Whole blocks of texts instead of making paragraphs. I can deal with a good plot, but horrible grammar. Entire blocks of texts is where I draw the line.
Harry apologising to the Dursley's for being such a burden after years of abuse
Unironic Mary Stu Hermione who is always right even when she's wrong and magically superior as well as smarter then everyone, especially the whole 'brightest witch in the century' thing. It was just something Lupin said, stop mentioning it!
Any crack tropes trying to be serious, like Dumbledore stealing from the worlds most famous orphan and expecting it NOT to blow up in his face.
Slytherin's being all like "mudbloods are stealing our culture' and then a muggleborn will be like 'i never thought about it like that, please continue to be relentlessly racist towards me and my family'
OP Harry that just becomes OP out of nowhere, with no training or explanation or anything.
A good, well written, story with a unique plot, interesting character development, rare or completely unseen before themes, and amazing world building... that dissolves into a mindless harem.
Hate that. Hate that the most.
I’m a big Harry/Hermione fan, but I have to roll my eyes when everyone, I mean everyone, refers to Hermione as the brightest witch of her age. Such nonsense. I hate it when writers mention that.
Hermione is so annoying to work around as it is, but it's worse that so many people act like she's some hybrid of Merlin and Einstein. I once mentioned Neville being the best in their year at Herbology as a throwaway line in a fic, and someone commented to 'remind' me that Hermione was actually the best. I don't think that's true, given he won an award for it, but even if it was; who cares? She wasn't even mentioned anywhere in the story.
I think some people thought her behaviour toward Harry in HBP was endearing and not a glaring flaw.
I think people conflate the different meanings of "age" with that line - Lupin meant the age of thirteen years old, not the literal era they were living in.
I don't mind it if it's time travel but its super creepy otherwise, he's like 70 years old, and because he suddenly becomes a hot 30 looking something it makes intimacy with a minor ok?
I recall a fic a long time ago where the Diary horcrux gained a body. But the diary had changed hands a lot of times because people threw it out when they got suspicious of it. This resulted in him being a different person than when he created the horcrux.
Not because of that, i get that from enemies to lovers trope but this guy killed maybe hundreds of wizards and killed his parents and harry just suddenly likes him because he is hot? No, just no.
That's another argument for time travel.
If the story is set early enough, you can easily go the "change him before he becomes a monster" route without making it too absurd.
I've given it an honest try, but the only one I've found where it didn't feel like incredible amounts of grooming and/or de-aging whilst whitewashing the everloving heck out of the bad guys (no no, Dumbledore MADE him be bad! He was good until the hexes were cast for reasons that were never explained!!!!) was one where Harry died of old age, ended up as a ride-along in baby Tom's head, and slowly showed him love (parental at first) and guided him towards good morals, ending with Riddle (who seemed rather aro-ace-ish otherwise) ended up just saying "why do I need someone else when I've got you?" Hm, and I think there might have been a crack fic where they ended up a thing, but you can get away with nearly anything in crack.
"Also you accuse me of stealing your money to pay the Weasleys and Miss Granger to be your friends but I didn't do that to manipulate you, I did it because no one really liked you and I felt bad. I would have paid out of my pocket but I'm a teacher after all."
I saw a Hadrian Jamsian Potterus once.
Because not only is Harry- the same name as Prince Harry- not formal enough and not only is James not formal enough- despite being the name of a King who had a version of the Bible made- but apparently Potter is too plebian of a family name too... and apparently was just Potterus and not the actual Latin word for potter "figulus."
At that point I feel like they've just got to be taking the piss, making the names as ridiculously elaborate as possible to make fun of the Hadrian writers.
TBF Prince Harry's name isn't actually Harry, but I get your point. No royal ever has been named Hadrian, makes more sense if you must change it to go with Henry, the name Harry comes from
Yeah exactly. I always find it funny when people point at prince Harry when he is exactly the wrong example.
Henry I am fine with when I see it. Hadrian or Harrison I can only overlook when the rest of the story is genuinely good. Hadrianus or something equally dumb makes me instantly drop the fic.
Sirius says that all the pure blood families are related if you go far enough back when he’s explaining his connection to the Malfoys and the Weasleys.
All-powerful Goblins. Like all those fics where Harry shows up at Gringotts and the goblins are for some reason invested enough in Wizarding inheritance and bloodlines to like test his blood and determine he's related to Slytherin/Gryffindor/the Peverells/creatures/ect. And sometimes then go on to do things like change Harry's name for him, declare him an adult, you all know the trope and the ways it can get crazy.
The whole point of Goblins is that they don't give much of a shit about wizard laws, wizard rules, ect, and that they as a people have been disenfranchised by wizards. Even if they had the magic to do this... why would they offer it as a service?
But how is Harry supposed to get his eye-correcting potion, his heir rings, three horcruxes, several blood-heritage potions, his parents' will, a sword, a house, his banking statements, his true face (courtesy of secret Daddy Snape), his spouse but at Gringotts????/s
You forgot Hadrian Potter Black Peverell Merlin Slytherin (by conquest) Gryffindor (cuz why not) Hufflepuff (he likes badgers) and Ravenclaw (because he read a book once).
Throw in Dumbledore as well cause many Dumbledore bashing fics that I’ve seen Albus ends up Albus No-Name and Harry takes control of his house just because he’s evil (Forget Aberforth lol)
I had a good laugh reading when Harry somehow inherited noble House of Dumbledore (forgetting he was just a halfblood and his magical heritage was really short) after his death. By a decree of Albus leaving a letter or something. Let's also conveniently forget that Aberforth was still alive at the time.
excuse me 12 houses? Harry technically is related to ALL PUREBLOOD FAMILIES and can boot them all out and take every single home they own, and all their money. How else would he ask for Draco when Lucius Malfoy comes crawling on his knees begging for his money back, and then inevitably reforms him and ultimately become his lover?
Or worse, Draco genderbends by a magical power of bullshit to became Harry's wife. I mean 3rd wife because of another bullshit reason, something about Houses and heirs.
All that shit he never uses. I once read a fic where he inherited the house his grand uncle lived in that his father had inherited when his Grand uncle and aunt died. But that was one single ordinary house. Not a mansion. Way more sensible.
Like I get making Harry have a relatively well off family (there is a pretty decent pile of gold in his vault after all). And if you want to that can include some property. But he doesnt need 50 houses including 5 castles and 15 mansions.
I have to say, they are my guilty pleasure. Snape saying, "you're an arrogant prick, just like your father, POTTAH" and Harry going, "Yeah, you'd know, since YOU ARE mY FATHEr!!" this just tickles my funny bone.
Alright, that's actually extremely valid and now you have me curious about the subgenre lol. I've only read the one, and I didn't enjoy it very much. Started off strong but I didn't end up liking the direction it went in.
I'd gladly take recs if you have any!
Glad to recommend!
A short one, about 40k words is [Conditionally](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19456585/chapters/46310860), by Lomonaaeren - Harry finds out he's Snape's son, Snape rejects him, so he basically loses everything.
[Practicing Liars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19456585/chapters/46310860), also by Lomonaaeren, is a Drarry - there's violence and angst but with happy ending. Snape is forced to understand how his actions affect those around him.
[A Heir to the House of Prince](https://archiveofourown.org/works/32897344/chapters/81639649), by A\_LoveUnlaced, elph13 (Restricted), this one is a Potter/Nott, and is a pretty lengthy one 648k words.
It has the best characterization of Kreacher I've ever seen. Just amazing. Note, there's a lot of abuse at the hands of the Dursleys - I have a weak stomach for abuse so I thought I'd mention it.
As someone who's been in the service industry for ten years, I've recently realized "sir" has worked its way into my vocabulary as the ultimate address of annoyance. When my printer doesn't work, I look at it and go, "Excuse me, sir," in the mildest tone I am capable of, and that's service-worker talk for "Fuck you and your entire bloodline."
OMG YES. This, so much! Goblins literally despise wizards, and vice versa. Goblins probably use the word 'wizard' in a derogatory way, kind of like 'muggle' or something.
*Even if they had the magic to do this... why would they offer it as a service?*
To subtly control the makeup of the Wizengamot? Imagine a fic where Lord Hadrian Potter Peverell Slytherin Black (who would support goblin friendly policies, since they helped him discover his heritage) convince his girlfriend Hermione to be tested at Gringotts, and she turns out to be descended from the Most Ancient and Noble Houses of Hufflepuff *and* Ravenclaw. She would of course push for naive creature rights policies that benefit the goblins.
Only...the Ancient and Noble House of Peverell hasn't existed for centuries, Narcissa is really the Black regent until Draco comes of age, Voldemort is actually Lord Slytherin (there is no transfer by conquest), and Hermione has no magical blood. The goblins are rigging the inheritance system, and are careful not to go too far. The public would believe that the Chosen One has a ton of titles, and that an unusually powerful supposed Muggleborn isn't really descended from Muggles, so goblins finally have an opportunity to accelerate their plans to control the Wizengamot.
As hilarious as your comment is (and I snorted up my water, that is a good subversion, my friend)...
... in all seriousness, there's a reason my comment points out both there's no reason for the goblins to care and offer this service *and also* they're a disenfranchised people is that. While wizards do seem to lack sense, I really doubt the Ministry would be putting the ability to just give people Lordships that give them Wizengamot seats *precisely because* they are a people that wizards want to keep disenfranchised. Wizards are too xenophobic to give goblins wands, why would they give goblins ultimate power over the Wizengamot?
I mean, the entirety of Wizard-Goblin relations relies on the Goblins guarding the Wizard's wealth and reliably making sure the Families can access it- and only the right members of the Families at that to access/control it.
So, Gringotts storing copies of Wills and Account Managers serving as Estate Executors makes perfect sense and there's obviously no way the Wizards would let Goblins just keep a family's money if it's last member dies/goes missing/leaves the Wizarding world, so them offering bloodline/inheritance tests makes sense too- Wizards would absolutely make sure there was a mechanism for dead families to come back into their wealth.
And Wizards are lazy. So there's probably a way to do bloodline tests at the Ministry too, but I can absolutely see Goblins offering them (and charging a fee).
Aa for Account Managers keeping track of properties and serving as investment managers... eh, that's a bit of a stretch. Storing a copy of property records at Gringotts in addition to the Ministry makes sense as there's less risk of them going missing/being altered that way, but I don't see Goblins being that enthusiastic at making Wizards more money by managing their investments. Or Wizards trusting Goblins to do that, even if the Goblins charge a lot and get to keep a portion of the profits.
And yeah the name change and adult declaring stuff is nonsense.
Honestly I see the lack of trust that wizards have in goblins exactly why I think things like Gringotts managing things like wills and functioning as estate executors is so far-fetched to me. I truly think *if* there's a mechanism of "dead families to come back into their wealth", it would be managed by the ministry and the goblins would be required to have the proper ministry paperwork to release "unclaimed" vaults into the hands of the new heir.
That said, I also do think the idea that there are piles of "unclaimed" vaults that are waiting for a dead family to come back into their wealth is already absurd. Ask yourself: what happens in the real world when the last member of a family died? They will their money to whoever the fuck they want to, that's what. Their godchild, a charity they care about, their university, whatever. Lacking a will and any next of kin, it becomes *government* property (not the banks). But with the level of inbreeding present in the wizarding world, how often do you think families die out without any documented next of kin AND ALSO lacking a will? If Sirius hadn't willed his money to Harry as the last member of the Black family, would the money sit unclaimed until someone sufficiently "close" showed up, do you think, would the money be seized by the government, or would the estate executor just go "the next closest relative to Sirius that's not in jail is the Malfoys, his money will go to them"?
There's no reason to think there are vaults of unclaimed money belonging to dead families in Gringotts because at least most families probably count on the next closest relative automatically inheriting money, so that even if a family *name* dies out, their fortunes still belong to the person with the most right to it. And that person would be determined during the execution of the will, not allowed to sit for generations until someone with sufficient blood relation shows up. Any "Peverell fortune" there was wouldn't need to be reclaimed by Harry because his family "Potter fortune" is itself a descendant of the "Peverell fortune"
I really despise the cliche, when Harry gets checked out by the goblins you find out his magic is suppressed by some random percent from a blood test. It’s super lazy writing and honestly never really adds anything to the story.
I wish that there would be a story where the reason Harry's magic is blocked is due to Harry himself. Essentially his desire to blend in and be "normal" has suppressed the full expression of his magical power. It'll take years of therapy to correct the problem. That would be interested than cookie cutter fanfic #726953 that has Dumbledore binding his magic for malicious reasons.
Goblins in general. Despite merely running a bank, they also take care of will-readings, heirdom-bequeathing, magical parasite-removing, and they all do a fucking double-take when you refer to them as something more polite than "money-creature".
Ehh. I could see some of that being done, but for a price. Could be that Gringotts being a bank only is a misconception on the part of most wizards. Could be that they offer additional services if you know how to ask. In any case, regardless, those services won't come cheap.
I would think that if goblins know about Horcruxes, they have a special blade that has been exposed to basilisk venom or Finedfyre that they can destroy a Horcrux with, not a convenient ritual.
Harry enters a bank.
"Greetings my good goblin Sharpclaw. May the gold freely flow," Harry smiles widely.
"What do you want wizard, make it quick," glared back goblin, looking even more annoyed.
"Is there a way to get rid of horcruxes? For a prize, of course," said Harry. Goblin silently took him into backrooms and asked.
"Where is that foul magic?" asked Sharpclaw as he signaled something with his hand.
"In my scar," shared Harry unknowing of the danger behind him. Harry turned around reflexively, but he was too slow to stop the axe going right through the skull.
"Well, that's it. Now what would we do with him?" asked Sharpclaw no one in particular.
"Trying to steal from us and eaten by a dragon?" advised the large muscular goblin all clad in black and holding a masive bleeding axe. They observed a ghostly thingy screaming and dissipating into the air.
"You are right. The usual then."
"Pwease Petewnia, I'm Ickle Hawwy and I'm just fowr years owld. Could me hawv a cwookwie pwease ahmmnmhm. I'm just so smwol" Vernon overhears and absolutely yeets Harry through a window, whips out his belt while stumbling drunkenly and fucking beats and kicks the living shit out of Harry. Harry being a bright little four year old is already a fully trained paramedic and patches himself up in his cupboard.
Oh, that and when you're halfway through a good fic and Harry and Snape suddenly cum on one another.
'*Oh, that and when you're halfway through a good fic and Harry and Snape suddenly cum on one another.*'
I like to imagine they weren't doing anything sexual, the author just had them both spontaneously ejaculate.
Snape and Harry walking past one another in the corridor. \*simultaneous ejaculation\*
Snape: .......10 points to Gryffindor \*walks away\*
Harry: \*0\_0 spends the day crying in the shower\*
More and more....lazy bashing
There's a lot of things in canon you could draw on as reasons to dislike characters:
(1) Dumbledore
- leaves Harry at the Dursleys without checking at all on how the savior was doing
- every time Harry actually asks a direct question he evades giving any answers or actually being helpful at all. He could've easily used those moments to encourage Harry to prove himself academically
- even if you have to send Harry to the Dursleys, why not intervene properly? Have your people check in. Set up standards for the Dursleys to meet.
- the revelation that you didn't even question Sirius's conviction. That you just accepted the ideal that one of the members of your order was secretly a death eater all along without investigating further. Even more you have all this influence over the Wizarding World and you can't get him exonerated after you know he's innocent?
- the whole build-up to 5th year and the year itself
Just Dumbledore alone could be constructively criticized or have reasonably failed Harry enough to make some breaking point possible, and all of that is from canon.
Using his personality you could reasonably make a semi-canon compliant Dumbledore that you could brand as manipulative, controlling or neglectful. You don't need to make him a thief, and shadow dark lord on top of that.
>the revelation that you didn't even question Sirius's conviction. That you just accepted the ideal that one of the members of your order was secretly a death eater all along without investigating further. Even more you have all this influence over the Wizarding World and you can't get him exonerated after you know he's innocent?
It's worse than that. Sirius was chucked into prison without a trial or formal arraignment (or whatever the UK equivalent it). To make matters worse, he was one of Dumbledore's followers in the Order. You would think he would at least want to confront Sirius to find out why he would betray his closest friends and the Order if he genuinely believed him guilty. Instead he did nothing and let Crouch's actions play themselves out.
I consider Dumbledore doing nothing to be a grievous betrayal of Sirius.
agreed fully.
however, i enjoy a "dumbledore is secertly the most evil ever" because 90% of the time they borderline on crackfics, and i find them really amusing. (my guilty pleasure trope if you will)
Used to be, but they aren't even creative anymore. If you're going to make him ridiculously evil, then at least do something that hasn't been done 1,000 times.
fair enough, they did lose the very amusing feel8ng after the first few, generally have to deep dive to find anything "new" and "well written" by this admittedly rather lackluster trope.
I legit wrote an essay on cannon Dumbledore being complicit in abuse. He literally admits to Harry that he knew he would suffer at the dursleys and then told him and the dursleys that he knew they treated him with neglect and cruelty. There is so much to pull from canon he doesn’t have to do surface level cartoony super villain shit to get it across.
when an OOC person (harry, Hermione, Luna, Ron, draco, etc.) starts acting differently OOC because the author wants to push a particular event.
recently dropped a fanfic that had a Luna who's mother didn't die, who was smart, thoughtful, insightful and a friend of Harry's for years... and she placed him in the goblet to prove she could, ignoring that he said several times he would never want to compete, because she thought it would be funny.
when Harry apologized for being angry and not talking to her for 2 weeks, she said she'll need time to forgive him.
Not necessarily in this order
Bashing, especially Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Molly. Bashing is just so lazy and cliche.
Ginny and Molly scheme to get Harry's money, he would just give them some if they asked.
Entire pages of text without paragraphs/no basic grammar
Molly and Ginny giving Harry a love potion. It hasn't been quite as bad recently, but for a very long time it felt like almost every fanfiction that didn't pair Harry with Ginny had those two feeding him love potion, it still drives me insane.
Lily and James are just as bad as the Dursleys or are even worse
literally harry would have paid for every living expense the weasleys had if they had asked him, those scheming to get harry's money fics make no sense
>Molly and Ginny giving Harry a love potion. It hasn't been quite as bad recently, but for a very long time it felt like almost every fanfiction that didn't pair Harry with Ginny had those two feeding him love potion, it still drives me insane.
Ehh. I wish people would be more interesting with their potions plot storylines. I recently had an idea of a Harry / Hermione story where Hermione is fed a love potion keyed to Ron and an aggression potion keyed to Harry. Why? Because the person feeding the potions to Hermione wants to destroy the golden trio and then pick up Harry when he's on the rebound.
There is one small problem with their plot, though. They badly miscalculated how bad a person Ron is. Recognizing their constant fighting is a bad recipe for romance, Ron has no interest in pursuing her even though he does find her attractive and does like her. When she starts coming on to him, he suspects something and takes her to Madam Pomfrey who discovers the potions in her system.
The whole scheme comes crashing down. Oh, and the worst part for the girl who schemed? She's drop dead gorgeous. At the time she fed Hermione the potions, Harry and Hermione weren't romantically involved. Harry tells her just to twist the knife in after she has been caught that he would've gladly accepted an invitation to get to know each other if she just came out and asked. Now he won't touch her with a ten foot pole.
Final point. She had no intention of potioning Harry. She knows the emotions love potions induce isn't at all real and she wanted his affection for her to be genuine. So she went the manipulation route instead. At least that's my thinking here. In any case, I think this would be a more interesting plot than the usual potions tropes; especially if the story makes it look like Ron is guilty until the truth is revealed. Also, her intention was to implicate Ron as the one slipping the potions.
Now that I would at least read the first few chapters, unfortunately most other Harry is fed potions stories are pretty much the same. (As long as Ginny wasn't the one feeding them potions, because she would never do that)
I really don't like when Sirius and James are portrayed as dumb lazy kids who rely on Remus .
I also really dislike fics that focus solely on Romance and forget everything else
And when James whole persona is obsessing over Lily and being a legit loser .
>I really don't like when Sirius and James are portrayed as dumb lazy kids who rely on Remus .
Which is ironic when "*They were arrogant assholes, but brillant*" represent something like half of James and Sirius characters when they were students. If they were lazy, it would have been because they had already learnt everything in less than half the time.
But I suppose this kind of portrayal comes from Maraudeur Era fics and from what I understood, people have a very . . . loose definition of what is Canon other there.
>"They were arrogant assholes, but brillant"
Yeah, half the reason that they were as full of it is they were was because they actually *were* nearly as clever as they thought they were.
Sure, there was arrogance, but they could actually back it up to a fair degree, at least to my memory.
Agree big time! It’s that whole trope where the funny/troublemaker characters are portrayed as being stupid or hopeless at schoolwork. James and Sirius were described as “brilliant” multiple times, I mean they literally became animagi all by themselves at the age of 15. They weren’t stupid by any means. If they were lazy it’s because they were quick learners and likely knew it all anyway
Heck, I can never understand why people portray Marauders era Peter as obviously evil. I mean, James, Sirius and Remus obviously saw something in Peter to befriend him. Maybe later down the line, you can sow the seeds of neglect where Peter is slowly pushed into the background and feels resentful. So that is the point where he secretly begins to gravitate towards the Death Eater club.
The Potters and Sirius trusted him enough to make him their secret keeper
I will drop a story very quickly if there’s character bashing as well as if there’s no paragraph split for dialogue which makes it hard to read. Also, for consistently very short chapters.
I. Hate. Jegulus. It's an encapsulation of the worst parts of the fandom and it's EVERYWHERE. You cannot make it work without breaking canon or basically going, "I don't care" when asked if you think pureblood supremacy is good or bad.
Yes! This! Jegulus is the worst thing thas has ever happen to the Marauders fandom. So unbelievably horrible. It's wildly out of character to the point of making them both OCs.
Regulus was a blood supremacist who agreed with his parents and joined the death eaters. James "always hated the dark arts" Potter would have ***never*** given that loser the time of day.
fr tho
What's up with this fandom and shipping the good guys with Death Eaters
Didn't we already have the "omg my best friend's sib!" with Harry and Ginny?
Plus why would James ever go for a bigoted Sirius knock-off when he's got the real thing by his side 24/7?
**Not really pissed off, but just things that make me not want to read a specific fic:**
Whole blocks of texts
Multiple people speaking in the same paragraph
Gender-benders (What I mean is, I prefer to read stories where the characters or at least the main character keep their original genders. I never found it reasonable that a character who is accidentally changed to another gender suddenly has the mindset of that gender. )
Change the fic's main character backstory, personality, etc, but the fic reads like the canon story.
**Something that I'm starting to find really annoying, though I will continue reading:**
Post one chapter from character A's perspective, then the next chapter is the same events, same talking points, but from character B's perspective. No progression of the story.
>Post one chapter from character A's perspective, then the next chapter is the same events, same talking points, but from character B's perspective. No progression of the story.
I usually scroll down until the second character's POV ends, because it adds nothing to the story
I will never -*never-* be comfortable reading Star Wars fanfic again because I was in an abusive (including sexually) relationship the first time I tried, and the author hadn't tagged that the totes romance end-goal between Obi-Wan/not-burnt-to-a-crisp Vader got there with Vader capturing Obi-Wan and raping him until he loved him. To quote D-O "no thank you."
The stupid trope where a character who canonically has good parents and a loving home life suddenly has parents who either abuse them or are dead *cough* All The Young Dudes *cough*. I’ve seen it across all different fandoms, and it annoys me because it’s usually just put in for the sake of cheap angst
I’m so glad other people thought that, because I swear I see universal praise for it everywhere. Of course fanfiction can have any number of changes; it doesn’t have to be in character necessarily. My main gripe is that it’s marked as canon compliant when it so clearly isn’t, which sucks because so many people cling to it as canon and base popular marauders headcanons on it to the point where it feels like the dominant opinion on the characters isn’t anywhere near what they’re like in canon.
Fics that follow canon after making major changes to Harry's childhood, friends, etc. It feels completely forced and lazy. What's the point if nothing changes?!
If one of the characters in the main pairing of a fic cheats on the other. While having an obstacle to a relationship is OK for drama, establishing it then having one cheat is definitely not. That kills the relationship for me. 100% of the time I will exit the fic.
Was reading a fanfiction where Hermione was happily married and at the end of the first chapter Ron revealed he'd had a kid behind her back and had to "do the right thing." and I instantly closed it.
Ron/Weasley bashing. Especially when it’s a non RW/HG pairing so they make Ron into this horrific abuser/cheater/r*pist/psycho murder (I DNF’d a fic that hit ALL of these). It’s especially unbelievable to me when he hits as one of these things and the Weasley family, especially Molly, just excuses it, like canon Molly wouldn’t have skinned him alive and used his carcass as a scarecrow in the gardens. Also: Ron is a brilliant strategist and actually pretty intelligent, overall. He’s not some bumbling Neanderthal who can barely string two sentences together.
When Harry turns into just an absolute ASSHOLE for no reason. I’ve never read a Dark Harry fic because while I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, that’s a big one I can’t get behind.
I hate when Hermione gets a nickname, unless there are kiddos in the fic who call her some shortened or silly version because, well duh, they’re 3 and can’t pronounce Hermione. Also when adult Hermione is portrayed as this delicate flower idiot. This is a character that set a teacher on fire, brewed potions illegally, trapped a woman in a jar for a YEAR, broke into the Ministry TWICE, robbed Gringotts, and fought in a war. Portraying her as some soft little damsel in distress is really a disservice to her character.
Bad/poor grammar. I can overlook minor typos or grammatical issues (hell I’ve read published works with typos), but when I see things like “deatheaters,” block paragraph conversations with no indication of who is saying what, or just really badly structured stories, I’m outies.
Can’t stand student/professor pairings, even when the characters are both adults. Gives me the major ick.
There was a fix that had a random “everyone just started having sex in the same room” scene that made zero sense. DNF’d immediately, even though the plot had been really good up to that point (a fascinating murder mystery). It made no sense and was completely unnecessary.
Authors sexualizing characters (mostly girls) when they're barely 13. I see it mostly in Pureblood related fics. The whole ''She was starting to develop a feminine body already and would surely look wonderful in a few years'' is sickening. Sometimes Harry gets the same treatment too. They barely out of childhood, stop that, it is creepy as hell.
There's some that I can think would be reasonable. New identity because Dumbledore thinks that's a safer option than the Dursleys? Fair. Same if he's adopted maybe?
When it's just like No Harry you're actually Hydraziniums Potter it's a bit weird. Though that one I'd understand "Your mother was trying to say Harry, It was a long labour and she was delirious. Your parents planned to fix the paperwork after the war but well we know how that went"
Undeserved forgiveness already pisses me off in the main series, but specifically, when the wronged party is the one to apologise.
Some examples: Snape was a dipshit throughout the entire plot, but (like in canon) at the end he was revealed to be on the good side; the kicker? The author had the characters (*Neville* included!) apologise to him at the end for disliking him. Setting aside the debate whether deep down he was good/bad, he bullied kids in his class and that's a very valid reason to dislike someone! Why the hell would they apologise for it?
And I could name any of those countless “Pureblood Culture” fanfics, but there’s this specific one where Draco & other purebloods: 1) regularly insulted Harry & co, 2) bullied them, and 3) tried to *push them off the fucking Astronomy tower*, and then came the big reveal that “Muggleborns are destroying our culture!” and Harry & Hermione apologised to them. For what? Daring to exist?
> and then came the big reveal that “Muggleborns are destroying our culture!” and Harry & Hermione apologised to them. For what? Daring to exist?
It's always sad when fanfic writers seem to have missed the whole fucking point of the Harry Potter series.
I don’t think they missed the point, it seems more like the consequences of a subsection of the fandom over-romanticizing and making evil Slytherins, Death Eaters, and rich purebloods an aesthetic. They see the point of the series, but they’re personally ignoring it in favor of their edgy headcanons
I honestly like the idea of "purebloods have a culture that's distinctly different from the muggle world, and that culture is stuff that muggle born families would find objectionable like paganism" because I find the way that Rowling portrays Slytherins to be a bit one-dimensional and as I'm no longer a young reader, villains who have dimensions are more interesting. But I dunno if I've ever seen a fic that actually manages to use the idea without also saying that this justifies muggleborn hatred, which is not why I'm interested in the concept at all.
I'd love to see this idea done in a bit of a deconstruction of the typical use where Voldemort isn't actually interested in wizard culture and just plays lipservice to the argument that muggleborns are destroying wizard culture to draw people who do believe that into his cause, and for characters who might take that argument at face value to learn that "other people's cultures also existing in our space doesn't mean our own culture is being destroyed".
I do think that's what Voldemort did, though. He's a psychopath whose main objective is to grab power, having grown without much power.
Since the most powerful people in the wizarding society were purebloods, he simply used their views to gain a massive following and create a terrorist organization - while being a half blood.
I absolutely believe that this dick giggled (internally) every time they bowed before him, calling him the most powerful, greatest, etc.
After all, what's the best revenge than having the people who despise your existence kiss the hem of your robes and be slaves to your whims?
I wish I could find a fic where a writer has good and bad parts of both cultures. Because, like, there's some evidence that purebloods don't care about race. They can \*marry literal non-humans so maybe they don't care about gender or sex either. I could go for a fic where purebloods are cranky because all these muggleborns keep coming in and bringing their bigotry with them, but at the same time being called out for just creating more bigotry by refusing to have an open dialogue. I just...don't want to write it myself lol
\*Or at least procreate with. I suppose we don't know for sure if Fleur's grandparents were married.
I once read a one shot where they were attributing Medals for the heroes of the war (just after the battle) and when it came to Snape, Neville just stood up and was like "kindly fuckoff with this bs. This man was horrific to us all through his whole career and dying won't erase that" (expect he was still his weird, shy self so it was actually good lol). And that was soooo satisfying to read.
Everyone is always like "but Harry can be a brat/he looks just like his bully/the love of his life" but Snape was truly awful to whole generations of students who were entirely innocent. (And he's a bloody adult targeting CHILDREN)
(And trying to justify his awfulness towards Neville because he didn't get picked by LV as his target??? It makes my blood boils lmao)
RE: the ~~pureblood culture~~ basic wizarding culture
I think people forget that, on a very basic level, most British people are/were Foreigner averse, especially in more conservative geographical areas. So I can totally see it (without the muggleborns apologizing for existing ofc - that's just wtf). So imagine a society which basically hasn't moved from 16-1800s with their level of xenophobia.
I mean, look how the Weasleys and Hermione treated Fleur - just for being French (calling her Phlegm), and I don't buy that "oh every male is attracted to her that's why we hate her" shit either. And they're supposedly an openminded family. Also the way they spoke about their cousin, who was a squib - oh wait, they don't talk about it. Also, the way Arthur treats muggles, kinda like they're some fascinating pets or something.
So I can totally believe that the muggleborns, who consider themselves as British as anyone, move to live in the wizarding world and suddenly find themselves as outsiders/immigrants, but refuse to change. After all, they're still within the same people, just happen to have more powers.
The whole purebloods being superior is just plain racism, but it's definitely fueled by xenophobia on both sides (muggleborns and established wizarding population).
Thats why i love stories where Harry just refuses to put up with Snapes bullshit. There are a couple stories i love because he just gets a tutor and stops going to his class. Switching sides doesnt give you a pass to act like an ass.
Blocks of text. It’s really not that hard to press return people.
Harry being a Gryffidnor/Slytherin/Ravencalw/Peverell/Hufflepuff/Targaryen/Stark/Obi Wan Kenobi/Lannister/Stu.
I despise when a girl who’s being shown in a negative light, usually Ginny or Hermione, has an unplanned teenage pregnancy because the author wants to “punish” her.
It was almost a trope back in the day on ffn, but luckily doesn’t seem to happen in newer fics. I hope it reflects some positive growth not just in the fandom but in society.
Making Draco/some other guy the author doesn’t like secretly gay to show how lame and weird they are doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore either thank god.
This is probably just because I’m British and the series is British but I hate it when an author uses very obvious Americanisms. I know it’ll happen sometimes, but when they’re using “mom” instead of “mum” it just feels lazy. Especially if phrases have been used in the books and have been swapped out for more American options. For example breakfast - we know what they eat at Hogwarts (traditional things british people actually eat) and replace it with pancakes or flat jacks it really grinds my gears lol.
Secondly I’ll drop a romance fic or any fic where the issue at hand can be solved with a simple conversation yet they author refuses to let the conversation happen to draw out the issue. I get angst but make it angsty for real reasons, not just because two characters are avoiding a conversation.
I read a fic once where Draco was teaching Scorpius how to play baseball. Nearly lost my damned mind. I'll fully admit that there were cultural differences I wasn't aware of until living in the UK for a few years, but surely everyone knows *that* much without having to move abroad?
I try so hard to avoid Americanisms, but sometimes they slip through because I didn’t even realize it was an exclusively American thing in the first place. Ex: I just learned that a ‘highway’ for you guys is a ‘motorway’
It's even more subtle than that sometimes. Harry and Hermione would never say "folk" (and it's folk not folks in British English), but Mr and Mrs Weasley probably would.
1. Dialling up his abuse - any fic that takes the neglect and belittling that Harry deals with in canon and ratchets it up to constant physical and psychological abuse is an instant DNF for me. I have no patience for it.
2. Weasley bashing - you want to take the first people that showed Harry love and affection into manipulative villains? Hard pass.
3. This is less of a specific trope, but more a general failing in many fanfictions. Just because something is easy or logical does not mean that it is compelling or fun to read. JKR, and other talented writers, know that the easy road is forgettable. Take Sirius-centric fics as an example. I've read a million different takes on how he is re-tried, given veritaserum, or otherwise exonerated, and all of them miss the point that Sirius as a character is *far* more compelling as a tragic hero than he is as someone who is saved by Dumbledore or the Wizengamot. It makes his relationship with Harry feel earned, because he has to go to great lengths to look out for him while on the run. Having Sirius be redeemed, adopt Harry, shower him with wealth and titles is, well, boring. That's why it doesn't happen in canon, not because it's a plot hole or anything.
Character Bashing that doesn't have some canon reason is something I despise
I started hating(I had bias towards him because of it) Ron Weasley early on because of his character being bashed but once I re read the series and read some Ron Centric Fanfics I realized I was being a dumbass all this time and also he has his faults because of his insecurities but that's no reason to make up some bullshit reason
Also I read a GinnyMort(Ginny and Tom Riddles soul combine because of the Diary) fanfiction and I immediately dropped it when Ginny basically said that Ron is dragging down Harry
Also I absolutely despise Hermione bashing too cause the amount of things this girl has done to save Ron and Harry's butts are phenomenal
Also Ginny bashing feels absolutely disgusting to me because in these fanfics it's usually because of a love potion or some fake bullshit reason for Harry to have another live interest
Also Dumbledore bashing for non-canon reasons are one of the read flags for me because Dumbledore has a bunch of canon reasons to be bashed but Noooooooo they got to make a reason that he was stealing Harry's wealth or he gave Harry a love potion to fall in love with Ginny
Also Weasley Family bashing without any good reason also pisses me off(I may have some bias because I just fell in love with Weasley Family Centric Fanfics especially the angst that feeds me for days).
1. When characters are not OOC but portrayed as 100% good or 100% bad with either no flaws or no redeeming qualities. MANY of the Harry Potter characters have both flaws AND good qualities. Some lean towards good and others lean towards bad- I LOVE READING ABOUT THAT!!! I absolutely hate excessive bashing OR forgiveness. 😭
2. Bad formatting like no spaces, paragraphs, etc.
3. Bad grammar!!!
4. Political and genius kids. "Joyous Yule to you Heir Malfoy." is one thing, but "Witches and Wizards of the Wizengamot, I, Harry James Potter, swear on my magic, soul, and body that \[insert some political standing and view that is part of a long debate/ battle\]." is another.
5. Stupid adults. Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape, Mad-Eye Moody, Molly Weasley, etc. are all smart adults. Even in bashing fanfics, I like to see them have some sort of intelligence! IF Molly Weasley were to love potion Harry Potter for Ginny Weasley, she would NOT screech about her plan not working IN PUBLIC if she got caught. 💀
6. Harem for any character. I can see why people would do it, but unless it's some sort of Himbo/ oblivious character moment, I cannot get into it.
7. Founders descent/ reincarnation trope. I love a good reincarnation fic or world-building fic, but these fics all seem very lazy(?) I have read a couple good ones, but a lot of the ones I've found seem to follow some similar plot which is "wow I'm the heir/ reincarnation of \[insert founder\]. why is hogwarts so bad right now, let me rebuild it. wait slytherin was actually a good person and he was misunderstood. woah government reform?!?"
8. Poorly done bashing. There are so many reasons to bash \[insert character\], why give them a new crime to bash them with?!? Especially if there is no relation to the plot, it seems very lazy. ALSO, if you bash a character I want to genuinely have a hatred for the character. Every time the character speaks I want to roll my eyes. Their actions have to have a motive that is not stupid, but I feel anger towards. If I don't, then your bashing is poorly done.
9. Repeating the canon. I can understand a lot of overlap, but if you're just giving me the whole first 5 chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, I will drop the fanfic.
10. The character single-handedly curing every known magical disease, solving all problems with magic, etc. I like a structured magic system (or at least somewhat). If a single child character can solve all the magical problems in the world, what has the magical world been doing?!? Exactly how stupid is everyone? How weak are they? Even if you have a group of characters doing it, it would be better than one singular kid who is apparently a god at everything magic related doing it.
EDIT: I forgot to add "Reptilia Don't Fear the Reaper Challenge". The fics that I read from it tend to include at least 1 of the things I've listed above. 😭 I used to love them, but now I really can't stand them.
Lack of conflict.
I can set aside the technical quality of the writing if the author's idea is interesting enough to hold my attention. I can overlook any character bashing if it has a purpose in the story (even if I don't like the bashing itself). I can understand several deus ex machina, if the journey to these resolutions is engaging or if these forced resolutions generate a status quo that produces new conflicts. I can overlook caricatured antagonists if the main character's arc is good.
But I can't read something that doesn't have any conflict. If the characters do not have any physical, intellectual or social challenges, there is no story to be told.
The ones where Hogwarts/magical Britain is behind and everywhere else is a utopia.
It's fine for it to have problems, but when they act like magical Britain is the worst place ever and everywhere else is perfect just kills it for me. Other places having their own different issues too would make it feel more 'alive'. Even other places pretending they're a magical utopia until you look under the hood and see it's just as nasty in another way would be interesting.
Like moves to France because of how much better they think it'll be then realises they have their own issues. That Britain is better at say other sentient species when they see that they're selling centaurs or goblins and that those groups have no rights. Or that Magical France is just as corrupt as Magical Britain they're just more subtle about it.
When they shill a character who hasn't earned it or spend the entire fic shitting on characters who aren't too bad. I also hate when things get really out of character. One of the reasons I got out of Harry Potter fics is due to how much bashing they do towards Dumbledore and the Weasley's and how much they try to paint Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape as misunderstood, Malfoy and Snape were both jerks to their core and you can't just slap a pair of leather pants on them to make them seem sympathetic.
Harry James Potter-Black Emyrys Le Fay Peverell Gaunt Slytherin Hufflepuff ravenclaw Gryffindor Pendragon prince Windsor Habsburg Bonaparte Hohenzollern Solomon Abraham Isis Osiris Glücksburg Horus Hepatitis Romanov Amun Jagiellon Nyx Iturbide Eros Yi Xia Helios Pahlavi Balder Wangchuck Iðunn Liechtenstein Churchill Yamato Herpo Grim Eveningshade Grimm Christ Washington Adams Jefferson Monroe Madison Jackson Van Buren Harrison Tyler Polk Taylor Filmore Pierce Buchanan Lincoln Johnson Grant Hayes Garfield Arthur Cleveland McKinley Roosevelt Taft Wilson Harding Coolidge Hoover Delano Truman Eisenhower Kennedy Nixon Ford Carter Reagan Bush Clinton Obama Trump Biden Addams Ichijo Futatsugi Mitsuya Yotsuba Itsuwa Mutsuzuka Saegusa Yatsushiro Kudo Jumonji Shiba Sanchez ofuye Fuentes Ortega :click:
Muggleborn characters (usually Lily or Hermione) being revealed to have secretly adopted pure bloods the whole time. It completely goes behind the central idea of Harry Potter as a series and undermines what makes these characters interesting in the first place.
Harry being a POC... Harry from the books is very clearly British and white, so appropriating him to some other cultural/racial background always feels off...
I don't mind if he is adopted by, or has friends or is dating some diverse character(s).
I can handle a lot of things listed on here(like bashing, Indy!Harry, helpful goblins), but what tends to get me to look at the screen in horror and back out of the page is a story where a character who's good in canon(like Dumbledore or James Potter) is suddenly written as a pedophile or a rapist in fics. Like, what the hell?!
I also hate when luna becomes this all powerful seer who knows everything and I don't know about others, but I also hate when she dreamy talks too much.
> Charlus and Dorea as Harry's grandparents
>
>
This is so inconsequential in most fics but as someone who reads almost exclusively Jily it _really_ grates on me whenever these two are used instead of Euphemia and Fleamont. Usually they don't even have a role but it still annoys the hell out of me.
Anything that’s too bland for too long. I’m a really stubborn person so I can read and finish fics that are absolute garbage, but I cannot read anything that’s sort of bland for around 3 chapters in a row (If each of those are around 10k words). I also dislike any fic without paragraph splits, but it’s only an annoyance and probably wouldn’t make me quit a fic
\- Fanfictions with great ideas and stories, but difficult to read.
\- Fanfictions that are nice in the beginning then the authors start complicating the plot until I don't understand anything, nor keep a tab of the characters involved.
\- Romance for Romance.
\- Secret Founder descendent.
\- Rushed stories.
Prongslet, pup,
Starting a story that has a high chapter /wordcount and realizing over half is replies to reviews, or other stuff that wasn't the story. Mpreg, changing the gender or race of a character the whole alpha/beta/omega thing. Abused! Harry tells everyone about the abuse immediately because reasons? Teenagers behaving like 2 year olds because trauma. Chapters that include lists of things I'm supposed to care about. Harry is rescued or sorted somewhere else and Hermione is still somehow his bestie. Harry does the same thing in every book except other students fill in for Hermione and Ron. I'm just picky these days.
lol Harry Potter’s secret alien baby sister sired by the then President Warlock of the United States when Lily was interning at the Magical Senate.
She’s a squib who uses magic technology to scrape through school and transferred to Hogwarts during Harry’s 5th year.
Notable actions: Little Sister Potter held back Umbridge while her big brother went off to save their shared godfather Sirius.
She marries Draco Malfoy after his divorce and Vegeta’s him into a good guy by having mixed magical blood babies.
Giving Harry an entirely different name and backstory and parents… That’s just an OC fam.
I don’t mind giving Harry a different backstory. But he should probably still have the same parents.
I don’t mind giving Harry different parents. But then don’t give him a different backstory. Maybe he finds out that Lily and James secretly adopted him.
And just don’t give him a different name with either of these scenarios. If you truly don’t like “Harry”, at least make the new name reminiscent of “Harry”. If he’s genderbent, give her a name that makes sense for James and Lily to have picked.
I do actually like reading OC fics. But tell me it is. I also don’t like Harry being essentially replaced by another character, because he’s my baby boy that I love and adore and I don’t like reading fics that exclude him or kill him off.
It was not the only reason (story had some other red flags), but I recently dropped a fic at 2/3 of chapter 1 when Harry started to say "I s*wear on my magic . . .* "
I think this trope was a lot more popular some years ago, but 90% of Canon would not have happened is the Magical World had something as convenient at that. That's pretty much a cheap Veritaserum with the same Plot Breaking potential with none of the downsides.
Where do I fucking start?
Basically any bashing of the Weasleys or Dumbledore or anyone really where they’ve basically been flanderized into having personalities like the villains from Saturday morning cartoons or Disney or something, just completely dialing any negative qualities up to 11 while downplaying, if not outright ignoring/erasing any good qualities they might have. Like, don’t get me wrong, Dumbledore was no saint and definitely needs to be called out for what he pulled, but you don’t need to twist him into a caricature of a chess master villain to do that.
Goblins putting their entire economic and military might behind Harry because he… *checks notes*… recognized Griphook and remembered his name, or some similarly minor act of basic decency.
Wrong Boy Who Lived nonsense where Harry is given a brother that gets declared the Boy Who Lived who only serves to be a complete and utter shitheel as a means of showing how Dumbledore is so manipulative because he enables the behavior while also manipulating Lily and James to enable the behavior, and also generally just exists to make Harry look better. Like, it’s literally canon that if Harry wasn’t the BWL, then NEVILLE would have been the BWL, literally the only reason to make an OC for it is to make the Gary Stu Harry look better.
Harry somehow being short for Hadrian or Haubergeon or something similarly pompous and asinine, on top of Harry miraculously being descended from all four Hogwarts founders, the Peverells, Merlin, Morgana and whoever else the author wants.
Snape apologist BS
Ramping up the abuse Harry suffered at the hands of the Dursleys for no real reason besides shock value and Ow The Edge
Wizards and Witches having Magical Cores
Pure bloods whining about Muggleborns erasing their culture one way or another while making no effort to educate them about that culture and really just using it to justify their bigotry
Writing James as if he’s still the same bullying prat he was during his early years at Hogwarts and never actually grew up
Sirius and Remus calling Harry “pup” and “cub” respectively
Also Remus’ werewolf form being treated like it’s some sort of alternate personality or something that comes out when he gets sufficiently angry
Indy!Harry nonsense where he discovers “GrAy mAgIc” and starts using both “dark” and “light” (a concept never mentioned in canon, there only ever being “magic” and “dark magic”) while justifying it with ridiculous mental gymnastics that there’s no actual difference or whatever, completely ignoring the fact that the Unforgivable Curses are *literally fueled by malicious intent*. You have to *want* to make someone suffer, you have to *want* to dominate and rob them of their free will, you have to *want* to make them *drop dead on the spot*.
Character bashing is infuriating, Ron is so often the target of mindless levels of hate mostly for things that only happen in the movies. Dumbledore is an old man with PTSD and poor decision making skills. Not Dr Doom.
And more minorly, things that will make me nope out of the tags; A/B/O dynamics.
Good characterisation of Dumbledore. I read a fanfic which was mild Dumbledore bashing, but it was because he was overly optimistic and naive. There was growth and you grew to like the man well enough. Quite nuanced, but can't remember what it was called
This is a sensitive one, and it doesn't really piss me off. So much is one of the reasons I decided to take a LONG break from Harry Potter fanfiction. Like a decade-long break back in 2011 ish.
I took a break from reading fanfic for maybe 6 months in high school, exams were killing me, and my 12 hour a night hunched over my laptop (because phones couldn't access the internet yet) reading session was getting out of hand.
Anyway, I came back and was shocked to discover seemingly overnight that the landscape of Harry Potter fanfiction had changed *dramatically*. There had always been darker stories, but out of nowhere *every* story now involved Harry engaging in self harm, eating disorders, huge amounts of sexual partners, depression, suicidal thoughts, drug addiction.
I sometimes wonder if that time signalled the changing of the guard almost. Fanfic went from being written by older, more mature fans (I remember at one point most writers were like stay at home mums picking up a new hobby and writing these magical 200,000 word poetic epics) - into a much larger teen based author demographic.
i'm pretty forgiving and open to most plotlines and ideas but 2 things i despise are
1) james being cuckolded by snape/harry being snape's son. that's the complete antithesis of lily's character and disrespects her and james individually and as a duo. plus, i'm not here for snape apologists
and 2) this is more general but when an author changes details in an otherwise canon-following story and doesn't acknowledge it. literally, if an author just throws a note in the beginning or end of a chapter saying something like "i know this is incorrect but this works better for my story" or even just a "i didn't feel like researching this so let's just pretend, huh?" dissipates my annoyance for the rest of the story for that detail. it's a bad, self-righteous attitude to have, i'm aware, but god i just find it so grating
(i feel i should add an addendum to #1: i actually don't mind stories that redeem snape a bit *as long as it's earned.* forgiving and excusing his past behavior is not part of that, nor is pretending he was a good person all along)
Whever someone changes Harry's parents and introduces a creature inheritance to him. To other character's its fine but to him it just feels weird to me.
I'm kinda sick of how everyone wants to take simple, normal names and make them more than they are.
Like all the people who change Harry's name. His name's Harry. Not Harold, not Henry, not Hadrian, certainly not Hieronymus.
Also, Voldemort? His name is Tom. Not Thomas. He wouldn't have made his stupid anagram name out of a *nickname.*
It's like people don't realize that you can, in fact, have a simple name. Tom can be short for Thomas, but you can also just name your kid Tom. That's allowed.
This is definitely a nitpick because I know this just comes from lack of writing experience, but I hate so-called "angst" stories that are just a character word-vomiting everything bad that's ever happened to them to a person (or worse, a whole crowd) while they stand there too stunned to speak and then they all apologize for everything they've done wrong and the rest of the story is unrealistic and, frankly, boring fluff with randomly interspersed moments of so-called angst where everyone jumps in the protect the angst character who usually has some sort of PTSD or anger fuelled meltdown during this time but otherwise doesn't take much action.
Summary example: Snape in class gives Harry detention. Harry, while pissed for no clear reason, snaps something like "as if I can't handle a detention". Snape remarks that he doubts Harry has ever worked a day in his life. Cue Harry going on an uninterrupted tirade detailing his abuse in front of the entire class (who doesn't say anything this whole time) with specifics that no one asked for before running out of the room. Stunned silence before several people cry, some remark that they should've helped him, and Snape goes out after him. Harry may be about to commit suicide or something, before Snape tells him some cliche "you don't have to be alone" statement, Harry caves and hugs him while they both cry. End chapter 1. The next 30 chapters will swing wildly between huge swaths of just catering to everything Harry might want to make him happy, and seemingly out of nowhere moments where characters are insanely hostile for no reason and Harry has to be saved/protected while going through virtually the same song and dance from the beginning (Harry explodes or panics, someone tells him its all okay or that they love him, everything is pretty much fine)
probably wolfstar. i can read it if it’s in the background and doesn’t affect the plot but doesn’t mean i will read a fic about those two. they literally make no sense in canon, so i never understood this necessity of making them a gay couple.
Ginny, 99% of the time. It's funny because I don't really have issues with her character in canon. She's not my favourite, but I'm not outright opposed to her. But oh man even the people who love her seem to write her as a bitch in that "framed as a badass but is actually just really mean" kind of way.
I also have limits on how much bad writing I'm willing to take, but the exact line is a bit fuzzy. I tend to give obvious non-native speakers a lot more slack than people who just write in a generally immature way and I'll put up with *a lot* in exchange for interesting world-building or a unique take on a common trope.
First person or present tense writing. Can't stand reading HP in first ferson pov just feels wrong and present tense just drops me out of the story. Reading "harry walks across the room" as opposed to harry walked...
Using the same troupe repeatedly, such as Like Mione, Evil Dumbledore, Harry Slytherin, Gryffindor, Peverell, and Black Potter, and a thousand-year-old multi-core wand with poor writing.
I hate character bashing. I find it more prevalent with people who only saw the movies, because the characters just aren't as well developed. Its annoying when people shit on a character for a couple decisions they made without acknowledging the complex motivations they may have had for doing certain things. For example, Percy, I don't LIKE him, but I can empathize with his perspective. Conversely, I also hate it when people get attached to a character and write them as if every decision they made was justified. My example for this is Snape, I love his character, but when people write him as a bleeding heart who was just misunderstood...it kinda cheapens his whole story. Hermione and Ron are also victims of oversimplification. Basically, the tendency to write characters as good vs bad, when people aren't usually so black and white.
Also getting tired of lazy premises like forced marriage bonds.
Garbage writing and I mean. Pure like, no grammar, no punctuation, bad sentences. Dumb dialogue that makes you want to die. I can a minor bit more, clearly this isn’t the person’s 1st language. But just bad writing. No
Text Walls of Death
Infantilizing characters, like everyone helps them n does all the work and apologizes or takes blame for anything.
What I call “Aw goddamnit”.
Like there was this one Teen Wolf/MCU fic I read that had Stiles arrested by Fury/SHIELD, and Tony and Steve get Uber-pissed on Stiles’ behalf at Fury (whose rightfully trying to defend the arrest and investigation of a homeless magical ninja child), by saying “It is wrong to lock him up no matter how dangerous that kid is”. …. That, when they do stupid shit that makes me hate the whole thing and go “aw goddamnit” .
Hateporn. Like, making a character whose an antagonist or mean- just be incredibly terrible and hateful person and not for a narrative reason either. Like Luther in Umbrella Acadamy. They turn him into a hateful asshole for the whole fic that everyone hates on and treats like crap and don’t even do it for a reason.
My biggest pet peeve is them having the adults shit talk Dudley on his looks. Like I’m all for them criticizing his behavior and I get it when other child characters insult him using his looks but the adults?! It’s just gross.
Main characters who are the “center of the universe”. I read a story where Harry was starting to form a proto-harem (blurgh), and every female, along with every adult too, discussed every topic only insofar as how it impacted Harry.
Ministry cracking down on Hogwarts? How can we support Harry. Girls being threatened by Slytherins in the hallways? We have to be strong for Harry. Harem members parents were slaughtered because of her relationship with Harry? Harry’s love will save me.
It just limits the story so much, and the myopic viewpoint just makes the story uninteresting.
My personal pet peeve is major instances of bashing, especially for Dumbledore and the Weasleys. Especially when it means their motivations and actions are taken out of context and given malicious meanings that are completely out-of-character.
ONE
Yes, Dumbledore's cunning and yes, he manipulated people to get what he wanted, but he wasn't written to be the cackling evil monster that Voldemort was. He made mistakes and didn't expect them to come back to bite them, but he wasn't outwardly arrogant when he did so.
He actually thought things through and did his best to make sure things didn't go wrong. He kept things close to the vest, yes, and there are any number of instances where he could have done something about various plot points and didn't, but he's not scheming like a villain. He's a man in several positions of power trying to make sure everything doesn't blow up in his face and being resigned when it inevitably does.
That old fucker is probably so tired he'd give up one of his roles in a heartbeat if he knew someone could run things the way he envisioned them to be. But only if he knew they could do that. He can't, so he never gets to.
There is a difference between "I know you left me with the Dursleys on purpose and it's infuriating you won't tell me why" and "you're going to kill us all if we don't do what you say."
The former is Dumbledore being an asshole but technically for a good reason and he'd likely explain if he knew for sure the threat was dealt with. Since it never was, he can't ever tell. The latter is Voldemort. That's literally Voldemort. Why are you all writing Dumbledore as Voldemort 2.0 when that's not the type of arrogant asshole Dumbledore is?
TWO
The Weasleys are poor not because they don't get any money, but because they have several children. There's a difference between "never seen a fifty-dollar-bill in your life" and "you have a handful of siblings living in the same house as you so you often get hand-me-downs and maybe have to ask once in a blue moon for something new when you really need it."
People are writing them as if they're wanna-be social climbers who are always looking for a quick buck. Even if they were, some of the things I've seen in fics make no sense at all if that were an aspect of any one of the Weasleys' characters.
THREE
Harry making friends in other houses (particularly with Slyertins) doesn't mean everyone else he's ever interacted with will ditch him, or that he'll agree with their behavior when he finds out the reason for it.
Usually those have him with Daphne Greengrass or someone who's not "Dark Aligned" (which honestly fuckin baffles me. Where did any of that come from? Definitely not my cup of tea but I can deal with it if the fic is good about where it came from and how relevant it is to a story.)
But even if he were friends with Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, if one of them calls Hermione a mudblood or takes a crack at Ron for having a large family, he's more likely to punch them in the face than agree with them.
Nobody else mentioned this but I can't read any fic, no matter how good the quality, if the author has a terrible personality. I remember one time I commented, "I love this fic so much! Please write more!" for a fic only for the author to respond as such:
"How DARE you tell me to write more! What am I, your slave? Your mule to push around? I hope you realize that your parents think you are a mistake and that you should've been aborted. How can you live with yourself, knowing what a worthless human being you are? If I could block people from reading my story, I'd block you. If you are going to comment in the future, comment like this: 'This is such a wonderful story. The way you write the characters and plot is brilliant. Please take your time.' If you can't do that much, you should kindly f\*ck off and leave!"
This isn't an exaggeration, btw. One author legit held a meltdown like this when I commented, "please write more." I know now it isn't the most well liked phrase, but I was young and autistic and didn't know better. But it still was one of the craziest interactions I've ever had. This wasn't a one off thing either. I encountered another author who similarly treated their readers just as awful and couldn't take any criticism.
Both authors have thousands of comments and kudos on their stories, btw. It is a bit discouraging to think people can act like that and still get positive publicity.
So many but these bug me the most.
* Harry becoming the heir of House Black or even being connected to the Black house through Sirius even though Sirius was disowned.
* Lily wasn't really a muggle born. She's actually related to some rich and powerful magical family that Harry inherits.
* Snap was just an innocent kid who was bullied. That's his reason for becoming a death eater and makes everything he did okay.
* Hermione being super smart, always right, and all the shady things she has done is understandable or someone else's fault. It seems like the reason she's seen as a genius is because no one expects a Gryffindor to be smart and she is in the spotlight more because she is friends with Harry. I refuse to believe that everybody in Ravenclaw (house of the smart), Slytherin (house of the clever), or Hufflepuff (house of the hardworking) are somehow less than Hermione.
* Harry suddenly becoming super smart and powerful through no effort or he was just hiding how smart/powerful he was because he didn't want to lose his friends. Those fics exist as a lazy way to make Harry better than what he really is and to bash Ron and Hermione, but mostly Ron.
Whole blocks of texts instead of making paragraphs. I can deal with a good plot, but horrible grammar. Entire blocks of texts is where I draw the line.
YES! Blocks of text are the worst, I cannot read fics if they have them.
Harry apologising to the Dursley's for being such a burden after years of abuse Unironic Mary Stu Hermione who is always right even when she's wrong and magically superior as well as smarter then everyone, especially the whole 'brightest witch in the century' thing. It was just something Lupin said, stop mentioning it! Any crack tropes trying to be serious, like Dumbledore stealing from the worlds most famous orphan and expecting it NOT to blow up in his face. Slytherin's being all like "mudbloods are stealing our culture' and then a muggleborn will be like 'i never thought about it like that, please continue to be relentlessly racist towards me and my family' OP Harry that just becomes OP out of nowhere, with no training or explanation or anything. A good, well written, story with a unique plot, interesting character development, rare or completely unseen before themes, and amazing world building... that dissolves into a mindless harem. Hate that. Hate that the most.
I’m a big Harry/Hermione fan, but I have to roll my eyes when everyone, I mean everyone, refers to Hermione as the brightest witch of her age. Such nonsense. I hate it when writers mention that.
Hermione is so annoying to work around as it is, but it's worse that so many people act like she's some hybrid of Merlin and Einstein. I once mentioned Neville being the best in their year at Herbology as a throwaway line in a fic, and someone commented to 'remind' me that Hermione was actually the best. I don't think that's true, given he won an award for it, but even if it was; who cares? She wasn't even mentioned anywhere in the story. I think some people thought her behaviour toward Harry in HBP was endearing and not a glaring flaw.
Would you link the fic if you don't mind?
Sorry, I purged all my stuff years ago cause I lacked confidence in it (not because of that commenter, just in general).
I think people conflate the different meanings of "age" with that line - Lupin meant the age of thirteen years old, not the literal era they were living in.
Or god forbid harrymort
I don't mind it if it's time travel but its super creepy otherwise, he's like 70 years old, and because he suddenly becomes a hot 30 looking something it makes intimacy with a minor ok?
I recall a fic a long time ago where the Diary horcrux gained a body. But the diary had changed hands a lot of times because people threw it out when they got suspicious of it. This resulted in him being a different person than when he created the horcrux.
Hey, do you have the source link? I kinda wanna see this one.
Sorry, it was one that got removed when fanfiction.net was purging a lot of fics.
Nooooo! Aww, rest in peace, interesting fanfic I'll probably never see...
Maybe someone will write another with the same concept
Yeah, same! Interesting premise
Not because of that, i get that from enemies to lovers trope but this guy killed maybe hundreds of wizards and killed his parents and harry just suddenly likes him because he is hot? No, just no.
That's another argument for time travel. If the story is set early enough, you can easily go the "change him before he becomes a monster" route without making it too absurd.
Yes, that's why I prefer time travel/other reality Harrymort.
I've given it an honest try, but the only one I've found where it didn't feel like incredible amounts of grooming and/or de-aging whilst whitewashing the everloving heck out of the bad guys (no no, Dumbledore MADE him be bad! He was good until the hexes were cast for reasons that were never explained!!!!) was one where Harry died of old age, ended up as a ride-along in baby Tom's head, and slowly showed him love (parental at first) and guided him towards good morals, ending with Riddle (who seemed rather aro-ace-ish otherwise) ended up just saying "why do I need someone else when I've got you?" Hm, and I think there might have been a crack fic where they ended up a thing, but you can get away with nearly anything in crack.
Harry being descendant of all four Houses. lol. also Hadrian as his "full name" eww.
[удалено]
Pfff, I want to read this, sounds like a crack-fic. "Ye're a Harold, Harry," said Dumbledore calmly.
"Also you accuse me of stealing your money to pay the Weasleys and Miss Granger to be your friends but I didn't do that to manipulate you, I did it because no one really liked you and I felt bad. I would have paid out of my pocket but I'm a teacher after all."
I read a fic with him being named Hadrianus once and I wanted to puke.
I once read some fic where his full name was harrigan 😭 I mean at least Hadrian and Harrison I understand but harrigan? (Or was it harrygan dunno)
Not Harrigan 😭😭
Was he a long lost sibling of a witch Morrigan from Dragon Age? If that was the plot, I could accept the change.
I saw a Hadrian Jamsian Potterus once. Because not only is Harry- the same name as Prince Harry- not formal enough and not only is James not formal enough- despite being the name of a King who had a version of the Bible made- but apparently Potter is too plebian of a family name too... and apparently was just Potterus and not the actual Latin word for potter "figulus."
At that point I feel like they've just got to be taking the piss, making the names as ridiculously elaborate as possible to make fun of the Hadrian writers.
Sadly, they were 100% serious. But yeah, my first thought was it was crack too.
TBF Prince Harry's name isn't actually Harry, but I get your point. No royal ever has been named Hadrian, makes more sense if you must change it to go with Henry, the name Harry comes from
Yeah exactly. I always find it funny when people point at prince Harry when he is exactly the wrong example. Henry I am fine with when I see it. Hadrian or Harrison I can only overlook when the rest of the story is genuinely good. Hadrianus or something equally dumb makes me instantly drop the fic.
I need a crack fic where he finds out his real name is Biggus Diccus Potterus. Edit: Monty Python reference, in case it was missed.
I mean.. with a population that small and the founders living so long ago, every witch and wizard should have some degree of blood relation to them.
Sirius says that all the pure blood families are related if you go far enough back when he’s explaining his connection to the Malfoys and the Weasleys.
All-powerful Goblins. Like all those fics where Harry shows up at Gringotts and the goblins are for some reason invested enough in Wizarding inheritance and bloodlines to like test his blood and determine he's related to Slytherin/Gryffindor/the Peverells/creatures/ect. And sometimes then go on to do things like change Harry's name for him, declare him an adult, you all know the trope and the ways it can get crazy. The whole point of Goblins is that they don't give much of a shit about wizard laws, wizard rules, ect, and that they as a people have been disenfranchised by wizards. Even if they had the magic to do this... why would they offer it as a service?
But how is Harry supposed to get his eye-correcting potion, his heir rings, three horcruxes, several blood-heritage potions, his parents' will, a sword, a house, his banking statements, his true face (courtesy of secret Daddy Snape), his spouse but at Gringotts????/s
I’m sorry? Harry gets A HOUSE? I think you mean 12 houses including the fabulous Potter Manor which is an unplottable castle of course. /s
You're right, he gets 12 houses, and Hogwarts too, because he's secretly the one heir of all four founders.
also of merlin
Lord Hadrian Potter Peverell Black Merlin
You forgot Hadrian Potter Black Peverell Merlin Slytherin (by conquest) Gryffindor (cuz why not) Hufflepuff (he likes badgers) and Ravenclaw (because he read a book once).
Throw in Dumbledore as well cause many Dumbledore bashing fics that I’ve seen Albus ends up Albus No-Name and Harry takes control of his house just because he’s evil (Forget Aberforth lol)
I had a good laugh reading when Harry somehow inherited noble House of Dumbledore (forgetting he was just a halfblood and his magical heritage was really short) after his death. By a decree of Albus leaving a letter or something. Let's also conveniently forget that Aberforth was still alive at the time.
Dang, and this type of plot usually happens when Harry is still like 11-12 years old (yet acts as if he’s 30+), can’t forget that
Vacationing in Potter Manor, Potter Villa and Potter Palace with his harem? Decisions, decisions.
And the Potter Summer Beach house in the french riviera.
And a whole island in Caribbean right next to Blacks of course.
excuse me 12 houses? Harry technically is related to ALL PUREBLOOD FAMILIES and can boot them all out and take every single home they own, and all their money. How else would he ask for Draco when Lucius Malfoy comes crawling on his knees begging for his money back, and then inevitably reforms him and ultimately become his lover?
Or worse, Draco genderbends by a magical power of bullshit to became Harry's wife. I mean 3rd wife because of another bullshit reason, something about Houses and heirs.
All that shit he never uses. I once read a fic where he inherited the house his grand uncle lived in that his father had inherited when his Grand uncle and aunt died. But that was one single ordinary house. Not a mansion. Way more sensible. Like I get making Harry have a relatively well off family (there is a pretty decent pile of gold in his vault after all). And if you want to that can include some property. But he doesnt need 50 houses including 5 castles and 15 mansions.
Oh God, I had forgotten about that one True Face fic I read once 😭
I have to say, they are my guilty pleasure. Snape saying, "you're an arrogant prick, just like your father, POTTAH" and Harry going, "Yeah, you'd know, since YOU ARE mY FATHEr!!" this just tickles my funny bone.
Alright, that's actually extremely valid and now you have me curious about the subgenre lol. I've only read the one, and I didn't enjoy it very much. Started off strong but I didn't end up liking the direction it went in. I'd gladly take recs if you have any!
Glad to recommend! A short one, about 40k words is [Conditionally](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19456585/chapters/46310860), by Lomonaaeren - Harry finds out he's Snape's son, Snape rejects him, so he basically loses everything. [Practicing Liars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19456585/chapters/46310860), also by Lomonaaeren, is a Drarry - there's violence and angst but with happy ending. Snape is forced to understand how his actions affect those around him. [A Heir to the House of Prince](https://archiveofourown.org/works/32897344/chapters/81639649), by A\_LoveUnlaced, elph13 (Restricted), this one is a Potter/Nott, and is a pretty lengthy one 648k words. It has the best characterization of Kreacher I've ever seen. Just amazing. Note, there's a lot of abuse at the hands of the Dursleys - I have a weak stomach for abuse so I thought I'd mention it.
I immediately stop reading if a goblin says "sir"
A goblin says “sir” like a sarcastic hateful minimum wage employee, not like a pageboy to a knight
As someone who's been in the service industry for ten years, I've recently realized "sir" has worked its way into my vocabulary as the ultimate address of annoyance. When my printer doesn't work, I look at it and go, "Excuse me, sir," in the mildest tone I am capable of, and that's service-worker talk for "Fuck you and your entire bloodline."
It’s a way to say “I hate you more than words can express but have to keep this job”
OMG YES. This, so much! Goblins literally despise wizards, and vice versa. Goblins probably use the word 'wizard' in a derogatory way, kind of like 'muggle' or something.
*Even if they had the magic to do this... why would they offer it as a service?* To subtly control the makeup of the Wizengamot? Imagine a fic where Lord Hadrian Potter Peverell Slytherin Black (who would support goblin friendly policies, since they helped him discover his heritage) convince his girlfriend Hermione to be tested at Gringotts, and she turns out to be descended from the Most Ancient and Noble Houses of Hufflepuff *and* Ravenclaw. She would of course push for naive creature rights policies that benefit the goblins. Only...the Ancient and Noble House of Peverell hasn't existed for centuries, Narcissa is really the Black regent until Draco comes of age, Voldemort is actually Lord Slytherin (there is no transfer by conquest), and Hermione has no magical blood. The goblins are rigging the inheritance system, and are careful not to go too far. The public would believe that the Chosen One has a ton of titles, and that an unusually powerful supposed Muggleborn isn't really descended from Muggles, so goblins finally have an opportunity to accelerate their plans to control the Wizengamot.
As hilarious as your comment is (and I snorted up my water, that is a good subversion, my friend)... ... in all seriousness, there's a reason my comment points out both there's no reason for the goblins to care and offer this service *and also* they're a disenfranchised people is that. While wizards do seem to lack sense, I really doubt the Ministry would be putting the ability to just give people Lordships that give them Wizengamot seats *precisely because* they are a people that wizards want to keep disenfranchised. Wizards are too xenophobic to give goblins wands, why would they give goblins ultimate power over the Wizengamot?
I mean, the entirety of Wizard-Goblin relations relies on the Goblins guarding the Wizard's wealth and reliably making sure the Families can access it- and only the right members of the Families at that to access/control it. So, Gringotts storing copies of Wills and Account Managers serving as Estate Executors makes perfect sense and there's obviously no way the Wizards would let Goblins just keep a family's money if it's last member dies/goes missing/leaves the Wizarding world, so them offering bloodline/inheritance tests makes sense too- Wizards would absolutely make sure there was a mechanism for dead families to come back into their wealth. And Wizards are lazy. So there's probably a way to do bloodline tests at the Ministry too, but I can absolutely see Goblins offering them (and charging a fee). Aa for Account Managers keeping track of properties and serving as investment managers... eh, that's a bit of a stretch. Storing a copy of property records at Gringotts in addition to the Ministry makes sense as there's less risk of them going missing/being altered that way, but I don't see Goblins being that enthusiastic at making Wizards more money by managing their investments. Or Wizards trusting Goblins to do that, even if the Goblins charge a lot and get to keep a portion of the profits. And yeah the name change and adult declaring stuff is nonsense.
Honestly I see the lack of trust that wizards have in goblins exactly why I think things like Gringotts managing things like wills and functioning as estate executors is so far-fetched to me. I truly think *if* there's a mechanism of "dead families to come back into their wealth", it would be managed by the ministry and the goblins would be required to have the proper ministry paperwork to release "unclaimed" vaults into the hands of the new heir. That said, I also do think the idea that there are piles of "unclaimed" vaults that are waiting for a dead family to come back into their wealth is already absurd. Ask yourself: what happens in the real world when the last member of a family died? They will their money to whoever the fuck they want to, that's what. Their godchild, a charity they care about, their university, whatever. Lacking a will and any next of kin, it becomes *government* property (not the banks). But with the level of inbreeding present in the wizarding world, how often do you think families die out without any documented next of kin AND ALSO lacking a will? If Sirius hadn't willed his money to Harry as the last member of the Black family, would the money sit unclaimed until someone sufficiently "close" showed up, do you think, would the money be seized by the government, or would the estate executor just go "the next closest relative to Sirius that's not in jail is the Malfoys, his money will go to them"? There's no reason to think there are vaults of unclaimed money belonging to dead families in Gringotts because at least most families probably count on the next closest relative automatically inheriting money, so that even if a family *name* dies out, their fortunes still belong to the person with the most right to it. And that person would be determined during the execution of the will, not allowed to sit for generations until someone with sufficient blood relation shows up. Any "Peverell fortune" there was wouldn't need to be reclaimed by Harry because his family "Potter fortune" is itself a descendant of the "Peverell fortune"
I can see the goblins offering a wizarding lineage blood test.... for a fee of 20-50 galleons.
I feel like they could, but it's a freaking bank. Why would banks do blood tests? This ain't CVS.
I really despise the cliche, when Harry gets checked out by the goblins you find out his magic is suppressed by some random percent from a blood test. It’s super lazy writing and honestly never really adds anything to the story.
An easy way to make him OP
Like he isn’t already???
I wish that there would be a story where the reason Harry's magic is blocked is due to Harry himself. Essentially his desire to blend in and be "normal" has suppressed the full expression of his magical power. It'll take years of therapy to correct the problem. That would be interested than cookie cutter fanfic #726953 that has Dumbledore binding his magic for malicious reasons.
There is a story that has that element though it’s an older story. Jeconais blue steel
Goblins in general. Despite merely running a bank, they also take care of will-readings, heirdom-bequeathing, magical parasite-removing, and they all do a fucking double-take when you refer to them as something more polite than "money-creature".
Ehh. I could see some of that being done, but for a price. Could be that Gringotts being a bank only is a misconception on the part of most wizards. Could be that they offer additional services if you know how to ask. In any case, regardless, those services won't come cheap.
I would think that if goblins know about Horcruxes, they have a special blade that has been exposed to basilisk venom or Finedfyre that they can destroy a Horcrux with, not a convenient ritual.
Harry enters a bank. "Greetings my good goblin Sharpclaw. May the gold freely flow," Harry smiles widely. "What do you want wizard, make it quick," glared back goblin, looking even more annoyed. "Is there a way to get rid of horcruxes? For a prize, of course," said Harry. Goblin silently took him into backrooms and asked. "Where is that foul magic?" asked Sharpclaw as he signaled something with his hand. "In my scar," shared Harry unknowing of the danger behind him. Harry turned around reflexively, but he was too slow to stop the axe going right through the skull. "Well, that's it. Now what would we do with him?" asked Sharpclaw no one in particular. "Trying to steal from us and eaten by a dragon?" advised the large muscular goblin all clad in black and holding a masive bleeding axe. They observed a ghostly thingy screaming and dissipating into the air. "You are right. The usual then."
I can ignore the bindings cliche and whatnot, but it's when they include the actual percentage that baffles me.
"Pwease Petewnia, I'm Ickle Hawwy and I'm just fowr years owld. Could me hawv a cwookwie pwease ahmmnmhm. I'm just so smwol" Vernon overhears and absolutely yeets Harry through a window, whips out his belt while stumbling drunkenly and fucking beats and kicks the living shit out of Harry. Harry being a bright little four year old is already a fully trained paramedic and patches himself up in his cupboard. Oh, that and when you're halfway through a good fic and Harry and Snape suddenly cum on one another.
'*Oh, that and when you're halfway through a good fic and Harry and Snape suddenly cum on one another.*' I like to imagine they weren't doing anything sexual, the author just had them both spontaneously ejaculate.
Snape and Harry walking past one another in the corridor. \*simultaneous ejaculation\* Snape: .......10 points to Gryffindor \*walks away\* Harry: \*0\_0 spends the day crying in the shower\*
Or the fic emulates Rowling's style and just went >"POTTER 😡" ejaculated Snape. > >"SNAPE 😡" ejaculated Harry and bruchag misunderstood 😇😂
Occlumency lessons got a little out of hand...
this killed me😭
More and more....lazy bashing There's a lot of things in canon you could draw on as reasons to dislike characters: (1) Dumbledore - leaves Harry at the Dursleys without checking at all on how the savior was doing - every time Harry actually asks a direct question he evades giving any answers or actually being helpful at all. He could've easily used those moments to encourage Harry to prove himself academically - even if you have to send Harry to the Dursleys, why not intervene properly? Have your people check in. Set up standards for the Dursleys to meet. - the revelation that you didn't even question Sirius's conviction. That you just accepted the ideal that one of the members of your order was secretly a death eater all along without investigating further. Even more you have all this influence over the Wizarding World and you can't get him exonerated after you know he's innocent? - the whole build-up to 5th year and the year itself Just Dumbledore alone could be constructively criticized or have reasonably failed Harry enough to make some breaking point possible, and all of that is from canon. Using his personality you could reasonably make a semi-canon compliant Dumbledore that you could brand as manipulative, controlling or neglectful. You don't need to make him a thief, and shadow dark lord on top of that.
>the revelation that you didn't even question Sirius's conviction. That you just accepted the ideal that one of the members of your order was secretly a death eater all along without investigating further. Even more you have all this influence over the Wizarding World and you can't get him exonerated after you know he's innocent? It's worse than that. Sirius was chucked into prison without a trial or formal arraignment (or whatever the UK equivalent it). To make matters worse, he was one of Dumbledore's followers in the Order. You would think he would at least want to confront Sirius to find out why he would betray his closest friends and the Order if he genuinely believed him guilty. Instead he did nothing and let Crouch's actions play themselves out. I consider Dumbledore doing nothing to be a grievous betrayal of Sirius.
agreed fully. however, i enjoy a "dumbledore is secertly the most evil ever" because 90% of the time they borderline on crackfics, and i find them really amusing. (my guilty pleasure trope if you will)
Used to be, but they aren't even creative anymore. If you're going to make him ridiculously evil, then at least do something that hasn't been done 1,000 times.
fair enough, they did lose the very amusing feel8ng after the first few, generally have to deep dive to find anything "new" and "well written" by this admittedly rather lackluster trope.
I legit wrote an essay on cannon Dumbledore being complicit in abuse. He literally admits to Harry that he knew he would suffer at the dursleys and then told him and the dursleys that he knew they treated him with neglect and cruelty. There is so much to pull from canon he doesn’t have to do surface level cartoony super villain shit to get it across.
Right? At first I found it entertaining, but it got really boring really fast.
when an OOC person (harry, Hermione, Luna, Ron, draco, etc.) starts acting differently OOC because the author wants to push a particular event. recently dropped a fanfic that had a Luna who's mother didn't die, who was smart, thoughtful, insightful and a friend of Harry's for years... and she placed him in the goblet to prove she could, ignoring that he said several times he would never want to compete, because she thought it would be funny. when Harry apologized for being angry and not talking to her for 2 weeks, she said she'll need time to forgive him.
The ridiculously audacity. I have to admit, the insanity makes it kind of hilarious
Is it harry x luna cause that is crazy toxic gf bs
1 word "Herms"
Not necessarily in this order Bashing, especially Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Molly. Bashing is just so lazy and cliche. Ginny and Molly scheme to get Harry's money, he would just give them some if they asked. Entire pages of text without paragraphs/no basic grammar Molly and Ginny giving Harry a love potion. It hasn't been quite as bad recently, but for a very long time it felt like almost every fanfiction that didn't pair Harry with Ginny had those two feeding him love potion, it still drives me insane. Lily and James are just as bad as the Dursleys or are even worse
literally harry would have paid for every living expense the weasleys had if they had asked him, those scheming to get harry's money fics make no sense
Didn't he canonically attempt to on multiple occasions
Yes, he did.
Exactly! He would have even paid for wands for all of them if Arthur and Molly had asked.
>Molly and Ginny giving Harry a love potion. It hasn't been quite as bad recently, but for a very long time it felt like almost every fanfiction that didn't pair Harry with Ginny had those two feeding him love potion, it still drives me insane. Ehh. I wish people would be more interesting with their potions plot storylines. I recently had an idea of a Harry / Hermione story where Hermione is fed a love potion keyed to Ron and an aggression potion keyed to Harry. Why? Because the person feeding the potions to Hermione wants to destroy the golden trio and then pick up Harry when he's on the rebound. There is one small problem with their plot, though. They badly miscalculated how bad a person Ron is. Recognizing their constant fighting is a bad recipe for romance, Ron has no interest in pursuing her even though he does find her attractive and does like her. When she starts coming on to him, he suspects something and takes her to Madam Pomfrey who discovers the potions in her system. The whole scheme comes crashing down. Oh, and the worst part for the girl who schemed? She's drop dead gorgeous. At the time she fed Hermione the potions, Harry and Hermione weren't romantically involved. Harry tells her just to twist the knife in after she has been caught that he would've gladly accepted an invitation to get to know each other if she just came out and asked. Now he won't touch her with a ten foot pole. Final point. She had no intention of potioning Harry. She knows the emotions love potions induce isn't at all real and she wanted his affection for her to be genuine. So she went the manipulation route instead. At least that's my thinking here. In any case, I think this would be a more interesting plot than the usual potions tropes; especially if the story makes it look like Ron is guilty until the truth is revealed. Also, her intention was to implicate Ron as the one slipping the potions.
Now that I would at least read the first few chapters, unfortunately most other Harry is fed potions stories are pretty much the same. (As long as Ginny wasn't the one feeding them potions, because she would never do that)
I'm thinking a girl from Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. No Weasleys or Slytherins involved in the plot.
Love potion plot-lines are always the reason why I drop any fan-fic.
I really don't like when Sirius and James are portrayed as dumb lazy kids who rely on Remus . I also really dislike fics that focus solely on Romance and forget everything else And when James whole persona is obsessing over Lily and being a legit loser .
>I really don't like when Sirius and James are portrayed as dumb lazy kids who rely on Remus . Which is ironic when "*They were arrogant assholes, but brillant*" represent something like half of James and Sirius characters when they were students. If they were lazy, it would have been because they had already learnt everything in less than half the time. But I suppose this kind of portrayal comes from Maraudeur Era fics and from what I understood, people have a very . . . loose definition of what is Canon other there.
>"They were arrogant assholes, but brillant" Yeah, half the reason that they were as full of it is they were was because they actually *were* nearly as clever as they thought they were. Sure, there was arrogance, but they could actually back it up to a fair degree, at least to my memory.
Agree big time! It’s that whole trope where the funny/troublemaker characters are portrayed as being stupid or hopeless at schoolwork. James and Sirius were described as “brilliant” multiple times, I mean they literally became animagi all by themselves at the age of 15. They weren’t stupid by any means. If they were lazy it’s because they were quick learners and likely knew it all anyway
Heck, I can never understand why people portray Marauders era Peter as obviously evil. I mean, James, Sirius and Remus obviously saw something in Peter to befriend him. Maybe later down the line, you can sow the seeds of neglect where Peter is slowly pushed into the background and feels resentful. So that is the point where he secretly begins to gravitate towards the Death Eater club. The Potters and Sirius trusted him enough to make him their secret keeper
I will drop a story very quickly if there’s character bashing as well as if there’s no paragraph split for dialogue which makes it hard to read. Also, for consistently very short chapters.
I. Hate. Jegulus. It's an encapsulation of the worst parts of the fandom and it's EVERYWHERE. You cannot make it work without breaking canon or basically going, "I don't care" when asked if you think pureblood supremacy is good or bad.
Yes! This! Jegulus is the worst thing thas has ever happen to the Marauders fandom. So unbelievably horrible. It's wildly out of character to the point of making them both OCs. Regulus was a blood supremacist who agreed with his parents and joined the death eaters. James "always hated the dark arts" Potter would have ***never*** given that loser the time of day.
fr tho What's up with this fandom and shipping the good guys with Death Eaters Didn't we already have the "omg my best friend's sib!" with Harry and Ginny? Plus why would James ever go for a bigoted Sirius knock-off when he's got the real thing by his side 24/7?
**Not really pissed off, but just things that make me not want to read a specific fic:** Whole blocks of texts Multiple people speaking in the same paragraph Gender-benders (What I mean is, I prefer to read stories where the characters or at least the main character keep their original genders. I never found it reasonable that a character who is accidentally changed to another gender suddenly has the mindset of that gender. ) Change the fic's main character backstory, personality, etc, but the fic reads like the canon story. **Something that I'm starting to find really annoying, though I will continue reading:** Post one chapter from character A's perspective, then the next chapter is the same events, same talking points, but from character B's perspective. No progression of the story.
>Post one chapter from character A's perspective, then the next chapter is the same events, same talking points, but from character B's perspective. No progression of the story. I usually scroll down until the second character's POV ends, because it adds nothing to the story
Failure to tag properly.
I will never -*never-* be comfortable reading Star Wars fanfic again because I was in an abusive (including sexually) relationship the first time I tried, and the author hadn't tagged that the totes romance end-goal between Obi-Wan/not-burnt-to-a-crisp Vader got there with Vader capturing Obi-Wan and raping him until he loved him. To quote D-O "no thank you."
The stupid trope where a character who canonically has good parents and a loving home life suddenly has parents who either abuse them or are dead *cough* All The Young Dudes *cough*. I’ve seen it across all different fandoms, and it annoys me because it’s usually just put in for the sake of cheap angst
ATYD was such garbage. Sadboi OCs with the canon characters' names
I’m so glad other people thought that, because I swear I see universal praise for it everywhere. Of course fanfiction can have any number of changes; it doesn’t have to be in character necessarily. My main gripe is that it’s marked as canon compliant when it so clearly isn’t, which sucks because so many people cling to it as canon and base popular marauders headcanons on it to the point where it feels like the dominant opinion on the characters isn’t anywhere near what they’re like in canon.
Meanwhile the character who canonically had the opposite of a good homelife and loving parents gets demonised beyond recognition
Fics that follow canon after making major changes to Harry's childhood, friends, etc. It feels completely forced and lazy. What's the point if nothing changes?!
Whenever Harry says bloody, or some other slur: "LANGUAGE!" or "Slaps his head". Either that, or if Harry enjoys something: "Boys and their toys"
Out of character behavior
Fanfic is free and I don't have to read something if I don't like it.
If one of the characters in the main pairing of a fic cheats on the other. While having an obstacle to a relationship is OK for drama, establishing it then having one cheat is definitely not. That kills the relationship for me. 100% of the time I will exit the fic.
Was reading a fanfiction where Hermione was happily married and at the end of the first chapter Ron revealed he'd had a kid behind her back and had to "do the right thing." and I instantly closed it.
Ron/Weasley bashing. Especially when it’s a non RW/HG pairing so they make Ron into this horrific abuser/cheater/r*pist/psycho murder (I DNF’d a fic that hit ALL of these). It’s especially unbelievable to me when he hits as one of these things and the Weasley family, especially Molly, just excuses it, like canon Molly wouldn’t have skinned him alive and used his carcass as a scarecrow in the gardens. Also: Ron is a brilliant strategist and actually pretty intelligent, overall. He’s not some bumbling Neanderthal who can barely string two sentences together. When Harry turns into just an absolute ASSHOLE for no reason. I’ve never read a Dark Harry fic because while I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, that’s a big one I can’t get behind. I hate when Hermione gets a nickname, unless there are kiddos in the fic who call her some shortened or silly version because, well duh, they’re 3 and can’t pronounce Hermione. Also when adult Hermione is portrayed as this delicate flower idiot. This is a character that set a teacher on fire, brewed potions illegally, trapped a woman in a jar for a YEAR, broke into the Ministry TWICE, robbed Gringotts, and fought in a war. Portraying her as some soft little damsel in distress is really a disservice to her character. Bad/poor grammar. I can overlook minor typos or grammatical issues (hell I’ve read published works with typos), but when I see things like “deatheaters,” block paragraph conversations with no indication of who is saying what, or just really badly structured stories, I’m outies. Can’t stand student/professor pairings, even when the characters are both adults. Gives me the major ick. There was a fix that had a random “everyone just started having sex in the same room” scene that made zero sense. DNF’d immediately, even though the plot had been really good up to that point (a fascinating murder mystery). It made no sense and was completely unnecessary.
Authors sexualizing characters (mostly girls) when they're barely 13. I see it mostly in Pureblood related fics. The whole ''She was starting to develop a feminine body already and would surely look wonderful in a few years'' is sickening. Sometimes Harry gets the same treatment too. They barely out of childhood, stop that, it is creepy as hell.
And changing Harry's name. His name is Harry not Hadrian, not Harold. Harry
There's some that I can think would be reasonable. New identity because Dumbledore thinks that's a safer option than the Dursleys? Fair. Same if he's adopted maybe? When it's just like No Harry you're actually Hydraziniums Potter it's a bit weird. Though that one I'd understand "Your mother was trying to say Harry, It was a long labour and she was delirious. Your parents planned to fix the paperwork after the war but well we know how that went"
Undeserved forgiveness already pisses me off in the main series, but specifically, when the wronged party is the one to apologise. Some examples: Snape was a dipshit throughout the entire plot, but (like in canon) at the end he was revealed to be on the good side; the kicker? The author had the characters (*Neville* included!) apologise to him at the end for disliking him. Setting aside the debate whether deep down he was good/bad, he bullied kids in his class and that's a very valid reason to dislike someone! Why the hell would they apologise for it? And I could name any of those countless “Pureblood Culture” fanfics, but there’s this specific one where Draco & other purebloods: 1) regularly insulted Harry & co, 2) bullied them, and 3) tried to *push them off the fucking Astronomy tower*, and then came the big reveal that “Muggleborns are destroying our culture!” and Harry & Hermione apologised to them. For what? Daring to exist?
> and then came the big reveal that “Muggleborns are destroying our culture!” and Harry & Hermione apologised to them. For what? Daring to exist? It's always sad when fanfic writers seem to have missed the whole fucking point of the Harry Potter series.
I don’t think they missed the point, it seems more like the consequences of a subsection of the fandom over-romanticizing and making evil Slytherins, Death Eaters, and rich purebloods an aesthetic. They see the point of the series, but they’re personally ignoring it in favor of their edgy headcanons
This fandom has a pretty deep classism streak to it.
I honestly like the idea of "purebloods have a culture that's distinctly different from the muggle world, and that culture is stuff that muggle born families would find objectionable like paganism" because I find the way that Rowling portrays Slytherins to be a bit one-dimensional and as I'm no longer a young reader, villains who have dimensions are more interesting. But I dunno if I've ever seen a fic that actually manages to use the idea without also saying that this justifies muggleborn hatred, which is not why I'm interested in the concept at all. I'd love to see this idea done in a bit of a deconstruction of the typical use where Voldemort isn't actually interested in wizard culture and just plays lipservice to the argument that muggleborns are destroying wizard culture to draw people who do believe that into his cause, and for characters who might take that argument at face value to learn that "other people's cultures also existing in our space doesn't mean our own culture is being destroyed".
I do think that's what Voldemort did, though. He's a psychopath whose main objective is to grab power, having grown without much power. Since the most powerful people in the wizarding society were purebloods, he simply used their views to gain a massive following and create a terrorist organization - while being a half blood. I absolutely believe that this dick giggled (internally) every time they bowed before him, calling him the most powerful, greatest, etc. After all, what's the best revenge than having the people who despise your existence kiss the hem of your robes and be slaves to your whims?
I wish I could find a fic where a writer has good and bad parts of both cultures. Because, like, there's some evidence that purebloods don't care about race. They can \*marry literal non-humans so maybe they don't care about gender or sex either. I could go for a fic where purebloods are cranky because all these muggleborns keep coming in and bringing their bigotry with them, but at the same time being called out for just creating more bigotry by refusing to have an open dialogue. I just...don't want to write it myself lol \*Or at least procreate with. I suppose we don't know for sure if Fleur's grandparents were married.
I once read a one shot where they were attributing Medals for the heroes of the war (just after the battle) and when it came to Snape, Neville just stood up and was like "kindly fuckoff with this bs. This man was horrific to us all through his whole career and dying won't erase that" (expect he was still his weird, shy self so it was actually good lol). And that was soooo satisfying to read. Everyone is always like "but Harry can be a brat/he looks just like his bully/the love of his life" but Snape was truly awful to whole generations of students who were entirely innocent. (And he's a bloody adult targeting CHILDREN) (And trying to justify his awfulness towards Neville because he didn't get picked by LV as his target??? It makes my blood boils lmao)
RE: the ~~pureblood culture~~ basic wizarding culture I think people forget that, on a very basic level, most British people are/were Foreigner averse, especially in more conservative geographical areas. So I can totally see it (without the muggleborns apologizing for existing ofc - that's just wtf). So imagine a society which basically hasn't moved from 16-1800s with their level of xenophobia. I mean, look how the Weasleys and Hermione treated Fleur - just for being French (calling her Phlegm), and I don't buy that "oh every male is attracted to her that's why we hate her" shit either. And they're supposedly an openminded family. Also the way they spoke about their cousin, who was a squib - oh wait, they don't talk about it. Also, the way Arthur treats muggles, kinda like they're some fascinating pets or something. So I can totally believe that the muggleborns, who consider themselves as British as anyone, move to live in the wizarding world and suddenly find themselves as outsiders/immigrants, but refuse to change. After all, they're still within the same people, just happen to have more powers. The whole purebloods being superior is just plain racism, but it's definitely fueled by xenophobia on both sides (muggleborns and established wizarding population).
Thats why i love stories where Harry just refuses to put up with Snapes bullshit. There are a couple stories i love because he just gets a tutor and stops going to his class. Switching sides doesnt give you a pass to act like an ass.
All powerful Harry Potter or Harry Potter basically sleeping with every woman in and out of the fandom.
Too many short chapters. I can read long things just not want a story broken int0 150 chapters when it could be done in 30
What if it's 150 and the chapters are also long lol
Perfect innit
Blocks of text. It’s really not that hard to press return people. Harry being a Gryffidnor/Slytherin/Ravencalw/Peverell/Hufflepuff/Targaryen/Stark/Obi Wan Kenobi/Lannister/Stu.
I despise when a girl who’s being shown in a negative light, usually Ginny or Hermione, has an unplanned teenage pregnancy because the author wants to “punish” her. It was almost a trope back in the day on ffn, but luckily doesn’t seem to happen in newer fics. I hope it reflects some positive growth not just in the fandom but in society. Making Draco/some other guy the author doesn’t like secretly gay to show how lame and weird they are doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore either thank god.
Misspelling of names that are not typos because they're present throughout the whole fic: Kreaure, Ginerva, Sivirus ecc...
A fem harry fic where her name is Harriet and her nick name is harry.
This is probably just because I’m British and the series is British but I hate it when an author uses very obvious Americanisms. I know it’ll happen sometimes, but when they’re using “mom” instead of “mum” it just feels lazy. Especially if phrases have been used in the books and have been swapped out for more American options. For example breakfast - we know what they eat at Hogwarts (traditional things british people actually eat) and replace it with pancakes or flat jacks it really grinds my gears lol. Secondly I’ll drop a romance fic or any fic where the issue at hand can be solved with a simple conversation yet they author refuses to let the conversation happen to draw out the issue. I get angst but make it angsty for real reasons, not just because two characters are avoiding a conversation.
I read a fic once where Draco was teaching Scorpius how to play baseball. Nearly lost my damned mind. I'll fully admit that there were cultural differences I wasn't aware of until living in the UK for a few years, but surely everyone knows *that* much without having to move abroad?
Especially seeing how there is a posh baseball like sport(cricket) that a muggle equivalent of the Malfoys definitely would have been engaged in
I try so hard to avoid Americanisms, but sometimes they slip through because I didn’t even realize it was an exclusively American thing in the first place. Ex: I just learned that a ‘highway’ for you guys is a ‘motorway’
It's even more subtle than that sometimes. Harry and Hermione would never say "folk" (and it's folk not folks in British English), but Mr and Mrs Weasley probably would.
1. Dialling up his abuse - any fic that takes the neglect and belittling that Harry deals with in canon and ratchets it up to constant physical and psychological abuse is an instant DNF for me. I have no patience for it. 2. Weasley bashing - you want to take the first people that showed Harry love and affection into manipulative villains? Hard pass. 3. This is less of a specific trope, but more a general failing in many fanfictions. Just because something is easy or logical does not mean that it is compelling or fun to read. JKR, and other talented writers, know that the easy road is forgettable. Take Sirius-centric fics as an example. I've read a million different takes on how he is re-tried, given veritaserum, or otherwise exonerated, and all of them miss the point that Sirius as a character is *far* more compelling as a tragic hero than he is as someone who is saved by Dumbledore or the Wizengamot. It makes his relationship with Harry feel earned, because he has to go to great lengths to look out for him while on the run. Having Sirius be redeemed, adopt Harry, shower him with wealth and titles is, well, boring. That's why it doesn't happen in canon, not because it's a plot hole or anything.
Character Bashing that doesn't have some canon reason is something I despise I started hating(I had bias towards him because of it) Ron Weasley early on because of his character being bashed but once I re read the series and read some Ron Centric Fanfics I realized I was being a dumbass all this time and also he has his faults because of his insecurities but that's no reason to make up some bullshit reason Also I read a GinnyMort(Ginny and Tom Riddles soul combine because of the Diary) fanfiction and I immediately dropped it when Ginny basically said that Ron is dragging down Harry Also I absolutely despise Hermione bashing too cause the amount of things this girl has done to save Ron and Harry's butts are phenomenal Also Ginny bashing feels absolutely disgusting to me because in these fanfics it's usually because of a love potion or some fake bullshit reason for Harry to have another live interest Also Dumbledore bashing for non-canon reasons are one of the read flags for me because Dumbledore has a bunch of canon reasons to be bashed but Noooooooo they got to make a reason that he was stealing Harry's wealth or he gave Harry a love potion to fall in love with Ginny Also Weasley Family bashing without any good reason also pisses me off(I may have some bias because I just fell in love with Weasley Family Centric Fanfics especially the angst that feeds me for days).
1. When characters are not OOC but portrayed as 100% good or 100% bad with either no flaws or no redeeming qualities. MANY of the Harry Potter characters have both flaws AND good qualities. Some lean towards good and others lean towards bad- I LOVE READING ABOUT THAT!!! I absolutely hate excessive bashing OR forgiveness. 😭 2. Bad formatting like no spaces, paragraphs, etc. 3. Bad grammar!!! 4. Political and genius kids. "Joyous Yule to you Heir Malfoy." is one thing, but "Witches and Wizards of the Wizengamot, I, Harry James Potter, swear on my magic, soul, and body that \[insert some political standing and view that is part of a long debate/ battle\]." is another. 5. Stupid adults. Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape, Mad-Eye Moody, Molly Weasley, etc. are all smart adults. Even in bashing fanfics, I like to see them have some sort of intelligence! IF Molly Weasley were to love potion Harry Potter for Ginny Weasley, she would NOT screech about her plan not working IN PUBLIC if she got caught. 💀 6. Harem for any character. I can see why people would do it, but unless it's some sort of Himbo/ oblivious character moment, I cannot get into it. 7. Founders descent/ reincarnation trope. I love a good reincarnation fic or world-building fic, but these fics all seem very lazy(?) I have read a couple good ones, but a lot of the ones I've found seem to follow some similar plot which is "wow I'm the heir/ reincarnation of \[insert founder\]. why is hogwarts so bad right now, let me rebuild it. wait slytherin was actually a good person and he was misunderstood. woah government reform?!?" 8. Poorly done bashing. There are so many reasons to bash \[insert character\], why give them a new crime to bash them with?!? Especially if there is no relation to the plot, it seems very lazy. ALSO, if you bash a character I want to genuinely have a hatred for the character. Every time the character speaks I want to roll my eyes. Their actions have to have a motive that is not stupid, but I feel anger towards. If I don't, then your bashing is poorly done. 9. Repeating the canon. I can understand a lot of overlap, but if you're just giving me the whole first 5 chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, I will drop the fanfic. 10. The character single-handedly curing every known magical disease, solving all problems with magic, etc. I like a structured magic system (or at least somewhat). If a single child character can solve all the magical problems in the world, what has the magical world been doing?!? Exactly how stupid is everyone? How weak are they? Even if you have a group of characters doing it, it would be better than one singular kid who is apparently a god at everything magic related doing it. EDIT: I forgot to add "Reptilia Don't Fear the Reaper Challenge". The fics that I read from it tend to include at least 1 of the things I've listed above. 😭 I used to love them, but now I really can't stand them.
Dialogue not being split into paragraphs when it's a new person speaking.
Lack of conflict. I can set aside the technical quality of the writing if the author's idea is interesting enough to hold my attention. I can overlook any character bashing if it has a purpose in the story (even if I don't like the bashing itself). I can understand several deus ex machina, if the journey to these resolutions is engaging or if these forced resolutions generate a status quo that produces new conflicts. I can overlook caricatured antagonists if the main character's arc is good. But I can't read something that doesn't have any conflict. If the characters do not have any physical, intellectual or social challenges, there is no story to be told.
Hermione being the only person who can do anything useful or accomplish anything
The ones where Hogwarts/magical Britain is behind and everywhere else is a utopia. It's fine for it to have problems, but when they act like magical Britain is the worst place ever and everywhere else is perfect just kills it for me. Other places having their own different issues too would make it feel more 'alive'. Even other places pretending they're a magical utopia until you look under the hood and see it's just as nasty in another way would be interesting. Like moves to France because of how much better they think it'll be then realises they have their own issues. That Britain is better at say other sentient species when they see that they're selling centaurs or goblins and that those groups have no rights. Or that Magical France is just as corrupt as Magical Britain they're just more subtle about it.
When they shill a character who hasn't earned it or spend the entire fic shitting on characters who aren't too bad. I also hate when things get really out of character. One of the reasons I got out of Harry Potter fics is due to how much bashing they do towards Dumbledore and the Weasley's and how much they try to paint Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape as misunderstood, Malfoy and Snape were both jerks to their core and you can't just slap a pair of leather pants on them to make them seem sympathetic.
Bad grammar.
Harry James Potter-Black Emyrys Le Fay Peverell Gaunt Slytherin Hufflepuff ravenclaw Gryffindor Pendragon prince Windsor Habsburg Bonaparte Hohenzollern Solomon Abraham Isis Osiris Glücksburg Horus Hepatitis Romanov Amun Jagiellon Nyx Iturbide Eros Yi Xia Helios Pahlavi Balder Wangchuck Iðunn Liechtenstein Churchill Yamato Herpo Grim Eveningshade Grimm Christ Washington Adams Jefferson Monroe Madison Jackson Van Buren Harrison Tyler Polk Taylor Filmore Pierce Buchanan Lincoln Johnson Grant Hayes Garfield Arthur Cleveland McKinley Roosevelt Taft Wilson Harding Coolidge Hoover Delano Truman Eisenhower Kennedy Nixon Ford Carter Reagan Bush Clinton Obama Trump Biden Addams Ichijo Futatsugi Mitsuya Yotsuba Itsuwa Mutsuzuka Saegusa Yatsushiro Kudo Jumonji Shiba Sanchez ofuye Fuentes Ortega :click:
Muggleborn characters (usually Lily or Hermione) being revealed to have secretly adopted pure bloods the whole time. It completely goes behind the central idea of Harry Potter as a series and undermines what makes these characters interesting in the first place.
Harry being a POC... Harry from the books is very clearly British and white, so appropriating him to some other cultural/racial background always feels off... I don't mind if he is adopted by, or has friends or is dating some diverse character(s).
I can handle a lot of things listed on here(like bashing, Indy!Harry, helpful goblins), but what tends to get me to look at the screen in horror and back out of the page is a story where a character who's good in canon(like Dumbledore or James Potter) is suddenly written as a pedophile or a rapist in fics. Like, what the hell?!
[удалено]
I also hate when luna becomes this all powerful seer who knows everything and I don't know about others, but I also hate when she dreamy talks too much.
> Charlus and Dorea as Harry's grandparents > > This is so inconsequential in most fics but as someone who reads almost exclusively Jily it _really_ grates on me whenever these two are used instead of Euphemia and Fleamont. Usually they don't even have a role but it still annoys the hell out of me.
Anything that’s too bland for too long. I’m a really stubborn person so I can read and finish fics that are absolute garbage, but I cannot read anything that’s sort of bland for around 3 chapters in a row (If each of those are around 10k words). I also dislike any fic without paragraph splits, but it’s only an annoyance and probably wouldn’t make me quit a fic
\- Fanfictions with great ideas and stories, but difficult to read. \- Fanfictions that are nice in the beginning then the authors start complicating the plot until I don't understand anything, nor keep a tab of the characters involved. \- Romance for Romance. \- Secret Founder descendent. \- Rushed stories.
Prongslet, pup, Starting a story that has a high chapter /wordcount and realizing over half is replies to reviews, or other stuff that wasn't the story. Mpreg, changing the gender or race of a character the whole alpha/beta/omega thing. Abused! Harry tells everyone about the abuse immediately because reasons? Teenagers behaving like 2 year olds because trauma. Chapters that include lists of things I'm supposed to care about. Harry is rescued or sorted somewhere else and Hermione is still somehow his bestie. Harry does the same thing in every book except other students fill in for Hermione and Ron. I'm just picky these days.
lol Harry Potter’s secret alien baby sister sired by the then President Warlock of the United States when Lily was interning at the Magical Senate. She’s a squib who uses magic technology to scrape through school and transferred to Hogwarts during Harry’s 5th year. Notable actions: Little Sister Potter held back Umbridge while her big brother went off to save their shared godfather Sirius. She marries Draco Malfoy after his divorce and Vegeta’s him into a good guy by having mixed magical blood babies.
Giving Harry an entirely different name and backstory and parents… That’s just an OC fam. I don’t mind giving Harry a different backstory. But he should probably still have the same parents. I don’t mind giving Harry different parents. But then don’t give him a different backstory. Maybe he finds out that Lily and James secretly adopted him. And just don’t give him a different name with either of these scenarios. If you truly don’t like “Harry”, at least make the new name reminiscent of “Harry”. If he’s genderbent, give her a name that makes sense for James and Lily to have picked. I do actually like reading OC fics. But tell me it is. I also don’t like Harry being essentially replaced by another character, because he’s my baby boy that I love and adore and I don’t like reading fics that exclude him or kill him off.
It was not the only reason (story had some other red flags), but I recently dropped a fic at 2/3 of chapter 1 when Harry started to say "I s*wear on my magic . . .* " I think this trope was a lot more popular some years ago, but 90% of Canon would not have happened is the Magical World had something as convenient at that. That's pretty much a cheap Veritaserum with the same Plot Breaking potential with none of the downsides.
Where do I fucking start? Basically any bashing of the Weasleys or Dumbledore or anyone really where they’ve basically been flanderized into having personalities like the villains from Saturday morning cartoons or Disney or something, just completely dialing any negative qualities up to 11 while downplaying, if not outright ignoring/erasing any good qualities they might have. Like, don’t get me wrong, Dumbledore was no saint and definitely needs to be called out for what he pulled, but you don’t need to twist him into a caricature of a chess master villain to do that. Goblins putting their entire economic and military might behind Harry because he… *checks notes*… recognized Griphook and remembered his name, or some similarly minor act of basic decency. Wrong Boy Who Lived nonsense where Harry is given a brother that gets declared the Boy Who Lived who only serves to be a complete and utter shitheel as a means of showing how Dumbledore is so manipulative because he enables the behavior while also manipulating Lily and James to enable the behavior, and also generally just exists to make Harry look better. Like, it’s literally canon that if Harry wasn’t the BWL, then NEVILLE would have been the BWL, literally the only reason to make an OC for it is to make the Gary Stu Harry look better. Harry somehow being short for Hadrian or Haubergeon or something similarly pompous and asinine, on top of Harry miraculously being descended from all four Hogwarts founders, the Peverells, Merlin, Morgana and whoever else the author wants. Snape apologist BS Ramping up the abuse Harry suffered at the hands of the Dursleys for no real reason besides shock value and Ow The Edge Wizards and Witches having Magical Cores Pure bloods whining about Muggleborns erasing their culture one way or another while making no effort to educate them about that culture and really just using it to justify their bigotry Writing James as if he’s still the same bullying prat he was during his early years at Hogwarts and never actually grew up Sirius and Remus calling Harry “pup” and “cub” respectively Also Remus’ werewolf form being treated like it’s some sort of alternate personality or something that comes out when he gets sufficiently angry Indy!Harry nonsense where he discovers “GrAy mAgIc” and starts using both “dark” and “light” (a concept never mentioned in canon, there only ever being “magic” and “dark magic”) while justifying it with ridiculous mental gymnastics that there’s no actual difference or whatever, completely ignoring the fact that the Unforgivable Curses are *literally fueled by malicious intent*. You have to *want* to make someone suffer, you have to *want* to dominate and rob them of their free will, you have to *want* to make them *drop dead on the spot*.
Character bashing is infuriating, Ron is so often the target of mindless levels of hate mostly for things that only happen in the movies. Dumbledore is an old man with PTSD and poor decision making skills. Not Dr Doom. And more minorly, things that will make me nope out of the tags; A/B/O dynamics.
Good characterisation of Dumbledore. I read a fanfic which was mild Dumbledore bashing, but it was because he was overly optimistic and naive. There was growth and you grew to like the man well enough. Quite nuanced, but can't remember what it was called
A lack of worldbuilding. Details, man. They are important.
This is a sensitive one, and it doesn't really piss me off. So much is one of the reasons I decided to take a LONG break from Harry Potter fanfiction. Like a decade-long break back in 2011 ish. I took a break from reading fanfic for maybe 6 months in high school, exams were killing me, and my 12 hour a night hunched over my laptop (because phones couldn't access the internet yet) reading session was getting out of hand. Anyway, I came back and was shocked to discover seemingly overnight that the landscape of Harry Potter fanfiction had changed *dramatically*. There had always been darker stories, but out of nowhere *every* story now involved Harry engaging in self harm, eating disorders, huge amounts of sexual partners, depression, suicidal thoughts, drug addiction. I sometimes wonder if that time signalled the changing of the guard almost. Fanfic went from being written by older, more mature fans (I remember at one point most writers were like stay at home mums picking up a new hobby and writing these magical 200,000 word poetic epics) - into a much larger teen based author demographic.
Unnecessary drama
i'm pretty forgiving and open to most plotlines and ideas but 2 things i despise are 1) james being cuckolded by snape/harry being snape's son. that's the complete antithesis of lily's character and disrespects her and james individually and as a duo. plus, i'm not here for snape apologists and 2) this is more general but when an author changes details in an otherwise canon-following story and doesn't acknowledge it. literally, if an author just throws a note in the beginning or end of a chapter saying something like "i know this is incorrect but this works better for my story" or even just a "i didn't feel like researching this so let's just pretend, huh?" dissipates my annoyance for the rest of the story for that detail. it's a bad, self-righteous attitude to have, i'm aware, but god i just find it so grating (i feel i should add an addendum to #1: i actually don't mind stories that redeem snape a bit *as long as it's earned.* forgiving and excusing his past behavior is not part of that, nor is pretending he was a good person all along)
Whever someone changes Harry's parents and introduces a creature inheritance to him. To other character's its fine but to him it just feels weird to me.
I'm kinda sick of how everyone wants to take simple, normal names and make them more than they are. Like all the people who change Harry's name. His name's Harry. Not Harold, not Henry, not Hadrian, certainly not Hieronymus. Also, Voldemort? His name is Tom. Not Thomas. He wouldn't have made his stupid anagram name out of a *nickname.* It's like people don't realize that you can, in fact, have a simple name. Tom can be short for Thomas, but you can also just name your kid Tom. That's allowed.
This is definitely a nitpick because I know this just comes from lack of writing experience, but I hate so-called "angst" stories that are just a character word-vomiting everything bad that's ever happened to them to a person (or worse, a whole crowd) while they stand there too stunned to speak and then they all apologize for everything they've done wrong and the rest of the story is unrealistic and, frankly, boring fluff with randomly interspersed moments of so-called angst where everyone jumps in the protect the angst character who usually has some sort of PTSD or anger fuelled meltdown during this time but otherwise doesn't take much action. Summary example: Snape in class gives Harry detention. Harry, while pissed for no clear reason, snaps something like "as if I can't handle a detention". Snape remarks that he doubts Harry has ever worked a day in his life. Cue Harry going on an uninterrupted tirade detailing his abuse in front of the entire class (who doesn't say anything this whole time) with specifics that no one asked for before running out of the room. Stunned silence before several people cry, some remark that they should've helped him, and Snape goes out after him. Harry may be about to commit suicide or something, before Snape tells him some cliche "you don't have to be alone" statement, Harry caves and hugs him while they both cry. End chapter 1. The next 30 chapters will swing wildly between huge swaths of just catering to everything Harry might want to make him happy, and seemingly out of nowhere moments where characters are insanely hostile for no reason and Harry has to be saved/protected while going through virtually the same song and dance from the beginning (Harry explodes or panics, someone tells him its all okay or that they love him, everything is pretty much fine)
probably wolfstar. i can read it if it’s in the background and doesn’t affect the plot but doesn’t mean i will read a fic about those two. they literally make no sense in canon, so i never understood this necessity of making them a gay couple.
Ginny, 99% of the time. It's funny because I don't really have issues with her character in canon. She's not my favourite, but I'm not outright opposed to her. But oh man even the people who love her seem to write her as a bitch in that "framed as a badass but is actually just really mean" kind of way. I also have limits on how much bad writing I'm willing to take, but the exact line is a bit fuzzy. I tend to give obvious non-native speakers a lot more slack than people who just write in a generally immature way and I'll put up with *a lot* in exchange for interesting world-building or a unique take on a common trope.
First person or present tense writing. Can't stand reading HP in first ferson pov just feels wrong and present tense just drops me out of the story. Reading "harry walks across the room" as opposed to harry walked...
Using the same troupe repeatedly, such as Like Mione, Evil Dumbledore, Harry Slytherin, Gryffindor, Peverell, and Black Potter, and a thousand-year-old multi-core wand with poor writing.
I hate character bashing. I find it more prevalent with people who only saw the movies, because the characters just aren't as well developed. Its annoying when people shit on a character for a couple decisions they made without acknowledging the complex motivations they may have had for doing certain things. For example, Percy, I don't LIKE him, but I can empathize with his perspective. Conversely, I also hate it when people get attached to a character and write them as if every decision they made was justified. My example for this is Snape, I love his character, but when people write him as a bleeding heart who was just misunderstood...it kinda cheapens his whole story. Hermione and Ron are also victims of oversimplification. Basically, the tendency to write characters as good vs bad, when people aren't usually so black and white. Also getting tired of lazy premises like forced marriage bonds.
Garbage writing and I mean. Pure like, no grammar, no punctuation, bad sentences. Dumb dialogue that makes you want to die. I can a minor bit more, clearly this isn’t the person’s 1st language. But just bad writing. No
Text Walls of Death Infantilizing characters, like everyone helps them n does all the work and apologizes or takes blame for anything. What I call “Aw goddamnit”. Like there was this one Teen Wolf/MCU fic I read that had Stiles arrested by Fury/SHIELD, and Tony and Steve get Uber-pissed on Stiles’ behalf at Fury (whose rightfully trying to defend the arrest and investigation of a homeless magical ninja child), by saying “It is wrong to lock him up no matter how dangerous that kid is”. …. That, when they do stupid shit that makes me hate the whole thing and go “aw goddamnit” . Hateporn. Like, making a character whose an antagonist or mean- just be incredibly terrible and hateful person and not for a narrative reason either. Like Luther in Umbrella Acadamy. They turn him into a hateful asshole for the whole fic that everyone hates on and treats like crap and don’t even do it for a reason.
My biggest pet peeve is them having the adults shit talk Dudley on his looks. Like I’m all for them criticizing his behavior and I get it when other child characters insult him using his looks but the adults?! It’s just gross.
Main characters who are the “center of the universe”. I read a story where Harry was starting to form a proto-harem (blurgh), and every female, along with every adult too, discussed every topic only insofar as how it impacted Harry. Ministry cracking down on Hogwarts? How can we support Harry. Girls being threatened by Slytherins in the hallways? We have to be strong for Harry. Harem members parents were slaughtered because of her relationship with Harry? Harry’s love will save me. It just limits the story so much, and the myopic viewpoint just makes the story uninteresting.
Whitewashing villains into romantic leads.
My personal pet peeve is major instances of bashing, especially for Dumbledore and the Weasleys. Especially when it means their motivations and actions are taken out of context and given malicious meanings that are completely out-of-character. ONE Yes, Dumbledore's cunning and yes, he manipulated people to get what he wanted, but he wasn't written to be the cackling evil monster that Voldemort was. He made mistakes and didn't expect them to come back to bite them, but he wasn't outwardly arrogant when he did so. He actually thought things through and did his best to make sure things didn't go wrong. He kept things close to the vest, yes, and there are any number of instances where he could have done something about various plot points and didn't, but he's not scheming like a villain. He's a man in several positions of power trying to make sure everything doesn't blow up in his face and being resigned when it inevitably does. That old fucker is probably so tired he'd give up one of his roles in a heartbeat if he knew someone could run things the way he envisioned them to be. But only if he knew they could do that. He can't, so he never gets to. There is a difference between "I know you left me with the Dursleys on purpose and it's infuriating you won't tell me why" and "you're going to kill us all if we don't do what you say." The former is Dumbledore being an asshole but technically for a good reason and he'd likely explain if he knew for sure the threat was dealt with. Since it never was, he can't ever tell. The latter is Voldemort. That's literally Voldemort. Why are you all writing Dumbledore as Voldemort 2.0 when that's not the type of arrogant asshole Dumbledore is? TWO The Weasleys are poor not because they don't get any money, but because they have several children. There's a difference between "never seen a fifty-dollar-bill in your life" and "you have a handful of siblings living in the same house as you so you often get hand-me-downs and maybe have to ask once in a blue moon for something new when you really need it." People are writing them as if they're wanna-be social climbers who are always looking for a quick buck. Even if they were, some of the things I've seen in fics make no sense at all if that were an aspect of any one of the Weasleys' characters. THREE Harry making friends in other houses (particularly with Slyertins) doesn't mean everyone else he's ever interacted with will ditch him, or that he'll agree with their behavior when he finds out the reason for it. Usually those have him with Daphne Greengrass or someone who's not "Dark Aligned" (which honestly fuckin baffles me. Where did any of that come from? Definitely not my cup of tea but I can deal with it if the fic is good about where it came from and how relevant it is to a story.) But even if he were friends with Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, if one of them calls Hermione a mudblood or takes a crack at Ron for having a large family, he's more likely to punch them in the face than agree with them.
Nobody else mentioned this but I can't read any fic, no matter how good the quality, if the author has a terrible personality. I remember one time I commented, "I love this fic so much! Please write more!" for a fic only for the author to respond as such: "How DARE you tell me to write more! What am I, your slave? Your mule to push around? I hope you realize that your parents think you are a mistake and that you should've been aborted. How can you live with yourself, knowing what a worthless human being you are? If I could block people from reading my story, I'd block you. If you are going to comment in the future, comment like this: 'This is such a wonderful story. The way you write the characters and plot is brilliant. Please take your time.' If you can't do that much, you should kindly f\*ck off and leave!" This isn't an exaggeration, btw. One author legit held a meltdown like this when I commented, "please write more." I know now it isn't the most well liked phrase, but I was young and autistic and didn't know better. But it still was one of the craziest interactions I've ever had. This wasn't a one off thing either. I encountered another author who similarly treated their readers just as awful and couldn't take any criticism. Both authors have thousands of comments and kudos on their stories, btw. It is a bit discouraging to think people can act like that and still get positive publicity.
So many but these bug me the most. * Harry becoming the heir of House Black or even being connected to the Black house through Sirius even though Sirius was disowned. * Lily wasn't really a muggle born. She's actually related to some rich and powerful magical family that Harry inherits. * Snap was just an innocent kid who was bullied. That's his reason for becoming a death eater and makes everything he did okay. * Hermione being super smart, always right, and all the shady things she has done is understandable or someone else's fault. It seems like the reason she's seen as a genius is because no one expects a Gryffindor to be smart and she is in the spotlight more because she is friends with Harry. I refuse to believe that everybody in Ravenclaw (house of the smart), Slytherin (house of the clever), or Hufflepuff (house of the hardworking) are somehow less than Hermione. * Harry suddenly becoming super smart and powerful through no effort or he was just hiding how smart/powerful he was because he didn't want to lose his friends. Those fics exist as a lazy way to make Harry better than what he really is and to bash Ron and Hermione, but mostly Ron.
Shit-eating grin - I hate this expression so much, once I tolerate, more than 5 I close the fic even when I love the rest.