Hey everyone. Remember Harry Potter? That ridiculously popular series of children's books that dominated the late nineties and a good chunk of the 2000s? I was a huge fan!
Strange it is, then, that I never really poked my head into the fandom. I guess I was just too young for the internet back then, but this series of books spawned tons and tons of fanfiction. Right now, I would like to look at one such fanfiction that has, for some reason, bizarrely fascinated me for quite some time.
I am referring to The Girl Who Lived, by one Keiran Halcyon. He has a number of works up on fanfiction.net, including stuff that crosses Harry Potter with Stargate SG-1, something that crosses Harry Potter with Assassins Creed, and some Avatar: The Last Airbender thing that tries to be Methods of Rationality.
I'm sure nobody cares about this fic and it's just me who's found it fascinating. Y'see, the basic premise for this is as stated at the beginning of the story: "What would Harry Potter have been like if he was born a girl?"
Now, there are apparently lots of "girl Harry" fics. So what makes this one special? Well, the first is plagiarism. The second is the way that the story takes a really hilariously awful turn. Y'see, the author of this story decided there were a lot of things he didn't like about the series and sought to correct them. Now, there are a lot of faults with the series. Saying you can fix them is a little presumptuous, but not that unreasonable. However, as I said... it gets worse.
Now, before I plunge into this, I think I should say something about Fallout: Equestria. There are lots of things I hate about that story. Seventy-six things, in fact, but here's the deal - this is where I start acting nice to Fallout: Equestria. Why? Because for everything I hate about that story, I can't bring myself to say "this is flat-out bad" (apart from the last act). However much I dislike Littlepip, I never feel I can accuse her of being a Mary Sue. While reading the story I never got the impression that it reflected poorly on its author's character. And to top it all off, Kkat does demonstrate a decent knowledge of how stories work. I mean, Fallout: Equestria's got tons of stuff - there's good worldbuilding, characters with their own personalities and arcs, themes, motifs, tons of emotions n' shit... Y'know... stuff.
And then, of course, there’s plenty of stuff Kkat didn’t do. For example, Kkat didn’t shit all over the source material and characters. Kkat didn’t plagiarize everything in the story. Kkat didn’t write a story that makes me think the author has extremely warped moral values.
Keiran Halcyon, by contrast, demonstrates that he doesn't know anything about storytelling. But hey, let's start on Rose Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
And, to ease the pain, I have in front of me my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Y'see, I'm hoping I can pretend to do an analysis of this thing and pick out how this fails in comparison to the original books. And how it fails in comparison to a lot of other stories and things, too.
The first chapter is titled The Snake, and on reading this, one notices something immediately: it's copied word-for-word from the book, starting with The Vanishing Glass (the first chapter was excised). There is one difference, however - the narrator is Rose Potter herself, meaning our story is presented in first-person. And here I was, thinking that Harry's Wangst in Order of the Phoenix was bad enough as is...
Also, I puzzle at the change in title. I mean, "The Vanishing Glass" is a lot more imaginative than "The Snake." I mean, the other title conjures up a sense of mystery. "The Snake" is like oooh, a snake. Don't tell Indiana Jones or he'll have a big fucking panic attack.
But it's only a few paragraphs in we notice a change. Now, in the book, we have Aunt Petunia nagging Harry to get up and help get breakfast ready, and she says "I want everything perfect on Duddy's birthday." In response, Harry groans, which causes his aunt to snap at him. Here, however, it's different.
Groaned inwardly, thus cutting out two lines. Why the change? Fuck if I know.
The second change comes shortly after. In the original book the narration informs us that Dudley likes to beat Harry up. Rose, on the other hand, does not have this conflict, because at age seven her Muggle teacher gave her martial arts lessons after school due to witnessing the bullying. There are a number of problems with this.
1. The author capitalizes "Primary Schooling" even though he shouldn't.
2. You're expecting me to believe that the guardians who won't buy her a fucking ice cream on a trip to the zoo if they can avoid it are going to let her stay after school every day to take martial arts lessons, which she then uses to break Dudley's arm.
3. You’re telling me that when a teacher finds that a student is being bullied, his response is not to discipline the bully, or contact his parents, or contact the other administrative authorities at the school, but to teach a student how to use physical force against their attackers.
4. It removes a source of conflict from Rose's life.
Let's talk about Harry Potter, shall we? His characterization.
Harry is an extremely bland character. He’s bog-standard average. He isn’t particularly strong, or smart, or anything. He’s a big bland everyman who exists so that the eleven-year-olds reading the series for the first time can connect with him and join him on his big fantastical adventure of magic and excitement in the most wonderful school there ever was.
Bland protagonists are pretty much part and parcel for these kinds of stories. Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Littlepip - they’re simple everyman figures that the audience can quickly identify with. Many of these characters are distinctly average and face substantial disadvantages before getting caught up in the grand Hero’s Journey.
The audience is inclined to sympathize with Harry early on because of his abusive guardians and generally miserable existence, with a few nuggets here and there that there’s something not quite normal - his hair refusing to be cut properly, him inexplicably finding himself on the roof, etc.
Removing this conflict from Rose’s life just gives the audience less reason to care. Seeing Harry’s mistreatment at the hands of the Dursleys makes us want to see him in a better position. But Rose doesn’t have it as bad as Harry. Also, by making her into a fucking ninja at age nine you just make her more ridiculous and less relatable.
So the narrative proceeds as it did in the original stories, with the difference being that Rose feels the need to chime in with her insights. Like the part where Dudley has trouble telling thirty-seven plus two, she thinks ‘’Thirty-nine you ignoramous.’’
So I guess the author’s implication is that if Harry were a girl she’d be really persnickety and obnoxious. Apparently for the longest time people thought the author of this story was a girl because apparently it has a bunch of “GIRL POWAH!” stuff and is laced with misandry. But honestly, if it’s saying that a female version of Harry would be even more insufferable and unpleasant than the male Harry found in canon... well, isn’t that honestly kind of misogynistic?
Then again, the author thought that making Harry a spiteful bint was an improvement.
Then there are some small changes in the list of gifts... instead of “video camera” it’s “cine-camera.” I don’t know if that’s a change from the book or if that’s just because I have the American Sorcerer’s Stone and not the original British Philosopher’s Stone. But one notice a number of edits that basically exist to bring the focus back to Rose - her chiming in on how she disgusted she is with stuff, etc etc.
There’s that part where they debate whether to take her to the zoo for Dudley’s birthday, and the part where Dudley cries. And Rose cracks her knuckles at him threateningly.
Y’know, it’s established that she can break his arm. Why is she trying to intimidate him? He’s not even a fucking problem as it has also been established that he doesn’t beat on her anymore. So... I know other sporkers have said that she’s really the one bullying him, but I kinda imagined that was exaggeration in some respects but... it really isn’t.
I mean, look at this:
It’s quite amazing how shitty this writing is. I mean, that fucking run-on sentence.
and this:
So yeah. Rose is a bully.
So we go through the motions of them going to the zoo and oh look he misspells “believe” as “belive.” He also misspells “seniorita” as “senoirita.” In addition, the author also doesn’t break his paragraphs properly, which leads to confusing dialogue wherein a character will say something and then in the same paragraph ANOTHER character will speak. It’s all the more baffling because the author is plagiarizing shit and seems to have deliberately made the choice to change the paragraph breaks like this. I have no idea why. This story is supposed to be a Fix Fic of sorts, but here it is, retelling the story and literally inserting errors where they didn’t exist.
So they go to the zoo, and there’s the whole deal where Harry talks to the snake and accidentally makes the glass disappear.
But something else occurs. The story isn’t just content with plagiarizing the books, nooooo it feels the need to crib scenes from the movies. For example, in the first movie there’s the bit where Dudley falls into the snake tank and the glass reappears, trapping him inside. The author of this fic decided to copy that scene for his own story. Let’s look at what he wrote.
Note the word “malicious” there. It’s the opening chapter and you want us to associate your main character with “malice”? If this were an anti-hero or a villain protagonist this would be one thing, but somehow I don’t think the author was going for that. I mean, the author does realize that “malice” is bad, right? It’s in the definition? In the etymology? Also, bear in mind that in this story, Rose hasn’t been a victim of Dudley’s bullying in years, and is, in fact, the bully herself. Also, a few things to note:
1. Rose Potter is apparently immediately aware that she made the glass vanish.
2. Rose’s mention of her “good mental discipline.”
3. Dudley at home in a snake cage? He’s compared to a pig, not to a snake.
4. The shitty writing again..
You know, it took three chapters (okay, and a bunch of spoilers) for me to get the inkling that something was wrong about Littlepip. It took another nine chapters for me to be fully repulsed. I didn’t start feeling really alienated from Littlepip until she started murdering people. Rose Potter, by contrast, has nothing going for her at this point, being a bully, and she’s already established as a martial artist with super-strength. Already she manages to be less relateable than a magical lesbian horse.
And so the first chapter ends with Rose Potter babbling a few paragraphs that are kinda the same as the ones from the book, except with the note that Rose’s only friend in the whole wide world is her muggle sensei. I get the distinct impression that I am going to come to hate the word “sensei.”
Comments
. I honestly don't know why I think that, since Nictis is a well-developed character in a fantastic fanfic while Rose just seems like a brat in a poor one, but it was the first thing I thought of.
The difference, of course, is that Nictis is hardly portrayed as being moral at...well, ever.
"I've been there. I've seen all your manipulations. Your little lies. Your sneaky little behind-the-back tricks. Your threats. If I wanted Spark to suffer, all I'd have to do is let you go along, doing your thing. You're a back-stabbing, conniving, soul-sucking witch. And you know what? I may not like him, but even I don't think he deserves something as horrible as you."
If the above describes Rose whatsoever, then I think I've got a pretty good idea of her character. Except that I'm rooting for Nictis, and I doubt I'd be doing the same to Rose.
