That even tops Harry Potter fic using "the Gryffindor" as an epithet in a conversation in the Gryffindor common room.
There were five or six characters in the scene, and yes, all mammals. I finally figured out they meant the one character who wasn't human, because he was the only one who was hard to describe in one word based on appearance. He's a small furry creature of superhuman intelligence and canonically ambiguous species, and you can't just call him "the principal" because that's a perfectly reasonable thing that ordinary people might say.
oh, bnha fandom... between that and “the principle,” which i’ve seen several times in otherwise-good fics, it really seems like authors should use that particular character’s actual name more
I was just reminded of a decade-old LJ post I loled at, which I quote here: The mental images stuck with me very strongly.
I will never understand how such a shockingly large proportion of the Harry Potter fandom seems determined to make Voldemort right about everything.
GOD "ACTUALLY blood purity is right because the muggleborns will do away with pureblood ~traditions~" If you have a fic where draco malfoy has to educate harry potter on his "true heritage" then you are legally obligated to include a scene of draco having a breakdown in a public bathroom because he has to ride the underground for some reason and it confuses and frightens him. Or have a scene where he tries to convice Harry that shitting wherever you are and "vanishing the evidence" is the only proper way to do things
Yeah. Like, I get that people are Into ~nobility~ and Special Bloodline Powers and like, whatever, YKINMKATO, but a little self-awareness of how deeply they're reading against the text would be really nice once in a while. Preferably before they get to the level of that thing that got quoted in FFA's WTF summaries thread a few days back with Voldemort saying he only ever wanted to open an orphanage so magical children wouldn't be abused.
also those fics in which it is revealed that actually, at the time of Hogwarts' founding, Everything Was Better magic was more powerful / the Hogwarts education was held to a higher standard / there was less prejudice / anything, whatever, honestly, but the idealization of the past as some sort of golden age gives me the creeps everytime. (I understand why people do it, I get the appeal in "ACTUALLY, this MUCH BETTER WAY is how it was ALWAYS MEANT TO BE", but... I don't like the idea that we've only ever been moving backwards)
SPEAKING OF THINGS THAT WERE IN A FFA WTF FIC THREAD RECENTLY Nonnies commented that they never thought they'd be saying "please just say orbs."
Advice that boils down to "don't do X" is also worthless because it doesn't tell you what mistake to avoid. An author could write something like "Thank you", he said thankfully and think 'hm, that sounds bad' and then find some advice that says 'adverbs bad!'. So they change it to "Thank you", he said, his tone thankful and think that hey, no more adverb, problem solved!
i mean, that's what eyes are, so. sounds great to me. unless the quoted sentence was not intended to be humorous.
presumably it was not, given that @LadyNighteyes found it in a wtf fic thread. aint nothin ironic about those moist, jiggly wibblespheres
It was not, and the next line was "Hot breath tinted by a canned pasta dinner and faint traces of mint toothpaste wafted down from one mouth, flowed into another."
