I agree with the above actually. I'd argue that Skeeter likely has a more difficult time transforming simply because the beetle is a completely different kingdom to the stag, dog/wolf, rat or even werewolf. The point is they were all mammals which I doubt requires as many changes as an insect or lizard requires.

 

It also seems likely that going from human form to rat or beetle form would be more tricky, as the transfiguration is from a large form to a much smaller form than from a human to a dog or stag.

 

It's fucking magic. Don't try science it, it won't work. I didn't work for MoR and it won't work for you.

 

Eh ... I'm just basing my opinion from the fact that JK had first/second years turning match sticks into needles, rats into a snuffboxes, and beetles into buttons, all of which are relatively of the same size. Nothing to do with science, just what the books present.

 

On the other hand transfiguration seems to work gradually in that you get pointy sticks when you want to turn matchsticks into needles. Definitely there is a theme of similarity being easier going on.

And the science of magic was definitely the best part of MoR, and actually very enjoyable. MoR flunked because it didn't go anywhere as a story, not because of the science.

 

If you're going to rape magic until it's just another field of science why even call it magic at all? Sure, magic can be consistent, but there's no reason it needs to make sense. The Nimbus and the Firebolt are relatively similar brooms, but one is vastly superior in speed and maneuverability because magic. One of Gamps' Laws of Transfiguration is that you can't create food out of thin air. You can summon it from somewhere else, transform it, and make more of what you have, but you can't just create it out of nothing. Don't spend the entire wordcount of your fic trying to explain the rules of HP or shoving it into your own ruleset, just write a damn good story. Harry Potter is fucking fantasy, readers already have a suspension of disbelief, or at least should.

 

Yeah, not to backseat mod or anything (too late), but we should probably shut this down now before the powers that be get angry. This has been discussed to death before, and it just gets people pissed off and topics closed. Kinda like religion. So yeah.

 

Pet peeve:
Does magic have rules? NOPE

 

Why do people centre their stories? I hate it.

 

When people add things in the summary that have nothing at all to do with the summary, and completely break immersion.

Speaking of summaries, any story that has "what if" in it's summary is probably crappy. Scratch that, stories that have questions in their summaries are probably crappy.

 

I hate when writers starts to change things for no reason at all and don't stop at 2.

Look You only get to have one unicorn per garden. Not one herd of them.

 

Underpowering Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort. No other wizard in Britain even come close to matching these two in terms of skill and power. If there were, they would have already come out.

And the Unspeakables aren't super assassins or deadly fighters. They are nerdy scientists with little talent for combat.

 

This may both shock and surprise you, but we have no idea what the Unspeakables do, other than that it's really fucking weird from Harry's adventure in the Department of Mysteries. They don't speak about their work, so they could be anything from Super Wizards who protect the Sanctity of Time, to That Guy In The Next Cubicle Who Won't Stop Fucking Humming.

 

Well, we do know they got shoddy security. And since Rookwood went to Voldemort and Voldemort didn't become the Lord of Time, a random Unspeakable doesn't have access to superpowers.

 

The DOM still comes under the jurisdiction of the MOM. So, if they are super-wizards or whatever, I can't see the minister not calling them to assist the aurors and hit-wizards.

From what we know of Rookwood, his position as an Unspeakable allowed him to gather as much information as possible from the ministry without questions asked. Or that's what I felt anyway.

 

Pet Peeve: the phrase, "asking for entrance," usually in a sentence such as, "his tongue touched her lips, asking for entrance." If it's real special, it'll be followed with "...tongue made a map of her mouth" or some asinine comment.

I'm not sure what's worse, that, or an action tag of the "they all fell on the floor laughing" variety.

:facepalm

 

Non-English when the rest is written in English. Not because I hate all other countries or anything.

But because most fanfiction is read online. And a simple ctrl+t, then tr enter takes me to Google translate. Whilst it isn't perfect, it does a reasonable job most of the time. Especially because a lot of the time it was how the author got their French, or Swedish, in the first place.

I can see the purpose of having characters talk in French. It can set the scene, or be used to conceal information from one of the characters, or show how clever you are as a writer that you know another language.

But it doesn't really conceal anything from the readers.

If we aren't supposed to know what's being said, then don't write it. Word your way around the characters actually saying it, if you have to : 'Harry tried to listen in on what Fleur was saying. But he only recognized one or two words, so was still quite clueless as to what she meant'.

But if I see 'pensez-vous que vous devriez lui parler des monstres?', then within a minute I'll probably know what it means.

And you, as an author, could save me those few minutes by just writing do you think you should tell him about the monsters?.

I'll admit, I haven't often done this for physical books. But paper books don't have an easily accessible translate function.

 

Seconded. Even worse when the Non-English is clearly butchered, and the author admits it in parenthesis immediately after or in author notes in the end.

A word or two - especially when the meaning is apparent from context or common roots - is fine, but more often than not it only distracts.

 

I remember when this was a staple and the bane of the various Anime fanfiction fandoms. Rampant Japanese, everywhere! And unlike now, Thaumologist, Google translate was not then your friend. Most of it was limited to -kun or -chan appended to names, with your occasional hai or iie, but a lot of it also stemmed from "Look how clever I am! I know all this Japanese!"

Once I began learning actual Japanese, though, I could suddenly see 90% of it for what it was: word-for-word direct translation of English sentences into strings of Japanese words.

 

Have you noticed that most fanfics have the description of current weather in the first sentence?