Lol, I like it. Kind of a dickish!Columbo.

 

I always thought then Columbo when off screen was laughing to himself like:"Hehe that poor sod how freeked out was he?"

I always imagined the people who ran the police just sent out Columbo to all this high profile cases then sat back and chortled. Not laughed, chortled and maybe cackled.

 

Are you by any chance talking about the fic where he has a martial arts teacher, an active harem and lots of character bashing?

 

I don't think so, the Diagon Alley scene was in chapter three and I ditched it immediately after the mentioned peeves, it doesn't sound like it though as no mention before the Hogwarts letter of a martial arts teacher. Feel free to check it out yourself though:

Soul Magic by Bellatrix.Giggles - https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10979006/1/Soul-Magic

 

There should be a fic in which goblins consider being polite as demeaning to the other party and the more of a dick they are to others the more they see them as rivals and thus worthy of respect. Griphook stealing the sword of Gryffindor and leaving Harry to die would be his way to show his appreciation.

Not really a good idea but might be refreshing if done right.

 

Might work in a crack-fic.

 

You want crack? Model Harry after the Duke of Edinburgh and write a one-shot of him at 17+ making a deposit/withdrawal.

Actually, do that with Harry visiting all sorts of places around the world.

I'd read the shit out of that.

Edit: not sure which I'd find funnier, if Harry was genuinely an idiot/ racist; or just turned it on to offend people who offend him, using his fame as a shield...

 

The Game is Afoot by Perspicacity.

 

A few weeks ago, I found out why exactly I find Evil!Incompetent! Dumbledore and everything along those lines so dump.

It's not that I disagree with the writers view on Dumbledore. I don't care how canon Dumbledore was, I don't care wheter Ginny was a whore or a pure maiden in canon and I don't care if Ron was a Death Eater, if Draco Malfoy wore leather pants or was a bitchy bitch. It's fanfiction. The writer can do whatever he wants, he is the god of his world. He can choose whatever cliches fit his story best.

So why. Why would you write something where the protagonist repeatedly stomps the biggest antagonist. Light only shines brightly if the darkness is pitch black. The protagonist is only awesome if his troubles are actually troubling. The one ring can't be awe inspiring if a random character just shrugs off it's temptation, Harry facing death would be meaningless if he did it every tuesday.

The villian should be as charismatic or even more charismatic as the hero.* The antagonist should be strong, else those who oppose him woudn't become strong by association. Similarily, if Worf is weak, whoever stomps him won't seem strong by association. If Voldemort beats dozens of aurors without trouble while Harry (the good guys) struggle to fight them, it's a lot more menacing then when they both treat the world as their plaything. If Voldemorts above Bellatrix and Bellatrix is above Harry, Voldemort seems really strong. If Voldemort stomps Draco Malfoy and Harry stomps Draco Malfoy, it just means that Draco Malfoys weak.

Even motherfucking Twilight hypes it's antagonists. Even Twilight never beats it's villians before the final showdown.

You don't want to write a worse action story then Twilight, do you?


*Rule of thump from somewhere, I forgot where exactly.

 

I agree with everything the above person said, but I also want to add to it.

The other part of manipulative!Dumbledore is that he never actually seems that evil. I mean, his motivation is generally that he wants to defeat immortal wizard Hitler.

That monster.

 

My biggest problem with evil!D or manipulative!D is that it's usually written horribly.

I mean, here you have supposedly super intelligent wizard, who has had +/- 100 years to perfect his routine (manip.) or plot his way to power (evil)… He even did it for 100 years without anyone noticing this — which is IMO worse than Voldemort, because noone suspects a damn thing — and then 11-15 year old boy (depends on writer) shits all over that with two questions, one speech and one muggle technique.

That is stupid. And boring. And mind-numbingly stupid.

 

Evil Dumbledore: Oh no, young Harry has discovered I placed a magical bind on him when I left him at Privet Drive! Without the binding he's become even more powerful than Merlin ever was! He's even unlocked both of his animgaus forms: basilisk and elemental phoenix!

 

I'm a little peeved at how people seem to have no idea how to use semi-colons.

They're used to join together two seperate clauses - implying a relationship between the two which is usually that the second is an explanation of the first.

e.g. "He walked into a lamppost; he wasn't looking where he was going."

In that case the semicolon basically replace 'because'. It's also usually substituted in instead of however, otherwise, and therefore. People using semi colons as commas have no idea how they work, and are gambling on a fifty-fifty chance that it will work and not make a fool of themselves.

 

They're also used in lists where the list elements themselves contain commas.

 

I don't know if this is even annoying enough to qualify as a 'peeve' but "Harry mentally rolled his eyes"

I'm pretty sure I've never done that. I've rolled my eyes and I've resisted the urge to roll my eyes but I've never actively imagined rolling my eyes whilst not physically doing so.

But perhaps it's a thing other people have done and I'm just weird and possessed of an extremely literal mind.

 

I know what you mean about it being used a lot. However I'm pretty sure that when they write that they are just trying to explain how exasperated Harry is with someone. I know I've got a boss at work who makes me want to roll my eyes and I don't out of professional courtesy. I simply suffer in silence.

 

Well, according to some fics, Sirius was such a slut that he probably did spread a few plagues of biblical proportions.

 

You've essentially 'mentally rolled your eyes' every time you've resisted actually rolling them.

 

I think Harrys 6pack abs cann roll their eyes too...

 

Light Magic, in any context. I don't care if 'Light and Dark is all just political anyway' or 'Dark and Light Magic has nothing to with whether or not you're a good or bad person', the idea is almost always done horribly. It shouldn't be hard to understand that HP Magic is mostly Grey, with some touches of Dark.

I've only ever read one story featuring Light Magic that I like, and even that relied on actually describing how it works, mentioning specific Light Magic spells, Dark Magic people can't use Light Magic (and vice versa), and actually showing examples where Light/Dark genuinely are equal and opposite.