Can someone tell me why slashy PWP fics are allowed to be cut, but cult indoctrination weapons get to stay?
Since it is extremely unlikely, now, that "A Peccatis" will ever be finished, I will supply an outline that the author published on his LJ site when *he* thought he might not get around to finishing it. Comments by me are in [].
A Peccatis – Outline of Upcoming Chapters
- Wizengamot questionnaire. First Wizengamot lesson. Felix Felicius hunt brings him back to Ricky. Kingsley Shacklebolt killed. (Done)
- Call from Harry. Assault investigation in Essex shows depth of depression for wizarding world. Approached for Wizengamot influence already. Diary entry. (Done)
- First day on the Wizengamot. Attempt on Weasleys. (Done)
- Visiting Weasleys in St. Mungo’s. Arthur lost. [Canon Violation.] Ron and Hermione’s marriage is not doing well. Goes home to find heaps of owls. (Done)
- Another lesson w. Draco [Malfoy]. Wizarding world outside DA, perspective on why DA happened.(Done)
- Splitting the day, call from Hannah, how does Justin [Finch-Fletchley] do it? (Done)
- McGonagall killed. [Moved down several chapters, combined with three other killings at Hogwarts.]
- Investigation at Hogwarts. We’ve got to be looking at Hermione. Harry refuses. (Done)
- Checking in at the Loch. Seamus is going stir-crazy. Harry is at last resort, authorizes him out. Goodbye to Neville. (Done, some elements moved down, and a rewrite that "explains" that the Loch's restraints no longer work on Seamus since he married Susan. ???)
- Wizengamot. Something weird going on w. Justin and Draco (Done)
- Diggle killed. Sue approaches Neville to go hunting for Seamus, won’t let him go so easily.(Done)
- Luna connected to black market FF via [Mundungus Fletcher]. Offers insight on various motives for Dumbledore. (Done, but moved up a chapter or two)
- [Mundungus] killed. (Done)
- Seamus resurfaces, helps Anthony traces diaries to Aberforth[, who has been Faking the Dead]. (Done)
- Interrogation of Aberforth, mystery of diaries solved. [It was Aberforth, who was able to access the Secret Cache because he had the blood of at least three of the cachers on his hands from moving wounded/dead DA members - and he decided Harry and Neville Needed To Know The Awful Truth about what a manipulative SOB his brother Albus really was. Does this remind you of anyone? ;-) ]
- Susan/Seamus reunited. (Done)
- Hermione spotted, argument, return, Aberforth dead [one of FOUR murders at Hogwarts, including McGonagall and HAGRID - a BLATANT Canon Violation!], Hermione arrested [End of story so far, no progress in nearly 3 years.]
[Planned chapters]
- Wizengamot reaction to all of this. Draco.
- Harry must cope with Hermione as killer, full Dumbledore diaries
- Hannah returns
- Hermione going to go to trial. Representing self, not afraid.
- Wizengamot high intrigue. Things not going well for Unificationists. Justin nearing end of rope. Draco playing both sides.
- Things slowly settling back to some kind of normal, preparing to separate, S/S going to get paper divorce to spare her fund while still living together, various friends falling on different sides of the fence.
- Button pushed. SAS attack on the Leaky, Justin just manages to avert airstrike on Hogwarts, on the run for treason, hidden in wilds around LC
- All hell broken loose on the Wizengamot
- Going through the wreckage of the Leaky, is anywhere safe?
- Draco/Justin/Seamus alliance revealed, Justin turns himself in
- Neville definitely wants to separate, decision made
- Justin’s court martial, truth exposed
- Wizengamot split, wizarding world coming to pieces, end of the world as we know it
- Anthony [Goldstein] found dead, clues lead to Resurrection Stone
- Anthony reveals truth about culling magic, says good-bye to Li
- Hermione’s trial
- [Elphias] Doge revealed [as the real "Nevermore" serial killer, out to preserve the "purity" of Dumbledore's reputation - like Aberforth, he was Faking the Dead and The Dog Was the Mastermind], Hermione exonerated, Doge suicide
- Justin still fighting for unity. There is no price too high for what is right. Echoes of Anthony. Definition of heroism is doing what is right over what is safe. Is Neville becoming someone who would have ignored Hogwarts? Can they reclaim their lives, or must they make new ones? Are they still being shaped too much by the past?
- What is right? Neville visits parents graves, says goodbye to his world
- Final question; what will US do? Vigil for answer. It's in.
- Wizengamot. The vote. Neville uses that ‘influence’ for the first time.
- Announcement by Justin in Parliament, simulcast over the WWN. The wizarding world is a secret no more.
- Epilogue; 9 years later, bring Daydverse full circle to intersect with JKR DH epilogue. [Like hell you can!]
The page is starting to need tidying-up, as some tropes are general and some are specific to just one of the three stories.
Update: So I went ahead and did it. Hope it reads more coherently now.
Edited by Maven
While Did Not Do The Research is not a trope, it can and should be put in subtropes. And these are not YMMV.
- Did Not Do The Research: Lots of things:
- Scotland does not have a Himalayas-like climate, as claimed when a Demiguise farm is revealed. Also, demiguises are described as wild and ape-like in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them; the fic treats them as some sort of invisible domestic sheep.
- Marks & Spencer is not the stuffy and upper-class department store presented it the fic, when in reality M&S is closer to J.C. Penney. The author might have confused it with Harrod's, which is that stuffy and upper-class, and more.
- In one scene, Neville and several characters use a National Express East Coast train as part of a journey to Gretna Green. In 1997/98, the route from King's Cross to the North was controlled by Great North Eastern Railway...and the far more convenient way to get to Gretna Green by train is via the line from Euston to Carlisle.
- The blood transfusion in Chapter 10 of DAYD
, done without any attempt at cross-matching bloodtypes, and with two people donating blood, was quite risky, with about a 35% chance Colin would die from bloodtype incompatibility. Now, a 65% survival rate may not sound so great, but it isn't that bad for a dire emergency, and it is justified in that none of the characters are trained medics.
- The commonest blood type in the British Isles is O, which can donate to anybody, followed closely in England by A (not so closely in Scotland, which averages 51% O to England's 47%). Ernie is Scots and Neville, as a Yorkshireman, is from the north of England, meaning that there's a good chance one or both of them are Type O. (There's also a 3% chance that Colin is Type AB, which can receive from anybody.) The Rh factor seldom causes problems unless an Rh- recipient has been previously sensitized by an incorrectly cross-matched transfusion or by an Rh+ pregnancy (neither of which applies to Colin). These odds help explain why early blood transfusion experiments were successful up to about half the time, with very primitive techniques and no real knowledge of what they were doing.
- What's especially annoying about it, in retrospect, is that in A Peccatis, the healers are clearly shown (in a flashback to the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts) as borrowing Muggle medical supplies and techniques, up to and including advanced triage, with no real in-story attempt at explanation. WTF???
- Sluagh is set in 2003. The Troubles ended in 1998. It did take a while for things to really calm down, but the depiction of the grimy, lawless, war-torn Belfast in Sluagh is, quite simply, anachronistic at best.
I think they'll have to be several different flavors of "Artistic License", which is a polite way of saying something is all screwed up.
The blood transfusion thing is somewhat subjective and attracts Natter, so I'm going to put it back on the YMMV page.
Edited by Maven
It had to happen. Somebody scammed the scammer. He's now caterwauling about "his" DAYDverse Wikia material being sold as an e-book on Amazon.com, and swearing up, down, sideways, forward and backward that he knew nothing about it.
Possible, since according to Wikipedia this sort of thing has been going on at Amazon for about five years. But given the author's track record, there remains room for reasonable doubt.
Update: it's also available as a Nook on Barnes & Noble.com, credited to "Source Wikia" - which isn't a publishing house but seems to mean "taken from a set of Wikia pages". This has...interesting implications. It could mean that someone's been shopping the material around, or it could mean that nothing on a Wiki is safe from being pirated.
Edited by Maven
A Peccatis seems to be underway again, although I have seen most of the "latest" chapter more than a year ago on the author's Live Journal pages. I'm not sure I like where it's going - it looks like it will take out all of the previous generation before we find out Whodunnit.
Please let's not have any comments on the main or even YMMV pages about the author's personal life - if we consistently Nattered about such things, the pages on Richard Wagner and other creators with unsavory private lives would just be filled with cruft.
Main: Just the relevant tropes.
YMMV: Arguments over the quality of the work(s).
Discussion: All the other stuff, until and unless someone says to shut it down.
Edited by Maven Hide / Show Replies
The thing about other creators with unsavoury private lives, though, is that said lives aren't so intimately linked to their work. Wagner, for instance, did not crib the Ring Cycle from the mythology of the cult he'd previously been heading. Reality Subtext and similar tropes are usually fair game for the main page - it's just that Thanfiction's Reality Subtext is a tad more... well... batshit insane than most.
Edited by Iaculus What's precedent ever done for us?
You should read more about what Wagner worked into the Ring Cycle (and other operas) from his private life - it would probably amaze you.
I don't doubt in the least that there's a seriously disturbed individual behind it all - I just don't think it is seemly or appropriate to drag it into the main pages.
In any case, isn't it more of an "Irreality Subtext", if there can be said to be such a thing?
Edited by Maven
Speaking of "batshit insane"...would you believe he had the brass nads to write an essay on "Child Abuse in the Daydverse" and cram it with so much Natter that it wound up being useless and meaningless? And still claim to have "done a lot of research into the topic"?
- rolleyes
After the recent shocking events in California [1] I think we can reasonably assume that A Peccatis is a Dead Fic - not because of Author Existence Failure (he survived), but because Author Has Too Much Real Life Shit to Deal With.
He was the one who got shot in the foot, was he? Or were the victims friends/relations?
Edited by Iaculus What's precedent ever done for us?
He was shot in the foot (or ankle), that is verified. Three other people are dead - and that has been verified also. It is totally unclear whether Thanfiction was an innocent bystander, an unintentional catalyst, or in any way a cause of what happened. (I tend to think he accidentally catalyzed a dangerously explosive situation, which is a middle of the road position.)
There's apparently a VERY long, VERY convoluted and VERY crazy backstory behind it all - and another thing that is absolutely unclear is to what extent, if any, he had succeeded in putting it behind him, and what effect, if any, the insistence on tying his past to his tail like a string of tin cans had on him and the people closest to him.
If you really want to know more, try Web searches on "Victoria Bitter", "Thanfiction", and "Turimel". It's very unpleasant reading and left me with the clear impression that neither of them is playing with a full deck. (And by "neither" I mean Blake and Turimel.)
Edited by Maven
Hold on, what does Turimel have to do with anything? Apart from being a crazy stalker with a possibly-justified grudge who's currently gloating over this news in a decidedly unseemly manner, I mean.
What's precedent ever done for us?
I'm not sure, but I think Turimel was the one who exposed "Andrew Blake/Thanfiction", as "Amy Player/Victoria Bitter/this and that bizarre alias". She's been going all Inspector Javert on him for years, getting him fired from jobs (or digging up and publicizing old dirt that gets him fired from jobs), causing him to feel like he has to move on, etc. And she's also a blatant transphobe, absolutely refusing to refer to him by the proper pronoun (on the specious and flimsy excuse that "this may also be part of the scam"). Yes, she's now gloating obscenely that she "knew something like this would happen some day". It's really disgusting.
As for Mr Blake, I rather suspect some combination of bipolarity, schizophrenia, and/or Dissociative Identity Disorder - but I'm not a shrink.
Neither one has said more than a word or two, if that, about the third victim, who it seems merely had the misfortune to be employed in the house as caretaker to the (presumed) shooter's elderly disabled father. I find that distasteful on both sides.
I don't want to get into an edit war, but I think the inclusion of the Ron The Death Eater trope is unwarranted, so I got rid of it. If general consensus is that is should be there, please re-add it, but I think, at the very least, some discussion is called for.
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I'd dispute it for different reasons. Yes, Snape is much more evil in this fic (up to and including trying to assassinate some of his students), but judging by the author's comments, this seems less a deliberate attempt to character-bash and more a case of accidentally going way overboard.
What's precedent ever done for us?
I remember once reading an... well, essay may not be the right word, but a discussion of sorts by Thanfiction about why he wrote Snape the way he did. Unfortunately, I can't seem to track it down any more, which is a shame, because it made a lot of sense (to me, at any rate).
Found it! Here's the essay the author wrote to explain his choices with Snape's character. http://daydverse.livejournal.com/107539.html
Oh dearie me. Yep, that's classic Ron the Death Eater there. Particularly regarding its assumption that Snape was personally responsible for the actions of a bunch of rabid Death Eaters put under his command by Voldemort. And speaking as someone who's had nasty (or at least abrasive) teachers in the past, there's a big difference between threatening to put down a student's pet and actually trying to kill a student via poison.
Edited by Iaculus What's precedent ever done for us?
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Alternative writeup of one of the Did Not Do The Research bullet-points, since the page is currently too big for me to edit myself:
- People cannot survive a hundred lashes, and then have it left untreated for days, without dying. This could possibly be justified by wizards' canonically superhuman durability (see also, Neville surviving being dropped out of a window without a scratch at the age of ten), were it not for the fact that blood loss from far lesser injuries is treated as a serious threat at other points in the story.
I'm afraid this is an example of Hollywood Durability. Ever see a 1950's movie called "Botany Bay"? There shouldn't have been much left of the hero after what he was put through - not only mercilessly flogged, but keelhauled *twice over* and then confined in a leaky brig with icy seawater constantly seeping in - he should have been shark-bait.
Somebody else quibbled hard about the believability of the "blood transfusion" scene with Neville and Ernie both donating to Colin. The odds are nowhere near as good as Thanfiction purportedly claimed (that link is broken and the FAQ is GONE), but not quite as bad as the other person said. Ideally it's best to have an exact match, but in a real emergency (which this was) Type O will generally do the job long enough to get the victim somewhere he can be stabilized. And Type O is by far the commonest - given their ethnic backgrounds, Neville had just under and Ernie just over a 50% chance of being that type. (Ernie might even have known his blood type if it was required as part of the wedding preparations, though he wouldn't have understood its significance unless a Muggle explained it to him.) Complications like Rh and Kell factors usually matter only when the victim is female and negative for one or both of them, and the main risk isn't to *her*, but to any children she may later have.
There's one other little quirk to the odds: in the unlikely event that Colin was type AB (it's by far the rarest), he could receive from *anyone*. (Cecil B. De Mille Failed Medical Boards Forever with exactly this situation in "The Greatest Show on Earth".)
It's still a helluva reach, though, and a single donor - preferably Ernie - would have been better. And better still if he and Susan had gotten their blood typed and he had asked the Muggle medical person what "Type O" meant. Chekhov's Gun, anyone?
You might want to amend the page with some of that yourself, then.
What's precedent ever done for us?
I ran the odds as best I could, not being a professional statistician, and posted the results. Seems the previous troper had it just about backward - though I may be overlooking something and the possibility of Epic Fail is still disturbingly high.
I also removed the gratuitous slam and broken link - Than's estimate did seem excessively optimistic (he's not a statistician either), but there was one 19th century experimenter who had a survival rate of 5 out of 10.
Fair enough. Looks a little dense, and could possibly be streamlined, but I lack the relevant knowledge to do so myself, so I'm cool with leaving it as is.
What's precedent ever done for us?
So it gets moved to YMMV, which is probably where it belonged in the first place. No harm, no foul.
Yeah, I only noticed that a bit after I posted on this discussion. Unfortunate that those little red dots don't always show up for YMMV pages.
What's precedent ever done for us?
Vandalism? We're now claiming the following are VANDALISM?
Here's what's said:
- Hatedom: As can be seen by frequent vandalism of this page, and occasional vandalism of the autor's photobucket account and a few other places by people complaining about fics they didn't read.
Here's the supposed vandalism removed in the edit that added that:
- Rape as Drama: It's never explicitly stated, but the bruises and bite marks that Crabbe and Goyle left all over Lavender's body would lead you to this conclusion.
- This work treats assault on Lavender just as seriously as most of its other material, and that episode doesn't play a major role in the rest of the story. So the trope about playing up a sexual assault for dramatic value doesn't apply here.
- That it doesn't play a major role in the rest of the story heightens its Rape as Drama credentials. Why is it in there? It serves no purpose in the story, hence, it's added solely for dramatic impact. Hell, the description of Rape as Drama says "All too often, it's a case of the Disposable Woman becoming the Distressed Damsel (or even getting Stuffed into the Fridge) to motivate the male vigilante" - and that's exactly what happens. It sets Neville and Co. off on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and then, a man having solved it for her, it never comes up again. At least the much more graphic, several-chapter-long rape and torture of Hermione in Slaugh is the main point of the story, though that fits under other tropes.
- This work treats assault on Lavender just as seriously as most of its other material, and that episode doesn't play a major role in the rest of the story. So the trope about playing up a sexual assault for dramatic value doesn't apply here.
- Hollywood Homely: In the books, both Neville and Hannah are a bit pudgy. In DAYD, Hannah's supermodel hotness was concealed by the school robes, which made her - but none of the other girls - look fat, and Neville replaces all of his fat with muscle, helped by him being starved for weeks as part of a punishment.
- Jerk Sue/Marty Stu: Your Mileage May Vary, but Neville at least has many aspects of these. Some of the things he does include:
- Both he and Colin think that when Colin and Dennis Creevey go home for the holidays, they'll find their parents murdered, but he doesn't bother to stop them or give them any protection. After they go home and find their parents murdered, the Creeveys go on the run, and end up hiding at their muggle friend's house. Neville and Co. go to rescue them, Colin is bleeding to death from being splinched, but they escape, with the muggle helping as best he can as Death Eaters begin breaking in. Despite him being right there next to them, they don't bother to take said muggle with them. Later, as Colin recovers from nearly dying, Neville berates him for having nearly died while being part of Neville's grand cunning plan, to the point that Colin breaks down in tears.
- Is the personal target for Snape's murder schemes, even while his grand tactical genius means that he's made it that noone can ever, under any circumstances, find out or tell anyone who's in Dumbledore's Army using a New Powers as the Plot Demands version of the Fidelius charm.
- Becomes instantly self-confident, delivering a speech at the start that wins everyone over to the DA instantly.
- And if that's not bad enough, in this one-shot, Ginny outright states that Harry Potter wasn't a hero, and she made a mistake choosing him over the true hero, Neville Longbottom.
- Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male: Hannah Abbot (Neville's future wife) tries to set him on fire and then throws several potted plants at him (one of which suffocates him to unconsciousness, while she does nothing to stop it). All this because of a bad case of Poor Communication Kills leading her to believe he was making out with Ginny—even though Hannah and Neville aren't even dating. This is supposed to be justified by the "fact" that girls are just crazy like that.
- Critical Research Failure: On TWO OCCASIONS, Thanfiction has rape victims, shortly after their rape, comforted by sexualised acts initiated by men. It's a throwaway line in DAYD itself, where, just after her rape is avenged * by the men, Lavender is found having sex with her boyfriend. The one shot More Realer is worse: In DAYD's sequel, Sluagh, Hermione spends about 5 chapters being tortured and raped, described in graphic detail, finally setting herself on fire to escape (she got better). In the one-shot, Ron basically forces himself on her, and she accepts this, because up to that point, he'd been patient about her request not to have sex. She's flinching away, but he just keeps massaging her shoulders, applying sensual kisses, and all sorts of things, all without her consent. Ugh!
Even if you had a case about small parts of the language there, it's not vandalism, and there's no way you should be deleting it all and attacking the people who added it on the main page itself
Edited by Maven Hide / Show Replies
Further, compare this page, after the whitewash, to the page on Harry Potter - It seems that Canon can be criticised, but if you add anything perceived as critical to a Fan Fic page, you will face Internet Backdraft.
Reverted some entries, and edited others to be less ranty and more in-keeping with the wiki's (admittedly loose) standards.
What's precedent ever done for us?
Neville's not quite that much of a Jerk Stu. Yes he does carry the Idiot Ball re: the Creevey boys getting a Nasty Christmas Surprise, but Colin lets him think that he (Colin) has his options all planned out, while juggling a whole lot of distracting information at the same time. (Any mention of Bellatrix Lestrange, in any context, is at that point still enough to give Neville a short-circuit between the ears. And Colin dropping the bombshell that she's his aunt by marriage....) Neville has enough wits left to make Colin promise to contact him immediately if anything is or goes wrong - but both of them mistakenly think Colin can handle it, and he can't.
As for the Muggle, even if they had the time to think of it (Hannah almost did) and were willing to take the unprecedented risk (no one knows if Muggles can be Side-Along Apparated or if they'd be Splinched to death), he breaks away from the group to turn on his stereos to cover their escape, and they're out of time to do anything but just scram as he tells them to.
And at the time Neville reams Colin out for what were really stupid mistakes, he's numbed himself out completely with Percy's old nerve potion. Mr. Weasley finds this so suspicious that he rings in Kingsley Shacklebolt to find out if they're dealing with the real Neville or an impostor - and makes Neville own up to doping himself to the eyeballs. The chapter ends with Neville admitting he's been a Jerkass and preparing to apologize as humbly as necessary.
Gran Longbottom later shows Neville how he should have handled it, after his own colossal screwup of bolting for Willow Creek after narrowly escaping execution. First she welcomes him home - then she slaps him and reams him out.
(I edited this entry myself - Maven)
Edited by Maven
I'm going through trying to make the article a bit more balanced (Yes, I'm a fan of the 'fic, but that doesn't mean I can't edit fairly). I'm tempted to delete the "Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male / Yandere:" entry.
Why? Because it seems to be inspired by the incident in HBP where Hermione set a bunch of angry birds on Ron. Not deleting straight up, because any attempt at defending the fic without providing a 'solid' reason is leapt upon and removed with vigour. Since this trope isn't included in the Canon pages, I see no reason that it should be here- or if it should be, it shouldn't be quite so viciously critical. (There does seem to be quite a bit of bias in the article, on both sides of the fence, and a lot of that should probably be cut down on. I know we aren't The Other Wiki, but the article is somewhat riddled with poorly researched Take Thats)
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Honestly, I'd say that it's fair to add that incident to the main Harry Potter page, assuming that Hermione didn't get a big What the Hell, Hero? moment for it (been a while since I read the books).
And there is a difference in severity, too - the bird incident was unpleasant, sure, but there's a difference between that and setting someone on fire and then strangling them with a carnivorous plant. One's painful, the other was nearly lethal.
What's precedent ever done for us?
Also, while I agree that you were right to remove the Take That!, you might still want to make note of the fact that Hans Belsen was named after the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I think it's worth mentioning.
I'd do it myself, mind, but the page is still too big for my connection to handle editing for.
Edited by Iaculus What's precedent ever done for us?
Across The Stars
Nominating this for the cut list. It's just an annoyance now.
All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by... Hide / Show Replies
It's still a works page, and it was a detailed one...
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage — Paul McCartney
And since when is Hype Backlash a reason to delist?!
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage — Paul McCartney
Looks like a good page to me. I'm not seeing anything that makes it cutworthy...
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
There's been some back and forth editing on subjective points but these neither dominate the page nor leave a bad taint in the final effect. Some back and forth is natural for a wiki and stabilises to an equilibrium, usually.
In any case, that is not a reason for a cut. It is a reason for a clear up, an examplectonomy, a page locking, a really big talking too and maybe a bad but it is not a reason for a cut.
As the first Justifying Edit has been made on the page I'm going to rev this back up again. You guessed it, it's the Wall Banger. My understanding of this trope is that it is for events, plotlines etc that have just about everyone experiencing the work looking for the nearest piece of gyprock. Can it truly be said that the organisation of the coup is in fact that bad, or is it major Your Mileage May Vary? I think my position is fairly clear on this, but I'm not about to start an edit war, I'd just like to edit or delete it based on a consensus from everyone. And then lock the page.
Edited by theladyisatiger
Why should it be cut? If edit wars were reasons to cut, any pages about popular stuff would be cut. Twilight would be first, probably.
As of 12/17/2017, the author has deleted his account on Fanfiction.net and removed all his work from there. I've heard rumors that there are archived copies of DAYD or "Sluagh" on Live Journal or Good Reads somewhere, but am not sure where to find them. Is there a protocol for a TV Tropes page in an event like this, if a fanfiction flat-out disappears from the Internet?
Disappointed that we'll never see the end of "A Peccatis", but I am at least grateful for the closure.