Hi. I don't have any fics up and I haven't favorited any because I am too lazy, so if you're here that means I reviewed something and you clicked my name although I cannot imagine why anyone would ever do that. But I hate leaving these things blank, and from reading certain Harry Potter fanfiction and certain reviews, I have a rant and this is the only place to put it, so here goes:

STOP. FETISHIZING. RACISM. This is the single biggest problem with fanfiction today. It's not terrible grammar or terrible writing or unoriginal plotlines, its this fetishization of the worst of the human experience. Terrible grammar or unoriginality doesn't hurt anybody, but what does hurt people is hand-waving the ideas of racism and genocide and slavery and putting those in the category of "sexy" or "bad boy." THIS IS NEITHER. Throughout the Harry Potter series, the Death Eaters and pureblood supremacists commit some of the worst acts any person can even imagine. They torture people into insanity, they kill for fun, they enslave whoever is available. They do all of these horrible, horrible acts and to my great surprise and disappointment, there is a sizable subculture in the fanfiction community that thinks these actions are just the bee's knees. They see Voldemort kill innocent people, they see Draco spit hate speech and advocate the death of all "mudbloods", they see Lucius do both, they see all of these things and they think "oh yeah, that is hot stuff" One reviewer flat out said that evil is "sexy" which only shows what I think must be a complete ignorance of these problems. To see these things as "sexy" is to hand-wave them, to tell everyone "Oh its just pretend, its just fantasy, none of these things really happened" which is correct in the literal sense, but so wrong it makes my head spin in the metaphorical sense. All of these things are still going on. There is racism, murder, and slavery IN YOUR COUNTRY, GOING ON RIGHT NOW. Notice that I said "your" country--because I cannot be wrong in making this statement. Every single country on Planet Earth has racism, murder and slavery. These things are going on right now, every day, and it is absolutely not sexy.

My only solace is assuming that these opinions, the thought that characters who kill and torture and enslave are "sexy" are the products of immaturity. I can't say I've never fallen under the spell of the "bad boy." I remember the bad boy from my high school. I remember he would walk around dressed in black, chain on his wallet and sneer on his face. He was hot as hell. I wanted nothing more than for him to notice me, treat me special. It's so easy to fall for the bad boy. Its important to remember that this bad boy had never uttered words analogous to mudblood and he had certainly never killed or tortured or enslaved anyone. He was a bad boy but he wasn't a villain. This makes all the difference.

There was another boy at my school, who was also physically attractive. He looked like a bad boy. He was not. He was a villain. He beat up and abused a gay student after school one day, and every day before that he made that student's life a living hell. We never put a stop to him because we were all afraid of him. It took that instance of actual, physical abuse for something to happen, for him to be removed. This boy was a villain. He was not sexy. He was not attractive. Anyone who found him sexy could only be immature or stupid, because finding these qualities attractive endorses them.

If you think that racism, torture, and murder make someone attractive, or that racism, torture, and murder are even forgivable qualities in any unrepentant character, real or fiction, you are endorsing racism, torture, and murder. There are no words to express how disappointing this is.

Okay Fanfiction Racism Update!

This time there's a more subtle racist trend in fanfiction, and again, in a series where racism and discrimination and genocide and prejudice ARE THE ENTIRE THEME OF THE ENTIRE CONFLICT THROUGH THE ENTIRE SERIES, this is incredibly disappointing, and whats worse is that it tries to snake its way in as "on the good guy's side!" Which just makes me more irked because when people fetishize racism I can at least hope or perhaps pretend that no, they don't really mean it, they're just young and will grow out of it. But this is the subtle kind, the kind that you don't get called out for, the kind that is acceptable because you only REALLY see that its horrible when you look closely: making Hermione Granger a pureblood.

One of the ways Hermione "receives" something in the fic-universe(either an inheritance or political power of magical power or whatever) is that she's made a pureblood. She was adopted by the Grangers, really she's the daughter of one of the Blacks or Harry's secret sister (apparently a witch's gestation and recovery period is much much shorter than a muggle woman's) or she's a Malfoy or even a Riddle (which is rarely if ever actually fully explained). But what it all comes down to is making sure Hermione Granger is not a mudblood.

Which is frankly pretty offensive to anyone who has ever suffered form any sort of adversity whatsoever, be it from their race or their class or their gender or their sex or their sexuality or what-the-fuck-ever.

The fact that Hermione is a muggle-born is a huge part of her character, as it is with anyone with a similar status. She will have to deal with that kind of conflict her whole life. From Malfoy's constant insults to society's discrimination to an entire movement of genocidal radicals who want nothing more to kill her and people like her, she will have to deal with the consequences of the grand crime of being a minority in public. And that makes her strong. It toughens her up and makes her more of an icon, that kind of discrimination, and the fact that she overcomes it, it gives her sympathy and compassion and all in all it makes her a great character. What's better is that in the magical society, half the justification for discrimination is that muggle-borns are somehow weaker, and Hermione still is as powerful as any other witch. Hermione becomes a symbol for the persecuted.

But then it turns out she's a pureblood, which means she doesn't have to deal with discrimination anymore (or maybe she does, if she keeps it a secret), and there's an explanation right there for why Hermione is just as powerful as anyone else: she's pureblood of course! This is never flat out-said, but the implication is always there, under the surface. Hermione becomes a pureblood not to hinder her, but to help her. The pureblood status is something to strive for and to want. And somehow this is acceptable. Nobody ever dreams of making Harry or Dumbledore or whoever else a muggleborn. Because that hurts the character.

What would people say if suddenly a history book came out that said Martin Luther King Jr. was white? Or Rosa Parks or Malcom X or any of the symbols of the civil rights movement? They could all have achieved great things, if only they were white, according to fanfiction.

I have more about the Harry Potter fanon's obsession with heirs and how this, too, is fundamentally racist but I don't think anyone is reading this anyway. I will complain about that another time, when I have more steam to let out.

FANFICTION ANNOYANCES:

These aren't actually damaging per se like the above, they're just irksome.

Out of Character: Something fanfiction authors need to understand is that they are writing FANFICTION. That means that you're working with characters that have already been developed. If you ignore this character development, then you then need to come up with development of your own, or you're writing about different people. And when you write about different people, the readers have literally no reason to care about them any more than they have reason to care about Penelope Clearwater or Professor Vector or the shopkeep at Borgin and Buke's. It might as well be a new character, and if it is, then you need to give a reason to care about them. Just recently I read a fic where Hermione Granger is Voldemort's daughter(publicly!) who died and was ressurected 20 years later, sorted into Slytherin, is a Death Eater, and was formally in a relationship with Severus Snape before she died and came back to life. I'm sorry, but this is not Hermione Granger. This is some girl with a weird name. As such, we have no idea who she is, what her personality is like, or anything of the sort--we don't care about her. If you want to write characters that OOC, you can. And you can make it believable, even! Just rename them. Then nobody can say your characterization is ridiculous. Taking a character and then completely butchering them and building a new one out of them is just poor writing, and its the mark of a bad author.

Perhaps more annoying, because its stealthy, is when a character is acting within their personality, and then they snap and stop acting that way. One fanfiction, set in 6th year, features Draco calling Hermione and mudblood, and then she jumps him and starts making out with him. This is not believable to anyone, ever, let alone a girl who has been a victim of racism since she turned 11. Dramione fics are especially susceptible to OOC, because the authors are lazy or impatient and just want to jump to the "good parts", but its totally unbelievable unless you create a whole substory about redeeming Draco and forming a relationship based on something besides mutual animosity and hatred before jumping into the ~hot makeoutz~. This is not how people act in real life. Everyone who hates you isn't doing it "because they secretly like you." Fiction must be even more believable than reality. Which brings us to our next annoyance:

Misplaced Setting: If you set your fic in 3rd year, that means everything that Rowling wrote up until then is assumed to have happened, unless you say otherwise (and if you do say otherwise, you need to at least touch on how the characters are different, because those events did not shape them, and again you're in danger of falling into the Out of Character trap) Likewise, everything that happened during 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th year did NOT happen. Before the fight in the graveyard, neither Harry nor Voldemort know that their wands will react in such a fashion. Ginny Weasley still has a fangirl crush on Harry (And if this site has taught me anything, its that fangirls have a ridiculous idea of love), Ron has not abandoned Harry to the Triwizard Tournament, Sirius Black is still on the run and Harry still believes him to be the man who betrayed his parents, Barty Crouch Jr. hasn't replaced Moody, etc. etc. If these things change, you must address them in the fic. If you bash the shit out of Ron, you must explain why--so far he hasn't done anything. If Voldemort uses a different wand and it doesn't react to Harry's, you must explain why. If Ginny Weasley matures 3 years, you must explain why.