Fanfic / Tough Guide to Harry Potter

The Tough Guide to Harry Potter is a fanfiction by Rugi and Gwena. Like its namesake, it is styled like a comedic dictionary, outlining common tropes and turns of phrase in Harry Potter fanfiction. Written during the "Three-Year Summer" between the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, it serves as an excellent reference to prevailing fandom plots, cliches and conventions during that time period.

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This fic includes the following tropes:

• Affectionate Parody: The authors admit in a disclaimer that they love Harry Potter fanfiction, and wouldn't know so much about the genres being spoofed if they hadn't read a lot of them.
• Age Lift: Often applied to Arabella Figg when she's being used as an O.C. Stand-in.
• Alliterative List:
  Lake, the is a spot conducive to cogitation, reserved for rumination, predisposed to pondering (::Rugi tears Gwena away from the key board:: I will be typing now!). Along with thinking (::Rugi glares at Gwena::)
• Angst Coma: Common, but only suffered by certain canon characters (Harry and Hermione) and inevitably fixed with The Power of Love. Tourists are advised not to worry.
• Author Tract: The authors attempt to be neutral, universal, and accessible in writing their guide, but it was written for the exclusively pro-Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny archive Sugarquill.net, which informs the tone of the Guide throughout:
  • When positive depictions of Ron are headlined with the title "I AM THE RON FROM CANON, MY WONDERFULNESS SPEAKS FOR ITSELF", it's clear the authors of the Guide are somewhat partial to Ickle Ronniekins.
  • Many extremely common pairings of the day, such as Harry/Hermione and Draco/Ginny, are given only cursory coverage, with the authors noting that they consulted outside sources for the ins and outs of the pairings.
  • Only one slash pairing is covered in detail, and it is Remus/Sirius, which was endorsed by the editors of the Sugar Quill. (Granted, it was by far the most popular slash pairing in the fandom at the time.)
  • Written in a time before anyone knew what the Order of the Phoenix even was, the authors are not shy about their distaste for the many trials and conferences involving the Order in some capacity that was common in "epic" fics of the time.
• Author Vocabulary Calendar. The source of many OFTs (Official Fanfiction Term). "When singing to an infant, you croon."
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Often the thing that renders Harry catatonic, when it's not an Angst Coma, will be whatever he ends up doing to defeat Voldemort, leaving him to be healed by the Power of Love or some kind of miraculous magical medical breakthrough concocted by Hermione and/or Snape in post-war fics.
• Byronic Hero: Durmstrang students are inevitably mature and intriguing characters whose deep accent indicates their internal struggle.
• Cardboard Prison: Azkaban is described as such, with the Guide mocking the notion that Death Eaters can apparently escape so easily. Note this was written before the fifth book featured a mass Azkaban breakout.
• The Cassandra: Lily will have doubts about trusting Pettigrew, but she will be tragically ignored.
• The Chosen One: Bearing in mind that this is before Harry was explicitly made one in Book Five, Lily sometimes ended up becoming this through a prophecy about her being the woman fated to give birth to the "hero who will push back the darkness." This inevitably ended up with her getting kidnapped by Voldemort and possibly subjected to Attempted Rape in order to prevent this from happening in Marauders Era fics.
• Chromosome Casting: Referred to internally as "Female Characters, Lack Thereof". Their "estimate" is that 75% of the prominent characters in the canon are male, and 25% are female, and that many fic writers seek to remedy this, most often by means of a self-insert (or a stand-in for same). As the Guide was compiled before the release of the fifth book, Luna Lovegood is conspicuous in her absence, and the Death Eaters are treated very much as a boys' club as this predates the introduction of Bellatrix Lestrange. Nymphadora Tonks, another prominent female character introduced in Book 5, is also absent.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Many authors use the Cruciatus curse as a writing technique so they can avoid having to research less abstract tortures.
• Cool Big Sis: A common variant of Ginny's characterization. In those fics, she essentially exists to comfort lovelorn protagonists, patch up their romantic troubles, and press them into wearing sexy clothing for the Yule Ball.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Hagrid's entry describes him as being far less prominent in fanfic than in canon, with the authors speculating that fic writers are intimidated by the prospect of having to include his Funetik Aksent.
  • Harry himself is rarely a protagonist- he generally exists so that other characters can have adventures healing his wounds/rescuing him from abusers/following his defeat of Voldemort.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Invoked in the entries on the characters most frequently subjected to this, namely Draco himself as well as Snape. The "Sort of Good Draco" described is basically Leather Pants Draco incarnate; he's not really a good guy, but he's hot and that makes it okay.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Guide says that Voldemort will be treated as such, with the role of Big Bad more often assigned to Lucius Malfoy.
• Hate Sink: Lucius Malfoy's entry describes him as a thoroughly loathsome character who exists to have no redeeming qualities.
• The Hedonist: Lucius Malfoy, since he is apparently mostly characterized as hosting orgiastic "Dark Revels" at his manor house.
• Held Gaze: The absence of these with a female character generally indicate that Draco will be evil in that particular fic.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Multiple entries in the Guide are devoted to original characters (overwhelmingly female to counter-act the Female Characters, Lack Thereof) and how they interact with the canon characters (especially in a romantic manner).
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Zigzagged. Pregnancy occurs "when it is most inconvenient for everyone involved" or when "when it is SO convenient that it will cap the tour in a state of perfect marital bliss". It is also 100% guaranteed to happen if rape is involved.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: The "Severus meets Perky" type of tours.
  She brings a breath of fresh air into his dismal life. We don’t really know what Perky gets from the exchange.
• A Million Is a Statistic: The entry on rape indicates that it's only important when it happens to main characters. When Lucius Malfoy's "Dark Revels" feature rape committed against numerous background characters, it "can be considered a sort of background noise or theme music to the main action of the plot. It sets an appropriately horrifying mood for dealing with death eaters and other such villains."
• Nominal Importance:
  Names or lack thereof are a good indication of an acquaintance’s life expectancy.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The authors wryly note that many writers (or "tour guides") are American and make little attempt to have their characters speak in British dialects, with Ron usually being the token exception to this.
• O.C. Stand-in: The characters of Arabella Figg, Ginny Weasley, and Blaise Zabini are described as existing to fulfill this purpose, since not much was known about them in canon at the time.
• A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: Lucius Malfoy's "Dark Revels" are debauched orgies, complete with Gratuitous Rape committed against random kidnapped victims.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Invoked in Ron's entry, where depictions of his character are sorted according to how much the given fic's writer likes him. Writers who hate Ron will inevitably depict him as this.
  • Most Guides depict Cho Chang as an angry and vengeful girl who blames Harry for Cedric's death or a glory-seeking Gold Digger.
• invokedSelf-Fanservice: Hermione's hair will not be tangled or unmanageable, as in canon, but smooth and "just curling at the ends".
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Dumbledore somehow finds the time to hook up lonely students and teachers, sometimes together.
    We will try to believe that he has his reasons.
  • James and Lily in Marauders Era fics where they're already together will often feature them as a Beta Couple to the main ship. An already together Ron and Hermione in Canon Era fics will do the same thing, but specifically for Harry and Ginny, unless Ron hasn't gotten over his "Big Brotherly Overprotectiveness" of her.
• Smells Sexy: The invokedfanon version of Snape smells "spicy, piney, or resinous". Hermione's hair is scented like "vanilla, strawberries, apples or violets".
• Urban Legend Love Life: Harry often develops one of these in post-graduation fics where he becomes a professional Quidditch player after defeating Voldemort and leaving Hogwarts.
• Uncool Undies: Tourists are advised that no-one wears tighty-whitey briefs, and that boxers with Quidditch motifs make amusing gifts for a boyfriend because they are so uncool.
• Wicked Cultured: All Slytherins, good or evil, have had an extensive classical education in things like Latin and runes. This enables Enemy Mine plots in which Hermione must team up with Draco or Snape to decode a scroll/Find the Cure!/heal someone's coma.
• Women Are Wiser: The Marauders' Distaff Counterparts will not include a female Pettigrew.

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