The Harry Potter Fanfiction Thread

OBHWF?

I really will never understand shipping wars. Liking a pairing more than the others doesn't mean you have to actively dislike the others.

OBHWF is One Big Happy Weasley Family, i.e. the canon ships (Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione).

And it's true, shipping wars are mostly stupid. I have to say I kind of significantly dislike Ron/Hermione, but I'm fine with Harry/Ginny even though my preferred ship in HP fandom is Harry/Hermione. (I try not to judge stories by pairing, usually, since I've seen the most random ones work well.)

I'm fine with the canon ships, though I find Harry/Hermione, Harry/Luna, Neville/Luna, and Neville/Ginny more interesting. (The only canon ship that I particularly don't care for is Luna/Some Guy We Never See, and that's just Word of God, it's not actually in the books. ...unless you count Hermione/Krum. I can't stand Krum in GOF. Reminds me of all the sleazy guys I've met in my life) To be honest, though, however interesting Harry/Hermione is, Ron/Hermione is probably the best thing Rowling could have done, because I can't think of anywhere else compelling to put Ron, and killing him off would just feel mean-spirited. And however interesting Harry/Luna is, Harry/Ginny was probably the best thing Rowling could have done, because even if Luna's a much more interesting character than Ginny, she still doesn't even show up until the fifth book, whereas Ginny had been set up as interested in Harry since her cameo appearance in the first book (and the connection to Ron is a plus, I guess).

Hmm... I think that for Harry/Luna to work out in an AU, Luna would have to be introduced as a recurring character much earlier, Ginny's presence would have to be downplayed, and Ginny would have to pass Tom Riddle's diary to Luna. For Harry/Hermione to work out in an AU, Ginny would have to be played as a kind of tragic, Eponine-ish character, and one of the minor female characters would have to be promoted to the main cast and made into a suitable love interest for Ron.

edited 30th Dec '12 6:02:49 PM by DAStudent

I don't think of Krum as sleazy. I get more of a stereotypical "hard-as-nails stoic Slav with a philosophical side" vibe from him.

I always got the feeling that Krum was a totally okay guy. Just... kind of shallow and uninteresting: being a couple with him means being the Make-Out Kids.

edited 31st Dec '12 2:30:13 AM by TheHandle

I tend to assume he's just kind of shy in public. He and Hermione seem to have some reason to get along enough to go as friends to the ball, and Harry has an indepth chat with him in Deathly Hallows.

It doesn't help that he's intensely out of focus. The only insight into his mind at all is Hermione's account of events that happen offscreen, and Ron's jealousy of course.

There's a lot of leeway into what his mental state is - I get a bit more of a Dogged Nice Guy who's ultimately very blase about romance in general.

But yeah, shipping wars make it such that more often than not romance in fanfics, especially when it comes to Harry Potter, is going to be more grating than written well. And the prevalence of shipping means that most fics are going to ultimately be about ships rather than anything else.

My favorite HP fics (and fics in general) tend to be adventure (or occasionally slice of life) stories where the romance is a part rather than a central focus, like the books themselves, but those are fairly uncommon. Even a decent percentage of adventure fics are written for the sake of enabling a specific ship.

I also really like the concept of time travel, but shipping and/or poor writing ruins that premise more often than not as well.

Granted, with the death of "Reading The Books" fics my interest in HP fics has waned considerably anyways.

I don't read so much HP fanfic, but I tend to like crossovers and timetravel fics.

Anyone know of if there are any good scifi fics?

Hmm. HP with sci-fi? Harder.

Might look into Invincible Technomage, which is a crossover with Marvel and goes a bit into the technological aspect. Also, this is the first part of the HP leg of an enormous crossover AU; it's rather strange, but good.

Already gone through most of Invincible Technomage.

I just reread Goblets Of Fire, and, my gosh! I'm sorry about what I said regarding Krum. My mind built him up as this horrible person, but he's actually a very interesting, sympathetic character, looking back.

Does anyone else violently hate certain Words Of God? I'm particularly talking about the one claiming that no descendant of the Dursleys would ever be magical. I feel it runs counter to a lot of the books' themes.

I don't really care one way or the other, but Petunia is Lily's sister, or so we're led to believe, at any rate. So unless Vernon's packing some serious Anti-Magic in his... y'know... there is a genetic possibility that descendants could be magical.

Unless it's not genetic at all and more of a 'belief' thing, in which case it might make sense. After all, if they refuse to believe and raise their descendants not to believe, then even if somewhere down the line there was magic, when the hell would it ever awaken?

That doesn't really work either, because it's more or less confirmed that Dudley repented and grew up to be a substantially better person than his parents - not the kind who'd prevent magic from developing.

edited 12th Jan '13 6:07:05 PM by DAStudent

Meh, whatevs.

I always kind of figured it was a genetic trait that only expresses itself under certain conditions. Like, lots of wizards and muggles are descended from the Precursor people or whatever it is that makes magic a genetic thing, because the Precursors were around so long ago that like a fifth of Earth's total population could be descended from them, but only mothers exposed to something during pregnancy have magic children. Or only Precursor-descendants mating, regardless of their own magical ability, can produce a viable wizard or witch. Or maybe it has something to do with the environment the kids grow up in; it can't be directly related to being exposed to magic, because otherwise there'd be no Squibs, but maybe you can't have magic if you don't experience something that makes you unlock it. Like tripping a flag event in a visual novel, only baby-themed.

edited 12th Jan '13 6:41:56 PM by FurikoMaru

Saying "no descendant of the Dursleys will ever be magical" makes no goddamned sense. Hypothetical: Dudley has a son, and that son marries a pureblood witch. Is the contention that every single child of such a union will be Squibs, and so on unto eternity? If so, that implies that the Dursleys have some powerful and dominant genetic anti-magic that overrides even the longstanding canon that the children of even one witch or wizard will be witches/wizards the majority of the time. I.e., another setting element that makes no sense whatsoever with the rest of the setting.

I had never heard of this before. Is this actually Word of God? If so, my remaining respect for Rowling just halved.

I tend to believe that the child of a wizard/witch and a Muggle tends to produce a magical child because wizarding genes magically prioritize themselves in procreation. IE, all the sperm cells and egg cells with the magic gene in them jump to the head of the line. Magic is a dominant trait, not a recessive one, and Muggle-born wizards and witches are the result of a mutation, not the result of rare recessive traits. Squibs are not the same thing as Muggles; they're the result of a recessive genetic disorder. So Squibs, unlike Muggles, DO have the "magic" genetic marker, they just also have a Squib genetic marker that makes them magically disabled. There are probably a lot of Muggle Squibs, too, but they'd never know it because they can't use magic in the first place.

As for the Dursleys and Word of God, it used to be on J. K. Rowling's website, but the relevant page now only displays a 404.

Doesn't make sense. Wizarding population is fraction of total population. If Wizarding is genetic dominant, and they've been around a few thousand years, you'd expect them to compose a fair bit of the population. Instead they seem to be less than 1%.

Yeah, but it's explicit in the books that while muggle-born witches or wizards are reasonably common (though presumably only a tiny fraction of total children born to muggles), Squibs from two-magical-parent families are quite rare and a cause for comment. And half-bloods are also implied to be magical in the majority of cases.

Yes, it doesn't make sense. It's Harry Potter. If you want sensible worldbuilding, you're in the wrong place.

It's likely that wizards have high enough death rates to offset the projected takeover of humanity.

Anyone read "The Well-Groomed Mind" yet?

I have read this. It is good.

I figured when she said "I don't think anything magical could survive contact with Vernon Dursley's genes" (or something like that) it was at least partially in jest, or at least not intended to be as serious as it's being taken.

Reposted from the "Crossover Concepts Only You Think Are Good" thread:

Canon Harry Potter (from the epilogue of Deathly Hallows), Canon Harry Potter (from halfway through Philosopher's Stone), MOR Harry Potter, and AVPM Harry Potter all discover portals that lead between different universes. They must defeat Sisyphus Harry Potter, who's finally acquired enough knowledge by going through enough lifetimes to attain godhood and become HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHarry Potter. (Enoby is his Dragon.)

edited 9th Feb '13 6:06:06 AM by TheHandle