The funny thing is that Su Li doesn't even exist in the books.

I think belleradh's "Snakecharmer" had a good setting here with giving these characters a depth. Too bad that story is probably dead.

 

Nor does the Slytherin half-blood "Tracey Davis"; she was a cut character, like Hermione's muggle sister. Su Li has the same status.

 

EDIT: Ninja'd by Pers, but still somewhat relevant.

It's less fluffy than most of his works, IMO. It starts as a one-shot that has some other one-shot-ish works following it (bundled together as Matryoshka Vignettes). As only the original one-shot is from Daphne's or Harry's POV, there is comparatively little space for overwhelming fluff.

 

I've only ever seen it in one fic (just another shitty Daphne fic), so it may not be a true pet peeve, but it made me rage. The entirety of the story revolved around how Daphne was running away from a marriage contract her father was trying to force on her. Her parents were generally cold and uncaring throughout, selling her to the highest bidder. Once Harry got all that sorted and had his meeting with her family, her father asked him, "What are your intentions toward my daughter?"

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Duckling

Some of the most beautiful women in the world, started out as awkward, strange looking 12 year old creatures from the Abyss.

Trust me, 10 years down the track you'll meet up randomly with a girl you used to make fun of in school and wonder why you never tapped that.

 

Because in the present time, she's kinda ugly?

Middle- and high-schoolers aren't exactly known for their forward thinking.

 

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Pansy_Parkinson

Read that a little bit - you'll see the back-and-forward tit-for-tat teenagers from opposing groups get up to. I think all of the descriptions of how each character looks, comes from each individual character's bias.

From a canon and an in-character Harry.. Pansy seems to be a definite no-no.

 

However, Snape did refer to them as "The Dream Team" in canon. Which, for me, is far weirder.

The first one makes me spit fire. Thankfully, I don't see the second nearly as often.

RAGE! That's as bad for me as the Godric's Hallow/Deathly Hollows fuck-ups I see constantly. At least people used to get the first one right, but ever since book seven they've been fucking it up left, right, and center. Is it so hard to figure this shit out, or are these people simply in a perpetual state of "I can't brain today; I have the dumb?"

I don't mind a little bashing when it's plausible, but when a writer turns an annoying, overbearing character with a temper, like Molly, into a stark raving mad harridan who only speaks in screams and has no mental censor, I have to wonder if they have any concept of realism. Does the term "suspension of disbelief" mean anything to them, or are they so hellbent on their crusade for visceral, personal satisfaction, that they throw any sort of quality control out the window in order to get there?

At the end of the day, they're still calling him what he wants to be called, instead of his real name, so the joke's sort of on everyone.

I've seen a few stories where either they turned on him, or he thought they were infantile dicks for pulling pranks on people. Still, those kind of stories are the exception to what, as you pointed out, is practically a rule.

Actually, Pansy was called pretty once, too... by someone who tears people down for a living. But I've dissected this one before, so I'll simply point you to this post and this one.

We've had to endure a lot of horse shit being vomited up into the fandom because of various things from the movies. Mainly anything Snape related.

The newest plague upon HP fanfic is Scabior/Hermione (or the dreadful portmanteau, 'Scabmione').

Yes, the fangirls have spoken, and apparently deemed Scabior's actor to be attractive be appealing have a pulse, so now we have to endure Scabior/Hermione fanart, signs instructing, "Keep Calm and Let Scabior Snatch You," and, of course, a metric fuck-ton of godawful fic where Hermione takes complete and fucking total leave of her senses, sense of duty, and any shred of credibility, and bones Scabior the Snatcher. Or, at least, is raped by him until she decides it must be love.

'Cause, you know, if there's anything hotter than the people instituting a genocide, it's the opportunistic gutter trash who use it as an opportunity to get paid for the raping, stealing, beating, and killing they'd have been doing for free anyway, in lieu of bathing.
uke:

He's like Monsieur Thénardier, except with a quarter of the charm and three times the smarm, but that's what the girls are into these days, I gather. Apparently sex appeal is a substance that builds up on the skin with each day that one eschews bathing.

--
Edit: Oh, and, as Mnemosyne said, I've seen Daphne Greengrass with many different eye and hair colors, and various shades of skin, from pale as a sheet, to well-tanned.

 

Remind me, por favor--who the hell is Scabior?

 

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Scabior

 

Precisely.

 

Most pet peeves simply make me stop reading the story, but there is one that makes me rage.

I don't mind baseless insults, as they are a part of everyday life, but I can't really stand when character X (usually a Weasley, but not always) learns that Harry is friends with a girl they don't approve of, and calls that girl names such as whore, slag, scarlet-woman, even though in 90% of the cases that girl is a virgin.

Happens in more stories than I can count, be it Mrs Weasley calling Fleur a scarlet woman, or Ginny calling Daphne a whore, when half the time Harry and the girl are barely even friends. I guess it is just massive overreactions and blowing things out of proportion that piss me off. Its not even that I care about Weasley bashing, its just when those particular words are thrown around unnecessarily. I wouldn't mind if they call each other a fucking piece of shit dogfucking cocksucker, but some insults go too far.

 

...because women have never been known to just blow shit out of proportion for no apparent reason we blokes can see...

 

Nobody can represent their house properly excluding Harry and his friends. This bothers me immensely.

No one in Slytherin besides Zabini or Greengrass or whoever befriended Harry can be cunning. No one in Hufflepuff can be loyal or hardworking besides Susan Bones and/or Hannah Abbott. No one can be brave like a Gryffindor besides Hermione or Ginny.

Lavender and Parvati tend to get the worst of it and portrayed as vapid, spiteful ditzes obsessed with their appearance and with no redeemable qualities. When the girls were some of the first to help Hagrid with his dangerous Skrewts into their boxes because they cared about him and his job. They got into Gryffindor for a reason.

 

pussy!harry in griffindor pisses me off too.

 

I think that pussy!Harry in general just pisses me off, really.

 

I'm sure he has his place.. even if only as a catalyst for other characters to change.

 

Since everyone's fleshing out their peeves, I'll do mine:

1. Misspelling the names of the characters, especially the important ones! Its Lily NOT Lilly. Herm-I-O-ne NOT Herm-O-I-ne, lets not even get to McGonagall and Dumbledore.

2. Screwing up spells, I mean come on! It takes one second to look it up on the HP lexicon. Or worse, they get lazy and use pig-latin or whatever it is they speak in America. I don't speak it, but I sure as hell know it isn't Latin!

3. All the good characters suddenly become incredibly hot. Harry/Draco/OC has become ripped and has bulging muscles after drinking X miracle potion. Hermione/Ginny/OC has 'filled out in all the right places' and has 'curves but are still incredibly sexy'.

4. Luna as a fuck-toy. She's a depressed girl who watched her mother die. She's odd and not entirely 'there'. She is NOT an automatic nymphomaniac!

5. Harry's emerald eyes that shine brighter than a killing curse. Or when its a Harmonian shipper: Hermione's eyes can never be brown, they have to be flavours. Cinnamon, mocca, chocolate and so on. Or when Draco is redeemed for some reason that is not entirely worth mentioning in the story, his eyes are never a colour, but a very low temperature: icy, cold, frigid that 'melt' when he shows emotion.

6. Harems...The word alone is enough.

7. Sirius and Remus or worse Sirius, Remus and Snape getting it on and encouraging Harry to do it with Draco/Lucius/Voldemort/joining them... *shivers* Have all the women in the world died?

8. Hating Dumbledore irrationally. Yeah, he fucked up a few times, so what? He's a bit set in his ways, but he's not the reincarnation of Evil! Partially-Kissed Hero anyone?

9. The Blacks are actually nice people. No...no they're not. They disinherited their daughter for falling in love with a muggle. They kicked their son out because he didn't want to be a murderer. Bellatrix, though an incredible character to work with, was a psychotic bitch even before she went to Azkaban.

10. Annoying, unnecessary nicknames: Mouldy-shorts, Dumbledork, Her-Bitchy (don't ask me where I stumbled across that one, it was...scary.) Although I do have a soft spot for Umbitch.

11. Prongslet/Pup/Cub. Yeah, nobody says that in Canon, you know why? 'Cause it fucking stupid! Sirius is a dog animagus, he is not a dog in reality. He will not call his godson a 'pup'. Remus hates that he is a werewolf, he runs away from it. Why would he call someone he cares about his 'cub', that's a tad counterproductive, not to mention contradictory. 'Prongslet' is not even a word, it makes me think they're calling him a bloody omelette. There was also this one story where the author decided to call him 'cublet'. WHAT THE FUCK IS A CUBLET!?!

12. Remus' werewolf nature lurking in the shadows and creating the sense of 'Pack'. Er...No. Its one of the main reasons I could never swallow the whole Dangerverse, the premise of the 'Pack' just didn't sit well with me.

13. The all-powerful trunk!

14. Wands are crutches and wandless magic is so easy! 'Cause everyone in the wizarding world is just a fucking idiot for not coming to that grand realisation sooner of course.

15. The process of making a wand! Have some respect, its the source of a wizard's power is Canon (essentially), wandless = defenseless. You're telling me the greatest wand ever with multiple cores and special wood and of course the inevitable rube/topaz/emerald/diamond on the tip took ten minutes to make?

16. Galleons are like water, people just throw them about frivolously.

17. Pedophilia. 11-year-olds fucking around and sometimes being tacitly supported by the staff of the school. I remember reading this one fic where McGonagall won a bet with Dumbledore because Harry and Hermione engaged in 'exploration' of each other by first-year and Dumbledore thought they would wait until they're twelve at least. WTF?

I'm sure I have a lot more, but these are just some of the ones on my mind.

 

These are all part and parcel of the dark, tortuous path from hurt/comfort to infantilism.

The hurt/comfort crowd call him childish names as a step on the road toward reducing him to a toddler who needs everything done for him, every boo-boo kissed better, and cuddled constantly because the world is far too cruel for him to cope with. Never mind the fact that he's been dealing with it, scarcely batting an eye, for over a decade.

And remember, folks, the more you hurt Harry, the more you can comfort him. So, go ahead, blind him, take away the use of his legs, confine him to bed, take away his MAGIC, and then his caretakers can spend time loving him better... or just enjoying the fact that their object of affection can't escape their presence.

Then there are the stories where Harry is turned into a cat or something similar, so that someone (male, 99% of the time) can take care of him in that fashion...

Then you get your full-blown infantilist. They like their Harry limp, pliable, and fragile. That way he won't complain when Remus, or Sirius, or SNAPE take him to the bathroom so they can wipe his pucker for him and powder his bottom.

Sirius is usually dead, thus usually being the reason someone is comforting Harry.

Snape? Authors that have Snape infantilize Harry prefer him the same way he is in most SS/Hr wank material: a stern taskmaster with a heaping dose of physical violence thrown in for 'good' measure. These are people with an embarrassingly obvious spanking fetish.

Lupin? The less said about this squirm-inducing shit, the better. I'm sure, when they gave him the pedo 'stache in the movie, they were unconsciously picking up on a particular vibe... From what we've seen of werewolves, in canon, werewolf attacks seem to be equal parts animalistic savaging, and pedophilic molestation. It's a subtext that seems like it has become part of the collective unconscious of the fandom.

Is this why the movies now have Scabior being the lead Snatcher, menacing Hermione in suggestive ways, instead of Fenrir; because the pedophile subtext was so inextricably attached to the two werewolves we see in canon, and they wanted to avoid that? Oooor maybe they just suddenly realized that the actor they had playing Fenrir wouldn't create enough girl-boners, in a scene opposite a sexually-threatened Hermione. *shrug*

That Lupin insists on calling Harry things that sound like one part lover's pet name (reeking of homoeroticism), one part emasculating epithet, and one part FOOD, makes sense on a very disturbing level.

Cublet = Cutlet = Pork cutlet? Cubelet? Cubed meat?

And the whole Prongslet thing... Hmm. Tell me again what it is that wolves do to deer? :facepalm

I'm convinced that whenever Lupin says anything about 'Pack' and 'Harry' in the same sentence, it's because what he's really thinking about doing is packing Harry's fudge.

Compared to this stuff, harem fic is downright tame, born of the strictly vanilla-flavor desire to fuck as many members of the opposite sex as possible.

 

>11. Prongslet/Pup/Cub.

It can get really annoying without a context but I have no problem with Sirius using it to annoy Harry for the fun of it because that would fit the character's profile. So it depends on the right timing and not overdoing it.

About wands, here I'm divided. It can get really annoying to read yet another custom wand paragraph but if it's well told, and there are a few writers which put some effort in it, then I have no problem reading it. From a logical perspective getting the best possible wand(s) and carrying as many as possible of them on your body for all situation makes at least common sense to me. But if you can't put some unique element in it it's best not bothering trying to emphasize it.

The problem with the trunk is that it's a logical tool we've read too many stories with the focus on the gimmick part. These days getting one makes sense but its usage shouldn't be emphasized for the sake of waving around some overused gimmick. Just using it as a tool it's meant to be is ok to me.

The rest I fully agree with.

---------- Post automerged at 06:12 ---------- Previous post was at 05:55 ----------

The interesting thing is what all these different story flavors reveal about the writers. I'm sometimes thinking about the mental state of the writer when the whole story's vibe sends too strong wrong signals.

There was this debate here about "Partially Kissed" where somebody strongly suggested the author has some kind of psychopathic disorder, which I actually agree with. I've seen similar signs with at least 2 other writers for instance where you could see some emotionless alien sadistic thought patterns.

Really creepy when you get the impression that there's no real distance between what the writer feels in reality and the story's emotional context.