I don't know what's sadder about that: how many posts were complaining about the exact same thing, or how many different Pet Peeves people managed to come up with.

To get things started: someone becoming an Uber-Athlete by playing Quidditch, a sport that you spend sitting on your ass on a broom the whole time. Especially if it suddenly happens during The Summer.

 

"To get things started: someone becoming an Uber-Athlete by playing polo, a sport that you spend sitting on your ass on a horse the whole time."

 

I think someone should have a whole genre dedicated to... you guessed it, The Summer. Notice the capital 'T'? You should have.

We get it. You want Harry to gain power. You don't have the patience to develop that power hence you start the story from the beginning of 'The Summer' and one chapter in, BAM.

Harry/Any other character is instantly uber-powerful-superduper-Ultra-XXGOD.

Goddamn do I find it annoying.

 

Yeah I've really gotten over Summer by now... Prefer school term weeks. I mean Summer can be good, I've just read it so many times... Also it's always either way too long or way too short.

 

Summer can be good only if it subverts this cliche. If the summer isn't a drawn out retelling of Harry powering up to over 9000, followed by a poignant trip to Gringotts... you know the rest. It was okay the first couple of times you read it, but it became a symptom of a far worse underlying cause. Shitty writing! There's just something repulsive about such lazy story telling that makes me want to stab someone (read:the author) with a spoon.

My pet peeve has got to be bumping into the main love interest within the first chapter or two, followed by going on an instant date before falling in love for all eternity. Romance is unfortunately such a big deal in our lives as human beings that it is naturally a big deal in most stories. And pairings polarise people very quickly. I'm kind of a big hater on Daphne at the moment, because she seems to one of the first choices of authors when it comes to the trope outlined above. Fleur usually has some pretty vomit inducing romance which whittles down to Harry being magically resistant to her allure and being one of a kind because of it...

Does it say something bad when the most popular thread is one where people come to bitch about fan fiction... the thing this site revolves around. Or do you think it says more about the stupidity of the human condition and DLP members' ability to rise above or merely our hubris toward fan fiction critiquing in general?

 

It's a bit of both, I think. The thing is it's very, very easy to find Bad FanFic, and it can be a very thin line between critiquing issues in a story and complaining about something you just don't like.

 

My biggest pet peeve at the moment is probably shipper goggles, where readers seem to consider any and all interaction between two characters - even if that interaction is literally one character saying "I'm not interested in the other character" - as foreshadowing to whatever terrible ship they repeatedly request the writer includes.

Though even more annoying are probably the people who read the exact same line, think the exact same thing, and request I NOT include the ship, even though I would never stoop to portray said ship.

Dramione is a mess, guys.

 

A "walk over your grave" moment outside of comedy or crack. It's dumb, please stop writing like that.

 

"I want to be totally regular non special guy"
"Your awesomest noblest guy ever harry. Lets marry right now"
"Absolutely. I have already ring prepared here"


Teenage romance.

 

What I don't understand is how people don't lose self respect when writing such rubbish. Though it might have something to do with the masses congratulating them on their work...

 

I wonder if FF would be better or worse with no feedback mechanism.

 

It would certainly be less populated. That’s not a good thing, despite all the garbage flying around.

Instantaneous gratification of any kind is an integral part of fanfiction. Writing a whole book, then sending it off to receive a rejection or no attention at all, while certainly a normal process, seems also like it can be demotivating to the extreme. I for one am glad to have started out with fanfiction, receiving enough feedback to keep me going until I was sure that this writing gig is something I want to be doing for a while.

The more people write, the better. It doesn’t even matter all that much what they write. As long as they write, they’re being more useful than people watching TV all day. Even better if someone else draws enjoyment from their words.

Losing self-respect, by the way? Consider the average age of an author who writes something like what’s been mentioned above, or super!Harry, or indy!Harry, or bashing!Harry. At fifteen I doubt I would have lost much self-respect for writing a kickass Harry who’s independent and wins against everyone, or for writing a romance in which the protagonist wins immediately the affection of whomever. Look at that totally awesome spell Harry just used to wreck Voldemort! Isn’t that the greatest thing ever? Ad infinitum, until you either stop entirely or grow up.

TLDR: The more people write, the better. If feedback helps, more of it. Also, age matters. Ten years down the line an author might look back and shake his head in mortification, but during puberty I’d be worried if someone lost self-respect over writing what he likes.

 

Absolutely agree with you there.

 

I think my biggest pet peeve, one that is applied to all of fanfiction; is when the author rehashes basic information from cannon. I know who the characters are as I'm interested enough in the book/movie/show to read fanfiction.

I don't know if this is a pet peeve or not, but I've been finding it increasingly annoying that there some really awesome premises that are destroyed by shitty writing.

 

All very insightful assertions, I totally agree. I was merely poking fun, compound that with the fact that sometimes I lose respect for myself at reading some of the shitty fics I'm hopeful won't be bad. What's worse is then seeing a plethora of positive reactions with no constructive criticism. But obviously ignorance is bliss.

It all comes down to personal skill through in your eye vs skill of hand. If your skill with your hand (I mean writing or any other art form, minds out of the gutters, guys) is comparatively higher than your eye's ability to perceive flaws, then naturally you'll think you're the shit. But for those that are more academically inclined, their eye is usually better than their hand. Case in point, I'm probably not expressing myself very concisely or even eloquently and will probably cringe when I read over what I've written just in this post.

I'm curious if anyone will ever go through all the posts and create the definitive list of things to not do when writing a fan fiction. It could be called something along the lines of DLP Law.

 

Pet peeve on HPreddit. When someone makes what they think is a post with a "clever idea" and then a million people go "I want this now." It's a shit idea, stop enabling people.

 

This is a great idea. I want this... oh. Nevermind.

 

Lol, right after seeing your post here, I saw two posts in r/HPfanfiction detailing a "brilliant" idea where Harry is raised by Sirius and Remus instead of the Dursleys - a totally unique idea that no one has even seen before.

The best part is, of the two posters responding, one called it a brilliant idea, and the other said "I need this in my life."

I can't tell if those responses really are that common, or if your some type of Divination expert, or something.

 

What happened is that I saw THIS in the main hp subreddit. Then I made this post, then a few hours later, the shitpost idea was crossposted into the hpfanfiction subreddit.