You either stick to canon, or live long enough to see yourself favoring Dark!Harry stories.

 

How the hell did you manage that? Either you just skipped the author page altogether, or you've had an impressive streak of luck.

 

I got over my Dark Harry phase a few years ago, and have in a circuitous fashion begun to favor the same stupid genres and clichés that got me into fandom in the first place over a decade ago: OCs, crossovers, time travel, and quirky AUs.


Peeves: Constantly misspelling a character's name, especially when canon is so easily accessible. Hermoine, McGonagal, Weasely, Obi-Won, Rumpilstitsken, Dinozo, Scuito, the wrong O'Neil for any fandom... the list goes on.

Also, changing a character's name to make it more mature or sophisticated? Incredibly annoying, with rare exception. Especially in those fics where the author makes sure to point out that Ginny's name is Virginia in their fics because Ginevra is such a horrible name... except the name doesn't come up anywhere but the author's notes, and it's all pointless blustering.

 

You read them enough to get a monthly quota to until 2015? Now, if you hadn't read any of them for 6 years how can you remember so many details that differentiate canon and fanon ?

I refuse to read a bios, only read one, and after that I never read anything else from the guy. It was mainly shit anyway. Never really liked Dark! Harry, awesomely sacarstic and arrogant? Yes, Dark? Nah.

To me, Virginia is almost as bad as Ginevra. Although Ginny is stupid. And thanks to DLP, she is now a major pet peeve. Any fic where she is more than a supporting secondary character, I doubt I will read it.

 

Yes and no on beating up Harry. Dudley did it quite a bit, it seems "Piers was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held people’s arms behind their backs while Dudley hit them. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once."

Vernon at the very least threatened to beat him at least two or three times, even coming at Harry with a raised fist."'You’ll get the stuffing knocked out of you, won’t you?' roared Uncle Vernon, advancing on Harry with his fist raised." THough you could argue from that, that there'd been a number of empty threats.

As far as cooking, yeah. Not so much. He was locked in the cupboard too much.

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I honestly don't have a problem with Ginny. Wished she was developed a little better in the books, but other than that she's just another character for me.

For bios, yeah, only if I read a fic that seems pretty good will I give the bio a chance, mainly to see if they discuss their stories a bit more so I can make a better decision on reading them.

 

It's really not that hard to differentiate fanon and canon without rereading the books every other week.

Is the concept one so basic and endemic to the fandom that it appears in virtually every fic that attempts to extrapolate on the magic of the books? It's fanon, like Apparition Wards. (It's actually an Anti-Disapparition Jinx that can be cast on a subject or an area.)

Is there a rant that is used by dozens of authors, all parroting each other, to justify portraying characters in a certain fashion, like the popular Dumbledore-bashing rant that asserts that the famous blood protection could have been established with any magical family due to pureblood interbreeding? It's fanon (the blood protection was based on the muggleborn Lily's blood and she only had one living blood relative at the time of her death).

Has it appeared in a story on FFA? It's fanon.

 

I agree. The Dursleys were almost criminally negligent and emotionally abusive, but there's a big difference between that and Vernon taking the belt to him every day and Petunia making him their personal slave.

The only physical abuse I know of came from Dudley, both from his gang outside of the house (do we ever see them actually beat him up? All I can remember is them chasing him) and threatening to hit him with his Smeltings stick in the house.

 

Many fanfic writers milk the scene where Vernon tries to strangle Harry in the OotP for all its worth. Harry apparently has 'purpling bruises' the shape of Vernon's hands around his neck for the whole year. The nutritional potions given by Ragnok the friendly goblin must have its limits then.

 

I have no issues with the Dursleys being physically abusive. Canon definitely does not try to make them into likable characters, and I can definitely see Vernon resorting to "good old fashioned beating" to keep Harry in line, despite what "those commies who want to get rid of discipline" say. Hell, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was only in 1989, when Harry was nine years old. Corporal punishment is still allowed in GB.

It becomes a problem when Harry is some broken mess because of that, and has to crawl to uncle Severus in the dungeon to join the Slytherin lullaby evening because obviously they are bullies only because their families are terrible, and Snape only is an ass to "protect" his broken little babies.

Harry had a shitty childhood, but he made it through without too much trauma or angst. There's no need to change that.

 

The Dursleys see themselves as the good guys. They're moral citizens who are burdened by a delinquent like Harry and only try to make sure he falls into line.

If your portrayal of them strays from a point where it could be justified as for Harry's own best, you have failed. Harry's life is tough enough. There is no need to have Vernon beat him up.

It also completely undermines any attempt at making Harry cool later in the story. Seriously, how's he supposed to beat Voldemort if a fat 45 year old has no problem handling him?

 

Obviously it depends on the situation. I was thinking more on the lines of the Dursleys beating Harry up before he went to Hogwarts ("beating the magic out of him"), not after. I agree that having Vernon rough Harry up without retribution after, say, the fifth year is a bad way to bring difficulties into Harry's life, but e.g. Harry using past abuse as an argument against not going back there is completely fine IMHO. Vernon's character definitely is not limited by his goodwill and "what is good for Harry".

So in a nutshell, as long as it helps Harry in his way into badassery there's no limits on what can happen to him. The opening scenes of The Summer of Change come into mind.

 

Stories that make up bullshit excuses for Harry's utter mediocrity.
Seriously, it was fun years ago when I was just getting into the fandom, now its just really annoying.
Anti-occlumency potions and magical core limiters my arse.

 

Stories in which the tittle is in a different language than the content. Not when it is a translation of another story, I can understand those cases. I am talking about people who think it is cooler to have the tittle that way. And not only does it happen on fanfiction but in videos in which you don't even have a summary to see that it is, in fact, in another language than the one the tittle suggests.

 

Potter constantly whining about his fame irritates me to no end.
It's like when extremely attractive people have a pity party about the horrible struggles they face. "People are just drawn to me like all the time and I'm so suffocated by all the signs of affection, my Beauty is a curse *sigh* like I never know if the attraction is real, I wish I were ugly like you lot." Or when rich people do that.
No-one wants to get to know the real you behind the Boy-Who-Lived, because the real you is an obnoxious twat.

Come to think of it, it could be fun if done intentionally. The prophesy chose a hero to vanquish the Dark Lord, but the hero is just so damn mediocre, unimpressive and unlikable people struggle just to be around him. Chastise themselves, because well he will be the one to save their asses, but can't really help their feelings of faint disgust. "That's nice Harry, go play with your broom now." But they do see it as their moral duty to at least be nice to him, give him support and even affection. So Hermione reasons herself into dutiful friendship, but snaps occasionally. Ron tries to connect through sports and chess as a way to spend time with Harry, without having to actually interact. And Ginny bites the bullet and starts drinking love-potions, punishing herself for her past childish infatuation with the Boy-Who-Lived when reality is so utterly disappointing.

 

Completely disagree here, in general people want to be beautiful it is not like that for fame. I certainly don't want to be famous to the point everyone knows who I am and would find it extremely annoying to the point I am likely to start simply ignoring everyone but my family/friends and would go out of my way to avoid interacting with anyone else.

Especially when the fame is about something you had nothing to do with it whatsoever and reminds you that your parents died while you didn't and that you had to live with people who barely tolerate you.

 

Harry hates his fame for the simple reason that he's never once experienced an upside to it. It makes him into the center of attention when he'd rather not be, it comes with a mountain of preconceived notions about his personality and character that others judge him by rather than by his actual characteristics and motives, and it prevents him from enjoying certain rights that other people take for granted, like any measure of true privacy or protection from gross libel.

I mean, who wouldn't want to be the oh-so-famous Boy-Who-Lived, the notorious gloryhound and troublemaker who openly flaunts the rules and laws of the society that gave him so much, who tells wild lies in a desperate effort to remain relevant, who hides an alarming facility for Dark Arts like parseltongue and strange curses?

 

Whenever Harry is referred to as Prongslet. This annoys me so much.

 

I'm in a dilemma: I want to agree with you but I don't want to agree with Alexx.

Prongslet,Pub,Siri,Cub... instakill.

 

Yes, I understand that. Fame, especially if not managed properly, has its drawbacks.
I also believe that the extremely attractive venturing into veela territory people from my example do in fact have legitimate grievances. Like total strangers deciding at first glance that they must obviously be vain and shallow and stupid to look that good. While other total strangers harass them with inappropriate offers in public places. Sometimes their same-sex friends get jealous. And yet, if they start bemoaning their cruel fate, I find myself not only totally unsympathetic to their plight but in fact somewhat irritated.
Fame is a commodity, so much useful shit could have been done with it. A proper non-angsty hero would go "yeah, I didn't want that, but oh well" and go endorse a charity or something, send his fans signed photos with shield charms embedded by the twins, support gay marriage, anything. I'm not talking about some grand unrealistic (at that age at least) aspirations of going into politics here, but getting money for the books about him and donating it to sick puppies would have been doable.

So when a fanfic takes that experiencing-no-upside-to-fame-on-account-of-being-a-passive-twat thing, increases it ten times; treats it not like a regrettable byproduct of a shitty upbringing, but as something admirable; makes Potter not just shy away from friendly admirers, but actively resent them; has internal monologue like "look at you just coming up to me all smiley, you don't even know me! you shallow bitch! oh why does this always has to happen to me?" - yeah, that makes me quite peeved.

 

My pet pev #342

People who think older=deeper.

The oldest vaults are always the deepest, the oldest part of Hogwarts is the deepest...

The Deepest vault is probably the ones most recently excavated and thus the newest. The Oldest vaults would be the ones right by the door.

Thats not to say they are the most secure vaults, but people always equate old with secure with deep, they are mutually exclusive aspects and not related.