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Pet Peeves v.10

Discussion in 'Fanfic Discussion' started by Dark Syaoran, Aug 13, 2015.

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  1. Peter North

    Peter North Dark Lord

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    Don't forget Prongslette or Vixen.
     
  2. SeekingSerenity

    SeekingSerenity Third Year

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    Also stop making Serious/James interaction feel homo.
     
  3. Peter North

    Peter North Dark Lord

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    Snape's memory in book five did that so it's canon.
     
  4. wordhammer

    wordhammer Dark Lord DLP Supporter

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    Hey, it was the seventies, man.
     
  5. Peter North

    Peter North Dark Lord

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    My mistake homosexuality didn't exist back then. It was the year where the Gilderoy Lockhart personality was most popular.

    As for a couple of peeves of mine. Fics that try to justify James and Sirius bullying Snape because he became a Deatheater, and when people who have a great fic going and give up on it because some asshole bitches that it isn't to their liking.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  6. Oliver Thanatos

    Oliver Thanatos Squib

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    Oh, boy...Let's see here...

    Illuminati!Dumbledore. Yes, Virginia, Ron really did make friends with Harry of his own volition, and not because Dumbledore/Molly was slipping him Galleons (stolen from Harry's vault, of course) under the table.

    Evil!Weasleys in general. I swear, most of the cliches associated with that bit of fanon had to have been invented by some flavor of paranoid sociopath.

    Harry having YUUUUUUUGE amounts of Galleons with no regard to basic economics (I read one fic that gave him trillions :facepalm)

    Bullshit speshul snowflake magic out the author's ass

    Sociopath!Marauders

    Dumbledore being obsessed with the prophecy. He LITERALLY said it would have meant JACK if Voldemort had just blown it off, you idiots! :facepalm

    Dumbledore being utterly evil for planning to sacrifice Harry. YOU HAVE A PIECE OF WIZARD HITLER'S SOUL INSIDE YOU, WHICH IS KEEPING HIM ALIVE, YOU EGOMANIACAL TOSSPOT!

    Good!Voldemort/Death Eaters. Genocidal bigotry is bad, mmkay?

    Hermione/Snape. No.

    Harry/Snape. NOOOOOOOO. :fire

    Snape being a nice guy. The man is a DICK, and proud of it, authors.

    Conversely, Snape being pure evil who regularly eats kittens for breakfast. The man is one of the most complex and fascinating characters in the series, and fanbrats on both sides just shit all over him. :facepalm

    Purebloods running everything in the most backwards way possible. Why do the DEs even need to exist, then?

    Lily being painted as entirely in the wrong for ditching Snape after the Mudblood incident.

    And lastly, the twins finishing each others' sentences all the damn time. Do not do this in your fic. I will know it was you. And I will end you.
     
  7. nubya666

    nubya666 Squib DLP Supporter

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    What about if its good; I have seen it done well a few times. In your opinion is there anything that makes it trashy or is it just somthing you dislike.
    Is that semicolon good or should it have been 2 sentences?
     
  8. Oliver Thanatos

    Oliver Thanatos Squib

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    Once or twice is OK; I'm talking about when they do it in every scene they're in. Yes, I have read multiple fics where that was the case.
     
  9. SeekingSerenity

    SeekingSerenity Third Year

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    Making Lily Dumbledore 2.0 from his early years, capable of dueling Voldemort close to standstill. Fuck that. She used to read a lot of books, we get it!But that doesn't give her a reason to be so utterly competent like most authors portray her.

    Using THE BRIGHTEST WITCH OF THE GENERATION as justifiable reason/excuse for a character to be born with inbuild info dump abilities (cough Hermione cough ).

    Adding MAXIMA at the end of every spell as an indicator for the supposed skill of the caster.Do you know the sheer number of shitty fics, that use this trope to present , a preview of let's say Harry's timetraveling powerup?

    It goes something among the lines of Harry, shouting "LUMOS MAXIMA" while the nearby onlookers gawk at his magical prowess or some similar stupid shit that belongs in chinese novels for bullies.

    Though the biggest peeve of all time is probably when Harry has a different and more difficult upbringing, reflecting in making his character a lot more wary,jaded,selfish or even introverted, then proceeds to go to Hogwarts, where he befriends Hermione and Ron :wall:.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  10. nubya666

    nubya666 Squib DLP Supporter

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    Can you explain exactly what this means, I am having a hard time following what you are trying to say in this example.
     
  11. SeekingSerenity

    SeekingSerenity Third Year

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    The brightest witch of her age
    Hermione proved to be a witch of exceptional skill, ability, power and talent. Even before she began her education at Hogwarts, she practised some simple spells which all worked. Professor Remus Lupin, who taught Defence Against the Dark Arts in her third year at Hogwarts, claimed that Hermione was the cleverest witch of her age he had ever met; a notable remark, considering that Remus once shared classes with the very talented Lily Evans in his days as a Hogwarts student. The British witch's magical capability easily surpassed almost very single student in her year, challenged only by a select few. Hermione was considered a "borderline genius" and was the most talented witch in her year at Hogwarts.
    At Hogwarts, Hermione was usually the first to master any spell, and was capable of using spells beyond her educational level.

    Hermione became highly skilled at non-verbal magic in her sixth year, being the first to succeed at it in her Defence Against the Dark Arts class and quickly becoming so good at non-verbal incantations that she did not need to say the words aloud for a wide variety of spells.Hermione was known to have practiced wandless magic in her years at Hogwarts. She did not need the aid of a wand or magical instrument for a wide variety of spells.
    And so much more of this worshiping that i\m to lazy to copy/paste from hp.wikia
    Lily and Hermione are so glorified it's actually scary .All other students are more or less fodder.
    What i'm essentially trying to say is that Hermione&Lily are Voldemort&Dumbledore 2.0 (magical skill/genious level), yet the books never put this "unusual aptitude "in the spotlight or mention it more then it's necessary , but fanfaction writers portray them to as characters that always take the best course of action, while somehow aware of all the relevant facts from an objective standpoint(ofc) then advising our shitty protagonist of the hour, who always follows their reasoning and then after a while they go trough whatever hurdle was present on their way.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  12. nubya666

    nubya666 Squib DLP Supporter

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    I get why the lat bit of following their logic can be bad if always is the word to describe the frequency of occurrence, but I, personally, would have no quarrel following the reasoning of another if they were noted as being OP in that department.

    Ohhh, are you saying that the inbuilt infodump ability or just the op (over powered) nature of hermione is wrong to have?
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  13. SeekingSerenity

    SeekingSerenity Third Year

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    Both of them actually but that is just my personal preference.
    Or somehow even the scales a bit . When Harry and more then 95% of the hp characters can't measure up to Hermione or Lily in someway, something is colossally wrong. To summarise : NO HERMIONE = GENERALLY BETTER STORY.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  14. Atram Noctem

    Atram Noctem Auror

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    Rowling literally wrote Hermione as an infodump device.
    But I generally agree that Hermione wank is probably the most annoying staple of fanfiction.
     
  15. Download

    Download Auror ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    I prefer to think of Lily as a less socially retarded Hermione.
     
  16. Ghosthree3

    Ghosthree3 Unspeakable DLP Supporter

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    Peeve: Harry suffering permanent bodily injury.

    I know it helps develop character and hammers home the idea that everything doesn't always work out ok. But whenever Harry loses an arm or a hand all I can think for the rest of the story is, "You're missing a hand. Dude you're missing a hand. Are you going to get that back? That really sucks can we please fix the hand. Wow this is lame, being all disabled 'n' shit."

    I just can't help it.
     
  17. wordhammer

    wordhammer Dark Lord DLP Supporter

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    I think JKR's mistake with Hermione was in making her both informative and effective. Making her more often right in principle was fine, but she really should have been challenged in the practical applications. By making learning=power, she was elevated to Harry's level in effectiveness, which is partially why the Harry/Hermione shippers have such a fanaticism to their cause.

    As a character acting as an assistant to the hero, Hermione would have been improved if she had the worst time of the three in casting spells. Make Ron the guy who just knows the everyday stuff and Hermione is solid on theory and esoterica. Make her potions work fine but any time her wand comes into play, things go awry. Her catchphrase: "That... shouldn't have happened."
     
  18. Warlocke

    Warlocke Fourth Champion

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    Is there any reaction one should have, to any fic where the main character is "The Reader," other than immediate disdain and disgust, coupled with a creeping sense of wrongness?
    ---



    I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this peeve before, but here it is...


    Marge Dursley's dog being a pit bull. Because pit bulls are more extreme!

    Ripper is a bulldog: A British fucking Bulldog. Marge, not unlike her brother, is a caricature of extremely conservative, traditional, types, and Ripper is an extension of that: Supposed good ol' fashioned British values (from the POV of casual racists/classists like Vernon and Marge) and a good ol' fashioned British Bulldog. If you don't get this, then you're missing a large part of what Marge is all about, and when you make Ripper a pit bull, you're actually taking a metaphorical hatchet to Marge's characterization.

    You're also missing one of the most obvious gags out there: That people and their pets start to look like each other after a while. Marge and Ripper are supposed to be a matching set. Now, you tell me, which type of bulldog do you think looks more like Marge? Hmm?

    Leave that pit bull horse shit where it belongs: America. :facepalm
    And you can say all you want about pit bulls just having bad press and being perfectly safe, loving, animals (and maybe they can be under the right circumstances -you can also teach gorillas sign language and get dolphins to stop thrill-killing babies and molesting swimmers long enough to disarm bombs) but you can't deny that a whole lot of ignorant fucking assholes own them, which is a lot like giving an M-60 to an 8-year-old bully with a behavioral disorder. Anyway...

    Now, I realize that Staffordshire terriers are considered to be part of the pit bull group and are from England, but one can generally assume that if we're talking Britain and bulldogs, without mentioning any other specifics, then we're talking about this particular wheezing, shuffling, genetic garbage dump right here.

    Ironically, it was American breeders that "recreated" the extinct Old English Bulldog which, unlike the modern bulldog, was not a barely ambulatory veterinary emergency waiting to happen.

    Some might point out that Ripper's breed was never specified in the books, but I will again point to common sense and the characterization of Marge. And, while the movies probably shouldn't be held up as the end all be all of canon, they can certainly help fill in the cracks.

    Also, Vernon is described at least once in the books as looking like a "bulldog," also without any qualifiers. Again, do you suppose Vernon's looks favor the lean, condensed, muscle of a pit bull or is he more reminiscent of a squat, tubby, wheezing, bulldog that can barely move its bulk across the floor?

    I rest my case. :sherlock:




    I have a friend who owns a bulldog and the more I'm around them, the more I see them as a symbol of humanity's cruelty and vanity. Let's create this thing that could never survive on its own, lives in constant respiratory discomfort, and is probably no more than a few breaths away from needing life support, because isn't it just too adorable?


    Bald eagles are carrion eaters, which is why Ben Franklin didn't like them... picking an animal as a national symbol is a crap shoot, but why should they embarrass us any less than the people we choose to represent us?
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  19. Karinta

    Karinta Sent Back to India

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    "Hermione-Sue" is basically why I quit The Arithmancer around the fiftieth chapter. In a way, it almost dehumanises Hermione as a character.
     
  20. Agravaine

    Agravaine Seventh Year

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    Hermione's competence is thematically important because it disproves the blood purist philosophy.
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2015
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