What about...

"I just want to be normal."

&

"I hate being a parslemouth because Voldemort was one."

Whiny! Harry gets on my nerves.

 

Yeah but if he was 'normal' he'd probably be living in the Dursley's cupboard until the age of thirty.

 

Thats what get to me. Dumbles says, at the end of OoTP, that he was Harry to have a happy childhood. Well what kind of happy childhood involves living in a cupboard for 9+ years??? Or being verbally abused?

 

An harry who learns in a week how to swear like a sailor...

 

I cant stand fics with excessive swearing. I dont know why, seeing as i could swear for england..

 

powerful!harry being forced to go shopping when he doesn't want to. how hard is it to just say no? especially when most of the time he's the most powerful wizard to ever live.

 

When someone dies in story it's always....

"(Insert Weasley or some other lame character here) managed to divert 15 death eaters single handedly giving Harry the chance to finally destroy Voldemort once and for all"

Lame.

Yeah, I know it's dramatic and whatever but I can't see Arthur Weasley managing to but 12 death eaters let alone one.

 

When Harry makes a vow to fight against voldemort and kill him, poor Voldemort feels it all the way across Brytain.

 

How about harry being betrayed by all his friends from because they think he's dark and then having hermoine see the "error of her ways."
Another one i hate is when in time-travel fics either
a). Zambini, nott, bones, weasley, lovegood, malfoy, etc.. are all in the same year that harry appears in.
b). The exact same thing except you throw in tom riddle.
c). Harry befriends a young tom riddle and they team up (used to like this but it has been used way too much).

 

Harry: I vow to destroy voldemort and I will do nothing to abstain from that goal!
The magic swirls around him, and as he collapses into a vision, he sees Voldemort clutch his heart, and whisper - "I can't believe his resolve..."
Harry: "Cool, so that's how it works."

The next day, in front of the ministry

Harry: Now everyone, repeat after me,
Everyone: repeat after me
Harry: I vow to destroy
Everyone: I vow to destory
Harry: Voldemort
Everyone: You-know-who
Magic: Ah hell, I do know who, let's not focus on that fear issue.

Voldemort has a heart attack from having so many vows at once.

The end.

 

When authors miss-spell canon characters' names. I read one story not long back where the author insisted on calling Sirius, Serious. Jesus he's one of the major characters in books 3-5!
OH! And I really, really, really hate it when Harry suddenly falls in love with, practically married at 16, Ginny and has only just noticed how beautiful she really is and has been stupid for not noticing before.
By God! The only time he really spent talking to her was after he'd killed Tom Riddle in the diary! And that's not exactly a good place to start off a romance is it? Damn you JK Rowling - fucked it all up for the rest of us.
And one more thing. I know its been mentioned but my all-time, absolutely, worst hate in fanfiction is where the author writes "i realy sux @ sumerys plz r&r"
Notice the lack of capitilisation, grammar, spelling, replacing words with symbols (thoug I don't mind the & sign), using 'dumb fuck' language and spelling a word wrong which is written in virtually every summary/disclaimer!
Enjoy. I'm off to sleep as it is now 1:24am in merrry old England.
Aekiel

 

Anybody said the one where centaurs seem to only be able to see mars?
I mean it seems like mars is the only planet they ever see in fanfics. Do the other planets or stars ever get bright? They make mars seem like it's a fucking flashlight in the sky.



Harry: Oh mi gods Centaurs! Can you tell me something mystical and powerful that can defeat Voldemort?

Centaurs: Noes we can not human. Get out of teh forest!

:Harry walks away:

Centaurs: Mars shines brightly tonight.

:Centaurs suddenly remeber that mars is Not the big white thing in the sky:

 

Do alt+0223 to get é. For an a, accent grave, it's alt+0224. From there you can figure out the rest.

The thing that has been bothering me the most lately is people who come up with shitty explanations for magic. Sure, just saying a crappy latin translation as a mean of making up spells is all fine and dandy, but what are the odds that a) that works, and b) it wouldn't blow up in your face?

If you're going to make a convinicing system, come up with some baseline magical theory (read: not like JKR's system, which as far as i can tell doesn't exist), and then base it around that. Harry doesn't become a spellmaster just by saying some bogus words and waving his randomly. Chances are all magic is interlinked, and learning 'House Elf' magic is no different than learning regular magic, just having different ways to tap into it.

 

If you're on a Winblows machine there's also the lovely little program called "Character Map". Usually it's under Accessories, or you can bring up a run prompt and just type "charmap." It shows you all the characters for a font, that are stored in the font file. Copy and pasting special ones become easy then, just by choosing the font that's in use. It also tells you the ALT keystrokes to make them, if there are any.

 

Its probably easier to just press Ctrl+alt+E

 

Hows this for a cliche:

Some-random-character: Harry Hermione and Ron betrayed you. They are spying on your for Dumbledore.

Independant-to-be-Harry: No how could they... RANT RANT RANT.

It seems to be there in almost every independant!Harry story. I just get tired of reading it over and over.

 

THANK YOU!!!

Christ, we were going off topic there.

I agree...too many stories end up devolving into rants at that point. When we've seen it that many times, it gets boring.

That's exactly why i decided to characterize my Harry differently. I'm trying to show him as someone who accepts what has happened, and doesn't whine about it. I want to make it clear that this is war, and that shit happens. Crying about the fact that a few assholes stabbed you in the back doesn't make a story progress, it just makes it fall into the groove worn by every other story.

IP82's story is like this as well...he entirely skips the freindship part. Why even focus on it when the point is to enirely ignore attachments and focus on Harry proving his worth?

 

Harry that is learning in 2 weeks how to speak like shakeaspeare....