"Mate".

That is all.

 

u wot m8?

No but seriously people in England do say mate quite a lot in some areas.

edit: oh, unless you meant mate as in soulmate?

 

Probably is a reference to vampires and werewolves 'mates'? That whole twisted Alpha, Beta and Omega stuff as opposed to the plain romance option.

 

Mate is probably the only stereotypical Australian slag that is in regular use in Australia.

 

That's not entirely fair dinkum.

 

Some fics come off really odd with it, stuff like Harry constantly calling his girlfriend mate.

 

Ahh, the secret to 'mate' is that you only call your worst enemies mate. Unless you start saying it ironically, and cycle back to sincerity.

 

"Nothing will go wrong, mate."

 

'Nuff said.

...Though replace X with Y and Percy with Draco/Severus/Voldemort/Lucius, etcetera, etcetera.

 

The usual, I guess.
Tags. Any tag. I might read it if one of the less nocive ones but even then... (I'm talking dark!, light!, grey!, political!, fem!, lord!, creature!, veela!, etc.) if you can't be bothered to join your nouns, adjectives and conjunctions to produce four sentences worth a shit for the front page of your story I won't be bothered to waste my time on it.

variations of "don't like don't read", "no flames", "reviews please". People are dicks. Unfortunate truth of life. Move on. Ignore it. I get that flames are a pain in the ass but the don't like don't read? Ugh. You don't belong on a public setting. Write for yourself.

Our. Our hero, our friend, our Harry, our savior.

Soulmate. Don't have to clarify here I think.

I picked up a bad habit from a crack fic, some summers ago. Whenever I see a question on a summary, I answer it. On the worst/more comical way possible. I just can't keep a straight face for the actual reading afterwards. (What if Draco were secretly in love with Hermione? She'd promptly marry him. Then divorce him taking all his money and putting him on the streets. - not my best one but I did just pass by that summary ten minutes ago)

That's it I guess. Can't remember anything truly awful I didn't already cover here

 

As far as titles go, I don't think I've ever read a good fanfic with the word "chronicle" in its name. Doesn't help that it's basically just a pretentious substitute for "story".

 

"i suck at summaries."

 

"What happens when"

It's a slightly less retarded version of "What if". But only slightly.

 

'Protagonist' paired with 'person 1', 'anybody else'. I don't care about pairings at all. But somebody being paired with multiple people screams of with fulfilment, and is nigh-guaranteed to be terrible. Unless it's a comedy, of course. Good comedy gets a free pass on practically anything.

 

'a chance meeting'

...ugh.

 

In the summary? Severus Snape. 90% of summaries with Severus Snape are shit. Make that 99.99% if there's ANY other person's name in there.

Goblin nation. Goblin friend. Magic Card/Bank Card/Galleon Card/Any variation thereof. Basilisk hide. Soul bond. M!preg, can't forget that.

X lives! For example, Fred miraculously survives the Battle while all forty-nine others don't.

Non-cliché. In my experience, this means that there are at least five different clichés in the first chapter alone.

RATIONALITY

 

"it gets better after a few chapters"
Because it doesn't. I don't want to read something that says "the first few chapters are shit but then you'll be accustomed to shit so it won't smell as bad"

Also, worse than questions in the summary, questions without question marks at the end.
"What would have happened if our "Golden Trio" were not put it in the same house. Would they still become friends, or would they ignore each other. Would Harry still get special treatment even if he's in Slytherin. And more importantly would Harry be able to stop Voldemort, or would the dark lord rise again."

 

"Bash", "bashing", "Lord", "Moldyshorts", "Dumbles", "Weasel", "Hadrian", "Grey", "Independent". Any combination of words presenting Harry as a close friend of Goblins or Gringotts. Any world or worlds in all caps.

 

So.... these words all make me go bang my head into something hard and flat.

 

Like maybe the Obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey? 'Cause this Harry can hook you up.