You might "master" a martial art (read: achieve a respectable degree of competence) after, oh, 5 years of practicing 10 hours a week (2500 hours). Not something for the casually inclined.

 

So, in Naruto/anime fanbase, is that what happens? Six months of a couple hours a day and all of a sudden, they've mastered it?

 

Well, I don't read much anime/manga fanfic, but in HP fics that are obviously influenced by them, try six weeks.

 

I dislike katanas. Even if an OC is a legitimate Japanese characters, no katanas. If I wanted to read about Japanese swords, I'd read Rurouni Kenshin. Not Harry Potter.

 

Well, that's six weeks by Muggle standards, but it's six years by Wizarding-Time-Turner standards!

 

Pet peeve:

Hermione owing Harry a life debt for the Troll incident, but not Ron because Ron was 'responsible' for her ending up in danger which negates it.

This is completely disregarding the fact that Ron only said something mean to her while Harry was the one who locked her in with the troll.

 

I forgot it for a while, but recently rediscovered my hate for this fucking thing.

The Point Me spell doing anything other than pointing north. Fuck that shit.

"Point Me the Chamber of Secrets!"

"Point Me The Deathly Hallows!"

"Point Me the Largest Diamond on Earth!"

"Point Me Bullshit!"

 

Seems that one helped, since you found the thread.

Poorly made joke aside, that is quite annoying.

 

Eh, I think it's reasonable. We know that a given spell, while it seems to have a "default" behaviour, can be used in alternative ways.

E.g. the shield charm, by "default", seems to create a relatively short term magical shield in front of you. However, the same spell can be used to alternatively create a physical personal shield, or a kind of magical wall covering a large area, or a magical barrier which harms those who attempt to cross. Sometimes you achieve this change by adjusting the incantation, sometimes you say the incantation the same but get a different result because you wanted a different result.

It seems to me to be no great extension of the HP magic system to say the "point me" spell points north by default, but can be adjusted to point to other things.

 

That's assuming all spells work the same way, which I doubt.

 

Really?

Really? :|

Anyway...



"No less" versus "Nonetheless."

First off, "nonetheless" is a single word (pfft, more like three scared words huddling together in shared inadequacy), while "no less" is (one, plus...shit, this is hard) a two-word idiom.

Nonetheless: "In spite of that thing I just said."
Nonetheless is used to say that even though something has one quality or set of circumstances, it still has another quality or set of circumstances.

"He was terribly allergic to pets, but a top notch veterinarian nonetheless."

"The SS were some of the most colossal douche-bags to ever walk the face of the earth; nonetheless they were snappy dressers."

...or you could phrase it as...
"The SS were some of the most colossal douche-bags to ever walk the face of the earth, but snappy dressers nonetheless."

...or...
"The SS were some of the most colossal douche-bags to ever walk the face of the earth but, nonetheless, snappy dressers."

As you may have guessed, 'nevertheless' means the same damn thing.



No less: "This thing I just said is significant, exceptional, or impressive in some way."

'No less' is used to show that something is, well, exactly what I said in the previous sentence.

"His new job provides much better employee healthcare, and profit sharing, no less!"
In this sentence, employee healthcare is groovy, but profit sharing is, perhaps, even more groovy.
It's groovier... ... ... Scoob', old buddy old pal.
And, well, that's great... for you; I don't have profit sharing. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go see what the cheapest shite policy is on the Obamacare site and OMG I'm talking to my own example sentence *42fQ~;kd%f!

"My daughter just got engaged, and to an ambassador, no less."
In this sentence, we're implying that being an ambassador is a pretty impressive thing. So, while your daughter becoming engaged is important, the fact that it's to an ambassador is also very significant. Literally, she is engaged to no less than someone of an ambassador's social standing.

It's not just for good things, either, of course...
"His daughter just got engaged, and to one of those despicably well-dressed Nazis, no less!"

Sometimes the emphasis only makes sense in context. If we know that Luke dislikes buying new clothes and hates the color green, then the following statement makes sense: "Not only did Luke just buy a new shirt, but it was in green, no less."

If we aren't privy to the former information, the latter statement is not going to make much sense; nonetheless we can sort of infer what the speaker intended to convey.

Sadly, if we can only infer the meaning of a sentence, that sentence is really only half there, half alive. We call this sort of half dead sentence an Inferi, but that's another lesson...

 

*groan* :facepalm

 

Not gonna lie; sometimes that's even more gratifying than laughter or applause.

 

Every single Harry Potter fic where Harry has a twin, whether a brother or a sister, along with both of their parents still being alive, but he somehow gets neglected by James and Lily. Sometimes it's due to some obscure, and plainly stupid, spell Dumbledore cast, sometimes it just has no fucking reason at all.

I think I've read only one good HP fic where Harry isn't the child that was marked by Voldemort, and where the Potters were a loving and caring family (The Santi's fic "HP and the BWL").

I consider the above more annoying than stories with dimension hopping and Harry immediately coming across his not-family, and proceeding to bond with them as if he was their son in truth.

 

Not just neglected. Abused and then labelled an outright Deatheater.

Because Voldemort is known for having shitloads of 10yo Deatheaters

 

I can't say I've seen this except in one particular fic, whose name escapes me at the moment, where Harry was thought as one of Voldemort's followers when some wards around their home let through a number of Death Eaters, when in truth it had been his brother who fucked things up.

Anyhoo, another pet peeve to add to the ever-growing lot: multi pairings. I detest those things, I truly do. You can have a fantastic story, but that shit just makes me close the tab and erase it from my browser history.

Aside from the numerous Harry "I have too many fucking hyphenated family names" Potter fics where he has to acquire a wife for each family name, there's also the quite nauseating soul-bonds coming into play.

For the latter, the biggest offenders tend to include Hermione or Ginny. Or even Fleur, though they always pull off some kind of Veela funky stuff going on. I think I saw, recently at that, one where Harry was paired off with Fleur, her little sister and Hermione. I just fucking love it how it happens all at once, that Fleur and Gabrielle just decide to let themselves be mated or bonded to him, without even talking to Harry, and then wandering in his... mind-scape? soul-scape?... fuck if I know, they find he's got a thing for Hermione, so they include her in the whole affair as well.

The soul-bonds shit is most annoying because it tends to be, more often than not, a lack of choice (or even worse, love at first sight) or possible implication a form of predestination. Two things that I completely abhor.

 

"The Price of Being Noble". Some of the cheesiest shit I've ever seen. And I still read it. No accounting for taste

I have no problem with the soul bond thing, as long as it occurs after the people have been married (or whatever) for twenty years. If you're going to use the fucking thing, it should be a reward for building a relationship, not the cause.

Peeve: The Unspeakables of Doom. If they were actually the evil-exterminating death machines I see in fics, then where the hell were they in canon?

 

Doing their job and keeping us safe from all the true menaces that wander the world. You never hear of it because they are just that good at it.

 

Or because they are the magical equivalent of a scientist, and you know, not MI6.

 

That's how I'd like to see them in a fic. Unfortunately, I haven't found that yet.