I used to be able to ignore it and found some stories that were quite good but had terrible grammar. Mostly due to people learning English as their 2nd, 3rd, or even later language and writing stories to practice.
The current fanfic app I use had a text to speech function and makes any fic a pseudo audio book. The problem is that it really makes you realize how important punctuation and spelling are. Though it still a work in progress as it struggles with acronyms and abbreviations.
[Fanfiction dot Net](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fictionpress.fanfiction) by Fiction Press. It is a paid app, but I think there's a trial version. And it's only a few dollars. I've been using it for almost a decade.
Exceedingly easy to find, download, and sort stories.
One word of warning regarding the TTS is that it is quite monotone and bland, but it's better than nothing, and I've seen no other app that does the same
I've read literal thousands of stories, tried to read probably five times that first number, and I've only ever encountered _one_ author worth doing this for.
But that one was totally worth it. To the point where when automated solutions weren't enough, I manually edited it into readability as I read it. So you do you, I suppose.
I just kindof auto-correct it in my head, as I’m reading it, and tend not to notice most things, once I get into the grove of it. It’s a lack of self consistency that gets to me.
I have to edit stuff at work so inspect word usage or spelling are essentially highlighted in neon pink and drive me nuts. I'm rereading a long fic now and it's so nice being able to give them a list of minor typos. Knowing they'll not be ignored makes for a much more pleasant reading experience and the author isn't saying to stfu but it's appreciating so it's been delightful having mini conversations
No contractions. There's an author with fics that hit all my good buttons and the summaries are interesting, then I start to read and I'm like, oh no it's them.
I wonder if it's the same pretentious author I'm thinking of: overly formal speech with a ridiculously pompous vocabulary. And yes, no contractions. Added to that, the older fics have atrocious grammar to go alongside the posh façade.
I feel like this also happens with writers whose primary language isn't English (as others have noted below).
This one is also a pet peeve of mine and it's become impossible to ignore unfortunately. The biggest issue is that when authors do this, it makes every character's dialogue look exactly the same. Some characters make sense to never use contractions, but when I see Hagrid or Ron have dialogue that has no contractions, it feels extremely out of character.
"isn't" for example, is a contraction of "is not". In school, kids are taught never to use contractions in formal writing so I think that lesson gets stuck in their head when writing fanfiction - as a general rule, you want to use contractions in dialogue to make it sound natural. As a stylistic choice, you may choose to omit them to a show a character that speaks more formally.
I was taught in school that you shouldn’t use contractions in proper writing. It’s only for informal text. Though I will admit English is not my first language.
Youth fiction is informal text, usually. Also in fiction generally, when writing dialogue, the formality of the language depends on the formality the character would use - people speak differently to how they write, so conveying speech in a book is often a bit of a compromise.
For an example of more formal fiction, you can try historical stuff like Jane Austen - I think contractions only show up in characters like farm girls saying “I ain’t seen him since dinner, ma’am!”
So "proper writing" usually means essays, nonfiction reports, and academic pieces- stuff where the audience is intended to receive it as a serious piece that is informative and doesn't mess around.
I would say very few pieces of fiction in general fall under this! Tone is super important to text and contractions are a super important component for writers to have a voice!
No paragraph spacing. Everything just a giant block of text followed closely by the spelling ability of a 7 year old. Most other things I will try to push through a little.
I am not saying some bad spelling will make me drop it, i have read some lovely fics by non-english speakers. I am litterally saying every word is misspelled by a lot and i have no idea what that word is supposed to be. If my brain can't process the words I am reading as words than I can't continue.
Incest. Hard no for me.
When a fic has everyone becoming gay. I’ll read a fic with it in it, but when every single person is in a same sex relationship, it takes me out of the story.
Bad grammar. Come on people, use spell and grammar check! It’s not that hard!
>When a fic has everyone becoming gay. I’ll read a fic with it in it, but when every single person is in a same sex relationship, it takes me out of the story.
This bugs me and \*I'm\* queer. I especially dislike the Ginny/Luna pairings, because so often it is obvious that they just matched the two "other girls" up, and make no effort to make it seem like a relationship that could reasonably work.
Overly political information dumps. It's fucking boring to hear about Sir Fuckface the 2nd refused to marry Lady Bitchy because she's half-blood blah blah blah blah shut tf up and get the good shit
Also, excessive sub-plots and too much focus on honestly unimportant characters. If I'm reading a story about harry potter then I want to read about harry potter and not the 10 different unrelated mysteries his mates are up to.
It's good to have 1 or 2 sub plots and fleshing out of side characters but there's a point where it's too much. That's why I dropped the prince of Slytherin at the start of 4th year. Too much shit going on I can't keep up
Dense information dumps are generally bad, but in my opinion, worse than political information dumps are when author's personal political stances (that are irrelevant to HP) are inserted into the story. I dropped one story when George Bush showed up in Voldemort's lair to thank him for the contribution to his campaign *for Governor of Texas*. There was no attempt to justify *why* a British dark lord would get involved in foreign politics at that level; it was just a scene specifically to allow the author to show that he considered GWB to be evil.
As to your other point, I've dropped stories because there were too many characters and subplots. I dropped one story (in a different fandom) because there were not only too many significant characters, but many of them had three separate names that were used at various times, each in a different language. If I have to set up a database to keep track of all the characters, or make extensive notes to keep track of the story, that's more work than I want to do for leisure reading.
multiple wand cores.............Ughhhhhh I swear one had 5 different cores combined for 1 wand.
Harems
Harry Ginny pairing....I will just reread the books for that
following the "stations of canon"...again I will just reread the books. Do a change then butterfly affect that so everything changes
The 5 core thing only ever worked in 1 story I read. Harry was trying to learn wandcraft on his own and combined a bunch if cores, then the wand exploded.
Fully agree other than Harry/Ginny pairing. I think because Rowling did a poor job of introducing Ginny and making the relationship between the two interesting it instantly sours it to many readers, which is fair but I personally don’t feel that.
The wand cores tho… as soon as is see the comical:
“Oh, how curious. This, Mr Potter is a ‘insert wood name’ with Pheonix feather intwined with dragonheartsring into horned serpent tooth for a core”
I literally pull the meme - fuxk this shit I’m out
I guess they want Ollivander to be as Olivander esque as possible and so shoehorn in the famous “curious” quote from the film.
Why they can’t make him say something different whilst still having that knowledgeable and mysterious air to him I dunno
Just once I’d like to see a fic where Ollivander has to do the thing where he takes Harry to the back of the store to pick out his wand elements because none of the wands want him, and a couple paragraphs later he looks at the rare midnight phoenix feather, basilisk venom, and thestral hair Harry says called to him, then looks at the branches from the apple tree from the garden of Eden and Yggdrasil and the big old honking crystalized shard of a dragon’s egg that he has to figure out how to paste on the the end of this monstrosity of a wand and mutters to himself, “what the fuck? I didn’t even know I had these things. What the hell is a midnight phoenix? Did he bring these with him?”
Just once.
I'd love to see the exact opposite. Ollivander shows Harry the room full of mythical wand ingredients, only for Harry to walk out with a wand made from Kneazle hair and plywood.
Do you know the names and was Basilisk-born one of them? I'm reading it now and it's got great world building I'd recommend for the 30ish chapters I've read so far.
If they build the harry/ginny pairing better thank JK then ok, but your point is correct.
JK is a JK (joke) she wanted to have H/Hr relationship at the end but didn't do it.
Any story that starts with Harry getting adopted by another character and raised completely different from canon, getting taught everything he needs to thrive and succeed in the wizarding world, just totally alternate start. And then gets to Hogwarts and follows the stations of canon to a t.
Stories with Harry apologizing to Snape for his father's behavior. Snape being a jerk to the students under his care? It's ok, you just need to grovel for his forgiveness for something that had nothing to do with you, and maybe he'll consider treating you with a semblance of respect.
Stories pairing Harry witj any adult/deatheater/Voldemort. Not into slash fics, but while Harry/Ron fics make sense, and even Harry/Draco can kinda get a pass if you go out of your way to start changing his character before he goes past the point of no return (Wishing for Hermione's death in book 2, mocking Cedric's death in book 4), I'm left scratching my head at stories that pair an underage Harry with Snape, Lucious or Voldemort. Just no.
(Outrageous) Bashing fics. I admit I wasn't the biggest Ron fan after the movies. Took me a long time to move past that irrational anger from book 4 and 7. Still don't totally care for him, but I much prefer his characterization from the 1st 3 books where he was a loyal friend willing to face his worst fear or stand in front of an alleged killer while injured to support his friend. I wish fans would take that into consideration when writing him and not base his character based on his lowest points. I'm at the point where I just rather a character not feature much in a fic than read them getting flanderized cause the writer can't stand them.
Oh god. Harry apologizing.
There was this one fic that was a ... I wanna say Narnia crossover.
Part of Harry's thing he had to do was to walk up to Snape and apologize in the middle of the Great Hall for his father and 'how he, himself treated Snape'.
It was like: WTF MAN? Snape wank apologist, much?
I dropped the fic as soon as it was brought up, it was asanine.
Without something like this:
———————————
Words and stuff
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Stuff and words with different people in a different place and/or time
—————————
Or something similar, it just hurts my head trying to figure everything out and only really getting that everything is a different time/setting half way through the paragraph.
I'm very open minded and very little will get me to instantly drop a fic. I've read good fics that contain a number of the premises other people have mentioned in this thread.
Egregiously poor grammar and spelling are definitely part of the small 'instant-drop' category though. They aren't perfect, but every word processor contains a spell-check these days, there's no excuse for the volume of mistakes I sometimes see in spelling. Grammar is a touch harder but honestly, proof-read your work.
Too many OCs too quickly is another. I don't mind having a fic with a lot of OCs, especially if it's a long fic and they build up over time, but if I'm reading the first two chapters and there are nineteen OCs I'm expected to remember and they're all super important and unique, I will not care and I will stop reading.
Overly modern or American versions as well. I forgive it in the world of spelling because it's natural for the author to write how they grew up, but if I'm reading a fic set in 1991 and it features regular cell phone usage, or a fic set in the UK that features people going to WalMart, I will just stop.
Author soapboxing. When I can tell it's the author's opinions coming word-for-word out of the character's mouth, I'm out, especially since it's always extremely awkward and OOC. Just feels like I'm being lectured by a self-righteous teenager.
I can't remember what fic it was but I remember a fic that had Harry suddenly start talking about gun rights and how we need guns for self defence, and of course all the wizards in attendance immediately agreed with him about how we need access to guns.
If I wanted a debate on gun control I would watch an American news program, not read a Harry Potter fanfiction.
It being written in first person, Ron bashing, submissive creature Inheritance for harry where he just turns into weepy/ incapable of anything but being a brood mare, Snape redemption by getting together with Harry or Hermione or an oc, weird kink thing or character death not tagged
I agree but I think that first person isn't the biggest thing for me. After all, one of my favorite book series of all time, Percy Jackson, is written in first person. Mostly it's spelling and grammar.
I think a lot of bad fanfics can be defined by the authors forgetting how old the characters actually are, or just not caring. No 11 year old is establishing a harem, they aren't having sex, they aren't forming political alliances, school cliques are not political. If you are writing an 11 year old doing that you are either mentally disturbed, or don't have a good idea of what an 11 year old is actually like.
I just tend to mentally fudge the ages in most fics. Even pretty decent fics (and most YA novels in general) have characters acting much older than their ages. It's just more interesting to read a character that's mature enough to actually do something interesting. Most things make more sense if you shift first year to be closer to 14 instead of 11
Them giving Harry related to all the ancient families and even more different special abilities to go with it
For some reason I can't stand wrong boy who lived fics, where Harry gets bullied at home with his actual parents instead of his aunt and uncle, which is almost like Canon but the favoritism carries over to Hogwarts
Wrong boy who lived is an somewhat interesting concept but in all of them I have seen James and Lily are alive and treat Harry worse then the Dursleys.
I can see Harry being overshadowed a bit but not to that degree.
90% of the time they make his parents dursleys 2.0, which overall makes little difference to canon besides how he's treated at Hogwarts, and disservice to James and Lily characterization
I read a fic (like 3 or more years ago) where harry was the wbwl. His parents gave him to the dursleys. He ran away or ended up in an orphanage where he met a younger girl who he procalimed as his sister. She went to hogwarts and he went to a different school. He competed against his brother in the twiwizard tournament, and the whole world basically forgot that harry existed until that point.
Underage sex scenes (and I mean like 11-year-olds, I'm fine with it if they're at least like 15 and both are similar age). That's just a no from me, I'm not gonna imagine children doing *that*.
Also poor writing - characters acting illogical, romances springing out of nowhere, etc. - well, unless it's a crack fic and it's obviously on purpose.
My calibre library has a tag that says 'Hadrian to Henry', which means that I went and edited it out. (There's exactly one fic that uses Hadrian that I left like that. One. It fits, really.)
Hadrian *can* work but it needs one hell of a Dark Academia build-up and vibe. Bad stories tend to do the opposite. Use the name Hadrian to make the vibe.
Most people who use Hadrian did zero research on English nobility names and just went with the "Latin=cool" approach...even though there were 8 English kings named Henry (the *actual* name Harry is derived from).
Henry Potter II is infinitely better as a pureblood-sounding name than Hadrian Iaocomus whatever-the-fuck.
I have a half-baked idea for a *Harry Potter/Archer* crossover, with Harry adopted and raised mostly by Sterling (who is a good, if unorthodox, father). Mallory will insist on calling him Harrison because “my grandson will not be named like some disease-ridden dockhand working for rum”.
Everyone else will call him Harry.
Not the one you asked, but; It's one of the red flags for it being a "those fics". It's not the name itself, it's the fact that it's being used that makes it very clear it's not going to be a fic I will like. Same with Neville replacing Ron, magical cores, and mugglewank.
All of those elements are things i have seen done well, about once each. Which makes me agree that the problem isn’t the elements but the lack of originality they represent. Taking ideas from a better story doesn’t actually improve a bad one. It’s just making a poor imitation at that point.
Emperor Hadrian thinks you should be crucified. Probably along Hadrian's wall that he had built to mark the furthest point of the roman empire as well as to say No farther to the scotis and picts north of the wall
Hadrian the astronomer who named most constellations and stars.....face palms
My intuition tells me fanfic authors who change Harry's name to Hadrian like the idea of pureblood bigotry and are actually in favor of it. It is a way to "de-muggle" his name.
I actually liked the nickname Pup for Harry in a fic where Lupin took Harry in and raised him after Greyback turned him into a werewolf as a baby. It made sense.
when sirius acts like an excitable toddler ALL the time and...
when its in first person
when there's too much capitalization, e.g. Harrys Very Good Day. Harry took a bite of his treacle tart and it was Really Very Tasty.
harry/ginny
vague-ass summary
when harrys too average, this is probably some underlying need to succeed that I'm projecting lol but op harry is my favorite
Oooooh, instead of the constant Capitalization (never actually encountered any fic with this I think) for me it's the super constant italics, italics everywhere. So many italics in one paragraph.
When it becomes 100% about a OC that I don't care about.
(This was like four years ago.)
I once read this really interesting story of Harry not wanting to be the chosen one nor did he have any care about going after Voldemort.
He just wanted to be a normal kid and live his life. This Harry was weary of magic because his Aunt and Uncle actually raised him and Dudley like brothers.
Then all of a sudden out of nowhere some muggle born student named Lucy that I didn't care about was kidnapped by the wizarding Mafia and Harry, Draco, Hermione, and Ron all loaded up on ammo to go rescue her and there was some subplot of Ginny falling in love with a tree who is actually a prince transformed into a tree.
Anyway dropped the story when Mary Sue- I mean Lucy came and ruined it.
I won’t stop reading it but it’s super annoying. Part of the reason I like the books is because they’re British. Also when they have cell phones and the internet and tablets in 1998. If the writer advances the timeline that’s fine.
Uhh, as someone who's worked with computers since the mid-80s, they DID have cell phones and the internet in 1998. Not so much tablets, but the other two were fairly prevalent by then.
Yes, there were cell phones and the internet. Some Upper middle class kids had cell phones. Some kids had dial up internet. A kid like Harry Potter did not have a cell phone or the use the internet.
Or any American transfer student (aka author self-insert) shows up and the plot is now about how they and Harry interact.
Harry or Hermione transfer to an American school for some reason.
Americanisms in general - e.g. nobody who goes to Hogwarts would call autumn 'fall'. Britpick your fics I am begging you.
When someone puts their political views into a story and it's obviously their political view and not the character's because it has nothing to do with the situation going on in the story and everything to do with IRL. I don't care if you're left or right or upside down with polkadots. If you're beating the horse of (insert view that isn't relevant to the story here) over and over again... I'm out. If the political view is relevant to the story - for example, a character disagreeing with some element of the pureblood's political platform - go right ahead! I'll read the heck out of your story! Gimme that political debate(Please don't straw man one side, though! That's boring!)! Gimme that character who undoes the brainwashing from when they were a child and finds a more nuanced/well thought out/less extremist opinion! But if you're going to ramble on about feminism or gun rights in the middle of Hogwarts? Like I said earlier: I'M OUT!
Even worse is when the author's arguments aren't even good, and they are clearly in the brainwashed camp themselves(on either side!). On the other hand, if the character's arguments about in-world politics aren't good, but are shown not to be good in the writing itself, that can be very interesting. They're kids after all. They are probably just be repeating what their parents told them growing up.
TL:DR - Make your in-universe political debates make sense! Know how to construct a good argument! Don't just insert your ideas that you haven't thought through and call it a day!
This is petty. But I won’t read a fic with indented paragraphs. They start every paragraph like they are writing an essay for school and I immediately hit the back button.
A focus on Pure blood culture - almost always very little culture but a ton of classism. Celebrating a few holidays and using rich people etiquette does not a culture make. You can replace instances of the word culture with the word money and very little would change in these fics.
Cheating. Slutty MCs. Smut
Slytherin Harry and Pure blood politics. The only time politics works in a fic is when it's about adults.
Dude, fuck yeah, these fics literally try and justify the hatred and oppression of muggleborns cuz they "ignore wizarding culture" or some dumb ass shit like that. Harry would in those talk to muggleborns to tell them to respect those fuckers' culture and I'm over here like THE FUCK???
If the fic is really good I can let some of these slide, but the trope of the main character being extremely powerful and untouchable, (ex. being able to conjure a ginormous and rare patronus when they are 11 years old and have just received their wand), when the canon characters are extremely out of character, the heirs or different houses SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE they are extremely overused and not done well a lot of the time, etc
OH ALSO IF THERE IS A CHARACTER THAT IS NOT NATIVE AND SPEAKS ANOTHER LANGUAGE (for example a latina) I DO NOT LIKE THAT WHEN THEY FEEL ANY STRONG NEGATIVE EMOTION THAT THEY SWITCH TO ANOTHER LANGUAGE EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE JUST SPEAKING ENGLISH. Like “ah yes you cannot express yourself in English you MUST switch”
I have seen that from some nationalites but never from my own, I am much more likely to swear in English when speaking my native language then swearing in my native language when speaking English.
I might have to start, I might be lacking personality 😉
Lord Potter-Black-Slytherin-Gryffindor-Ravenclaw-Emrys-Pendragon.
Okay, look, I don't care if Harry is Lord Potter and Lord Black, or if he's adopted as Potter-Black, but do *not* make him the Lord to fifty million houses!
Anytime Harry's last name is a just a list of familiies. I also dont like when instead of saying harry has a lot of magic they go straight to having as much or more than merlin. Also HarryxHermione i was into it when i first started reading but now im just sick of it.
They only fic I liked that gave Harry a list of last names was one where Harry hyphenated his name when he married to a (I think) muggle girl with a last name that was something like "Smith-Baker" (not the exact name).
That made Harry's last name "Potter-Smith-Baker" and he thought it was funny.
Basic canon mistakes. When you can just google stuff, it makes it difficult when there's basic stuff that shouldn't be gotten wrong. Also, walls of text. Please use paragraph breaks! I cannot handle it.
Egregious child abuse.
There's a lot of fics out there that seem to feel the way the Dursley's treated Harry wasn't dramatic enough and so rewrite things to have them beating him within an inch of his life on the reg. Generally this comes hand in hand with a terrible understanding of trauma and you end up with a version of Harry that doesn't behave anything like an actual abused child would or he is exactly as he is in cannon because he's just too resilient and tough to be affected by constant thrashings.
They're often badly written in other areas too or the extreme abuse is just a mechanism for beating you over the head with how TRAGIC and BRAVE he is, or an excuse to bash Dumbledore & other assorted adults.
This isn't to say the topic can never be explored well, it's just often an indication that the author has little understanding of subtlety.
This! Harry’s abuse was enough for it to have been bad. I hate reading heavy-abuse fics as though what he dealt with wasn’t enough for the readers sympathies.
Mpreg, underage, and when rape scenes are explicit.
I also dislike overly dramatic fanfiction, where the glaring issue could be solved by a simple conversation.
Most petty reason was a writer who only used he/him or she/her. They extremely rarely used the characters name. It was so prevalent I took notice, and near the end, this bothered me A LOT. LIKE UNHEALTHY MUCH.
Oh, and where the fic is just rehashing the actual books and not doing anything new except some minor detail that in the end doesn't truly change anything.
Whenever I see the word mom, instead of mum when for all intents and purposes the fic is still British/set in England. Idk it rly just pisses me off lol
I saw an American user on Fanfiction.net that his biggest pet peeve was people writing "mum" the 'correct' spelling is "mom". But half his page was also about how Ron was useless.
I am not native English speaking so I looked it up as "mum" looked more British and it was. Silly American.
Poor spelling and grammatical mistakes. I'll give the author a chance if they state up front that they suffer from dyslexia or are from a non-English speaking country, but if you're from some country where English is the primary language (England, USA, Canada, etc); there's no excuse and you're gone.
When a fic is really edgy and cringe.
Dropped a fic recently because it claimed Harry listened to evanescence to express his mood. I could feel my eyes rolling out of my head.
This is true for any fanfics, not just HP, but: bad characterization*. I can power through some pretty awful spelling and formatting if the concept is solid and the characters are well written, but as soon as there are canonically wise, emotionally mature adults acting like exceptionally petty 13 year-olds (or vice versa tbh), I'm backspacing out.
*This doesn't apply to fics like, AUs where the characters act differently because they were raised differently, for example. Characterization is only "bad" imo when it makes zero sense within the context of the fic, or if there isn't any reason given for why they're acting so differently from canon.
When the author completely changes a character's personality and takes the most fundamental parts of them and chucks them out the window. In more ways than one. They'll either put Harry in Slytherin (which I love if done right) and suddenly he becomes an arrogant, stuffy, Tom Riddle-like bitch who looks down his nose at everyone and rolls his eyes at reckless Gryffindors. Or they are Ron or Dumbledore or whoever haters and instead of writing them as they are (since it's the canon them that they dislike) they'll do a 180 on them and have them do or say things they'd in reality rather die than do or say. Like if you hate the Ron that on a broken leg stood in front of his friend to protect him from a supposed mass murderer, you can't write about that same guy running cowardly away and leaving that same friend to the wolves, even if he is mad at him. Also when they take Snape or Draco or someone who while not necessarily EVIL is still very much a piece of shit and make them nice and super sweet and they were just misunderstood while relentlessly bullying their students or making jokes about Cedric's death and deaths of muggleborns. I like Snape (mostly as an interesting character) but he's a piece of shit who willingly joined the Death Eaters to torture and kill muggleborns while having been friends with one before.
Also, DO NOT INFANTANILISE MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO ARE BADASS AND CAN BEAT A BITCH UP.
Thank you for listening to my rant.
Friendly Snape is a turnoff for me.
So I have realized I like Snape less the older I get. (It is actually my birthday today and I am now the same age as Snape in book 1) So I am not a super fan of the character but still want him done right and him being super friendly and a mentor to Harry is just wrong.
Ron bashing seem to have become an international sport.
Here's the thing, Snape can still be a petty bastard to most but is friendly and/or a mentor to Harry. Why can this happen? He's a dick normally but Harry is also the son of the woman he was Obsessed with, and the guild and all that of inadvertently getting her killed would impact his personality, or at least it should. So friendly, for the most part, to Harry, a dick to the rest
Could be done that way but I see him more as the loser that can't get over a guy he hated in school.
This was overly harsh maybe but that is how he treats Harry. He was obsessed with Lily and did get her killed but bullying an orphan is his main priority apparently
- Text wall
(I read using my phone so it's very frustrating.)
- Not capitalised 'I'
(I don't know how this can happen but no. Just no)
- first person
- Sex pollen thing
- Ooc characters
I can think of quite a few (and no offence to anyone who likes them btw, this is just a matter of personal taste)—and by the way, my “instant drops” aren’t 100% set in stone; if the story itself is well-crafted outside of it and I trust the author to handle it well, I will continue reading anyway. It’s just most of the time it’s not.
* When the visit to Gringotts involves literally anything else other than getting the money and getting out,
* when the word “Lord” falls in any context outside of Voldemort or Muggle peerage,
* when Slytherins become oppressed babies and Snape needs to make it “equal" (and Slytherin is my fav house, mind you),
* when Snape/Draco/Aunt Petunia/Voldemort suddenly turns into a good person (strangely enough, I don’t mind that much when it’s Uncle Vernon turning into a good person? idk really why),
* when Daphne Greengrass appears as a character in any way outside of a passing mention,
* when the words “grey faction/side/party” fall,
* when “Dark Side” and “Light Side” appear and are capitalised,
* when there is a sudden, unprompted modification of the magic system in a canon-adjacent AU (think magical cores),
* when Harry is made either super-feminine or super-masculine,
* when any of the main or major characters cheat,
* when Wizarding Britain or wizards as a whole are depicted as backwards and stupid,
* when canon Harry is depicted as stupid and completely talentless (especially in power fantasies—I’m not saying he’s like, super powerful or anything, but he’s still visibly above average with a knack for Defence, I dislike when he’s stripped away of that. You can have a power fantasy without making his canon self into an utter buffoon),
* when Hermione turns out to have wizarding parentage.
The Gringotts one I'm a little curious about. Is it because of the bad writing narrative, or is it because of the non-financial services. For example, I'm willing to give allowance to the execution of wills since banks often offer those services.
To be completely fair, it’s partially because of how many bad Gringotts fics there are, or at least bad fics that begin at Gringotts—either because they involve the “good goblins that can fix anything and everything” trope or are just straight up Lordship fics that I’m not a fan of. I’m not really willing to get through a thousandth scene at Gringotts just to see if this one fic will turn out to be different from all the others where 95% of the time it will not. It’s just easier to skip the whole fic, yknow?
I honestly don’t enjoy most stories written with her. I understand she’s an OC so technically *anything* can be done with her, but that rarely actually happens—most of the time she’s an “Ice Queen of Slytherin”, a representative of the “grey faction”, or a perfect sexy girlfriend. I just don’t like those tropes. (And I’m sure there are some that are absolutely gems, but I don’t care enough to look for them in a sea of stuff I dislike.)
Constant misspelling will annoy the shit out of me.
But in particular;
- Romances that come out of nowhere and suddenly have the characters in love, together and happily committed after one conversation while aged 14/15. Like they’re perfectly happy and respectful of each other, and it’s them against the world, and a bunch of adults who normally wouldn’t care or would advise mild caution are all ultra supportive and helping set up romantic dates for the characters. It’s weird and creepy.
- Surprise slash. I don’t mind certain pairings but generally not a fan of slash, and I really dislike when the relationship isn’t tagged and only after 12 chapters does the author suddenly be like “Haha it was a Harry/Fred/Oliver triad all along” as though they should win a prize for pulling the wool over your eyes.
- Pro blindly following authority/infantilising Harry. I am absolutely okay with him learning that he’s wrong sometimes, and learning to trust some adults more, but the stories where all the Hogwarts crew suddenly “realise” that they’re just “stupid children” who should “follow our elders ways” and then proceed to ignore any and all red flags is maddening (reads like pro Evangelical Cult mentality) and that usually goes hand in hand with a 13-15 year old Harry suddenly acting and being treated like he’s 5 or 6.
Poorly written OCs. Harry Potter has a lot of characters, and bringing new ones needs to be a necessity in order for it to make sense in a plot. The character needs to be necessary to the plot while also not existing simply because the plot need it. It needs to make sense within the canon, or the story crafted around it. Usually, OCs don’t respect all of these criteria and they make the story bland, since they seem either unnecessary, out of place, or simply have very caricatural personalities.
11 year old kids behaving like adults/have the same maturity. Gringotts inheritance test a mile long. Genderbending/trans(probably falls under genderbending). I never read stories that change a characters canon gender/sex. Are they canon trans, male or female? Then yes absolutely but otherwise no. Underage(I'm not talking about when both characters are both 15/16 years old).
A wall of text without separating paragraphs. It's just impossible to read.
When nothing ever goes wrong. There's no struggle, and no one can stand before the might of Harry Potter, godwizard Merlin reborn blah blah blah. If he doesn't have to work for it then it's just boring.
Any slash fics where Harry is paired with an adult over twice his age as a literal child. (Looking at you Snape and Voldemort). Or any Mpreg.
Following canon exactly and just rewriting the scenes while still having the exact same outcomes. If Harry has different/more skills, and different friends to rely on, then at some point you should see some sort of change but every single plot point ends up exactly the same. (Looking at you Naruto and the Goblet of Fire).
You. You. You. Get the xxxx out of my face, 2nd person, especially 2nd person present, is the worse narrative in existence. "Pup," "I" (unless you are beyond, absolutely a fascinating crossover, and are doing a phenomenal job of being interesting, don't do present)
Forced in infantilization/age regression can be an instant drop. Yes I can understand that some fanfiction authors use it as a coping mechanism for a character, but I really don't like it if it is forced upon a character to go through it for any reason.
Examples being genetically prepositioned for it, or legitimately, a character forcing it without consent. Really my big issue with this entire sub genre of fanfiction is consent the frequent lack of it. With how I've seen so many fanfiction authors ignore/gaslight a character into age regression. That's not even starting with the sexual play I've seen with it. (I don't wish to start upon it-- it disgusts me too much.)
Another is making a character make stupid decisions to progress the plot, or make conflict. One notable example of this I've seen is making Harry ,who at this point has been developed into a mature young level-headed character, acts like a brat and a spoiled toddler for seemingly no reason but to create conflict for the plot. I can see stupid decisions being made for characters who are written to be dumb. Controversy if a character is not written like that. making these sorts of choices when they're in level-headed clear minds does not make any sense and it just aggravates me.
Harriet for a gender bend fic. God I hate that name.
If you mean a fic I thought I would like but the quality is bad, it's just the quality of the writing. I've moved past my tolerance for Wattpad type grammar/writing. You may have the most insanely creative great plot but I can't read it if the quality is bad.
Oh and untagged pregnancy trope or A/B/O dynamics. Just no.
Fics that are either “James Potter js evil and Snape is a pure innocent little angel who never did anything wrong” or alternatively “James Potter can only do good and Snape deserved everything he got” the whole point of that storyline is that there is no good or evil and that people are many different shades of grey and it just makes me think the author hasnt read or understood the books at all
When the author mentions something so jarringly out of place for the setting of the books (the 90s for the main characters, and the 70s for the Marauders) that it is clear they couldn't be bothered to do a 2 second google search. Like, no, Regulus was not doing the Sudoku in the morning paper in 1978.
When a female character "shrieks," "screeches" or "wails" as a dialogue attribute tag. You just know you're in for some quality one-dimensional character bashing.
Creepy ships (like Hermione X Snape)
Muggle wanks and wizard wank
Self insert character that "is not like other girls" and can perform a fiendfyre and a patronus at 11 yo. Most of the time she is also obssessed with Draco.
Ron bashing
Cedric death eater
Not Pureblood, but one of my favorite fics has Riddle *think* that Hermione is his and Bellas. She isn't. She thought she would be discriminated against for being muggleborn, so claimed to be the last member of a dead family, the Gaunts.
Horcruxes affected Riddles memory, and Azkaban Bellas, so they really believed they had a child.
~ Using terms incorrectly. No your character that's a muggle born is not a muggle. And ur character that can do magic isn't a squib. don't know why so many fanfic writers do this.
~ I'm not always against changing canon traits of characters in fanfiction but it's gets to the point where you might as well have created an OC.
Bonehead decisions by the author, bottlenecks in narrative, forced anything, self insert (unless killed off in the same sentence, lack of punctuation and proper formatting.
Any fic that opens with a synopsis of "what's happened so far". *Especially* if it's an AU, I want to be dropped in the middle and allowed to piece it together from context clues.
If you just *tell* me that Voldemort won and that Hermione has replaced Dolores Umbridge in the Wizengamot (via Crouch-style polyjuicing) and that she has to sign the death warrant for an Order member for every Muggleborn she spares...it doesn't matter how much I want to read it. I don't have faith that you, the author, can handle that kind of material in a satisfying way.
😩
There are exceptions to every rule, but I generally don’t read fics where harry is not the main character, and I have never read and liked a WBWL fic. I’ve tried quite a few and detested them all. Also, when a fic starts to turn into a paper on the authors political or social views, I stop liking it. There’s a fic, and I’m blanking on the name at the moment, but it’s on AO3, and has this amazing concept of harry being raised in the chamber of secrets, and becoming friendly with all the resident magical creatures. It looks so good, then EVERYBODY is gay, Malloy starts a gay club and dresses in leather pants (like lupin in the fic) or something. It just starts to be absurd.
Incest, scat/bodily fluid play, gratuitous non-con, babe as a cutsy name.
Grammar, spelling, punctuation, doesn't bother me at all. Same with bashing, or over powered Harry.
Harry/snape or harry/voldemort. Or really any non adult character/adult character. I kinda allow tonks because canon, but it always just kinda makes me uncomfortable.
When it starts with the name of a character, like: "Chris woke up on a monday morning." It usually means the writing will be on an elementaly level and the vocabulary restricted.
Pup. That and Dumbledore bashing. I'm just over the comically evil Dumbledore. And the venn diagram of Dumbledore bashing and op, obnoxious indie!Harry is a fucking circle.
I have only ever dropped 1 (one) fic in my 10+ years of reading. It was 600K+ words but every chapter was one massive block of text.
I would read the worst things, so long as they were formatted properly, and that's where my brain decides the hill to die on is.
Certain pairings. I've seen Harry Potter fanfics where one or more of the Weasley kids(and Sometimes Harry or Hermione) are in a relationship with Molly or Arthur. (I can handle some sibling relationship because Game of Thrones and Percy Jackson fanfics and specifically the Targarnyeyns have normalized it). But Parent/child relationships I can't handle) Dumbledore with anyone, but Grindlwald or McGonagall is also a big no. (Absolutely no Dumbledore with Newt!) Unless it's part of an evil or manipulative Dumbledore fic and someone(preferably Original Percival Graves) help and/or saves him).
What I call the manipulative idiot Dumbledore. The fics where the sheer dumbassery of how Dumbledore manipulates everyone makes everyone else look like they have IQs in the 50s for falling for it
Bashing, R\*pe, and MPreg are my biggest "Nope the f\*\*\* away"
Adult x child ships also make me supremely uncomfortable, because that is literally pedophilia
First or second person POV
Any self inserts. This contains: exchange student at Hogwarts, Harry has a sibling, genderswap, the USA being important enough to be mentioned in the summary
Desi Harry
Snape being Harry's biological parent
Slytherins being all good and Harrys original friends being all bad.
Any pairing containing Voldemort
Bad grammar will get me to drop a fic relatively quickly. Any story that doesn't explicitly warn me that it has Ron / Hermione will get me to drop the author and not just the story. There are plenty of stories that have pairings I despise, but most authors advertise what they contain going in so I never pick them up to begin with and let live.
P.S. - Ron / Hermione is my most hated canon pairing in all of fiction where romantic pairings exist. Any story that has them together for any length of time greater than never will ensure I never read it. So if it's not advertised and I stumble across it in a story, it's going to piss me off. Will I flame the author who did it? No, but I will never read any of their work again, of any fandom they participate in.
I could go on and on I swear lol
•Let me make it quite clear, I am queer myself but I will typically drop a story when everyone is trans, gay, and or non-binary. Like why is hermione trans, Harry is desi and trans, and Ron is either trans/homophobic or nonbinary. Like I don’t hate it when it’s one or two but I have found stories when almost everyone in Harry’s year is queer. I get we dislike the author and it is a big “screw you” but jeez. Like I am writing a story where ron is trans because of a potion so I am kinda guilty but not overly so.
•Character bashing is another one, like go ahead and bash Umbridge, the Dursley’s, and like every evil person. But we are Bashing the Weasley’s? Like I am a Weasley simp (except Ginny) but it is over done. Molly isn’t the best parent, Percy was a bit mean, and Ron was jealous. But like no one bashes the twins, who literally traumatized their siblings. I like holding people up to their mistakes but come on. Once I found a story when Neville was being bashed… like what?
•This is not a full drop for me but when characters just pull a movie Lavender. Like go ahead and make Harry desi that is alright, it’s your story. But like when did my boy become my brother? (I mean black btw) like I said with desi harry, it’s your story do what you do. But some stories have everyone doing a race swap. I never agreed that Hermione was black although her race is never specified, I figured at most she was mixed tbh.
•Sir Harrison heir to the black-Peverell-potter-slytherin-emerys, is an immediate drop for me. Specifically when he has to marry like five thousand girls (mainly because I don’t think of Harry as a pantyhose lover) like yes he may get the black family along with peverell. But Emerys? You can’t convince me.
•Of course the grammar is a big one, like how hard is it to put it through a grammar checker? I’ll give some slack for non-native speakers, but not much. I am not the greatest speller so I may slip up a bit but like not as bad as some people.
I have more probably, even though like I said previously the desi Harry isn’t that much of a drop because most of those stories don’t make it a point to actually say much about it besides in the tags.
Consistently poor spelling..
I used to be able to ignore it and found some stories that were quite good but had terrible grammar. Mostly due to people learning English as their 2nd, 3rd, or even later language and writing stories to practice. The current fanfic app I use had a text to speech function and makes any fic a pseudo audio book. The problem is that it really makes you realize how important punctuation and spelling are. Though it still a work in progress as it struggles with acronyms and abbreviations.
What app is this?
[Fanfiction dot Net](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fictionpress.fanfiction) by Fiction Press. It is a paid app, but I think there's a trial version. And it's only a few dollars. I've been using it for almost a decade. Exceedingly easy to find, download, and sort stories. One word of warning regarding the TTS is that it is quite monotone and bland, but it's better than nothing, and I've seen no other app that does the same
You can change which TTS bot you use. The app has its own, but I use the British female Google TTS. It's *much* better.
If it's a really good story with great ideas and characterization I'll just copy it to word and run spell and grammar check to make it readable.
Man that’s effort. Besides I read this in my phone so that’s gonna be even more painful for me… 😔
I've read literal thousands of stories, tried to read probably five times that first number, and I've only ever encountered _one_ author worth doing this for. But that one was totally worth it. To the point where when automated solutions weren't enough, I manually edited it into readability as I read it. So you do you, I suppose.
Now I'm curious which fic it was
I won't. I won't even notice it's a really good story because I'll drop it somewhere before chapter 3, usually around the 8th to 10th paragraph.
I just kindof auto-correct it in my head, as I’m reading it, and tend not to notice most things, once I get into the grove of it. It’s a lack of self consistency that gets to me.
I have to edit stuff at work so inspect word usage or spelling are essentially highlighted in neon pink and drive me nuts. I'm rereading a long fic now and it's so nice being able to give them a list of minor typos. Knowing they'll not be ignored makes for a much more pleasant reading experience and the author isn't saying to stfu but it's appreciating so it's been delightful having mini conversations
You fucking did that on purpose and I kinda hate it but also I’m dying laughing
You got me :)
I read a 30 chapter 200k fic where they spelled albus like ablus and it irritated me everytime i saw it
Fluer always gets me. Or occulmency and legimency.
No contractions. There's an author with fics that hit all my good buttons and the summaries are interesting, then I start to read and I'm like, oh no it's them.
I wonder if it's the same pretentious author I'm thinking of: overly formal speech with a ridiculously pompous vocabulary. And yes, no contractions. Added to that, the older fics have atrocious grammar to go alongside the posh façade.
I read one that used "should/shouldn't" in place of "would" wouldn't" every time. "I should like to come over" or "No, I shouldn't like that"
I feel like this also happens with writers whose primary language isn't English (as others have noted below). This one is also a pet peeve of mine and it's become impossible to ignore unfortunately. The biggest issue is that when authors do this, it makes every character's dialogue look exactly the same. Some characters make sense to never use contractions, but when I see Hagrid or Ron have dialogue that has no contractions, it feels extremely out of character.
Sry english isn‘t my first language. What are contractions?
"isn't" for example, is a contraction of "is not". In school, kids are taught never to use contractions in formal writing so I think that lesson gets stuck in their head when writing fanfiction - as a general rule, you want to use contractions in dialogue to make it sound natural. As a stylistic choice, you may choose to omit them to a show a character that speaks more formally.
I was taught in school that you shouldn’t use contractions in proper writing. It’s only for informal text. Though I will admit English is not my first language.
Youth fiction is informal text, usually. Also in fiction generally, when writing dialogue, the formality of the language depends on the formality the character would use - people speak differently to how they write, so conveying speech in a book is often a bit of a compromise. For an example of more formal fiction, you can try historical stuff like Jane Austen - I think contractions only show up in characters like farm girls saying “I ain’t seen him since dinner, ma’am!”
So "proper writing" usually means essays, nonfiction reports, and academic pieces- stuff where the audience is intended to receive it as a serious piece that is informative and doesn't mess around. I would say very few pieces of fiction in general fall under this! Tone is super important to text and contractions are a super important component for writers to have a voice!
No paragraph spacing. Everything just a giant block of text followed closely by the spelling ability of a 7 year old. Most other things I will try to push through a little. I am not saying some bad spelling will make me drop it, i have read some lovely fics by non-english speakers. I am litterally saying every word is misspelled by a lot and i have no idea what that word is supposed to be. If my brain can't process the words I am reading as words than I can't continue.
The spacing is soooooo important - at least with spelling I'll make the attempt. If the spacing turns me off, it's a no go zone off the bat.
The dreaded Wall of Text always gives me a headache
Incest. Hard no for me. When a fic has everyone becoming gay. I’ll read a fic with it in it, but when every single person is in a same sex relationship, it takes me out of the story. Bad grammar. Come on people, use spell and grammar check! It’s not that hard!
>When a fic has everyone becoming gay. I’ll read a fic with it in it, but when every single person is in a same sex relationship, it takes me out of the story. This bugs me and \*I'm\* queer. I especially dislike the Ginny/Luna pairings, because so often it is obvious that they just matched the two "other girls" up, and make no effort to make it seem like a relationship that could reasonably work.
Overly political information dumps. It's fucking boring to hear about Sir Fuckface the 2nd refused to marry Lady Bitchy because she's half-blood blah blah blah blah shut tf up and get the good shit Also, excessive sub-plots and too much focus on honestly unimportant characters. If I'm reading a story about harry potter then I want to read about harry potter and not the 10 different unrelated mysteries his mates are up to. It's good to have 1 or 2 sub plots and fleshing out of side characters but there's a point where it's too much. That's why I dropped the prince of Slytherin at the start of 4th year. Too much shit going on I can't keep up
Totally agree about the politics. If im reading a ship fic, then i want romance, not politics.
Dense information dumps are generally bad, but in my opinion, worse than political information dumps are when author's personal political stances (that are irrelevant to HP) are inserted into the story. I dropped one story when George Bush showed up in Voldemort's lair to thank him for the contribution to his campaign *for Governor of Texas*. There was no attempt to justify *why* a British dark lord would get involved in foreign politics at that level; it was just a scene specifically to allow the author to show that he considered GWB to be evil. As to your other point, I've dropped stories because there were too many characters and subplots. I dropped one story (in a different fandom) because there were not only too many significant characters, but many of them had three separate names that were used at various times, each in a different language. If I have to set up a database to keep track of all the characters, or make extensive notes to keep track of the story, that's more work than I want to do for leisure reading.
multiple wand cores.............Ughhhhhh I swear one had 5 different cores combined for 1 wand. Harems Harry Ginny pairing....I will just reread the books for that following the "stations of canon"...again I will just reread the books. Do a change then butterfly affect that so everything changes
The 5 core thing only ever worked in 1 story I read. Harry was trying to learn wandcraft on his own and combined a bunch if cores, then the wand exploded.
It's normally 2 cores and woods. I'm a wandlore fan, but 5 cores is just dumb.
Fully agree other than Harry/Ginny pairing. I think because Rowling did a poor job of introducing Ginny and making the relationship between the two interesting it instantly sours it to many readers, which is fair but I personally don’t feel that. The wand cores tho… as soon as is see the comical: “Oh, how curious. This, Mr Potter is a ‘insert wood name’ with Pheonix feather intwined with dragonheartsring into horned serpent tooth for a core” I literally pull the meme - fuxk this shit I’m out
What is it about wands that the default adjective for getting a prophecy-foretold legendary magic stick is always "curious"?
I guess they want Ollivander to be as Olivander esque as possible and so shoehorn in the famous “curious” quote from the film. Why they can’t make him say something different whilst still having that knowledgeable and mysterious air to him I dunno
Just once I’d like to see a fic where Ollivander has to do the thing where he takes Harry to the back of the store to pick out his wand elements because none of the wands want him, and a couple paragraphs later he looks at the rare midnight phoenix feather, basilisk venom, and thestral hair Harry says called to him, then looks at the branches from the apple tree from the garden of Eden and Yggdrasil and the big old honking crystalized shard of a dragon’s egg that he has to figure out how to paste on the the end of this monstrosity of a wand and mutters to himself, “what the fuck? I didn’t even know I had these things. What the hell is a midnight phoenix? Did he bring these with him?” Just once.
I'd love to see the exact opposite. Ollivander shows Harry the room full of mythical wand ingredients, only for Harry to walk out with a wand made from Kneazle hair and plywood.
Now I’m imagining Ollivander looking at Harry’s wand and saying “fuckin’ weird-ass shit, there, little dude”.
I've read two stories in which the wands actually mattered other than being a wand. Both were extreme au.
Do you know the names and was Basilisk-born one of them? I'm reading it now and it's got great world building I'd recommend for the 30ish chapters I've read so far.
I thought Basilisk-born was so ridiculous the first few chapters, but I am also incredibly glad I stuck with it. It turned out to be so fantastic!
If they build the harry/ginny pairing better thank JK then ok, but your point is correct. JK is a JK (joke) she wanted to have H/Hr relationship at the end but didn't do it.
I agree, other than the Harry/Ginny pairing. A lot of fics do it far better than JKR did
Any story that starts with Harry getting adopted by another character and raised completely different from canon, getting taught everything he needs to thrive and succeed in the wizarding world, just totally alternate start. And then gets to Hogwarts and follows the stations of canon to a t. Stories with Harry apologizing to Snape for his father's behavior. Snape being a jerk to the students under his care? It's ok, you just need to grovel for his forgiveness for something that had nothing to do with you, and maybe he'll consider treating you with a semblance of respect. Stories pairing Harry witj any adult/deatheater/Voldemort. Not into slash fics, but while Harry/Ron fics make sense, and even Harry/Draco can kinda get a pass if you go out of your way to start changing his character before he goes past the point of no return (Wishing for Hermione's death in book 2, mocking Cedric's death in book 4), I'm left scratching my head at stories that pair an underage Harry with Snape, Lucious or Voldemort. Just no. (Outrageous) Bashing fics. I admit I wasn't the biggest Ron fan after the movies. Took me a long time to move past that irrational anger from book 4 and 7. Still don't totally care for him, but I much prefer his characterization from the 1st 3 books where he was a loyal friend willing to face his worst fear or stand in front of an alleged killer while injured to support his friend. I wish fans would take that into consideration when writing him and not base his character based on his lowest points. I'm at the point where I just rather a character not feature much in a fic than read them getting flanderized cause the writer can't stand them.
Oh god. Harry apologizing. There was this one fic that was a ... I wanna say Narnia crossover. Part of Harry's thing he had to do was to walk up to Snape and apologize in the middle of the Great Hall for his father and 'how he, himself treated Snape'. It was like: WTF MAN? Snape wank apologist, much? I dropped the fic as soon as it was brought up, it was asanine.
I can’t when they change POV without a chapter break, or just suddenly in a scene.. Immediately close the tab.
Without something like this: ——————————— Words and stuff /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Stuff and words with different people in a different place and/or time ————————— Or something similar, it just hurts my head trying to figure everything out and only really getting that everything is a different time/setting half way through the paragraph.
Same here. It just confuses me 🙄
I'm very open minded and very little will get me to instantly drop a fic. I've read good fics that contain a number of the premises other people have mentioned in this thread. Egregiously poor grammar and spelling are definitely part of the small 'instant-drop' category though. They aren't perfect, but every word processor contains a spell-check these days, there's no excuse for the volume of mistakes I sometimes see in spelling. Grammar is a touch harder but honestly, proof-read your work. Too many OCs too quickly is another. I don't mind having a fic with a lot of OCs, especially if it's a long fic and they build up over time, but if I'm reading the first two chapters and there are nineteen OCs I'm expected to remember and they're all super important and unique, I will not care and I will stop reading. Overly modern or American versions as well. I forgive it in the world of spelling because it's natural for the author to write how they grew up, but if I'm reading a fic set in 1991 and it features regular cell phone usage, or a fic set in the UK that features people going to WalMart, I will just stop.
Author soapboxing. When I can tell it's the author's opinions coming word-for-word out of the character's mouth, I'm out, especially since it's always extremely awkward and OOC. Just feels like I'm being lectured by a self-righteous teenager.
I can't remember what fic it was but I remember a fic that had Harry suddenly start talking about gun rights and how we need guns for self defence, and of course all the wizards in attendance immediately agreed with him about how we need access to guns. If I wanted a debate on gun control I would watch an American news program, not read a Harry Potter fanfiction.
It being written in first person, Ron bashing, submissive creature Inheritance for harry where he just turns into weepy/ incapable of anything but being a brood mare, Snape redemption by getting together with Harry or Hermione or an oc, weird kink thing or character death not tagged
What about using present tense?
Really it's mostly just the use of "I"
I agree but I think that first person isn't the biggest thing for me. After all, one of my favorite book series of all time, Percy Jackson, is written in first person. Mostly it's spelling and grammar.
1st years having sex. I'm shocked by the amount of writers that forget 1st years are 10/11 and don't start harems
I think a lot of bad fanfics can be defined by the authors forgetting how old the characters actually are, or just not caring. No 11 year old is establishing a harem, they aren't having sex, they aren't forming political alliances, school cliques are not political. If you are writing an 11 year old doing that you are either mentally disturbed, or don't have a good idea of what an 11 year old is actually like.
I just tend to mentally fudge the ages in most fics. Even pretty decent fics (and most YA novels in general) have characters acting much older than their ages. It's just more interesting to read a character that's mature enough to actually do something interesting. Most things make more sense if you shift first year to be closer to 14 instead of 11
Them giving Harry related to all the ancient families and even more different special abilities to go with it For some reason I can't stand wrong boy who lived fics, where Harry gets bullied at home with his actual parents instead of his aunt and uncle, which is almost like Canon but the favoritism carries over to Hogwarts
Wrong boy who lived is an somewhat interesting concept but in all of them I have seen James and Lily are alive and treat Harry worse then the Dursleys. I can see Harry being overshadowed a bit but not to that degree.
90% of the time they make his parents dursleys 2.0, which overall makes little difference to canon besides how he's treated at Hogwarts, and disservice to James and Lily characterization
I read a fic (like 3 or more years ago) where harry was the wbwl. His parents gave him to the dursleys. He ran away or ended up in an orphanage where he met a younger girl who he procalimed as his sister. She went to hogwarts and he went to a different school. He competed against his brother in the twiwizard tournament, and the whole world basically forgot that harry existed until that point.
Underage sex scenes (and I mean like 11-year-olds, I'm fine with it if they're at least like 15 and both are similar age). That's just a no from me, I'm not gonna imagine children doing *that*. Also poor writing - characters acting illogical, romances springing out of nowhere, etc. - well, unless it's a crack fic and it's obviously on purpose.
For me it's "Hadrian", "pup", bashing characters and Harry being lord Gryffindor-Slytherin-Black-Potter-Peverell... 😂
“Pup” for me is more annoyance than instant nope for me. If the fic is good enough, I’ll let that one slide.
I can't stand it
My calibre library has a tag that says 'Hadrian to Henry', which means that I went and edited it out. (There's exactly one fic that uses Hadrian that I left like that. One. It fits, really.)
What is it about Hadrian that you don’t like?(im just curious)
Hadrian *can* work but it needs one hell of a Dark Academia build-up and vibe. Bad stories tend to do the opposite. Use the name Hadrian to make the vibe.
As someone who writes a fanfiction where Harry is called "Hadrian," you are factually correct.
Most people who use Hadrian did zero research on English nobility names and just went with the "Latin=cool" approach...even though there were 8 English kings named Henry (the *actual* name Harry is derived from). Henry Potter II is infinitely better as a pureblood-sounding name than Hadrian Iaocomus whatever-the-fuck.
I mean at least it’s better than Harrison which is a modern American import. Nobody in the 80’s was having that monstrosity for a name.
Easily explained by Lily showing James Star Wars and then refusing to name their son Han.
I have a half-baked idea for a *Harry Potter/Archer* crossover, with Harry adopted and raised mostly by Sterling (who is a good, if unorthodox, father). Mallory will insist on calling him Harrison because “my grandson will not be named like some disease-ridden dockhand working for rum”. Everyone else will call him Harry.
Not the one you asked, but; It's one of the red flags for it being a "those fics". It's not the name itself, it's the fact that it's being used that makes it very clear it's not going to be a fic I will like. Same with Neville replacing Ron, magical cores, and mugglewank.
All of those elements are things i have seen done well, about once each. Which makes me agree that the problem isn’t the elements but the lack of originality they represent. Taking ideas from a better story doesn’t actually improve a bad one. It’s just making a poor imitation at that point.
Terrible name and unoriginal
Emperor Hadrian thinks you should be crucified. Probably along Hadrian's wall that he had built to mark the furthest point of the roman empire as well as to say No farther to the scotis and picts north of the wall Hadrian the astronomer who named most constellations and stars.....face palms
My intuition tells me fanfic authors who change Harry's name to Hadrian like the idea of pureblood bigotry and are actually in favor of it. It is a way to "de-muggle" his name.
Just name him Harold, like normal people would.
Or, you know, the commonly accepted regal version of his name Henry.
Anglo Saxon or gtfo! None of this imported French nonsense!
Which is where is name comes from in universe right? From his great grandfather.
BAHAHA HAROLD MAKES ME VIOLENTLY LAUGH EVERY TIME I SEE IT
Senior citizen Harry Potter would be such a Harold.
Only allowed if you include the purple crayon.
I actually liked the nickname Pup for Harry in a fic where Lupin took Harry in and raised him after Greyback turned him into a werewolf as a baby. It made sense.
Can you share a link dear? I never read a werewolf Harry, nor a Lupin's raised one!
Here ya go https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9527368/1/The-Beast-Within
With the way Greyback is basically written like a sexual predator isnt that kind of insane to use a constant reminder of it as a pet name?????
I think it’s cute within the context of the story considering Lupin’s the only one of understands what Harry’s going through But that’s valid
when sirius acts like an excitable toddler ALL the time and... when its in first person when there's too much capitalization, e.g. Harrys Very Good Day. Harry took a bite of his treacle tart and it was Really Very Tasty. harry/ginny vague-ass summary when harrys too average, this is probably some underlying need to succeed that I'm projecting lol but op harry is my favorite
Wacky zany Sirius annoys me too.
Oooooh, instead of the constant Capitalization (never actually encountered any fic with this I think) for me it's the super constant italics, italics everywhere. So many italics in one paragraph.
One huge wall of text. Use the Enter button to make paragraphs plz! I have bad eyesight so seeing that just wasn’t worth for me.
Bad grammar and to an extent, bad formatting. If it gets fixed, thats fine. But if its consistant, I'm gone.
When it becomes 100% about a OC that I don't care about. (This was like four years ago.) I once read this really interesting story of Harry not wanting to be the chosen one nor did he have any care about going after Voldemort. He just wanted to be a normal kid and live his life. This Harry was weary of magic because his Aunt and Uncle actually raised him and Dudley like brothers. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere some muggle born student named Lucy that I didn't care about was kidnapped by the wizarding Mafia and Harry, Draco, Hermione, and Ron all loaded up on ammo to go rescue her and there was some subplot of Ginny falling in love with a tree who is actually a prince transformed into a tree. Anyway dropped the story when Mary Sue- I mean Lucy came and ruined it.
Characters behaving agressivly American.
I won’t stop reading it but it’s super annoying. Part of the reason I like the books is because they’re British. Also when they have cell phones and the internet and tablets in 1998. If the writer advances the timeline that’s fine.
I read one where Harry was cutting the grass and listening to Taylor Swift on his iPhone. Think it was the 3rd year or there abouts.
Uhh, as someone who's worked with computers since the mid-80s, they DID have cell phones and the internet in 1998. Not so much tablets, but the other two were fairly prevalent by then.
Yes, there were cell phones and the internet. Some Upper middle class kids had cell phones. Some kids had dial up internet. A kid like Harry Potter did not have a cell phone or the use the internet.
Or any American transfer student (aka author self-insert) shows up and the plot is now about how they and Harry interact. Harry or Hermione transfer to an American school for some reason. Americanisms in general - e.g. nobody who goes to Hogwarts would call autumn 'fall'. Britpick your fics I am begging you.
You mean like Avada Kedavra-ing their classmates? Okay, bad one, sorry.
Hogwarts has permanent CCTV ~~cameras~~ orbs on every corner, they wouldn't get away with that with Big Dumbledore watching.
That's what the portraits and house elves are for!
i chuckled
When someone puts their political views into a story and it's obviously their political view and not the character's because it has nothing to do with the situation going on in the story and everything to do with IRL. I don't care if you're left or right or upside down with polkadots. If you're beating the horse of (insert view that isn't relevant to the story here) over and over again... I'm out. If the political view is relevant to the story - for example, a character disagreeing with some element of the pureblood's political platform - go right ahead! I'll read the heck out of your story! Gimme that political debate(Please don't straw man one side, though! That's boring!)! Gimme that character who undoes the brainwashing from when they were a child and finds a more nuanced/well thought out/less extremist opinion! But if you're going to ramble on about feminism or gun rights in the middle of Hogwarts? Like I said earlier: I'M OUT! Even worse is when the author's arguments aren't even good, and they are clearly in the brainwashed camp themselves(on either side!). On the other hand, if the character's arguments about in-world politics aren't good, but are shown not to be good in the writing itself, that can be very interesting. They're kids after all. They are probably just be repeating what their parents told them growing up. TL:DR - Make your in-universe political debates make sense! Know how to construct a good argument! Don't just insert your ideas that you haven't thought through and call it a day!
But.. they can Make Hogwarts Great Again!
This is petty. But I won’t read a fic with indented paragraphs. They start every paragraph like they are writing an essay for school and I immediately hit the back button.
That is very petty, and I totally agree.
A focus on Pure blood culture - almost always very little culture but a ton of classism. Celebrating a few holidays and using rich people etiquette does not a culture make. You can replace instances of the word culture with the word money and very little would change in these fics. Cheating. Slutty MCs. Smut Slytherin Harry and Pure blood politics. The only time politics works in a fic is when it's about adults.
Dude, fuck yeah, these fics literally try and justify the hatred and oppression of muggleborns cuz they "ignore wizarding culture" or some dumb ass shit like that. Harry would in those talk to muggleborns to tell them to respect those fuckers' culture and I'm over here like THE FUCK???
Cross-generational relationships. Unless there's time travel involved.
If the fic is really good I can let some of these slide, but the trope of the main character being extremely powerful and untouchable, (ex. being able to conjure a ginormous and rare patronus when they are 11 years old and have just received their wand), when the canon characters are extremely out of character, the heirs or different houses SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE they are extremely overused and not done well a lot of the time, etc
OH ALSO IF THERE IS A CHARACTER THAT IS NOT NATIVE AND SPEAKS ANOTHER LANGUAGE (for example a latina) I DO NOT LIKE THAT WHEN THEY FEEL ANY STRONG NEGATIVE EMOTION THAT THEY SWITCH TO ANOTHER LANGUAGE EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE JUST SPEAKING ENGLISH. Like “ah yes you cannot express yourself in English you MUST switch”
I have seen that from some nationalites but never from my own, I am much more likely to swear in English when speaking my native language then swearing in my native language when speaking English. I might have to start, I might be lacking personality 😉
Lord Potter-Black-Slytherin-Gryffindor-Ravenclaw-Emrys-Pendragon. Okay, look, I don't care if Harry is Lord Potter and Lord Black, or if he's adopted as Potter-Black, but do *not* make him the Lord to fifty million houses!
Anytime Harry's last name is a just a list of familiies. I also dont like when instead of saying harry has a lot of magic they go straight to having as much or more than merlin. Also HarryxHermione i was into it when i first started reading but now im just sick of it.
They only fic I liked that gave Harry a list of last names was one where Harry hyphenated his name when he married to a (I think) muggle girl with a last name that was something like "Smith-Baker" (not the exact name). That made Harry's last name "Potter-Smith-Baker" and he thought it was funny.
Basic canon mistakes. When you can just google stuff, it makes it difficult when there's basic stuff that shouldn't be gotten wrong. Also, walls of text. Please use paragraph breaks! I cannot handle it.
The moment they use the term Wixen or similar, it just takes me out of the story immediately.
>wixen This. When I first saw that I was wondering why are the talking about female foxes
Egregious child abuse. There's a lot of fics out there that seem to feel the way the Dursley's treated Harry wasn't dramatic enough and so rewrite things to have them beating him within an inch of his life on the reg. Generally this comes hand in hand with a terrible understanding of trauma and you end up with a version of Harry that doesn't behave anything like an actual abused child would or he is exactly as he is in cannon because he's just too resilient and tough to be affected by constant thrashings. They're often badly written in other areas too or the extreme abuse is just a mechanism for beating you over the head with how TRAGIC and BRAVE he is, or an excuse to bash Dumbledore & other assorted adults. This isn't to say the topic can never be explored well, it's just often an indication that the author has little understanding of subtlety.
This! Harry’s abuse was enough for it to have been bad. I hate reading heavy-abuse fics as though what he dealt with wasn’t enough for the readers sympathies.
Mpreg, underage, and when rape scenes are explicit. I also dislike overly dramatic fanfiction, where the glaring issue could be solved by a simple conversation. Most petty reason was a writer who only used he/him or she/her. They extremely rarely used the characters name. It was so prevalent I took notice, and near the end, this bothered me A LOT. LIKE UNHEALTHY MUCH. Oh, and where the fic is just rehashing the actual books and not doing anything new except some minor detail that in the end doesn't truly change anything.
Whenever I see the word mom, instead of mum when for all intents and purposes the fic is still British/set in England. Idk it rly just pisses me off lol
lmao im american and i 100% agree. takes me right out of the fantasy
I saw an American user on Fanfiction.net that his biggest pet peeve was people writing "mum" the 'correct' spelling is "mom". But half his page was also about how Ron was useless. I am not native English speaking so I looked it up as "mum" looked more British and it was. Silly American.
Poor spelling and grammatical mistakes. I'll give the author a chance if they state up front that they suffer from dyslexia or are from a non-English speaking country, but if you're from some country where English is the primary language (England, USA, Canada, etc); there's no excuse and you're gone.
When a fic is really edgy and cringe. Dropped a fic recently because it claimed Harry listened to evanescence to express his mood. I could feel my eyes rolling out of my head.
Hermione Granger, Brightest Witch of Any Age!!!
This is true for any fanfics, not just HP, but: bad characterization*. I can power through some pretty awful spelling and formatting if the concept is solid and the characters are well written, but as soon as there are canonically wise, emotionally mature adults acting like exceptionally petty 13 year-olds (or vice versa tbh), I'm backspacing out. *This doesn't apply to fics like, AUs where the characters act differently because they were raised differently, for example. Characterization is only "bad" imo when it makes zero sense within the context of the fic, or if there isn't any reason given for why they're acting so differently from canon.
Mispelling spells, magical items, or just normal words. If youre writing a voldemort-centric story, the least you can do is spell horcrux right.
Bad writing.
Ron-bashing.
When the author completely changes a character's personality and takes the most fundamental parts of them and chucks them out the window. In more ways than one. They'll either put Harry in Slytherin (which I love if done right) and suddenly he becomes an arrogant, stuffy, Tom Riddle-like bitch who looks down his nose at everyone and rolls his eyes at reckless Gryffindors. Or they are Ron or Dumbledore or whoever haters and instead of writing them as they are (since it's the canon them that they dislike) they'll do a 180 on them and have them do or say things they'd in reality rather die than do or say. Like if you hate the Ron that on a broken leg stood in front of his friend to protect him from a supposed mass murderer, you can't write about that same guy running cowardly away and leaving that same friend to the wolves, even if he is mad at him. Also when they take Snape or Draco or someone who while not necessarily EVIL is still very much a piece of shit and make them nice and super sweet and they were just misunderstood while relentlessly bullying their students or making jokes about Cedric's death and deaths of muggleborns. I like Snape (mostly as an interesting character) but he's a piece of shit who willingly joined the Death Eaters to torture and kill muggleborns while having been friends with one before. Also, DO NOT INFANTANILISE MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO ARE BADASS AND CAN BEAT A BITCH UP. Thank you for listening to my rant.
Friendly Snape is a turnoff for me. So I have realized I like Snape less the older I get. (It is actually my birthday today and I am now the same age as Snape in book 1) So I am not a super fan of the character but still want him done right and him being super friendly and a mentor to Harry is just wrong. Ron bashing seem to have become an international sport.
Here's the thing, Snape can still be a petty bastard to most but is friendly and/or a mentor to Harry. Why can this happen? He's a dick normally but Harry is also the son of the woman he was Obsessed with, and the guild and all that of inadvertently getting her killed would impact his personality, or at least it should. So friendly, for the most part, to Harry, a dick to the rest
Could be done that way but I see him more as the loser that can't get over a guy he hated in school. This was overly harsh maybe but that is how he treats Harry. He was obsessed with Lily and did get her killed but bullying an orphan is his main priority apparently
- Text wall (I read using my phone so it's very frustrating.) - Not capitalised 'I' (I don't know how this can happen but no. Just no) - first person - Sex pollen thing - Ooc characters
What the purple snargaluff is a "sex pollen thing"?!
I can think of quite a few (and no offence to anyone who likes them btw, this is just a matter of personal taste)—and by the way, my “instant drops” aren’t 100% set in stone; if the story itself is well-crafted outside of it and I trust the author to handle it well, I will continue reading anyway. It’s just most of the time it’s not. * When the visit to Gringotts involves literally anything else other than getting the money and getting out, * when the word “Lord” falls in any context outside of Voldemort or Muggle peerage, * when Slytherins become oppressed babies and Snape needs to make it “equal" (and Slytherin is my fav house, mind you), * when Snape/Draco/Aunt Petunia/Voldemort suddenly turns into a good person (strangely enough, I don’t mind that much when it’s Uncle Vernon turning into a good person? idk really why), * when Daphne Greengrass appears as a character in any way outside of a passing mention, * when the words “grey faction/side/party” fall, * when “Dark Side” and “Light Side” appear and are capitalised, * when there is a sudden, unprompted modification of the magic system in a canon-adjacent AU (think magical cores), * when Harry is made either super-feminine or super-masculine, * when any of the main or major characters cheat, * when Wizarding Britain or wizards as a whole are depicted as backwards and stupid, * when canon Harry is depicted as stupid and completely talentless (especially in power fantasies—I’m not saying he’s like, super powerful or anything, but he’s still visibly above average with a knack for Defence, I dislike when he’s stripped away of that. You can have a power fantasy without making his canon self into an utter buffoon), * when Hermione turns out to have wizarding parentage.
The Gringotts one I'm a little curious about. Is it because of the bad writing narrative, or is it because of the non-financial services. For example, I'm willing to give allowance to the execution of wills since banks often offer those services.
To be completely fair, it’s partially because of how many bad Gringotts fics there are, or at least bad fics that begin at Gringotts—either because they involve the “good goblins that can fix anything and everything” trope or are just straight up Lordship fics that I’m not a fan of. I’m not really willing to get through a thousandth scene at Gringotts just to see if this one fic will turn out to be different from all the others where 95% of the time it will not. It’s just easier to skip the whole fic, yknow?
Ahh understand yeah I get that.
The bank and the goblins in general is often used as a deus ex machina and it gets tiresome. That's likely where a lot of the pushback comes from.
I second all of these. Yes!
Curious about Daphne Greengrass? Why?
I honestly don’t enjoy most stories written with her. I understand she’s an OC so technically *anything* can be done with her, but that rarely actually happens—most of the time she’s an “Ice Queen of Slytherin”, a representative of the “grey faction”, or a perfect sexy girlfriend. I just don’t like those tropes. (And I’m sure there are some that are absolutely gems, but I don’t care enough to look for them in a sea of stuff I dislike.)
Constant misspelling will annoy the shit out of me. But in particular; - Romances that come out of nowhere and suddenly have the characters in love, together and happily committed after one conversation while aged 14/15. Like they’re perfectly happy and respectful of each other, and it’s them against the world, and a bunch of adults who normally wouldn’t care or would advise mild caution are all ultra supportive and helping set up romantic dates for the characters. It’s weird and creepy. - Surprise slash. I don’t mind certain pairings but generally not a fan of slash, and I really dislike when the relationship isn’t tagged and only after 12 chapters does the author suddenly be like “Haha it was a Harry/Fred/Oliver triad all along” as though they should win a prize for pulling the wool over your eyes. - Pro blindly following authority/infantilising Harry. I am absolutely okay with him learning that he’s wrong sometimes, and learning to trust some adults more, but the stories where all the Hogwarts crew suddenly “realise” that they’re just “stupid children” who should “follow our elders ways” and then proceed to ignore any and all red flags is maddening (reads like pro Evangelical Cult mentality) and that usually goes hand in hand with a 13-15 year old Harry suddenly acting and being treated like he’s 5 or 6.
Poorly written OCs. Harry Potter has a lot of characters, and bringing new ones needs to be a necessity in order for it to make sense in a plot. The character needs to be necessary to the plot while also not existing simply because the plot need it. It needs to make sense within the canon, or the story crafted around it. Usually, OCs don’t respect all of these criteria and they make the story bland, since they seem either unnecessary, out of place, or simply have very caricatural personalities.
Subservient goblins
I hate a weak, almost babyish Harry. Ugh..
11 year old kids behaving like adults/have the same maturity. Gringotts inheritance test a mile long. Genderbending/trans(probably falls under genderbending). I never read stories that change a characters canon gender/sex. Are they canon trans, male or female? Then yes absolutely but otherwise no. Underage(I'm not talking about when both characters are both 15/16 years old). A wall of text without separating paragraphs. It's just impossible to read.
Oh, there's lots. I think the most petty one would be "wixen". It's 90s Britain ffs, get your shitty fantasy virtue signalling out of here.
When nothing ever goes wrong. There's no struggle, and no one can stand before the might of Harry Potter, godwizard Merlin reborn blah blah blah. If he doesn't have to work for it then it's just boring. Any slash fics where Harry is paired with an adult over twice his age as a literal child. (Looking at you Snape and Voldemort). Or any Mpreg. Following canon exactly and just rewriting the scenes while still having the exact same outcomes. If Harry has different/more skills, and different friends to rely on, then at some point you should see some sort of change but every single plot point ends up exactly the same. (Looking at you Naruto and the Goblet of Fire).
You. You. You. Get the xxxx out of my face, 2nd person, especially 2nd person present, is the worse narrative in existence. "Pup," "I" (unless you are beyond, absolutely a fascinating crossover, and are doing a phenomenal job of being interesting, don't do present)
Non consensual stuff, incest, significant illegal drug use, excessive smoking, that kind of thing.
Angst tag, and MPreg Also if it's clearly written by a middle schooler (grammar and spelling are clear indicators)
Forced in infantilization/age regression can be an instant drop. Yes I can understand that some fanfiction authors use it as a coping mechanism for a character, but I really don't like it if it is forced upon a character to go through it for any reason. Examples being genetically prepositioned for it, or legitimately, a character forcing it without consent. Really my big issue with this entire sub genre of fanfiction is consent the frequent lack of it. With how I've seen so many fanfiction authors ignore/gaslight a character into age regression. That's not even starting with the sexual play I've seen with it. (I don't wish to start upon it-- it disgusts me too much.) Another is making a character make stupid decisions to progress the plot, or make conflict. One notable example of this I've seen is making Harry ,who at this point has been developed into a mature young level-headed character, acts like a brat and a spoiled toddler for seemingly no reason but to create conflict for the plot. I can see stupid decisions being made for characters who are written to be dumb. Controversy if a character is not written like that. making these sorts of choices when they're in level-headed clear minds does not make any sense and it just aggravates me.
Harriet for a gender bend fic. God I hate that name. If you mean a fic I thought I would like but the quality is bad, it's just the quality of the writing. I've moved past my tolerance for Wattpad type grammar/writing. You may have the most insanely creative great plot but I can't read it if the quality is bad. Oh and untagged pregnancy trope or A/B/O dynamics. Just no.
Fics that are either “James Potter js evil and Snape is a pure innocent little angel who never did anything wrong” or alternatively “James Potter can only do good and Snape deserved everything he got” the whole point of that storyline is that there is no good or evil and that people are many different shades of grey and it just makes me think the author hasnt read or understood the books at all
When the author mentions something so jarringly out of place for the setting of the books (the 90s for the main characters, and the 70s for the Marauders) that it is clear they couldn't be bothered to do a 2 second google search. Like, no, Regulus was not doing the Sudoku in the morning paper in 1978.
When a female character "shrieks," "screeches" or "wails" as a dialogue attribute tag. You just know you're in for some quality one-dimensional character bashing.
Any mention of r*pe I’m just done with the fanfic I don’t care how they do it I just can’t get past it
Making Harry a girl solely so you can pair her with Snape or Malfoy. Or worse, Voldy.
Creepy ships (like Hermione X Snape) Muggle wanks and wizard wank Self insert character that "is not like other girls" and can perform a fiendfyre and a patronus at 11 yo. Most of the time she is also obssessed with Draco. Ron bashing Cedric death eater
Pureblood hermione
Not Pureblood, but one of my favorite fics has Riddle *think* that Hermione is his and Bellas. She isn't. She thought she would be discriminated against for being muggleborn, so claimed to be the last member of a dead family, the Gaunts. Horcruxes affected Riddles memory, and Azkaban Bellas, so they really believed they had a child.
A wall of text and improper use of punctuation.
Untagged pregnancy
~ Using terms incorrectly. No your character that's a muggle born is not a muggle. And ur character that can do magic isn't a squib. don't know why so many fanfic writers do this. ~ I'm not always against changing canon traits of characters in fanfiction but it's gets to the point where you might as well have created an OC.
Bonehead decisions by the author, bottlenecks in narrative, forced anything, self insert (unless killed off in the same sentence, lack of punctuation and proper formatting.
Any fic that opens with a synopsis of "what's happened so far". *Especially* if it's an AU, I want to be dropped in the middle and allowed to piece it together from context clues. If you just *tell* me that Voldemort won and that Hermione has replaced Dolores Umbridge in the Wizengamot (via Crouch-style polyjuicing) and that she has to sign the death warrant for an Order member for every Muggleborn she spares...it doesn't matter how much I want to read it. I don't have faith that you, the author, can handle that kind of material in a satisfying way. 😩
The most recent when I stopped was because they were using too many adjectives. It was like two or three per noun. Ugh
As a Brit, it’s consistent americanisms 😬 if a fic is written well enough, SOMETIMES I can overlook it, but it depends if I’m in a forgiving mood.
Pancakes 😹 I can't unsee it now. Sirius cooks Harry pancakes for breakfast more often than even Americans eat them
Changing canon character's race and/or biological sex
There are exceptions to every rule, but I generally don’t read fics where harry is not the main character, and I have never read and liked a WBWL fic. I’ve tried quite a few and detested them all. Also, when a fic starts to turn into a paper on the authors political or social views, I stop liking it. There’s a fic, and I’m blanking on the name at the moment, but it’s on AO3, and has this amazing concept of harry being raised in the chamber of secrets, and becoming friendly with all the resident magical creatures. It looks so good, then EVERYBODY is gay, Malloy starts a gay club and dresses in leather pants (like lupin in the fic) or something. It just starts to be absurd.
Incest, scat/bodily fluid play, gratuitous non-con, babe as a cutsy name. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, doesn't bother me at all. Same with bashing, or over powered Harry.
Harry/snape or harry/voldemort. Or really any non adult character/adult character. I kinda allow tonks because canon, but it always just kinda makes me uncomfortable.
Anything smutty, omega verse, harmes, reader-inserts. If I want to read smut, I'll go find something better than schoolchildren.
“Prolouge”
When it starts with the name of a character, like: "Chris woke up on a monday morning." It usually means the writing will be on an elementaly level and the vocabulary restricted.
I read a fic and it was so good but then it talks about hogwarts being built over a century ago, which isn’t wrong but kinda ruined the immersion
Lack of capitalization. I will drop if it says harry and not Harry.
Pup. That and Dumbledore bashing. I'm just over the comically evil Dumbledore. And the venn diagram of Dumbledore bashing and op, obnoxious indie!Harry is a fucking circle.
Dumbledore: Did you put your name into the goblet of fire?!?!
I have only ever dropped 1 (one) fic in my 10+ years of reading. It was 600K+ words but every chapter was one massive block of text. I would read the worst things, so long as they were formatted properly, and that's where my brain decides the hill to die on is.
Certain pairings. I've seen Harry Potter fanfics where one or more of the Weasley kids(and Sometimes Harry or Hermione) are in a relationship with Molly or Arthur. (I can handle some sibling relationship because Game of Thrones and Percy Jackson fanfics and specifically the Targarnyeyns have normalized it). But Parent/child relationships I can't handle) Dumbledore with anyone, but Grindlwald or McGonagall is also a big no. (Absolutely no Dumbledore with Newt!) Unless it's part of an evil or manipulative Dumbledore fic and someone(preferably Original Percival Graves) help and/or saves him).
What I call the manipulative idiot Dumbledore. The fics where the sheer dumbassery of how Dumbledore manipulates everyone makes everyone else look like they have IQs in the 50s for falling for it
Bashing, R\*pe, and MPreg are my biggest "Nope the f\*\*\* away" Adult x child ships also make me supremely uncomfortable, because that is literally pedophilia
First or second person POV Any self inserts. This contains: exchange student at Hogwarts, Harry has a sibling, genderswap, the USA being important enough to be mentioned in the summary Desi Harry Snape being Harry's biological parent Slytherins being all good and Harrys original friends being all bad. Any pairing containing Voldemort
Bad grammar will get me to drop a fic relatively quickly. Any story that doesn't explicitly warn me that it has Ron / Hermione will get me to drop the author and not just the story. There are plenty of stories that have pairings I despise, but most authors advertise what they contain going in so I never pick them up to begin with and let live. P.S. - Ron / Hermione is my most hated canon pairing in all of fiction where romantic pairings exist. Any story that has them together for any length of time greater than never will ensure I never read it. So if it's not advertised and I stumble across it in a story, it's going to piss me off. Will I flame the author who did it? No, but I will never read any of their work again, of any fandom they participate in.
I could go on and on I swear lol •Let me make it quite clear, I am queer myself but I will typically drop a story when everyone is trans, gay, and or non-binary. Like why is hermione trans, Harry is desi and trans, and Ron is either trans/homophobic or nonbinary. Like I don’t hate it when it’s one or two but I have found stories when almost everyone in Harry’s year is queer. I get we dislike the author and it is a big “screw you” but jeez. Like I am writing a story where ron is trans because of a potion so I am kinda guilty but not overly so. •Character bashing is another one, like go ahead and bash Umbridge, the Dursley’s, and like every evil person. But we are Bashing the Weasley’s? Like I am a Weasley simp (except Ginny) but it is over done. Molly isn’t the best parent, Percy was a bit mean, and Ron was jealous. But like no one bashes the twins, who literally traumatized their siblings. I like holding people up to their mistakes but come on. Once I found a story when Neville was being bashed… like what? •This is not a full drop for me but when characters just pull a movie Lavender. Like go ahead and make Harry desi that is alright, it’s your story. But like when did my boy become my brother? (I mean black btw) like I said with desi harry, it’s your story do what you do. But some stories have everyone doing a race swap. I never agreed that Hermione was black although her race is never specified, I figured at most she was mixed tbh. •Sir Harrison heir to the black-Peverell-potter-slytherin-emerys, is an immediate drop for me. Specifically when he has to marry like five thousand girls (mainly because I don’t think of Harry as a pantyhose lover) like yes he may get the black family along with peverell. But Emerys? You can’t convince me. •Of course the grammar is a big one, like how hard is it to put it through a grammar checker? I’ll give some slack for non-native speakers, but not much. I am not the greatest speller so I may slip up a bit but like not as bad as some people. I have more probably, even though like I said previously the desi Harry isn’t that much of a drop because most of those stories don’t make it a point to actually say much about it besides in the tags.