I more or less immediately stop reading a story if there is any mention of magical cores and energy. I don't really feel like that fits in with the magic in harry potter.

 

I've been trying to find some decent Mass Effect fanfics recently.

Easily my biggest turn off is one side during a first contact situation picking reactionary, rash morons as their diplomats. Far, far too many fics I've read have had one side (usually not the humans) discovering the other side uses something controversial like AIs or genetic engineering and then going ballistic; screwing up the first contact completely.

I have zero patience for writers writing aliens as morons.

---------- Post automerged at 18:58 ---------- Previous post was at 18:57 ----------

Oh yeah, and having soldiers draw their weapons when an AI is discovered, pretending as if the AI's computer is in the room.

 

Dumbledore being evil is an absolute no-go for me, I'd immediately stop reading anything that depicts him as such even if he is actually competent (which I've never seen anywhere), because if you write Dumbledore as inherently bad, you don't write about Dumbledore.
On that notion, I really hate it when authors start to review canon plot points from the earlier books to show how right they are to depict Dumbledore that way despite the fact that his actions/inactions at some points are that way for obvious plot reasons and not because he's evil.
Same goes for Voldemort, albeit the other way around. I can accept him being more intelligent/political than in canon. But when he starts to use healing spells on flies, it gets a tiny bit ridiculous.

 

Harry suddenly waking up with some kind of super powerful creature inheritance.

I don't care how well it's explained, that is just not on and quite impossible. Veelas? Phoenix? Half-Dragon? No thanks. And don't even get me started on Basilisk powers.

 

This is a personally hated plot device of mine, which is basically Hedwig turning into a phoenix. Okay we get it, she was an amazing owl, but she ain't a phoenix, and frankly never should be.

 

One pet peeve of mine is when an Author makes Harry some powerful wizard of some sort and all the sudden he's a coward the next when faced with multiple enemies or even a weaker opponent. That just pisses me off and turns me off from reading the story outright. Then there are those that supposedly make him "Cold, calculating, and intelligent", guess what? Nope! He's a happy-go-lucky idiot the when he presents himself and most of all...he's a damn White Knight! I. Hate. White. Knights. Period. And most of all, they just literally butchered their "Cold, calculating, and intelligent" character to the point I don't even care about the story no more. Last pet peeve in HP stories are those with serious Angst-wank. Seriously, a constantly crying, depressed and sniveling Harry pisses me off to no end and will make me feel like vomiting, so no go for those either.

 

To be honest, that goes for every story ever written, not just for the HP fandom. Who wants to read about a protagonist you constantly want to kick in the ass?

 

A story that basically goes like this:

Harry sitting in his bedroom, crying over Sirius' death/Sad about how miserable his life is, and all of a sudden a Gringotts owl shows up. Owl has a letter full of convenient nonsense.

Harry goes to the bank, rattles off some trite nonsense goblin saying, goblins immediately fall over themselves in shock.

"Us goblins will now take you to our King, who is down this hallway for some reason".

"Hello goblin king with a generic name, let me repeat this trite goblin saying".

"Holy shit, you are so polite, here's 50 vaults, a dragon and a helicopter, and a credit card, go buy all of the things".

*Endless shopping montage*

"Hello Mr. Ancient Revered Wandmaker the 3rd, I need a fabulous wand, mine is broken/stolen/traced/not special enough".

"Not special enough? Then let's give it guns, and a laser!! And space rockets! And a core of basilisk venom mixed with unicorn jizz and dragon tears and Kryptonite".

"Something something the power he knows not"

"I am such a powerful and regal wizard now, I should probably find a girlfriend. But it has to be the most special snowflake girl ever, and least developed person I have never met before, and probably be in Slytherin".

*Random Slytherin girl walks into Harry*

"Generic statement about not being friends"

*Twoo Wuv happens*

*Harry aces every test ever*


*Voldemort appears*

"Hiss hiss, I am teh big evilz hiss hiss"

*Harry conquers with the power of his amazing wand, twoo wuv, and being the heir of Merlin and Gryffindor and a never before seen race of special dragons*

*Contrived saccharine ending*

Man...this post went on longer than it should have. But there are so many stories like this, makes me want to pull my hair out.

 

That made me laught out loud, good one.

 

ffn review: omg gr8 fic Killerz you write so well dont let the haters get you down!

Seriously though, someone do me a favor and give the guy a thumbs up for this line since I can't.

 

Harry: "Do I get a say in this?"
Harry's girlfriend(s): "No."

Fuck you.

--

Lily, the Fifth Marauder.

My issues with whether they even called themselves "The Marauders" aside, doesn't Lily get enough credit in the books without the writer turning her into the even more clever, even more devious, so-sneaky-no-one-even-knew-about-her, fifth Marauder? Come on now.

It's even worse when she, too, was a teen animagus.

Also, only slightly tangential to blatant Lily worship: Tearing down or besmirching Lily's image just to be different.

"HaHA! You thought Lily was as pure white as her namesake, but I have made you reconsider, I have-"

You've done jack shit. You wrote a piece of fan fic, with the sole purpose of going against the general flow. Congrats; I'm sure you also liked ___ band before it was cool.

--

It's been said before, and I'll say it again: "Language, Harry/Ron!" from Hermione... mul-ti-ple times a chapter.

--

Knock/Notch/Nock

Knock - [verb] to strike or rap on something, to dismiss.
Notch - [verb] to score, carve, or mar something so as to create an indentation.
Nock - [verb] to ready an arrow for loosing from a bow.

Yes, I have seen people using 'notch' when they meant 'nock.'

First you steal my idea for a story and then you make fun of it?

Now you're on my list... ound

 

Good...good, take your words, strike me down will all of your hatred, and your journey to the Dark side of Fanfiction will be complete.

 

Magical guardians. I don't hate the idea (it sort of makes sense for muggle raised students to have an older wizard/witch around to represent their interests and explain stuff), but I despise the execution.

Usually it's introduced as, "Dumbledore is Harry's magical guardian, but he doesn't tell Harry this because he's trying to manipulate him."

Alright, fine. Let's pretend, in the context of your shitty fanfic, that Dumbledore is an evil bastard, who's goal in life is to manipulate Harry and come up with impressively convoluted ways to worsen his life in every way imaginable. How does not telling Harry he's his magical guardian make any sense whatsoever?

In his entire life Harry has not had a single good parental figure. He is starved for someone who can substitute for the Dursleys as a role model. If Dumbledore wants to manipulate Harry, telling him he's his magical guardian should be the easiest method available.

It's easy enough. Dumbledore just has to say, "Harry my boy, I'm your magical guardian. I know you have a shitty situation at home, so I'm going to try and get you out of it - but the evil and corrupt ministry won't let me, so I'll just offer you vague advice instead. You should do everything I say - after all, I'm working in your best interests."

He would have Harry eating out the palm of his hand. Instead the author introduces it solely so they can have Dumbledore be lying about it, allowing Harry to see past his manipulations. I think a large part of it is the author just wanting to "prove" that canon Dumbledore is evil by making up random bullshit.

 

Harry was never treated like a muggleborn wizard. In fact most people assumed he knew things any other wizard would know. I could see Harry Potter not knowing he has a magical guardian however I can't see Dumbledore not making that clear to him from the very beginning.

 

Pure Infinity. It's called not possessing originality.

To not make this post entirely irrelevant, I can safely say that Voldemort is shown as this big bad bogeyman and then in fics even though he's made out to be someone that no one could defeat for decades in the beginning, he turns into this homicidal psychopath that is frankly a retard... :/ Hate when it happens.

 

So here's a screencap from 4chan, that I'm pretty sure I've used elsewhere on the forum. I can't be bothered to go dig it up. There was also a thread about the difficulty in portraying someone good at magic a while back.

But the problem is true - you can only write what you know, and most people don't put much thought into how they would be a evil wizard that wanted to conquer the world (or if they do, they only put in a minimum amount of effort). I mean, how would you portray a character as Voldemort? He inspires some very powerful members of society to follow his lead in changing it, and beats everyone else so that even TEN YEARS after his defeat, people do not dare to speak his name.

Not just dislike talking about him... No, these adults are terrified of saying his name.

Voldemort gets a lot of stick, but in canon, after his rebirth, he takes control of the country within two and a half years. Admittedly, he rules from the shadows, but he still rules. His government makes people disappear, tortures schoolchildren, and probably kicks puppies and kittens for fun... And nobody is really fighting against him - sure, you have three teenagers camping in the woods and launching guerilla attacks, and there is civil disobedience, but most people seem to just put their heads down and hope to bring their friends and families through without too much trouble.

And then one of those teenages manages to kill Voldemort through the power of blocking the unblockable curse (again), and sending it back... because wands!
I'm not saying Voldemort deserved to win that fight....

And that hits another issue with making Voldemort a legitimate threat.

Harry just isn't very good at magic. He wins because a unique artefact follows the rules of a little-known subject.

If you write Voldemort as competent, clever, and as brilliant at magic as canon suggests, then you either need an asspull of your own, or some way of making Harry just as good.

Whilst it may not be the best way of doing it, and I'm sure people here would argue about how good of a plot device it is... I like that making horcruxes stole something more than just humanity from Tom Marvolo Riddle. They made him less capable of holding himself back from his urges. They blurred his mind, so that whilst he was still brilliant, he was also mad, and lost.

But yes, I do agree that having him being a cruciatus slinging maniac without any explanation can be a little trying.

 

Yep. Really there are only four routes that I can think of to any story. Harry wins through deus ex machina. Voldemort for some reason becomes retarded. Voldemort is completely ignored in the story, or at least not the primary focus, allowing for a whole new playing field level to be built. Harry becomes a genius like Tom Riddle was as a teenager and actually becomes competent.

The first two are boring and really stupid. The next is not really my cup of tea, on a rare occasion it is but I don't really go for AU stuff very much, mainly by accident.

The final option is the only one I really consistently like, unfortunately it suffers two issue: it's usually written by idiots, it's pretty much impossible to make believable because of the fact that Voldemort has been a genius for 60 years or something like that. To compensate in the believability realm perhaps Harry both needs to be incredibly smart and proficient in magic, but also get lucky and win a gamble that he is able to outwit his opponent in some way that Voldemort did not expect. Unfortunately I can't really think of any times that has been done off the top of my head.

It's a real shame because 'competent Harry' is by far my favourite genre, if you could call it that.

EDIT: There is a fifth option I didn't think of. Harry is not your star. But ew...

 

Harry's quite bland and formless, so...?

 

Sure, in canon. Doesn't have to be in fanfiction, and he's the main character that canon is pretty much entirely built around. He's the one I actually care about the most and so much can be done with him. I just don't really have much interest in anyone else as the primary character. I'm not saying they're all terrible and nobody should be interested, but I'm not.

 

I just read the first few chapters of a fic where every characters says "Ya" instead of yes, okay, yeah, sure or some other variation.

I can certainly understand in dialogue people not using proper English, but no way should everyone be speaking like that. It should be isolated to a few people.