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Going Against the Grain of Potter Cliches
09-04-2012, 09:53 PM
Well, sinc Bob wanted another thread for cliches from Harry Potter fanfics, here we go.
Now then.
The Centaurs in the Forbidden Forest.around Hogwarts. The heavy majority of stories have the centaurs as always been there.
At any rate, Centaurs are good and belong in the forest around Hogwarts. I seem to recall in old myth and legend that there was no such thing as a female centaur. How they continued their species was to capture women and either rape them or gang rape them.(If I ever get back to mine...) That has never been used to my knowledge
moRon and 'Draco in Leather Pants'.
Bob is going to run into the main problem with the Harry Potter world that I did. Doug is Competent. British wizards are not. Which should take care of the other big clice of drawing the battle out with Voldemort to Harry's 7th year.
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re: Centaurs:
I'm fairly certain I recall seeing a fic that explicitly said that that is what happened to Umbridge, and the books do kinda imply it, IIRC.
As for cliches, there's stuff like the Potters being an 'Ancient and Noble House' (with the name Potter? Really?), the Goblins being incredibly helpful to anyone that is polite to them, and other types of magic (Celtic, Native American, ect.) being automatically better than the dominant form of magic, even though logically they must have lost out historically to the 'Latin' based wand magic.
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I've seen inversions of the helpful goblin cliche, as well as the old "Potter family vault" one.
Has anybody seen a fic use magical maturity without giving Harry a significant power boost, inherited magical talents, or both? On that same note, has he EVER inherited a magical disadvantage?
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ShinDangaioh Wrote:Bob is going to run into the main problem with the Harry Potter world that I did. Doug is Competent. British wizards are not. Which should take care of the other big clice of drawing the battle out with Voldemort to Harry's 7th year.
You throw tar around with a large brush, sir. Summarizing the situation as "derp British wizards are incompetent" is in itself one of the more pernicious cliches in Harry Potter fanfic and fandom.
Doug is a highly-trained special operations soldier with (as of DW8) something around a hundred years of combat experience solo and in groups. Almost every witch and wizard we see in HP is... just a bunch of guys, really.
EDIT: On that note, here's a cliche I hope to see get dragged out & stomped on with big heavy hobnailed boots - "Dumbledore's Army" organizing as a real army where the self-taught half-trained teenagers are suddenly supersoldiers capable of taking down Voldemort's goon squad.
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OTOH, Dumbledore's Army being capable of taking on Voldemort's goon squad is not completely unrealistic. From all appearances atleast a fair chunk of the Death Eater's threat level comes from the dread they inspire in their enemies. This was different when said goon squad was a bunch of 20 something fanatics with presumably some combat training and experience, rather than a bunch of 40 or 50 year olds who haven't done some serious training since the early 80's at the most. Sure, they have experience and are treacherous, but they also aren't used to fighting anymore, whereas the DA was a bunch of teenagers who regurlarily practiced their combat spellwork and what to do when fighting someone who intended them harm.
The DA won't be great, but they will be capable enough to escape and evade, which is what IIRC is what they trained to do, rather than take the DEs head on. Especially since the DEs won't be expecting a bunch of mudbloods and bloodtraitors to have a clue when it comes to not getting killed.
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Speaking of wizards in general and the Ministry in particular, why do I get the feeling that the DWverse Ministry is keeping in active contact with the mundane British government?
Every fic I've ever seen with HM's Government in it has the MoM ignoring, keeping things from, or outright manipulating #10 Downing Street and/or the Queen.
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RE: The DA.
Remember who's teaching Defense this year.
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Jorlem Wrote:re: Centaurs:
I'm fairly certain I recall seeing a fic that explicitly said that that is what happened to Umbridge, and the books do kinda imply it, IIRC. Cracked magazine had an article titled The 5 Most Depraved Sex Scenes Implied by 'Harry Potter'. The Umbridge/centaur scene was number 5. www.cracked.com/article_19397_the-5-mos ... otter.html
If you don't want to read the entire thing, this pretty much sums things up:
Two characters watch Umbridge getting dragged away -- Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. At least one of those two knows that centaurs are rape machines. (Hint: It's Hermione, the character whose main purpose in the plot is to know absolutely everything.)
Neither of them make an effort to save Umbridge. Potter gets in a witty, James Bond-esque quip as she's being dragged away, and Hermione seems satisfied that mass horse rape is a fitting punishment. We like to think that on the way back to school, Harry asked "So what do you suppose those centaurs are going to do to the professor?" and that Hermione casually described to him how Umbridge would almost certainly be brutally violated by equinely endowed inter-species rapists. And that was the day Harry learned that you do not mess with Hermione Granger.
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M Fnord Wrote:ShinDangaioh Wrote:Bob is going to run into the main problem with the Harry Potter world that I did. Doug is Competent. British wizards are not. Which should take care of the other big clice of drawing the battle out with Voldemort to Harry's 7th year. You throw tar around with a large brush, sir. Summarizing the situation as "derp British wizards are incompetent" is in itself one of the more pernicious cliches in Harry Potter fanfic and fandom.
Doug is a highly-trained special operations soldier with (as of DW8) something around a hundred years of combat experience solo and in groups. Almost every witch and wizard we see in HP is... just a bunch of guys, really.
EDIT: On that note, here's a cliche I hope to see get dragged out & stomped on with big heavy hobnailed boots - "Dumbledore's Army" organizing as a real army where the self-taught half-trained teenagers are suddenly supersoldiers capable of taking down Voldemort's goon squad. Doug is HIGHLY competent and there probably won't be a DA.
As to catergozing the British wizards as incompetent, well with the way JKR killed off the competet characters: Amelia Bones, Mad Eye Moody, Remus Lupin, Tonks, it is hard not to. Judging by Slughorn's class for 6th year, that was potential people who would be allowed to pursue and auror career or medical. The potions requirement savaged British competency thanks to Snape's unprofessional conduct.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:RE: The DA.
Remember who's teaching Defense this year. Right. Doug's Army it is.
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Indeed. given its DOUG's army, I'd fully expect them to be able to do just that. Definatly able to escape and evade, defend themselves. But I can also see him pointing out that sometimes your only defensive option is a good offense. at which point you go do what you can to take the other guy ALL the way out before he can do for you.
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I suggest folks go look at some of the older, pre-chapter 1 snippets I've posted. While some are now outdated and probably won't be used as they appear here, they will at least still point toward some of the things I'm planning.
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THinking of Harry Potter fanon cliches got me thinking of Soul Bonds and any sort of Magical Love Beyond Your Comprehension nonsense should hopefully be tossed in the dumpster.
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And indeed they are. They have no place in my plotline.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:And indeed they are. They have no place in my plotline. heh, you could always have some of the girls start waxing poetic on the subject after hearing about how Doug is trying to find his way back to his wife (only for Doug to shoot down the idea)
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Heh. Might be fun...
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Here's another cliche that bothers me: the tendency of fanfic authors to add worldbuilding material, and then bash canon characters (usually Dumbledore) for not taking advantage of that added material in canon.
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That's not a cliche, that's a systematic failure in an entire subgenre of HP fics -- the failure of the author to account for Dumbledore's actions when constructing his incredibly creative and exciting version of the Wizarding World and not changing Dumbledore's history to match it. Either there should be astute and believable reasons that Dumbledore would act the same under different conditions, or you need to change Dumbldore's history and plot role.
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Ah, my bad then. Got mixed up on what exactly constitutes a cliche, I guess. Sorry about that.
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Another cliche: Hermonie Granger, Super-Genius (and not the Wile E. Coyote type).
She's book-smart, not all-around-smart.
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Well.... I might be playing into that one a little. Once Hermione gets her hands on the Unified Theory of Magic and UTM notation, as well as the Mansion Thaumatology lab... well, I have plans.
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robkelk Wrote:Another cliche: Hermonie Granger, Super-Genius (and not the Wile E. Coyote type).
She's book-smart, not all-around-smart. The other end of that cliche is Ron Weasley, Moron.
Ron's not stupid; he's average. In the American public education system, he'd attend class almost every day (probably skipping on nice spring days), do his homework and pray that the teachers don't call on him, and make Bs and Cs. He's just a guy, but his best friend is the Chosen One and his girlfriend is the smartest girl in school. It makes him look stupid. He's not; Rowling goes out of her way to show that he's got knowledge of the Wizardling World that neither of the other two characters (being Muggles) have, connections throughout the community through his father and older brothers (Percy not so much, but it's still a connection), and he's got a keen eye for strategy (he's cited as being one of the best chess players among the First Years in Sorcerer's Stone). And yet, people play him off as an idiot. (Rupert Grint's generally clownish expressions probably influence it as well; I saw a film with him that was done just before or just after Deathly Hallows where he plays a competent character that's still played up as something of a buffon, and he does it pretty well with that dopey grin of his. "Wild Target" with Bill Nighy, Emma Blunt, and Martin Freeman, if anyone's interested.)
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... As far as standing stuff on its head, the thought that just occured to me is that Herminonie's studies into Doug's UTM materials have such a tendency to go Boom as she works through them she gains at least for a time, the Wiley Cyote [Or maybe Kohran] style supergenius rep with her peers.
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Ebony Wrote:The other end of that cliche is Ron Weasley, Moron. Right. Another thing you won't see in DW8 is Ron Weasley, human garbage disposal system, who talks when his mouth is stuffed full of anything edible within arm's reach.
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Star Ranger4 Wrote:... As far as standing stuff on its head, the thought that just occured to me is that Herminonie's studies into Doug's UTM materials have such a tendency to go Boom as she works through them she gains at least for a time, the Wiley Cyote [Or maybe Kohran] style supergenius rep with her peers. Heh. While my plans actually have Hermione doing some careful iterative spell development with controlled testing in the RoR, maybe I could add a little of this for giggle value...
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