Hm. Suppose it is a joke, after all. Could be a bit hammier, though.

 

Wincest is just wrong. That needn't be said really, but the number of fans that think bopping uglies between siblings is perfectly okay is just too much. *bleaches eyes*

 

Exactly. I said that same thing a few months back. And we have examples of this in canon. Dumbledore pwns an entire room in a flash. The duel between him and Voldemort in the Ministry was a few minutes long at best. Hell, even the films seem to understand that--Harry and Sirius teamed up against Malfoy and he got his ass kicked.

And yeah, fuck the 'you want me do x with y year magic' thing. If Hogwarts is the only stage of education in Wizarding Britain, it's fucking logical that they'll teach you the spells you'll need most as an adult, in whatever profession.

 

Then again . . .

 

Scrub, wtf dude. You actively searched for that pic. Fucking Lannisters and their lucky star.

You know what, 15 seconds of staring at that picture and I'm laughing like stupid.

 

I had the same reaction: Stare. Stare. Stare. Chuckle. Laugh.

 

Peeve: 'Crossovers' where the only thing that crosses over is Harry's name. Which he then dumps in chapter 2 because of reasons (none of which stand up to inspection).

Honestly, a 'Harry Potter' story where Harry isn't called Harry, isn't in the Harry Potter world, doesn't have Harry Potter magic and doesn't even retain canon Harry Potter personality traits isn't really a Harry Potter story. You've created an OC and then selected 'Harry Potter crossover' to increase viewership.

Elfling!Harry HP/LOTR and Jedi!Harry HP/SW fics I'm looking at you.

 

Pet Peeve which might help some of you out, as I've had to purge myself of this damnable flaw: Anti-Apparition, Anti-Disapparition, Apparate, Disapparate

There is no such thing as Anti-Apparation or Anti-Disapparation. If someone is entering a place, they are Apparating in; conversely, if they are leaving a place, they are Disapparating. You cannot Apparate into Hogwarts or Disapparate from Hogwarts, which is to say that Apparition and Disapparition are banned within Hogwarts.

 

Sorting is slowly, but surely, becoming a pet peeve of mine.

I'm not sure what's worse: seeing the Hat praise whomever the author dotes on by telling them they'd make the Founders proud with certain qualities/traits and even come to excel their achievements; seeing the Hat say to someone they have qualities for all four Houses; or just plain rehashing of canon with minor and inconsequential alterations in regards to the sorting itself.

Don't get me wrong, there's fantastically written sorting scenes, I've read them, it's just that the bad ones tend to overwhelm the good.

 

Don't most people have the qualities of all four houses, to one extent or another? As I've argued at length elsewhere, the whole idea that the sorting hat is dividing people by attributes mostly seems to be a Hogwarts myth. As we saw with Harry, and countless other characters, the Hat wants to put you where you would do best, not where your character says you belong.

 

Probably and I have no issue with the base level of those qualities. It's when they get exalted to heaven and beyond that shit starts getting downright disgusting.

 

Sturgeon's law, buddy.

 

From what i remember of anything the hat says this seems pretty accurate. That being the case surely attributes of the person (perhaps loosely defined) are what would determine how well they would do, and how they might develop, among different groups of peers. If slytherin would help you on the way to greatness it's surely because of the attributes of the students of slytherin house, suggesting that they have something distinctive in common. The sorting song of first year supports the simple categorisations method.

 

The use of née in names annoys me for some reason. I see reason for it, telling the maiden name of some woman gives a little bit more information. But I can't think of a decent story that uses née.

Usually maiden names are not at all important. And I usually see née used in bad indy fics where Harry is finding out his heritage at Gringotts.

 

The use of "née" in names usually comes with a battery of middle names that no one cares or knows about and bunch of meaningless titles that grant no powers, priveliges or anything really aside from sounding fance. Fancy titles have their uses, but it's like with thinking up lies on the spot: don't use an excessive amount of details if you want to appear genuine.

TL;DR: I agree

EDIT: My... something... is tingling. Odran, where art thou? Isn't it time to do the thing again?

 

I think I've mentioned my distaste often enough for the ever-helpful Goblins of Gringotts and the 'heritages' that Harry acquires by constantly tripping over his feet and landing into family magics of Black/Slytherin/Gryffindor/Ravenclaw (but not Hufflepuff obviously, since the 11 year olds there are more concerned with giving blowjobs rather than studying magic), thus wards of Hogwarts now obey him and Dumbledore and every other adult in the world has been incompetent until Harry came along with his harem of wives, because hey he needs a wife for every family name and so on and so on, and Ron is a Death Eater who raped the author's mother.

Now shut up and get inside my magically expanded trunk that's larger than Buckingham Palace with its own ecosystem.

 

Marriages must be consummated and heirs (male) conceived before Summer Solstice or Malfoys get everything because reasons. Also, the druid said so.

 

Like you say, no problem if it's done right and there's a reason for it.

My first fic I ever wrote had it in one place. Harry received a letter from a ministry worker who did some research into his background for him. His grandmother was blah blah née Gaunt. But she changed her name. Hence, Harry killed his closed living relative when he fought Voldemort.

Outside of something like that, I can't really see a reason to use it.

 

I only just read the thread otherwise I would have contributed to the discussion earlier. However I have the following to say/vent about. If this isn't really the place (it is a peeve thread) then if a mod could move it I'd appreciate it.


Magical Cores

Funny thing, when I first started reading FF, about 07 or 08 I think, which was a bit late to the party admittedly. I don't remember ever actually coming across the term.

I don't remember if there were alternative explanations or if magic simply "was" and no explanation was (or needed to be) given. The whole concept of cores seems pretty recent to me.

There's two different ways I like to think about how wizards (and witches) use magic. The first is that magical people do not necessarily have magic themselves, but are instead able to, for whatever reason, use magic. Perhaps magic simply is, that is to say, it exists within the world (or further, but who cares, it's not relevant), and wizards and witches (who I shall hence forth call magicals) are simply humans that are attuned to it, and can thus call on it. It is more subconscious than anything, they probably don't know exactly how they do it. This allows different magicals to be stronger or weaker (magically) without some kind of predefined "core" which simply lets them use more magic because...they have more magic. The reason that one magical can be stronger than another in this case is that they better understand their connection to the magic in the world. They learn (in whatever way) how to manipulate the magic in the air better than others. This does NOT necessarily mean they consciously know what they're doing any better than anyone else. Perhaps they do, Dumbledore and Voldemort almost certainly do. But they probably don't, they just use it. So magicals can be stronger, but not because they're more inherently more powerful.

In this case magical exhaustian isn't REALLY a thing, you don't "run out of magic" and have to recharge (did this EVER happen in canon?). However it was brought up that everything you do does cost you SOMETHING. In this case I personally think it just leads to mental exhaustion. Even if you are unaware of how you're using magic, your brain is working really hard and you will eventually get tired. But it's not magical at all, you're just plain tired. Also being a battery is fucking retarded.

This is in my opinion, the better way, but while I'm sure I've come across a similar train of thought, I can't recall any stories that have used it in quite some time, if ever. The reason this is so good is because it keeps magic unquantifiable, a lot of authors try really hard to try and explain magic in ways we can understand. It's fucking magic, it doesn't have to make sense, it just is. By the very definition of the word it's not supposed to be possible and its limits are unknown. Trying to explain how it works is a waste of time.

The other way is pretty much anything similar to a magical core, because it's quantifiable. If a person has a certain amount of magic, then that magic must be contained within them, however you want to look at that, whether you have a "core" or magic runs through magicals' veins. It's obviously limited and can be exhausted. In this case I think it's just another form of energy, and I'm willing to say it can simply recharge on its own over time once used, because like I said above, it's magic, it doesn't have to make sense fuck you.


Dumbledore being manipulative and evil

To me, this is just wrong, there's only a few of reasons I can think of someone wanting to do this is. The first is that they simply want Harry to be a rebel, and it's a lot more believable when Harry actually has a reason to fly off the handle and become independent (and obviously smarter than Dumbledore) if Dumbledore's an evil guy that placed Harry with the Dursleys to control him and have him die. There's two major problems I see with this.

Firstly, if Dumbledore really wanted to manipulate Harry into being who he wanted him to be, why not take him himself, raise him EXACTLY how he wanted so when the time came for him to die, Harry wouldn't even question it. He'd been raised all his life to believe it was his destiny (or some stupid shit) and there'd be no issue at all. It's pretty easy to manipulate a child into sharing your beliefs if you control everything they're exposed to for their early years. Look at how Draco turned out, its because of how he was raised, not because of who he is.

Secondly, and way more importantly, Dumbledore placed Harry with the Dursleys IMMEDIATELY following Voldemort's death. I really doubt he actually knew exactly what had happened, it's very likely that he thought Voldemort actually had died that night before he could actually look into what happened. Like someone else posted, the war very likely didn't end the moment Voldemort died, Death Eaters were still running around free killing people. Dumbledore probably wanted Harry far away from any of that, at least for a while, possibly because he felt he owed it to him for taking down Voldemort. After everything calmed down he probably felt that Harry actually was better off staying there, it could have been several months, maybe even a year before they managed to catch enough Death Eaters to finally call the war over. By then he perhaps thought it best not to move Harry, or felt he might still be attacked by one of Voldemort's followers if they ever got the chance. Living with muggles greatly reduces that chance.

Also a lot of stories where Dumbledore is manipulative, he leaves him with the Dursleys either knowing or causing them to be abusive towards Harry. It has already been said but, the Dursleys being abusive is not canon. Not physically anyway, we're never told he's starved or beaten. I seem to recall him ducking under a frying pan once, though it never hit him. Dudley almost certainly beat him up with his friends, however, this does not mean Harry had an abusive childhood. A LOT of kids get picked on and beaten up (though beaten is probably less common these days) by their school peers.

Another point, if he did place Harry with the Dursleys to manipulate him (for some reason) before he knew Voldemort wasn't actually dead. What on earth was he trying to accomplish? He sure doesn't need Harry's fame, he has plenty of it on his own. The whole thing doesn't make any damn sense.


Harry's inheritance

Ok, I can actually buy that he has a family vault with a fair amount of gold in it. Most pureblood families having a family vault that kids couldn't use makes sense. He probably only has a trust vault BECAUSE his parents died though, I see no reason for any kid to normally have access to that much money (if you look at how much money he has in canon, that's probably a bit much if he wasn't expected to pay for his school things). He probably isn't the richest pureblood in all of England though, if the Potter's had that much gold we would have heard about it in the books. People would have been all over him.

I can also buy him being the heir of Gryffindor, it's either heavily hinted at or confirmed in canon I believe. I doubt he'd get any MORE gold from that though, as there most certainly would have been heirs before him to use/merge the gold in the vault. That's if Gryffindor even had a vault, was Gringotts the wizarding bank 1,000 years ago?

You can MAYBE push the title of Slytherin on him due to rights of conquest. But only after Voldemort ACTUALLY dies.


Gringotts and the Goblins in general

I'm not a huge fan of him being on best terms with Goblins simply because he treats them nicely and remembers ones name (lets not even tackle that one, it's very stupid). At most all I can see is this causing them to NOT hate him, perhaps be more willing to help him out with things they do anyway.

Also, why is it that fanon says that Gringotts handles wills and all other legal matters related to blood lines. I'm not totally against the idea, but surely magicals would want to handle this themselves, ESPECIALLY with their natural distrust of Goblins. As far as we're ever told (unless there's something more introduced in book 7, which I try to forget happened), Gringotts is a bank, and only a bank.


Spell power

I'm with Taure on this one (I think? it's been a few pages). I personally think spells should either work, not work at all, or be mutilated if the spell execution was sloppy causing some weird in between effect. If you want a more powerful effect, you have to use a more powerful spell. For example, the severing charm probably can't cut all the way through someone's body, but you could probably use a dark spell that's designed to cut through human flesh to do that. If you could just put more power into a spell then there's probably only 5 or so offensive spells you would ever need if you were magically powerful (for whatever reason you are).

So how does what I said about being magically stronger by being more attune have any meaning whatsoever? Well I think that understanding magic (even only on an unconscious level! I'm sick of saying that so I won't repeat it again) better allows you to more quickly cast spells, by calling upon it, or simply cast them at all. More advanced spells require more understanding, so being more powerful is more like being knowledgeable than having any "real" power.


Related to that, spell creation

This I don't think has actually been brought up. But it's never really clear how exactly a spell is created, and why it needs to be created. I believe we were told that Snape created Sectumsempra, well what would happen if Harry went back in time (HYPOTHETICAL, CALM DOWN), said the word and moved his wand in the right movements. Would it work? I assume that it would, in which case, is spell creation simply figuring out what combination of words and wand movements are required to create a certain effect?

Also, how exactly does silent casting work, do the words not matter? Or do you simply have to mean them for the spell to work (as long as you do the wand movements).

Any story which tries to say wand movements aren't actually required is stupid. If all that was required to create spells was to say a word then spell creation would not be difficult and would be simply cross checking an English to Latin dictionary and shouting words until something happened. Which does make you wonder how wandless magic works, not going to touch that one. It can be done according to canon (I think?) but I really don't know how that works with the above theories. Except perhaps that magic can be cast purely with intent and wand movements are more of a focus than anything, to FORCE the effect.


Duels

I think this is directly related (well should be) to how magically strong you are, your knowledge of spells, and your ability to see what your enemy is planning before they do it (in other words experience). I DON'T think being able to dodge spells is actually important, from what we can understand from canon (I think, it's been so long), most spells have practically no travel time. You simply COULDN'T dodge them. Being able to move around during combat is different, getting yourself in a better position, perhaps using the terrain to your advantage further in the fight, is still useful, but its not about dodging spells.

Because it is mostly related to what spells are actually cast, the winner is almost always going to be the one who can cast a spell the other does not know how to block, or is simply too slow to block. Which is why I agree with others that most duels would be incredibly one sided and end in seconds. Two equals may try and pull their punches, slowly moving up to more complicated spells if necessary, to not show their hand so to speak. If you show a spell you know now, the next time, they might know how to counter it. This is the only reason I can imagine a duel might take a longer time for two that are close to equal, that and that neither may be able to think of a spell the other can't block. So they keep trying until they get lucky or can leave.

Magic can do pretty much anything, so I'm pretty sure that if for example, someone had a leg blown off, they theoretically could reattach it on the spot. If they knew how and if they didn't get taken down trying (unlikely). So I don't really see a simple thing like that stopping a fight. It could lead to it stopping of course, fighting on one leg, especially if trying to reattach it, would be quite difficult. Your enemy hasn't become any weaker.


Fights in general

Fights with multiple opponents can hardly be called dueling, in most cases I believe that the only way an out numbered person could win would be to cast more quickly than his opponents, or more smartly. For example a casting a shield that can with stand multiple blows.

About the use of lethal blows and Taure pointing out that someone trying to revive a stunned ally would probably get stunned because of it thus rendering lethal spells unnecessary. I sort of agree, but not if your out numbered. If you're out numbered or the enemy simply can spare a person to sit at the back lines to revive and heal your enemies then this is simply not true, and taking a leg off is going to be way more useful. Stunning someone so you can easily do this is fine though.


Harry being powerful

This is a really tricky subject. First of all let me just say that you cannot demand that Harry not be allowed to receive/already have some kind of advanced power or knowledge, while also demanding that he not use time travel to give himself the time he needs to develop these things naturally, AND demand he face off against Voldemort and NOT get his ass handed to him. There's simply no way for Harry to be average, even better than average, AND win against Voldemort. Tom Riddle was exceptionally smart and there's just no way Harry can out pace him. Being gifted random knowledge and/or power is kind of stupid though which leads me to believe that Harry using SOME kind of time travel is the only way to make any story in which Voldemort isn't blatantly incompetent and retarded work.

Even the best written stories in which Harry simply buckles down, studies and finally ends up winning vs Voldemort don't work. Because there's just nothing explaining how he can defeat someone with 60 years of study and magical research on him. That said, even time travel kind of pushes it, because really he'd need way more than a few years worth of time travel to come that far. But no one wants to read 60 years worth of story. The best story I've seen that handles Harry's power with time travel is definitely Wastelands of Time.

The other thing is, despite what some like to believe, Harry IS special. Whether you believe in the prophesy or not, some how he managed to cripple the most powerful dark wizard of at least a few hundred years. Some argue that his mother used some kind of protection and that is what reflected the killing curse. Well...maybe, there's no real proof for this though other than Dumbledore saying Harry has his mother's protection, which may or may not be true. We really don't know. It's possible that Harry burnt Quirrel to death for reasons completely unrelated to his mother, perhaps it was not the physical contact itself but some unknown power we never really learn about. It's honestly more interesting if our hero is actually special. No one likes an average hero, I think that canon has taught us that. He was honestly so average, worse than even, he was boring. We got hints that he was something more in each of the first few books, however he ends up spending all of book 7 (maybe 6 too) doing absolutely nothing. As far as I can recall Hermione actually did all the work finding the Horcruxs, or they just got lucky and found them anyway. The only thing he did was cast a disarming spell at Voldemort at the end, and the only reason that worked was because of the shitty elder wand concept that Rowling introduced.

So really, I'm all for a powerful Harry, it's way better than that one that does literally nothing.


I should probably stop the wall of text. Especially since this thread is more about listing peeves and I was explaining my reasoning for liking/disliking or simply my thoughts on other people's.

I will however say that I hate any of the following and they're auto no-reads for me.

Slash, pretty much what everyone else complains about.

Ginny being anything more than a secondary character, to be honest this was more of a festering hate than a real reason. She was so poorly developed in the main story that I just started to resent her very being when she became the love interest for the main character.

Ron being a strategic genius, this has been explained before as well, he's good at chess...that's all, I can play chess too, that doesn't mean I can run a war. Ron is a useless character who's only redeeming trait is that he's there for Harry as a friend (most of the time). Which Harry sorely needed coming into the magical world.

Hermione, now let me explain... I don't hate her character, in fact I really like her character for the most part, I was/am a HHr shipper for many years, however fanon has had me move away from that because of the following.
She is either:
- Represented as a flawless woman who can solve anything and has no equal.
- She has most of her annoying traits enhanced and shown in a light that portrays them as good things, like the fact that because she likes to read she automatically deserves to read any book Harry gets his hands on.
- Or her house elf slave labor bullshit. They LIKE working, if they like it, shut the fuck up and leave them alone. This seemed more of a phase in canon if I recall correctly. But there are times in fanon she just won't shut up about it.
- She apparently has the right to be in charge because she's smart.
- Despite being overly annoying, she becomes the love interest essentially because she's a girl. At least that's what I assume, since I can't see anyone actually wanting to put up with that bull shit.
- She's not the love interest, and the author makes that painfully clear by taking and adding to the above traits, making her even more annoying and annoying the reader.
Just about any other way of handling Hermione is fine, love interest or not, but god damn, it's made me actually begin to dislike that canon pairing.

I must say I think Harry/Fleur has become my favourite now. For two reasons, the first is that the best stories I've ever read have used that pairing, I guess writers for it are just not retarded like more popular pairing writers are. The other is that is kind of makes sense except for the age difference, which really isn't that much, 3 years is nothing once they're both past 20. They have some similarities, though perhaps I'm reading into it what I want to, they both get a lot of attention they don't want and can't find anyone else that really understands that. Also Harry is somewhat immune to the Veela charm if I remember the canon world cup properly, and I like to believe after learning to throw off the imperius curse that he becomes much more/complete immune to it. I like the idea that Veela find that attractive.


Wow I'm amazed this wasn't over the max post size. Sorry for the huge post, I just needed to get thoughts out of my head. Also curious if anyone agrees with me.


EDIT: Added more stuff to Dumbledore section.

 

That was an impressive first time list. Thank you for the post, although I think you may find we've discussed and already mentioned most of these things already. There's a reason this is the eighth Pet Peeves thread. I don't have time to discuss all of your things, but hey, I agree with some, considering the anti-anti-manipulative!Dumbledore oneshot I wrote. The only thing I don't really buy is the Harry/Fleur pairing, not because it's not interesting, but because very few good fics exist.

I don't hate Ginny anymore, not for many years... it was just a phase, like for most here. Nowadays, my favorite characters are all of them. But I especially like writing Ron, because he's a lovable dolt.