I shut any Naruto fic that allows Haku to live,it had too much of a impact on Naruto for it not to happen.

The character never feels right without this happening. Only exception is Kusari no Naruto which really doesnt feel like naruto either

 

Harry/Hermione

Unless of course Hermione is already dead like in By the Divining Light, in which case it's acceptable.

I don't mind them conceptually but in like the past 5 years or so I haven't found a single one that doesn't bore or grate on me. So yeh hard pass.

 

Mpreg? Are people still writing that shit? I haven't seen any since I was released, and I was kinda hoping that idea had died...

See, I don't mind Harry/Tonks that much. She's only, what, 6 or 7 years older than Harry? So at the start of his seventh year, she'd be 23 or 24. I've seen plenty of real-world relationships between similarly aged people, though it is unusual for the older partner to be female (which, double-standard or not, does seem less uncomfortable to contemplate, imo).

Honestly I'm more bothered by the age difference involved with Snape/Hermione fics, or the occasional Sirius/Hermione story that crops up, or even the canon Remus/Tonks pairing. Seriously, Remus is pushing forty and gets together with 22-23 year-old Tonks? Plus I'm pretty sure that was a bit of laziness on Rowling's part; she was just scraping the barrel for female characters to throw at Remus, and Tonks was the only unattached, non-school-aged one that had any real "screen-time".

 

I don't think I have any redlines besides hating fics that don't put the minimum effort in writing a fic that's not full of grammar mistakes and typos. If I see any of that level of shittiness in the first chapter, I skim and quit.

 

I'll be in the cold, cold earth before I read a Hedwig becomes a Phoenix fic again.

 

"The king is pregnant."
What bothers me so much about Mpreg is that most of them is just a plot device for a slash pairing to begin curtain trope. Ok,there are fics using mpreg as body horror,but it quite unnerves me as well. Usually it is dealt in a very unrealistic way. For example,why everyone in the fic just accept this bizarre event so easily without any question? How may it challenge the social system and gender relationship if women are not the only child-bearers?Those mpreg fics don't care about these kind of things. Same goes for same-sex marriage and pregnancy in the magical society. Writers should not add these things to their stories while basically portraying the magical society as a patriarchal society.

Mpreg as a trope should be scorned .However ,it should not be ignored at least in fandom study. There are simply too many mpreg writers and readers.

Hadrian definitely sets off the alarm. And if I come across "magical inheritance" or stuff like that I'll drop the fic immediately. I won't be able to read a fic if I find its flow forced and unnatural.

 

Oh, I see you think you fancy.

 

Basically, my biggest red X is bad dialogue, which for me goes beyond bad cadences and structures and more into characters: if all of them seem to have the same 'voice' - aka, the author's - I tune out because my suspension of disbelief snaps like a rubber band (it's also one of my biggest pet peeves with some of my own writing, in that I can see a lot of my personal tics sliding into certain characters and they don't quite feel as real as I'd prefer).

That's also probably my biggest tic against Methods of Rationality, where thankfully its stock has fallen because a lot of folks recognized the bad author tract for what it was, but for me not only did certain characters not speak roughly like they were in canon, but I could clearly hear the author decide to drop in 'here's why I'm so smart' monologue mode, and you need to be a lot better of a writer to make me not immediately snap out of it.

Another tic for me - and again, it's something I'm starkly reflective of in my own work - overdesigned systems of magic that stop feeling like 'magic' and more like a science or alchemy. There needs to be a sense of wonderment and the inexplicable, where even if there's a method to the madness, things can and should go wrong or show side-effects. For me magic is always more about reinforcing themes and ideas or making symbolic points than just plot mechanism.

Also, to tie back to the age gap or contentious ships, I'm not against them in principle, but make them interesting AND frame them appropriately. In Harry/Tonks there's a very real and messy age gap, so if you want that ship you better be prepared to frame the relationship as having deep/ugly consequences (hence what happens to them in Renegade Cause). It's also one reason I've liked Lily/Snape as a ship for years - there's so much potential for dramatic storytelling given the messy internal lives of both characters.

 

Generally I try to keep an open mind besides generic stuff like bad writing the one thing that springs to my mind is fanfiction of videogames that blindly copies game mechanics other limitations like extremely small settlements etc. instead of using them as inspiration for building a believable and complex world.

SI (Self-Insert) is also nearly always a non-starter for me and I only attempt to read if I am horrible bored, trust the author and find the idea interesting and even then I often try my best to ignore the SI aspects of a story and instead treat it as a normal OC.

And if its a longer piece I always struggle if the main character is really stupid/uncharismatic, I don't need a genius but some basic (social) competence is basically a requirement for anything but a short.

 

Oh, I have one. Adding in "more modern" or anachronistic details because "it's convenient", the first being "and the Muggleborn students started singing along with Harry's terrible rendition of Ed Sheeran."

 

Red lines?

Well, any pairing that involves Voldemort, especially as he is in canon (hideous-disgusting), especially if paired with someone underage. If it's slash on top of it... well, it's supremely unlikely for me to stay, if I click on the fic to begin with. Same with Snape and a student.

Harry's actual name being 'Hadrian' is generally a symptom of Lords and Ladies and other forms of wanking, so if I see it, I fuck off.

Another thing that makes me roll my eyes, and not click on the story in the first place, is saying 'I suck at summaries' in the summary. The (potential) readers can see that on their own, moron. I once put 'I am literally incapable of writing a bad summary' in the summary of a parody fic... for obvious reasons.

Has any of you heard of 'Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics'? If you haven't... lucky you. Seriously, don't even look it up. If you have... well, it's one of my few pet peeves that cease being a pet peeve and becomes something I draw the line at. I don't just fuck right off, I close the site and go do something else.

Finally, 'Draco is a Veela'. Just no.

 

I am unwilling to read about a meek protagonist. If they are continually getting walked over or clearly have some form of social anxiety, I have to stop reading. I am sure there are plenty of stories where there is plenty of character growth and are good stories, but I have zero desire to read about them.

 

I think I differ from a lot of people here in that I steer clear of most fanfic that looks downright unreadable, so my limits for tolerance don't get tested all that often. I'd say in the stuff I do wind up reading, the thing that's most likely to force me out of it is bashing, not even so much because it assassinates characters that don't deserve it, but more because it provides meaningless, tensionless conflict. Take Umbridge, who had the upper hand on Harry and his friends for most of OOTP, but in fanfiction rarely gets to land the kind of blows and humiliation that made us hate her canon incarnation so much in the first place. If she'd just been a bitchy Gilderoy Lockhart who would fold to a strong gust of wind, we would never have gotten so invested in her comeuppance.

And that being said, I wouldn't even say that fanfic Umbridge needs to outsmart the protagonists to be taken seriously, as such. She's no threat to Harry and friends whatsoever in Backwards With Purpose, but she still reminds us just how much she sucks when she slips a question in about Harry tying Ron up in a packed courtroom. Just little acts of pettiness like that, where you can't just respond by punching her in the face can do just fine.

And I'd say the same thing applies even if you're instead bashing someone who isn't supposed to be an antagonist, like Ron or Dumbledore or whoever. If you insist on making them an obstacle, they should actually obstruct, not get outmaneuvered and completely owned by the heroes once every three chapters. And if that's an author's idea of rivalry, then I can't really trust them to deliver on the bigger conflicts with Voldemort or whoever.

 

1) Magical Cores

2) Fics that use a mindscape and have thousands of words dedicated to learning occlumancy

3) soul bonds

4) pre-hogwarts mastery of wandless magic (or really any super advanced magic)

5) Reading the books & SI's

6) Katanas

7) Bringing tech like phones into hogwarts

8) Lord Hadrian Potter-Black

9) First year of Hogwarts started at 14/15/16/17 years old instead of 11 years old

10) Hermionewank

Needless to say it does seem like I barely read anything these days. Stories with this kind of shit tend to have further underlying problems so it's not like I'm really missing out anyways.

 

I get the other ones, but could you explain whats wrong with this one?

 

I get preferring certain ages of main characters, I just dont really understand why the age when they start their first year matters.

 

Hurt/Comfort. Like if Harry starts having panic attacks or anything like that or if the author is projecting some sort of mental instability onto him. He has temper issues, that's enough.