The Harry Potter Fanfiction Thread

Say that it's just Dumbledore, then.

Dumbledore, who has forgotten more about magic than most people will ever learn. Dumbledore, who, when compared to an Auror who'd had an excellent performance on his NEWT and who had become recognized enough to be the minister's personal guard, made him look like a child waving a toy wand around.

If this guy can't waltz around doing whatever the hell he likes and leaving absolutely no trace in anyone present that he was ever there, then you're doing it wrong.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

To be honest, half of that was directed at this thread.

Oh God! Natural light!

Just because people disagree and argue does not mean people don't get along.

We're all mature enough as adults to not engage in petty flamewars and fling insults at each other like children.

I do wonder why it's so common for people to think 'getting along' means 'agreeing on anything and everything every time'.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

And part of that skill means never tipping his hand when it's not necessary.

It's certain he left no traces, and any good spy can tell you, the key is to do so by not letting secrets get out unnecessarily in the first place. That means everything's done via need-to-know, instead lining up battalions of ground crew and mass memory-wiping them. He is very skillful, but he is still only one man; much easier not to waste time trying to chase down every ground crewmen who accidentally saw Something Man Was Not Meant To Know, and prevent them from seeing it in the first place.

Which means Powers' Law still holds. Dumbledore has better things to do than trying to alter the memories, conclusions, and written minutes of high-level meetings; easier just to keep the number of participants small and to enforce secrecy that way.

edited 6th May '15 12:09:45 PM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

I don't think that, but that discussion was starting to grate.

I suppose it's not important.

Oh God! Natural light!

I do have to wonder.

What is even the point of throwing in the HP universe if you're not going to do anything with it?

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

He's dropping a giant fire-monster on a pair of German cities. That would count as doing something in most people's minds.

You're missing his point; you can do really, truly crazy things that have amazing real-world impact during wartime. But that doesn't mean the people doing them have to understand the purpose or the impact of what they're doing. It's safe bet that very few of the people who worked on things like coding machines understood what the machines were doing or how ridiculously important it was they do their jobs well constantly (otherwise they wouldn't have done them badly so much, which we know since coding badly lead to a lot of people on the other side breaking them), but it was. The messages about the bombing of Hiroshima meant nothing to the code clerks who handled them; "Able, Line 1, Line 3" etc. But they meant everything to the history of the world.

People can be part of great events, or even deploy incredibly advanced and effective weaponry (FIDO, an aerial homing torpedo that entered service in 1943, but to the end of its service life the pilots who used it weren't told what it was, just when to use it) without the least bit of understanding.

edited 6th May '15 4:33:48 PM by Night

Nous restons ici.

And what difference does dropping a fire monster on top of a city make, when the city is left in the same state by being firebombed?

My point is: What is the purpose of using wizards, if you're not gonna have them do anything that is unique to them?

edited 6th May '15 6:41:10 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

Because JKR told only the barest outlines of wizarding WWII: Dumbledore vs Grindelwald, Western Allies versus Germany. (The Soviet Union would be a different story: again the accusation of JKR being Anglo-centric would apply here.) There's potentially a great story to be told there, and the story would only be strengthened by carefully mixing in real-world events. Maybe it'd even be enough to help to explain the configurations of power that led to Voldie seizing control three decades after Grindelwald's defeat.

---

Breaking from the subject a little (but remaining on the subject of Anglo-centricity), I think there may be room in the Potterverse for some fourth-wall-hopping that would still make canonical sense. In the different language editions of the Harry Potter books, spells are rendered differently. Take Stupefy: the H.P. Wiki tells me that in Spanish that's Desmaio or Desmaius, in German Stupor, in Japanese 麻痺せよ!.

I think that it would make some sense for that to apply in-universe as well as out. Not every wizarding tradition draws on Latin, after all, and it'd only raise more questions than it'd answer for, say, an Australian aboriginal spellcaster who has never heard a word of the Germanic languages in his life, to slay his enemies by bellowing at them in English to be stunned. (Spellcasting is explicitly more than just pointing a stick and saying a funny-sounding word, after all...)

edited 6th May '15 8:28:01 PM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Random possible thoughts for A Buddy Cop Story

The 1990s-era Clinton "cruise missile diplomacy" included at least one attempt to kill Voldemort or one of his allies. (Hey Sabre, got an opinion? '96 strikes in Southern Iraq are my only good option I think. The '98 strikes are too late, and Serbia was hit for the first time in '95, which falls outside my story.)

At least some of what was blamed on The Troubles was actually Death Eaters during the first go-round.

The Great Depression and Prohibition-era violence provided cover for the Wizarding Civil War in America, which was ultimately the bloodiest war in Wizarding history.

Nous restons ici.

re: cruise missile strike timing: sounds about right, if somewhat overt, and it's contingent on what Voldie is doing in Iraq. So far as I can tell other air/missile campaigns fall well outside the timeframe.

...wait, on second thought, my imagination is providing some answers, and now I'm regretting going down this train of thought.

(Of course, relatively obvious option: second round of unrest in Balkans starting 1998 attributed to Voldie's death and subsequent power vacuum.)

edited 17th May '15 10:48:54 AM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

...

I'm actually wondering why so many people think Harry's name isn't, well, Harry.

It's the name he answers to, it's the name everyone knows him for, it's his name. It's not a diminutive. It's his name. His name is Harry. Not Harrison. He's not the son of the leader of armies. He's Harry.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

...People think that?

edited 18th May '15 4:47:36 PM by KarkatTheDalek

Oh God! Natural light!

Elaborate.

Nous restons ici.

There's not much to elaborate upon.

I read plenty of bad fanfic. Call it Bile Fascination.

A lot of them give Harry the name 'Harrison' or 'Hadrian' or basically anything to turn Harry's every day common name into something more exotic. It typically pops up in fics in which Harry is on the Slytherin side.

I like the fact that Harry and Tom Riddle both have such common names. Because it reinforces the fact that nobody saw Voldemort coming (because who could've thought a guy named 'Tom' would turn out to be the biggest and baddest Big Bad ever?) and that Harry is really just a normal guy (which... he actually is).

edited 18th May '15 6:47:45 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

I hope the fics in question are the sort that manage to exaggerate how awful the Dursleys are. Because they thought "Harry" was a nasty, common sort of name as well.

You know what's sadly lacking from the Potterverse, so far as I know? A famous and mighty wizard named Dick.

Took me a few seconds to get that one.

Of course they are.

The only way to make their 'hero' look even remotely palatable is by putting him next to people who are even more evil than the result of Activision and EA having a child and then that child getting together with Ubisoft to produce the Antichrist of publishers.

edited 19th May '15 11:06:42 AM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

It was kinda obvious to me.

Don't forget Konami being their Godfather.

edited 19th May '15 12:14:08 PM by SaintDeltora

"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!

At this rate you're going to run out of triple-A games to play.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

We still have Bioware and Blizzard. And Suda51, if you like that thing. Also whatever creates Trails In The Sky.

I'm just talking Publishers. And there are cool publishers out there. The problem is that the big name publishers kind of suck major balls and are all around terrible at their jobs. Hanlon's Razor at least tells me to believe it is incompetence, because otherwise they have to be intentionally trying to kill the game industry.

And yes, I am of the mind that big name publishers do far more damage to the game industry than pirates could ever do.

@Saint Deltora

Let's be fair here: Konami is just plain not interested in games anymore. They're intentionally trying to kill off their games division. That's the only thing that can justify just how much they neglect it and the most epically stupid move of all time, firing Hideo Kojima or pissing him off enough to cause him to quit. There's also the fact that Jim Sterling personally offered to give one of their Silent Hill games marketting out of his own free will, voluntarily, without asking for cash in return, and they turned him down. Yes, I know he's a smug and fat jackass, but he's got a large fanbase at The Escapist.

Put simply, Konami is not like Activision, EA or Ubisoft. They're not evil.

They're just colossaly stupid.

edited 19th May '15 1:34:05 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

What about a complacent mainstream public, with very reliable tastes, and even more reliable pockets?

It's like Hollywood movies, where casting someone Middle Eastern as Moses, as opposed to a white star, is allegedly too much of a risky move.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Ah, well. If Konami's game division is killed, at least I don't have to deal with PES anymore.

In case if you are wondering, I hate PES. Maybe the only game I could hate passionately, with my heart and soul.

edit: Also, if Konami's game division is killed, then we can reasonably sure that EA Sport division has made some Human Sacrifice. I mean, their only major competitor is killed, there's no way it could happen in a capitalist world without some kind of black magic.

edited 19th May '15 2:02:21 PM by RBomber

When will they make a game that gives you the experience of being an individual football player?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.