This has always bothered me about fanon as well. I doubt occlumency is a "barrier" at all. I can't imagine Voldemort using legilimency on Snape and encountering a "shield" or "barrier" and letting that slide. The fact that Snape erected a "shield" around his mind would be enough to tip Voldemort off that he's hiding something albiet he would be able to determine what it was via legilimency. However, there's nothing stoping him from stunning Snape, shoving veritaserum down his throat, interrogating him and executing him.

Another pet peeve I have about fanon is its insistence that the stunning spell is useless, favoring "bonebreakers" etc. over it. I can follow the logic that an enemy ally can simply revive the stunned opponent. However, in a 1v1 scenario its seems like one of the most useful spells. You hit it and they're unconscious and at your mercy.

 

Sometimes I wish i didn't get an epiphany on how the Council isn't Canon, now I can't read ~80% of all fics rec'd on TvTropes

 

Well, it kinda is. Just not the way it's portrayed in most of those fics. It's just Sarutobi's two old advisors and maybe Danzo. There's also something about a Jonin Commander, IIRC.

And those fics were probably terrible, anyway.

 

Sometimes there's a review left that needs to be called out publicly. For instance, this one left on my fic:

To which I responded something along the lines of: "There's a reason I placed the warning, "This is a dark fic, not lighthearted by any means" at the beginning. To flame after that is being an ass. To do so, and then confuse physiotherapist and psychologist, is being a dumbass."

Other than that, I usually leave a few author's notes. Sometimes it's because I'm interested in a certain part of the chapter and would like to hear specifically what people thought about it. Other times it's an update on life and telling readers not to worry about long pauses between chapters, as I am not abandoning the fic. Once in a while, it's an actual footnote to the story where I did some research and thought it would be interesting or useful to readers.

In short, Author notes are fine, as long as they serve a specific purpose and don't overun the story (which is why I go and remove them from the previous chapter before posting the latest ones. That way I'm not inflating my word count).

 

they're great in AO3 because they have designated places for them

 

One of the more common cliché & my pet peeve: magical portraits which are a font of knowledge, if it happens to be a lost art, all the better! And of course Harry is the 1st wizard to find them & learn from them, especially if they happen to be Founders' portraits.

 

In honour of an old gem of a WBWL Fic I rediscovered that avoids many of the Cliches:

1. Everyone believing that the Twin is the BWL, and not Harry, without a shred of evidence.

2. James and Lily outright spoil the Twin and ignore, if not abuse, Harry.

3. Everyone the Author hates treating Harry like shit, while people the Author likes (especially the Love Interest) are the only people who realize that Harry is a Super-Wizard, and join him in his Awesomeness.

4. Harry is always a Super-Wizard, while the Twin is a bumbling incompetent Lockhart could defeat in a duel.

5. James and Lily having any more kids. Seriously, if you're just going to ignore them, why bother?

6. Once people find out Harry is the real BWL, they expect him to save the day almost immediately despite treating him like shit.

7. The discount-Dobby house-elf the Potters happen to own who essentially acts as the surrogate parent, what with feeding him and everything.

8. James being reduced to a parody of his younger days (before he matured, became Head Boy, married, became a father, and in another life sacrificed his life for his wife and son), and Lily pretty much turning into her polar opposite.

 

How about somewhere other than the story?

It inflates the word count of the chapter. Now multiply that by the number of chapters.

The fact is a lot of authors add shit to both the beginning and end of each chapter they write.

Another fact is that FFN provides authors with the ability to create their own on-site forums, with sub-forums and threads for whatever stories or subjects you wish to discuss. The only author I know of, right off the top of my head, who bothers using that functionality, is Darth Marrs.

If people are so worried about an author's responses to other people's reviews and questions, then they can haul their ass to the appropriate forum, instead of said author VASTLY inflating the word count of their story.

Word count is a large part of that on which I base my decision of whether to try out a story. However, there are writers on FFN whose word count per chapter/story would be reduced by two thirds if they ditched the author notes and review responses. It makes it hard to use word count as any sort of reliable yardstick, when it could be so wildly inaccurate.

It would be like trying to find out the run-time of a movie, but not being able to because the back of the case listed the movie's run-time as the total time of the movie, making of featurettes, trailers for other movies, commentary tracks...

Besides, it's actually against FFN's rules to have extensive author's notes and review responses in your chapters. It's just that, much like any content that FFN supposedly doesn't allow, if no one bothers to report it, then the rule doesn't get enforced: Most people aren't 'morally offended' enough by this particular infraction to bother reporting it... especially after witnessing the oftentimes lackluster response of the admins to the issues they actually were outraged by.

I believe AO3 provides a separate, per chapter, "author's notes" section that is attached to and yet separate from the story itself.

Ah, well, the ya go...

Authors: Save the conversation for PMs and forum threads; I'm there to read a story, not read people's prattle.

Posted from Chrome after two 408 errors in Firefox...

 

I hear ya, and inflated word count is actually why I remove my author's notes from the previous chapter when I go to post my new one. In my current fic, I have notes in the first chapter, and in the last chapter. That's it. I don't have a problem with that.

In general, I agree with you, however, 2500 words sandwiched between 3000 words of notes is not only annoying, but makes me hit the x almost every time.

 

On the subject of thing concerning authors, I have found a new peeve concerning that. It is when the author makes no indication that the story is done for that chapter so you continue reading and end up very confused for a couple of seconds.

 

Not sure if this has been mentioned but ANs that are just a list of dozens and dozens of names of reviewers followed by a thanks for the reviews are a pain as well.

 

Another peeve of mine... Political Marriages. That being said I believe they probably can be done right, just not by fanfic authors.

 

Yep, been there. Even worse are when the story isn't done yet but there was a scene break that there was no indication for. Very confusing for a few lines while you try to figure out how the hell you got 'here'.

 

Depending on how old the fic is, it's a good chance that FFnet decided that what they had used previously for a scene break needed to be deleted.

 

I know I'm a bit late to the party but I disagree with this statement. That's what werewolves should be and what makes them cool as shit.

 

Potions for 'vision quests' where the person who imbibed it discovers what's his or hers animagus form. This kind of thing tends to pop up in fics where apparently being an animagus isn't a rare thing at all and it isn't really all that hard to achieve.

That's something that annoys me.

It goes hand in hand with Harry conveniently being handed over a cheat-sheet of a book on how to become an animagus in a short span of time. Just for shits and giggles, I'd like to see a fic where in a scene that Harry gets said book/journal on how to become animagus only to realize how utterly useless it is to him since he can't be one.

 

I know the urge to deny Harry any powerups is strong, especially after stumbling over all the Monty Haul antics of your typical IndyHarry sugar-fest, but just how difficult can it be? Wormtail did it as a fifth year. This is clear example of the minimum requirements being:

A. you're magical

and

B. you're willing to follow the process, even if it's risky, ugly or uncomfortable

That's it. JKR posted some apocrypha on Pottermore suggesting that the candidate had to walk around for five months with a leaf in their mouth, but since that's the requirement she highlighted, I'm tempted to think it's the worst part of the process.

 

A really big one is Sasuke either:

1.Always lusting for power at the beginning of the story as in always jealous if someone was slightly stronger than him

2.Always fucking brooding or being referred to as the brooding Uchiha

3. Every fucking thought of his being replaced by "my clan" or "how am I going to defeat Itachi"

It's like people cant write him or some shit because they completely forget that while the Uchiha Massacre was a big part of his life it didn't occupy every fucking thought of his. So almost every fucking author sucks at writing him including Kishimoto because all they can personify is his revenge driven side and fucking nothing else, and what we see at the end of Part I and are constantly stuck in thinking that that is how he constantly is like, so we just get a broken record of a cardboard cutout. he is not this person when he was 12 years old.

Edit

probably wrong thread but yeah.

 

Eh, while I agree that it can get tedious to read at times and that he probably also had other thoughts on his mind, revenge has always, from day one, been his main priority. He introduced himself with: I want to kill a certain man. And, from that point on, he found anyone who did not contribute to that goal, or was strong enough to help him achieve it, to be a burden.

If he had other thoughts, he had them because Naruto forced them down his throat and showed him that things could be different (until all went to hell anyway, that is.) In a fanfiction where things work out in a different way between those two, I'm not going to be surprised if all he thinks about is revenge and all he does is brooding.

Doesn't change the fact that you can write him differently, of course, but that would deviate from canon.

 

I'm mostly talking about fics set during the Wave Arc where they assassinate all his character, but I do see what you mean in Naruto playing a big part in his personality.