I've decided to create this thread about what you as a Harry Potter fanfiction reader think about fanon and some of the many things in it as well as common fanfic cliches. My intention is to have a thread to allow you to express your views on fanon and cliches. For example, what are some fanon elements that you commonly see that you like usually like to add as part of your stories or that you like or dislike.

It can range from the words The Golden Trio and Daphne Greengrass being an Ice Queen to Dorea Black being James Potter's mother to even the whole Ancient and Noble House system that you commonly find in fanfiction. Is there something in fanon that you like or hate, then talk about it. Also, do you like fanon or tend to avoid it?

Another thing here is to talk about cliches that you either really hate or like. This can range from the usually bad Wrong-Boy-Who-Lived to Soul Bonds. How do you feel about Harry Potter cliches?

So please express your views on fanon and cliches.

 

Sorry if I'm missing something here.

So, what you'd like is a single thread that summarizes the entire Fanfic Discussion subforum?

 

Don't we already have this thread? Which in turn has the previous 5 versions of the same thing linked within it already?

 

Not everything Fanon has to be a peeve/bad so no.

 

Well...to be fair, if you read the peeves thread it's basically what OP is asking for despite the name.

 

I was pretty sure that Dorea Potter (née Black) being James's mother is canon.

 

It's never specified if she is James mother, grandmother, or aunt. The only source that says that she might be his mother is the OOTP movie, and that's the Black family trapestry. Unless JK Rowling confirms it, Dorea being James mother is fanon. I do like the idea of her being his mother however.

 

I hate fanon interpretation of Snape as some horribly misunderstood poor dear of a man who the authors probably have fantasies about at night.

 

That's more about Rickman than anything else. Same could be said about Hermione being some kind of a beauty queen, all the evil!Dumbles being inspired by Gambon being crazy, hot Bellatrix, Drako the sex pest etc.

The movies overall is the worst thing that happened to the whole damn fandom.

 

Prior to the movies, I imagined Snape as having a goatee.

 

For good reason, too, as that is how Mary GrandPré depicted him.



and also this one. Of course he doesn't have the goatee in HBP...

Extremely Asian looking in the first one.

 

The movies destroyed Harry. Daniel Radcliffe made Harry such a damn pussy and a clueless twit. I hate how they basically made Hermione the heroine for the films.

I was watching the Sectumsempra scene on youtube. There were comments saying how Harry should have hugged Malfoy and comforted him. :facepalm

Gambon was like the 'Dumbles' from a manipulative Harry story.

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How would Lupin be? The movies made him look like a creepy paedo.

 

Ignoring the fact that you could simply do a google search for Mary GrandPré Remus Lupin, I went ahead and made an imgur album.

And here is an image with all of the chapter illustrations, please do utilize Google in the future.

 

Some cliches became cliches in the first place because they work. Of course shitty writers hitting us over the head with them has led to visceral reactions of disgust when they are even hinted at - the implication that Harry and Hermione fucked around during the camping trip, for example. Not unreasonable in itself, maybe a potential source of conflict if you're into romantic subplots, but terabytes of terrible H/Hr and evil asshole Ron ruined it.

Other fanon cliches are just useful plot devices - Notice-me-not charms, a Lordship system, Bellamort, Nargles being real, blood oaths, etc. Basically if it doesn't prompt an eyeroll and alt-F4 on sight or detract from the plot, you're doing it right.

 

Nonsense. Notice-me-not charms have no place in good fics. Muggle Repelling Charms however, are a completely different story.

 

All of those things would make me Alt-F4 and some of them would make me Alt-F4 and then open the fic again just to Alt-F4 some more.

 

But the Nargles, man

(Seriously though, what's the matter with each of those things?)

 

I hate Snape is Harry's father fics. Most of these fics have heavy slash and Vernon abuses Harry. Worst thing from it is "Harry is under glamour".

 

Overall, I prefer well executed cliches over badly executed new ideas, or bad new ideas.

 

I'll do this one by one:

1.Notice-me-not charms - lazy writing, and on an aesthetic note, it takes away some of the secrecy and mystery that I like about parts of the HP universe. If everyone can just cast a 'Notice-Me-Not Charm' and have their own little private hangout, you take some of the mystique away from the characters actually having a time/place to arrange their covert meetings. That's one of the reasons, incidentally, why Muffliato works really well as a spell in the HP universe: while it does work by filling listeners' ears with white noise, it's always been viewed - like everything else in Snape's book - as a cheat. Furthermore, it has reasonable limits, and in some of the more egregious cases in fanon, the Notice-Me-Not Charm isn't nearly so well-crafted, instead turning into 'Turn-Invisible-Except-To-Friends' button. Fuck that.

2. Lordships - in a perverse way, I get why these are included in so much of HP fanfiction. After all, complex royal families and politics and all the indelible backbiting and fucking appeals to the teenager/drama-queen in all of us - it's the same reason people watch reality TV. But to me, it strips away the best part of political drama, and that's the bureaucracy. It's the ultimate element of uncertainty, but more importantly, it adds atmosphere and weight to politics, gives them that complex morality that I find compelling (if you've read my work, you'll understand).

Introduction of lordships and royalties might fit certain elements of the HP atmosphere, but it's too often used as a clumsy way to propel Harry into 'high society'. On top of that, they don't fit well with the egalitarian, borderline-socialist tone that Rowling took when she wrote Harry Potter. To bring those elements in and then use them for Harry to gain uber political points and Daphne's pussy just seems a bit of a value betrayal (unless, of course, you do it like Sesc did it in Unatoned, but that only worked because he nailed the balance by soaking everything in a thick noir atmosphere - and even then he was smart enough to include the bureaucracy).

3. Bellamort - this one is a personal pet peeve of mine, mostly because I don't buy for an instant that Voldemort is a sexually-driven being. To me, he embodies pure, asexual avarice, and while he might be aware of Bellatrix's desires, he's definitely using them and manipulating her to get her undying loyalty and ultimately what he wants, while providing zero reciprocal attention. Bellatrix, on the other hand, is arguably mentally unstable, and while she might be a sadist, her slavish loyalty to Voldemort would probably be considered cloying and Voldemort would use it to knock her down a peg. And besides, I've always given Bellatrix the benefit of the doubt and argued she was more attracted to Voldemort's power rather than him personally.

4. Nargles being real - to me, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of Luna's character. See the Harry/Luna thread (namely Tehan's post and mine) for my feelings on this matter.

5. Blood oaths - I don't know why the hell these are even in HP fanfiction. We have the Unbreakable Vow, we have contract magic of some sort (the Goblet Of Fire, Hermione's hex on the DA list), we don't need 'blood oaths'. I have no problem with blood magic in some form, but blood oaths are just appropriations from the Dark Age of comics and should carry about the same weight.

Here's my overall point regarding everything above - if I see it done right, I'll read it and I might actually appreciate it. But they seldom are done correctly and frankly, I've gotten tired of wading through the dreck of thousands of bad Indy!Harry fics that utilize the cliches wholesale without thought or characterization. I've been reading fanfic for over five years, and having seen about every possible permutation of it, I'm just about done.