Harry Potter Fanfic Cliches

[murmur]

Hey everybody.

So I've been writing a fanfic, Harry Potter and A Memory of Light, and also re-read chapters 1 and 2 of the DW step.  However, I realized something: I have no idea what the harry potter fanfic cliches are.

See, I pretty much avoided Harry Potter and HP fanfic until about five years ago, and so I missed a lot of the furor and fanfic that came out in the gaps between the books.

Now I know some from general pop-culture osmosis, though only by their names and entries in tv tropes, such as Fem-Blaise, Draco in leather pants, marriage contract and soul bonds--actually i have no idea what the last two connote, as I'm assuming these both have to do with love and/or sex but beyond that I've got nothing.

From reading the DW steps, apparently there is always a sorting ceremony and mysterious prophecies by Sybil Trelawney.

Having read some of the peggy-sue HP-fics out there, I am aware of the dangers of ultra-powerful Harry Potter, and emotionally mature Harry Potter.  Trust me when I say that neither of those things will be the case in my fic, justified or not.

So, I am asking here, what other cliches are out there in HP-fic-dom?

-murmur
warning: just because it's a cliche, doesn't mean that I won't use it.  I've already used a peggy sue, and therefore am not afraid of more cliches.

[murmur]

Just noticed the other HP cliche thread:

http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/top ... Q7A5KU72Ag

Although it's gone off the rails a bit.

Here's a compilation of the list created there so far.

Good centaurs (is that a cliche?  Really?)
MoRon (nice one)
Draco in Leather Pants
Helpful goblins
Ancient House of Potter (that one might actually be canon-based but whatever)
Other types of magic based around other cultures being more powerful than the HP-magic
Hermione Granger, Super-Genius (but wait, isn't she?)

Anyone have any more?  Or should this thread be deleted and integrated to the other thread?

-Murmur
My excuse for not noticing is that I am currently very sick with the flu.  cough, wheeze, sneeze, snort, etc.

[Bob Schroeck]

Albus "I'll kill babies and drink their blood for the Greater Good" Dumbledore and Albus "Ask me how senility can enrich your life" Dumbledore. Sometimes both in the same character. (And I'll add this to the other thread, too.)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

Hermione Granger, Super-Genius (but wait, isn't she?)

She can't out-think Stephen Hawking, no. And her smarts are book-based; she just reads a lot of books... okay, a lot of libraries.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Florin]

Don't forget the inverse of Draco in Leather Pants, Ron the Death Eater.
--
If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. 

[classicdrogn]

The US mages being integrated with the muggles - despite 60% of Americans considering the Christian holy bible to be a true and accurate history and guide to living.

Quiddich-trained reflexes

Master Strategist Ron

Sudden increase in power from 'magical maturity'

Legilimency and Occlumency as superpowers

Divination only about the future, when knowing the past and present would be far more useful most of the time.

Ancient magic is better than modern magic

Animage, Metamorph, Parsel theonly rare traits
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Norgarth]

hmm, how about:

- Dumbles letting Snape get away with blatant favoritism for his house/make up reasons to penalize the other houses (especially Griffendor)

- Snape's hatred of Potter being so mouth-frothingly intense that he'll blame anything and everything on Potter even when there's no way Potter could have been involved.

- Similarly Snape's hatred leading him to badmoth Potter even when such accusations merely make Snape look stupid.

- Dumbledore's 'greater good' being nothing more than his own legacy/fame/ego, and him being quite willing to sacrifice others to his own benefit
- Timeturners being available to any top tier student
Edit: geeze, I left a lot of typos in this post
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[classicdrogn]

All of those are canon, except for Alby being a glory hog anyway.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Norgarth]

I was refering more to the tendancy to take canon traits and exaggerate them to ridiculous levels
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[murmur]

Compilation so far:

Fem-Blaise (Okay, so a guy is a girl in fanfics.  Anything else?)
Draco in Leather Pants (see tvtropes)
Marriage Contract (What?)
Soul Bonds (Huh?)
Sorting Ceremony for OC (Sparklypoo???  Is there anything else that goes with it?)
Trelawney's Mysterious New Prophecies (pretty self-explanatory)
Ultra-Powerful Harry (so's this)
Ultra-Mature Harry (and this)
Good centaurs (I guess that's a cliche?)
MoRon (So Ron's not the smartest guy around--anything else?)
Helpful Goblins (like, really helpful or still complete dicks?)
Ancient House of Potter (And so . . . what?  I mean, what does this do?)
Other types of magic based around hippy-dippy crystal animal spirit guys in kilts being more powerful than wands (I think that too is self-explanatory and . . . inevitable.  I personally blame Charles deLint)
Hermione Granger, Super-Genius (I still think that's basically canon)
Evil Dumbledore (pretty self-explanatory)
Senile Dumbledore (and that)
Evil Senile Dumbledore (okay . . .)
Ron the Death Eater (How'd that come up as a cliche?  Geeze.  Poor Ron, he really does get the worst of things, doesn't he.)
US Mages integrated with muggles (wait, what?  How is that relevant?  How'd it even come up?  Are there a lot of Harry Potter in America stories?)
Quiddich-trained reflexes (I think I can see how this would be a super-annoying cliche.  I imagine Rocky-style training montages.)
Legilimency and occlumency as superpowers (meaning what?  I'm not sure I get it)
Divination only about the future (uh huh)
Ancient magic is better than modern magic (the annoying thing is, is that this trope shows up in the canon as well.  Maybe not "better" but we never do see
equivalent stuff to the Room of Requirement.  Even magic photographs aren't as good as stealing the subject's soul as portraits)
Animagus, metamorphmagus, and parsel-tongue the only rare traits (I think that they are the only rare traits.  Except maybe animagus, which people can 
learn, they just don't bother to)
Dumbledore letting Snape get away with blatant favoritism (okay)
Snape's hatred of Harry being so great he'll blame anything on him (yeah, but more often than not he's actually right)
Snape's hatred of Harry leading him to look stupid (I sense a pattern)
Timeturners being available to any top tier student (is this a cliche?)

So if people can come up with an explanation to some of these cliches, that'd be great.  Marriage contracts and soul bonds, especially

[classicdrogn]

Marriage contracts - like the GoF's involuntary inescapable contract, to get married. Usually to someone Hero hates, all too often requiring a gender change mcguffin or mpreg.

Soul Bond - a kiss (or touching, or first sight) of that one perfect someone and your souls become one, often including telepathy, magical powerups, automatic legal aduthood, gender change mcguffins, or mpreg.

Super Legilimens - steal/copy/modify huge blocks of skills or experience

Super Occlumens - eidetic memory, immune to the
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

Unforgivables and dementors, superpowered magic due to focused will and visualization.

Helpful Goblins - the bank handles all legal services, and the goblins turn into Dobby clones for a wizard who says please and thank you. Often involves a goblin prophesy and or bloodline tests revealing some ancient legacy thought long lost is fulfilled by Hero. Not so often with the Rule 63, maybe half the time a result of soul bond or resulting in a marriage contract, but usually to someone Hero likes.

US Harry -
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

not so many as all that, but invariably the case when it does show up.

Rare Traits - what I mean is, hardly anyone makes up any others, beyond the occasional elemental affinity or something. Talk to some other animal, smell magic, channel powers based on the legends of the constellations, touch ghosts normally, animate things with a breath, something different!
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Hazard]

Marriage contracts of some kind used to be pretty common amongst the nobility and potentates of older times, and was often seen as a way to enhance the social and/or financial position of atleast one side of the family. Usually, it was both. It was also not unknown as a way to enforce a peace between two organisations.

Because of this, it's not entirely weird that the Wizarding World, which from all appearances lags behind the Muggles in many ways, also lags behind in sociocultural matters like views on romance and marriage. However, it's often used as a hamfisted way to get a pairing together or as a threat for the muggleborns/half bloods to conquer or be forced to marry pureblooded spouses selected for them by the surviving blood supremacists in an attempt to keep them muggleborns and half bloods suppressed as a powerblock.

Soul bonds look to me as a mostly romantic/idealistic trope used to highlight how 'right' the various pairings are and how important they are for eachother.

Goblins are often unusually and unrealistically helpful for Harry, especially when he's highlighted as being 'the only nice wizard the goblins ever met.' It's silly really, and although it would not suprise me one bit to learn that the more racist wizards are pretty rude to the goblins, most wizards and witches are more likely to stick to a curt bussiness manner. Partially because the goblins make no secret of not liking humans, and partially because the magic users see no reason not to be particularily nice or rude as they'd like to get on with their shopping/bussiness.

Ancient House of Potter is often associated with 'Harry is the heir of (Merlin/Gryffindor/Slytherin/the Founders/God/_________)' It usually comes with a big library of with lots of books with powerful magic, more money in Gringotts than the current economy of Wizarding Britain (Or the United Kingdom, or the entire freaking world), which often crosses right over with 'goblins are nice as long as you have a really big account.'

Ancient magic being more powerful than wandwaving is not entirely stupid as long as the advantages of wandwaving are clear, that is, it's a lot faster, a lot less work, and it works perfectly fine for pretty much everything you want done. Usually, ancient magic is things like the animagus magic, or rituals where the question 'why doesn't everyone use these?' isn't properly answered.

Divination is AFAIK only shown as 'predicting the future' in canon, and few people realise that divination as a class of magic is more the magical equivelant of information and communication technologies, with a focus on information, than predictive modeling. Which, come to think of it, can be considered part of ICT.

Hermione Granger is as noted elsewhere pretty smart. Omnidisciplinarian super genius? Not so much. She's good at book learning and probably has the widest knowledge base and spell repertoire out of all of Harry's friends, she still puts in a lot more effort than most when it comes to actually learning stuff. If she were that smart she was a super genius, she wouldn't need to study nearly as much, nor be as much at a loss when things don't go quite as planned. Although she does have good planning/time management skills as a result of her needing to carefully husband her time.

[classicdrogn]

I think the communications aspects are considered to fall under Charms (messenger patronus, protean charm on DA coins, unspecified charm on Marauders' Map and mirror pair, howlers, etc.) but finding water or lost things or just scrying the present in a gramerhain, clouds, or pool of water has lots of literary tradition ignored in fanfic as much as in canon. Of course, how any form of magic actually works and esp. why is largely ignored by canon, just like the overall logic deficiencies of the plot.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles

woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Norgarth]

I think the 'Ron the Deatheater' cliche came about by people playing up Ron's jealosy of Harry's fame, apparant fortune and girls throwing themselves at him (whaether he's interested or not), and turning it up to 12.

as for Snape, I've seen some (bad) fics where it seems every time someone stubs their toe, or spills a drink, Snape is claiming that Harry is responsible, Or where Snape is giving Crabbe and Goyle point for tying their shoes properly. Maybe those fics pissed me off more than I thought.

Another aspect of 'The ancient House of Potter' usually involves Harry suddenly getting a seat/vote(s) on the wizgammot (or whatever the governing body is called) and suddenly weilding massive political power.

Hmmm, There's also the Harry's animagus form is a powerful magical animal (Pheonix, basalisk, dragon, ect) despite no one ever getting a magical animagus form before.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Necratoid]

Ancient and Nobel House of Black (Potter, etc...)  There is a cliche where people related to Harry actually bother to give him the equivalent of a 'Wizard's Studies class', which is like Muggle Studies only explaining to muggleborns or those not 'Pure Blood Nobels' How the hell wizarding society works to those not forged of it.  You know the kind of thing that would make sense to be an early mandatory class... yet isn't actually existant without paying private tutors.  Usually Malfoy's wife or Tonk's mom end up explaining how things work.
If said AaNH is invoked... Harry is automatically the cluseless head of said entity.  I've never seen him be part of a fic with this cliche in it that managed to have him as a member instead.  Usually its all populated by females and occassionally Draco.
Related is the 'Harry gets a wizarding lawyer' cliche in which Harry manages to hire, has hired for him, or gets appointed a lawyer who actually knows how to handle things with the Ministry and explains what is going on in court and with his legal rights.
Related to 'Wizarding Laws are Gibberish' which means that that the WLs are so twisted, convoluted, full of Pure blood are exempt clauses,  utterly conflicting, prone to bizarre centuries old ultraspecific loopholes, openly conflicting to the issue you can 'win' legal arguments by countering every law and argument by pointing out the conflicting law and canceling them out like some kind of puzzle game.
Luna is the smartest cast member... she just loves screwing with people.  Then again her dad does actually run the only other newspaper besides the state controlled media.  So the Lovegoods must be doing something right.
---
Herminone is very, very good with crystal memory. she apparently memorizes everything she real (or tries to), its the Fluid thinking that gets her.  She tends to actually believe what she reads as gospel truth.  So basically an honors student. uncreative, but good at regurgitating facts.  She gets better later, but has the printed word as truth as her major religion in the first books.  Things like Harry finding the knowledge they've been looking for for months on the back of a trading card gets to her.  The cliche is people forgetting this and her ending up with creativity on the level of her book  learning skills.... or being little more that an in game cheat guide.
Fudge IS the Sheeple God of the Sheeple Nation.  The Daily Prophet is Holy of Holies.  The NPC cast members with believe anything and everything printed in it... even and especially if radically conflicts with itself.  Even on the very same page.  Often used when Harry is the Head of the Ancient and Noble House(s) of (X, Y, Crowbar) where Harry owns a majority share of and/or buys out the Daily Prophet... the excepted counter is the Ministry countering by using 'legal' bludgeoning or soon to be fired ministry shills to fight back against him counter oppression.
Romance, shippings, and pairings are a giant ball of issues on its own.

[classicdrogn]

the Fudge/Prophet bit - again, pretty much canon. Though the "only other media outlet" thing is leaving out the Wizard Wireless, Witch Weekly and Teen Witch, Potions Quarterly & Transfiguration Today, though probable canonicity of the last few declines.

Luna as the snartest cast member, I don't think I'd call a cliche on its own so much as a subset of the "House stereotypes are accurate, except for Wormtail" canon cliche.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[K sai]

Then again there is the complete opposite of the 'Snape wants to kill Harry' school...

I present to you the 'Alan Rickm... ahem Severus Snape is a tortured misunderstood persona who is secretly an ultra competent wizard and father figure to Harry that uses logic and Elf magic' Cliche. See also 'Severitus'

This is usually combined with Snape having superpowers, an inheritance or some sort of secret that allows him to save Harry from everyone and turn him into the perfect Pureblood Prince while using strict - yet fair and loving - discipline to provide Harry with the boundaries and control he needs while taking on all the people who want to run his life.

The Harry Potter YMMV Tropes page has an extremely comprehensive list of the Harry Potter Cliches/Tropes - Canon or otherwise

[robkelk]

Master Strategist Ron

He is amongst the best chess players in his year...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Compilation so far:...
US Mages integrated with muggles (wait, what?  How is that relevant?  How'd it even come up?  Are there a lot of Harry Potter in America stories?)

There are, actually, more than a few "Harry escapes England after discovering Dumbles is manipulating him/planning his death/hogging all the sherbert lemons" where he ends up in America, and Wizarding America almost always is a "more enlightened" place.   "Integrated with muggles" isn't living in the open, btw -- it's just that wizards tend to live among muggles as muggles, and not isolate themselves physically or culturally.   There is a strong tendency among fan writers to paint Wizarding Britain as the backward child among the magical cultures basically because it is rather crapsack compared to the muggle world, once you get past the sparkles and "ooo wow" factor of being an 11-year-old learning magic.  The thing is, what little we see of non-British Wizarding nations paints them in almost the same light.  I doubt "canon" America would have been much different had Rowling written about it.
  
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

Marriage contracts - like the GoF's involuntary inescapable contract, to get married. Usually to someone Hero hates, all too often requiring a gender change mcguffin or mpreg.

I've always wondered why characters need to go to such lengths to avoid a marriage when episode 22 of Rental Magica explains why two mages would want to marry each other, no matter what they may think of each other as people... Maybe they don't watch anime.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[ECSNorway]

Marriage contracts - like the GoF's involuntary inescapable contract, to get married. Usually to someone Hero hates, all too often requiring a gender change mcguffin or mpreg.

I've always wondered why characters need to go to such lengths to avoid a marriage when episode 22 of Rental Magica explains why two mages would want to marry each other, no matter what they may think of each other as people... Maybe they don't watch anime.

Of course not. They're British Wizards. It's neither British nor Wizarding, even if it's about magic, so it's automatically rubbish.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Judah]

Hmm let's see:

--Dursleys are child beaters and are deliberately molded this way so evil-Dumbles gets a trusting pawn-Harry

--Potter is somehow super-rich but doesn't know it

--magical trunks which turn into small houses on the inside, including potions lab and library ... standard equip for the newHarry! (TM) or self-insert

--students in houses other than Gryfindor have different arrangements, usually single rooms in Slytherin, or house library surpassing school library in Ravenclaw

--Weasley twin created diabolical plans always work

--Wizarding World is super ignorant of modernization, to the point where modern writing utensils, television, and cars are muggle curiosities (this has an Arthur Weasley basis in books, but fanon takes it to the extreme)

--alternatively, any wizard who combines modern technology with magic can easily dominate the wizarding world, ignoring why generations of muggle-borns have not done this

--everyone powerful is an animagus

--parseltongue is so super-unique it has a dark-magic-haxx sub-branch known as 'parselmagic'

--ministry is corrupt and/or stupid, often beyond absurdity

--Dementors can't die, of if they can die are ridiculously hard to kill... often SuperHarry! proves he is super with Dementor destruction

--House Elf magic can be taught to wizards, or is in general superior to normal Wizarding magic (usually for teleportation, have also seen for food conjuration and spying through wards)

--any canon relationship the author doesn't like is from a love potion

--male veela, the standard plot vehicle for harems

--any plot inconsistency in the fic can be explained via a memory charm

--the Veil in the Department of Mysteries leads to whatever alternate world the author wants to do as a crossover

[Bob Schroeck]

Hmm let's see:
--magical trunks which turn into small houses on the inside, including potions lab and library ... standard equip for the newHarry! (TM) or self-insert

Well, this is canon, or nearly so.  We know that Barty Crouch, Jr. owned -- or borrowed from its owner -- a multi-compartment trunk, one compartment of which was big enough and deep enough to use as a cell for Alastor Moody.  The film version of Goblet of Fire is pretty explicit on that -- looking into it is like looking into a room from a hole in high ceiling.

--Wizarding World is super ignorant of modernization, to the point where modern writing utensils, television, and cars are muggle curiosities (this has an Arthur Weasley basis in books, but fanon takes it to the extreme)

This one is very definitely disproven by Draco Malfoy in something like the fourth scene he ever appeared in -- the first flying lesson.  He boasted of having played chicken with a helicopter.  And clearly knew what a helicopter was and what its flight characteristics were like, and expected the other purebloods to know as well.  Arthur's clueless fascination seems a definite odds with this.

--ministry is corrupt and/or stupid, often beyond absurdity

Well, I think this one is canon.  We see examples of both throughout the books, though far less of the "stupid" (that seems to be Fudge's territory alone) and far more of the corrupt (we can start with Lucius Malfoy's influence and the simple existence of Dolores Umbridge, then move on to things like Sirius' lack-of-trial, Harry's "hearing" for underage magic use and the legal shenanigans surrounding it, Barty Crouch breaking his son out of Azkaban, and the various Death Eater sympathizers in an organization that has canon magical means to make sure there are no enemy agents among their number).  The Ministry is corrupt; there's no doubt about it.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.