Regarding the Cruciatus, I believe it is plainly the biggest pain spell in existance. The maximum amount of pain. There are bound to be medical spells which stir nerves in a way that couses pain, but the Cruciatus is the end all be all of pain spells, brute force out of the others league.

You also have to want the one you cast it on to suffer for the Cruciatus to work well, which makes conviction based on intent easy.

But pain isn't torture. There's no variance, no stick and carrot, no psychological stress beside the obvious pain driving you insane. While you can't somehow resist the Cruciatus, it is difficult for the guy casting it to mold the target to his wishes. I is driven into insanity, but that doesn't mean the poor guy will do whatever the torturer tells it to. They just want it to stop. Case in point, Nevilles parents.

Voldemort usually went Cruciatus, "you don't want to disappoint me again", Cruciatus, "really". It was the pauses that allowed him to control his followers or victims, not the Cruciatus itself and the maximum amount of pain likely wasn't needed.

What I find intricate and horrifying if you think about it is that in seventh year, the students where supposed to punish each other using the Cruciatus. So potential recruits against potential rebells, from the Death Eaters point of view.

The Cruciatus only works to it's fullest effect when you genuinely want the target to suffer, not for some greater goal or justice, but out of pure sadism. So the Death Eaters would easily see quiet "sympathisers" since their curses woudn't be as effective and their soon to be recruits would be trained to hate the DA.

God, I'm creepy when I think from the point of view of Voldemort or the Death Eaters.

 

I have a little pet theory about the Cuciatus that doesn't have any basis in canon but isn't disproved by it either (I don't think so, at least).

The way it goes is that the Cruciatus is more painful than the most painful thing that you've ever felt in your life. Every single time. So the first time you get hit, it's more painful than that time you got hit by a car/gave birth/etc. The next time you get hit it's more painful than the first time you got hit by the Cruciatus. And on, and on, and on.

So Neville's parents didn't go crazy because they got hit with the most powerful pain they'd ever felt x10. They went crazy because they got hit with the most powerful pain they'd ever felt ^10.

That's how I like to justify it being an unforgivable curse while other torture curses aren't. The potential agony is infinite.

 

Annoys me when people use wearily instead of warily. Its a small thing, but its one of the most common mistakes I see and I just don't understand how so many people confuse the two.

 

Why does most of the H/Hr fics contain Super!Hermione, Ron bashing and Harry as a useless love interest?

 

That is because 99% of fanfiction stories is unreadable and <insert pairing here> is not immune? And ship centered stories are more likely to be bad?

And why this problems are quite typical in this case?

Ron bashing usually is caused by fact that poor authors prefer to change characters (Ron becomes stomach etc) rather than situations (any type of AU).

Super!Hermione - because all H/Hr shippers like her what in case of poor stories (99%) is likely to cause appearance of de facto omnipotent and omniscient character.

useless love interest - result of poorly done Super!Hermione.

 

It is indirectly proved as not-canon by the fact that JKR's dyscalculia would prevent her from thinking of it.

 

Author insert.

 

This type of characterization of Voldemort and Death Eaters.

 

I am more and more irritated by people somehow unable to mark completed stories as completed and not completed as not completed.

I understand confusion with collections of oneshots (IMHO - permanently completed), but everything else is so painfully obvious.

 

One thing that has really started bothering me is overuse of pensieves, which seems most common in crossover or Indy!Harry stories but is in others as well. I get annoyed when something happens and instead of explaining it to other characters, they just skip to "Hey, watch my memory of last scene in my pensieve!" "Oh no, I can't believe Snape was such a git, Harry!"

The pensieve can be done well, but often it's overused and becomes almost mundane.

 

Thats why you make them really rare, otherwise they are everywhere, cuz they are just so damn useful.

 

They can work to incorporate a flashback, or to show instead of tell, but when they're depended on because an author doesn't have the tools to do anything else, it's a joke. That's not to say I haven't used them in a story, but I don't shortcut a story with them (at least I hope it doesn't read that way).

 

Multiple concurrent stories.

I don't mean where the author is just writing three or four different stories at once, but where they're writing several in the same continuity at once, and they don't overlap timewise.

If they did, I could sort of see why - you want one story focusing on Alex, one on Bill, and one on Charles. They could all be stuck into one story, but then you'd sort of have to write in chronologically.

But when the stories doesn't quite match up, and you have to read all of them to follow the conversations and references, it gets really annoying. Especially if you find yourself not caring about one of the stories in the slightest in its own right.

 

I never encountered this but it sounds like really poor idea.

 

I just saw this in a fanfic I was reading.

It's the run of the mill, Manipulative Dumbledore thing. Just something to kill a couple of hours on a train. But that quote...

You should have six wives... I'm an avid feminist.

 

Why would a 16 year old Harry would even want a wife much less 7 wives?

 

Please don't tell me it was King Ragnok who said that...

 

Any fic using the word "canoodling" to describe kissing/making out.

 

Anytime an adult character uses the word "snog". Or when any British character uses Americanisms, or when characters reference things that haven't actually happened yet (I read a fic that had Tony Blair as the Prime Minister in 1993 or something).

I also dislike it when authors treat England and Scotland (sometimes Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland) as the same country. It doesn't take an hour to get to Hogsmeade from London on a steam train, even if it is (probably) magical.

 

No, it was an OC, a girl who the author called Red. She had been given an actual name, but the author didn't like it, and called her that every single time she was mentioned.

On the flip side, there was a King Ragnok who revealled that Harry was heir to the four founders, Perevall (Not Peverell) and Potter lines, and who told him he probably had to marry 6 women. So, eh, I guess it evens out.