Words that would stop me from reading it:
Slytherin!Harry, Powerful!Harry,Smart!Harry, Grey!Harry, Misguided Father Figure Dumbles, Indifferent Snape, What would happen if, an Elemental, Ice Queen, King.

Seventy percent? Honestly, that's pretty impressive in a "and this wasn't even done on purpose" way.

 

Nextgen. The only non-terrible nextgen fic that comes to mind is Backwards With Purpose, and it's not even the main focus.

Adoption and genetics also seem to be pretty good indications of a crapfest. I think JKR said something in an interview about Muggleborns being actually Squib descendents or some such, which I think is stupid to begin with, but Hermione/Lily/whoever being the secret unacknowledged heir of [Pureblood family] is not just pointless and naff in 99% of cases but it also undermines the whole blood supremacy issue.

Biology (specifically, genetics) is my field, so fics with grossly oversimplified and outright incorrect infodumps regarding genes and heredity instantly gets on my tits far more than it probably should. Not everyone understands it beyond the 8th grade level Mendelian stuff, I get that, but banging on about how trait X in character Y is "impossible" due to [bullshit horseshit] and thus Snape is obviously Hermione's father is not only shitty hack writing but makes me want to either cry or harpoon the writer in the ballsack. I imagine that people who study economics or law probably have the same problem regarding "Harry using legal machinations to bankrupt half the country" nonsense, but I don't know.

The worst part is, we are talking about a bunch of magical wizards here, why the fuck would you even be bound by the laws of genetics anyway? Werewolf bites and parseltongue forehead horcruxes exist, after all.

So, yeah. Genetics. Avoid it. /sperglord

 

I am honestly surprised no one has mentioned soul bonds yet but as soon as see that I usually just turn off my computer.

 

Hmmm words that turn me off from a story: grey!harry, powerful!harry, smart!harry, political!harry, SLASH, M-PREG, soul bond, dumbles, voldieshorts (and any other such nonsense nicknames), bashing, wrong boy-who-lived, evil!dumbledore, manipulative!dumbledore, HP/SS, HP/TR, HP/LV.
There's still a lot of words that make me instantly dislike a story, the list is just so long that very few stories actually avoids them.

 

Yes. Ohmygod. My next catchphrase.

 

Moldyshorts

 

Hush now. The Naked Quidditch Match was awesome.

 

Moldyshorts gets grandfathered in. Any fic before 2008 or so, fine, whatever. The first 10 times someone came up with it, it's kind of clever, I guess? It was probably funny at one point. But at this point it's like "you go, girl!" or "get down with your bad self." Anything recent that uses it, for any reason, is so cringe-y I literally read it through my fingers.

Same goes for "Dumbles", "Death Nibblers", and variations thereof.

 

It was always stupid in a serious fic. It worked in Naked Quidditch Match because it was humor, because the author somehow managed to create a situation where "Moldyshorts" sounded more funny than stupid and because it was a 2001 (IIRC?) story. The Original Humor Fic.

 

No, it was never clever. Or funny.

I'd only allow it if, by using it, Voldemort materialized out nowhere and AK'd the offender.

 

ROB, Council. those two almost always ruin any chances of me looking at a story twice

 

"The Man Who Conquered".
I despise that title. Just what exactly did Harry "conquer"? It's been used so many times, and simply turns me off.

 

Pretty much any wordy variation of The-Boy/The-Man Who Something. Though there are some funny exceptions. But if it's in a non-parody fic, my hand itches for the X.

 

- The "twins-who-lived", or Harry's twin
- Snape/Voldemort/Harry's daughter/son/sister/etc.
- Sev
- Bashing of any kind
- creature!Harry
- prankster/ prank war

 

The name obsession with altering character's names so they sound cooler genuinely angers me.

An even more egregious offender for me is with PJO fanfiction. On my other account, I often got reviews that 'Perseus' should be used more often. To me, it sounds ridiculous, pompous, and presumptive. Just plain stupid.

My biggest 'word' that takes me out of a story is bashing. Bashing is FFN's worst trope. The worst.

 

What gets me with that is that they actually have 'x character bashing' in the summary, so they're aware they're representing a character badly on purpose and making other characters chew him/her out about it. They don't say 'Umbridge bashing' or 'Voldemort bashing' when those characters are presented the same way, so they have to know at some level that the canonical versions of the characters don't actually deserve bashing. This behavior presumes that the canonical Dumbledore, the canonical Ron, and whoever else, are actually mostly good characters and it's just their dumb subjective way of looking at things that says otherwise. If they actually believed Dumbledore was categorically awful, they would not bother to put 'Dumbledore bashing' in the summary. If and when someone says there's 'untagged bashing', they would just double down and argue 'no, that's what he's really like'.
Of course I don't read anything with 'bashing' in the summary, but to say what hasn't been said, I don't read anything that isn't either complete or regularly updating.

 

I've just recalled a new breed of cancer in the cesspit of tumors we call the PJO fandom.

Dark! (insert name of likely a male protag. here)

This is typically off-putting for me because tags like these almost always include heavy bashing, some sort of betrayal story (we all know just how well written those are).

There are like one or two that aren't complete shit, this one, in particular, comes to mind.

Other than that?

Fem! (insert male protag)

I genuinely despise this because, nine times out of ten, it's nothing but an excuse to pair this male protag with another male character without slash. Most HP/GoT or Asoiaf crossover stories come to mind with this.

 

"To say blank was blank was an understatement."

God I hate this turn of phrase. It's trite, it's clumsy, and it makes me twitch every time I come across it.

 

To say TheWiseTomoto was a Prick was an understatement