that.

I know JKR said a galleon is about 5 British Pounds, and there is a lot of evidence in the first three books that would suggest exchange rates that are way higher but a lot of writers seem to forget their own numbers and it shows. Personally, I like to stick to JKR's number because it makes sense when you need to break it down to knuts to pay for things accurately.

Now, I think this is enough for my first post on this site so I'll just stop here.

 

I completely agree with you on the third one. I hate it any time they try to make Harry super rich by saying he has a million, zillion, gagillion galleons in his vault. They make it even worse when he goes and buys half the muggle world. I saw a fic once where they listed all the muggle companies that Harry owns and it was just a list of all the biggest companies in the world, he had a controlling share in both Apple and Microsoft.

Also welcome to DLP.

 

Bashing. Plain and simple. Jealous Ron bashing, manipulative/evil Dumbledore; Dumbledore is a manipulative prick, but he does not keep Harry in Privet Drive just so the Dursely's have their own house-elf or memory charm them into thinking Harry is the devil who deserves daily beatings. Don't know the term, so I'll just explain it, you know, when the Weasleys are getting payments from Dumbledore for being Harry's friends, Hermione is getting books, Ginny is getting her marriage contract, the twins are still 'good' as is Bill cause he has the excuse of having an earring. Percy is still a prick and the author probably doesn't even know who Charlie is, so he doesn't count. Arthur is cool and in exchange for being loyal to Lord Potter he finally learns how airplanes stay up. There are more, but I'll stop for now.

 

The bashing stories suck, but there are valid questions about canon re: extent of Dumbledore's personal and political power and how hard he worked for the benefit of his faction/pawns. He lost a whole bunch of minions/supporters. He could have helped Harry a lot more than he did. But he didn't. Either because he couldn't, thus he is not as powerful as some believe, or he didn't care, thus he is not as benevolent as some believe. Or he had moral qualms about using power for these ends, in which case his morals are not what some believe. To reconcile his behavior with his supposed capabilities and benevolence, something must give. I think it is true to say he worked harder to save Draco Malfoy than he did to save any Order member. For his supporters who were dying for the cause, I don't think such actions were popular. Same with all the shit that went on in Hogwarts that our intrepid hero helped solve. Either Dumbeldore didn't know about Quirrelmort, the Chamber entrance in the girls' bathroom, Crouch Jr. as Moody, Rosmerta being Imperioused, etc. or he knew and chose to not act. Either way, I refuse to worship such a deity.

 

No, it doesn't because bashing is the ignorance/shortcut of valid motivations. Dumbledore had a lot valid (conflicting) motivations from his point of view to do what he did but these motivations are obviously not really in the interest of Harry. That's what life is about struggling through conflicting motivations and text as a means to describe reality is a powerful tool to do it without that.

While the idea of bashing must have been fueled by the comic scene where generic characters in that limited medium are put through this black/white filter. It's like bad pantomime theatre misused in the wrong media form, written text.

What's really sad about bashing is that people either use it because due to comic overdose they think that's the right way to characterize people or they get an emotional high on degrading/bullying characters. In the end bashing only makes the writer look dumb but I doubt that's the goal of them doing it

 

This is a canon peeve, but it has bled into the fanfiction and I feel it's worth the mention.

(as an aside, I blame Taure for talking about the Snape-McGonagall duel which prompted me to read the chapter and get annoyed in the first place)

WHAT... THE.. FUCK.

If JKR or her editor had any sembance of feminism in their blood, this should have been stricken from the story.

My alternate version, as it should have been if Ginny is meant to mean anything to anyone:

‘Mum’s right, Ginny,’ said Bill gently. ‘You can’t do this.
Everyone under-age will have to leave, it’s only right.’

‘I can’t go home!’ Ginny shouted, angry tears sparkling in her
eyes. ‘My whole family’s here, I can’t stand waiting there alone
and not knowing and –’

Her eyes met Harry’s for the first time. She looked at him
beseechingly.

Harry stared back for a moment and then spoke up, 'Seems to me that nearly all the Weasleys are about to enter a battleground. I don't think the Death Eaters are going to care about birthdays when they cast their curses, and I've seen Ginny's spellwork. We'd be fools to hold her back- she's a bloody juggernaut.'

Mrs. Weasley looked at Harry with an expression of betrayal. 'Harry! How can you say that?'

He shrugged. 'Because I love her, and I respect her. How could I not say it?'

[[]]

... with this small edit the canon relationships actually work and Harry looks like an honest-to-goodness hero. Instead, Harry's own treatment of Ginny as a useless fragile keepsake taints the entire fandom into thinking the girl's a talentless witch.

 

Oh, you're not the only one who'll check, believe me. Here's my issue though: if we go by Rowling's exchange rate, the Weasleys only had one Galleon in their vault during Chamber of Secrets. One Galleon = 5 pounds = approximately $7.50 according to recent exchange rates. That's very, very little, particularly considering Mr. Weasley should be pulling in a salary from his position in the Ministry. But even assuming his job is barely above paper pushing (and considering there's no good statistics suggesting there was a minimum wage in the United Kingdom in 1992), even making half of what the minimum wage was in 1999 (3.60 pounds/hr, which would imply Arthur makes 1.80 pounds/hr) should mean he should have a lot more than a single Galleon in the family vault, even if he's not getting paid overtime. Why weren't they saving if they knew a Diagon trip was coming up for Ginny? They probably aren't paying a mortgage on the Burrow, and considering magic probably handles the utilities, where the hell is all of the money going?

Look, I know Rowling's trying to make a point about poverty, and it's still fairly effective, but crunching the numbers, it doesn't make sense at all. If the family is so poor, why doesn't Mrs. Weasley work? Does she lack qualifications? I find it hard to believe she's that poor of a witch - even considering it was a Ripley-In-Aliens moment that allowed her to off Bellatrix - to be unable to get a job. And furthermore, during the course of the Hogwarts year, the majority of her kids aren't at home, so she doesn't have to cover food - why aren't she and Arthur saving more throughout the course of the year?

 

There's a difference between bashing for bashing's sake and delving into the motivations behind the decisions a character makes.

I've seen some seriously bad Dumbledore bashing, making him out to be on of the most vile and stupid villains, blaming everything he does on the "Greater Good".

I've also seen conversations between Dumbledore and another adult that explains the reasons behind some of the questionable decisions he made. They still wind up being bad decisions, and he looks bad in the process but it's not bashing.

 

Smoking.

Why the fuck do any authors think that by having Harry become a smoker, he is suddenly freaking awesome. Yeah, people like Joe have done it well, but that Harry smokes cigars, and cigars ARE cool.

Trust me, coming from a smoker, smoking is not cool.