This annoys me as well, when 'random figure in history' was actually a squib, such as Isaac Newton, or Einstein, or Karl Marx, Julius Caesar... in %100 of the case these characters have no influence on the story at all, so the author was just adding in extraneous bullshit for the sake of having bullshit in their story.

 

I know... I'm still stuck there as I type this. Only 32 tabs open, though, so, clearly, I'm learning to cut back. :facepalm

 

I guess my biggest pet peeve would be the fact that the majority of fic's make Harry smart/super but leave ol' Voldemort the same or weaker then canon. It bugs me that everything's roses for Harry and he's tripping over money, weapons and books of untold power (you know, just like how he wins the greatest crap shoot in history in DH). I'm not saying this very well, and I know I've read someone say it much better, but if Harry gets a huge improvement in his abilities then throw Voldemort a bone.


Also:

DLP has 12 tabs on one run of firefox, two others are tropes and wikipedia and it totals around 40ish. Plus Minecraft running in the background, a half finished essay in wordpad, itunes and adobie audition open for some strange reason and a blueprint of Wayne Manor in front of my keyboard.

 

Just figured that I'd mention that the latest chapter of Letters violates just this. When I saw it, I thought of you, Warlocke. And I snickered.

 

I hate the idea of Lily or Hermione turning out to have magical ancestry, and worse, being descended from a Founder or some significant magical people. It diminishes their character.
Going a little further, Hermione as somehow an heir to Ravenclaw or Neville one for Hufflepuff. Surely it'd be more interesting, even if one's using the heir angle (often as convenient power-ups), to use others instead? Say, Luna for Ravenclaw, Zach Smith for Hufflepuff or something. It'd introduce extra character conflict to liven things up; imagine if Cormac MacLaggen is the heir to Gryffindor and Harry & co. have to work with him.

 

Muggleborns do have magical ancestry. They descend from Squibs who married into muggle families.

And why would being the Heir of Gryffindor make Harry and the gang have to work with Cormac?

 

Because it's ok to believe in superiority of blood-lines if the heroes do it.

 

Alternate theory:

MAGIC!

Sometimes it's legitimately better to just say, "It's magic, shut up and move along." There aren't nearly enough people who understand that.

 

The whole 'Hermione as the Heir of Ravenclaw' cliche is pretty far fetched, but muggleborns in general do have magical ancestry (see Squib); it's up to the author to decide whether the squib's ancestor(s?) were just regular, common squibs with no importance at all, or members of a pure-blood family/prominent half-blood family that had been booted out for being non-magical (as the Blacks tended to do).

 

I think you're mistaking canon with fanon.

 

No, more like canon and some conjecture.

JKRowling herself has said that muggleborns have distant magical heritage, and that it's usually from squibs. (Then again, she also did say that magic was from a 'gene' :facepalm).

Since there's actually no known information on -for an example- who Hermione's squib ancestor could be, he/she could be anything a potential author wanted him/her to be, just like how any OC would be; normal, unimportant squib like Mrs. Figg, or outcasted member of a pure-blood family, like one of the Black family's relations (I can't remember the name, but one was blasted off for being a 'squib').

 

(Crack! mode)
"We need the heirs of the Founders to channel the power of Hogwarts into our super mighty giant robot Hogwartron, to fight Voldemort's Dark Beast of the Week! We need you Cormac!"
"Alright! But only if you make me the red ranger."
(Crack! mode)

 

You certainly do like writing !crack in a lot, don't you? :facepalm

 

Actually I don't. I signed up for DLP for the sole purpose of using it to weed out my less-sane ideas so that I might produce something that might be palatable. So...yeah.

 

minor pet peeve.. but it still happens often enough to cheese me off.

non canon love interests who suddenly get let into all of his secrets.. and then the Author suddenly tacking on explanations - ruining the entire flow of the paragraphs.
usually these love-interests go on to become a pseudo Hermione-Ginny hybrid in personality and character usefulness.

 

Aye, that's one of mine as well.

Although, I think the biggest one for me recently is what has become the obligitary meet the parents chapter. I mean the one where Harry is asleep / has been knocked unconscious / has encountered a wild plot device and all of a sudden Lily and James appear to impart vital information, bolster his confidence or generally be unnecessary.

 

Well, it would make sense if the pseudo-scar horcrux in the story was taken out the same as it was in DH earlier than it was in canon, with Dumbledore being still alive...but yeah, it is a horribly overused plot-device. Usually is done poorly, too, making me cringe.

 

One pet peeve of mine is when the author makes characters have knowledge of things that there is no good reason for them to know.

Like this one fic I was reading where Harry got his first wand which contained the same core as the Elder Wand and Lily started going crazy at Ollivander for trying replicate the Elder Wand, and I was just left wondering how the hell Lily would know what the Elder Wand was made of.

Let alone the fact that it actually existed.

 

You see that all the time in Naruto fics and crossovers.
Naruto, before having even met Haku starts crapping on about his "precious people", for example.

 

A little bit of background research would pretty much kill those sort of problems, but people are way, way too lazy to do that.