Author has written 110 stories for Harry Potter, Naruto, Legend of Dragoon, Star Wars, Pokémon, Mass Effect, Yu Yu Hakusho, X-Men, Fire Emblem, Matrix, A song of Ice and Fire, Elder Scroll series, Star Wars, Thor, Game of Thrones, Digimon, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and Avengers. I now have a challenge forum. If you enjoy comedic Triwizard Tournament stories, be sure to check out Too Many Champions by maschl. Okay, I've tried to find it, and I might as well ask for help on my profile. I remember a Neon Genesis Evangelion fic on this site that was Shinji/female Kaworu. All I remember clearly about it is that, soon after they met, Shinji and Fem!Kaworu consummated their love against... the kitchen counter, if I recall correctly. Asuka, who was not comatose, came in and began screaming at them, whereupon Fem!Kaworu (who was somewhat yandere towards Shinji) promptly demolished what was left of her sanity. At the end of the story, Fem!Kaworu somehow brought about Third Impact, with Shinji as the only other survivor, and they lived together forever. It would have been from 2005 or earlier, I think. While digging through ancient fandom archives for fond memories, I found a quote that perfectly sums up my opinion of "The Cursed Child" and a great deal of post-core-series "canon" in general: The thread title [C.S. Extra Non-Book Info from JKR VI: "Professor Longbottom's a Raving Drunk!"] comes from a discussion on the last thread about the fact that JKR says completely random things and will probably continue to do so even on her death bed. Darth Gojira had this to say: "Lily and James will get married!" "But-but-" "LILY AND JAMES WILL GET MARRIED! Albus Severus marries Rose Weasley! Hugo's gay and marries Locran! Lysander marries Neville and Hannah's kid Doreen! Albus commits suicide when he realizes that people don't like the Weasleys!" "Um, ma'am?" "Shut up, I'm on a roll! Professor Longbottom's a raving drunk! Snape returns from the dead and becomes head of Gryffindor! Cho Chang is a Death Eater and is eviscerated!" "Please..." "Harry goes out every winter to piss on Wormtail's grave! S.P.E.W. is outlawed by the Union for Grovelling House-elves!" "Ugh" "Yes, exactly!" When somebody sarcastically "predicting" the most ludicrous post-hoc additions to canon possible comes within a hair's breadth of predicting a key plot point of "The Cursed Child" (Cedric Diggory becoming a Death Eater), I... think that really says all that can be said. Did I mention this was from February 2010? I don't think I'll ever be able to view Voldemort the same way again after realizing he's just Tom Riddle's case of chuunibyou gone terminal. "Chuunibyou", or "middle-schooler syndrome", is derogatory Japanese slang for the phenomenon of some teenagers convincing themselves they have special destinies, superpowers, and an overwhelming need to give themselves a new, awesome name to match. It tends to peak around fourteen. Tom Riddle was using the title of "Lord Voldemort" before his sixteenth year, which puts him at what age when he invented it? Yep... about fourteen... I have an unending and bitter hatred for the fanfiction trope of depicting House-Elves as being reliant on their masters' magic to live. Because Dobby was doing so poorly while freed - wait, no, he was doing great. I can't find any evidence for the entire 'magical parasite' thing in Pottermore canon, either, which means it isn't just an interview I missed. I find the trope creepy because it's a magical version of actual pro-slavery propaganda - that slaves are so helpless and feckless that they could never live except under the supervision of their masters. Obviously this is false in real life. I'd be fine with the magical analogue being propaganda in-universe, similar to the weird claims about Muggleborns being magic-stealers in the propaganda put out under the Death Eater regime. But for it to be reality in-universe is basically awkward hand-waving that it's all right to own slaves if you're doing it for the slaves' own good. In stories centering around Harry rebelling against the control of a manipulative Dumbledore, this is not only detestable, it's exquisitely hypocritical. An interesting thing about movie "Obscurial" canon (which I generally ignore) is that it casts a different light on the fight that led to Ariana's death. As far as I'm aware, the traditional fanon interpretation is for Ariana either to be caught in the crossfire or get hit while attempting to put herself between the three. Fair enough, because Aberforth certainly tries to make it sound that way. Aberforth is Ariana's partisan. The only fact he gives is that Ariana was "set off". Both he and Albus skip completely over what she actually did and jump right to her death. Reading very carefully also reveals that they say nothing about it being an accident - Albus only mourns that it happened "after all my mother's care and caution" and both brothers had no idea who dealt the killing blow "in that last, horrific fight". Given what actually happens when an Obscurial goes off, the picture shifts from a three-way brawl, too wild for anyone to tell which particular stray spell took the life of a terrified girl who was just trying to help, to three boys dropping their duel and firing blindly into the central mass of a howling maelstrom of destruction. Which Aberforth later justified, Hagrid-like, as poor little Ariana only wanting to help. She wasn't trying to hurt them - she just "didn't really know what she was doing", that was all. Again, I generally disregard post-core-series canon, but if it's an indicator of authorial intent regarding the true course of that duel, it's worth noting. I accidentally came across an old doozy of JKR's: "So Voldemort himself acts almost like a Horcrux for Harry – except that the power of Lily’s sacrifice is a positive force that not only continues to tether Harry to life, but gives Voldemort himself one last chance (Dumbledore refers to this last hope in chapter 35). Voldemort has unwittingly put a few drops of goodness back inside himself; if he had repented, he could have been healed more deeply than anyone would have supposed." Let it be known that Harry is literally Wizard Jesus: by imbibing the sacrament of the holy blood, even Voldemort can find redemption! And, by implication, he could only find redemption because he happened to choose the right boy's blood. Morality has nothing to do with it, only unwitting consumption of abstract "goodness". This makes no sense whatsoever: either even Voldemort deserves the right to repentance or his evil is too great for any repentance to be meaningful. Redemption does not come in a 12 oz aluminum can. Leaving morality entirely aside and assuming this refers only to whether or not Voldemort can induce self-soul-repair - that means Harry's blood, empowered by Lily's sacrifice, is a potent magical ingredient capable of repairing even the most grievously wounded souls, much as phoenix tears are capable of repairing even the most grievously wounded bodies. Since killing splits the soul, Harry's blood should be incorporated into both prisoner-rehabilitation and veteran-PTSD-treatment programs. After all, it can heal even a hardened serial killer, soaked to the bone in black magic and unspeakable abominations, "more deeply than anyone would have supposed" - imagine what it would do for ordinary folks! (The two major fanfiction handwaves would be using it as general-purpose trauma repair, on the grounds that most traumas surely rend the soul less than seven Horcruxes, and redeeming the hot villain of the author's choice for an eventual Harry romance. Yes, including Voldemort.) Miscellaneous Harry Potter fan fiction notes:
And a rant: [Content note: discussion of child abuse] "An Obscurus is developed under very specific conditions: trauma associated with the use of magic, internalised hatred of one’s own magic and a conscious attempt to suppress it. The Dursleys were too frightened of magic ever to acknowledge its existence to Harry. While Vernon and Petunia had a confused hope that if they were nasty enough to Harry his strange abilities might somehow evaporate, they never taught him to be ashamed or afraid of magic. Even when he was scolded for ‘making things happen’, he didn’t make any attempt to suppress his true nature, nor did he ever imagine that he had the power to do so." -J.K. Rowling I was unaware that locking a child in a cupboard for doing magic (whether or not they called it such) didn't teach him to be ashamed or afraid of doing so. And Vernon specifically says Harry's "freakishness" was "nothing a good beating wouldn't have cured", if I recall correctly -- he certainly gave it some thought, even if fear or some last scrap of human decency held him back. Furthermore, abused children are a good deal more attentive than JKR thinks. As a matter of pain minimization, they learn to pick up quickly on what enrages their abusers, even if -- especially if -- their abusers can never be bothered to specify what they did wrong. And 'they get particularly vicious towards me right after something freakish occurs' is a relatively easy pattern to recognize. As far as the magnitude of the Dursleys' abuse, Harry casually mentions in DH that he's unsurprised by the mental effects of food deprivation because "he had suffered periods of near starvation at the Dursleys'". Starving a growing child can lead to permanent physical and mental stunting, digestive system dysfunction, and all sorts of other nasty side effects. Including death, by the way, because abusers are infamously incompetent at estimating the caloric needs of children. I'm supposed to believe that, in an abusive and life-threatening environment, a child would not make the necessary connections and, whether he thought it possible or not (the Dursleys would not be the first abusers to expect the literally impossible), at least desperately attempt whatever actions he thought might prevent his abusers from becoming his murderers? Now, perhaps in the bizarre AU which JKR describes, in which the Dursleys were nothing more than "nasty" to Harry and only "scolded" him for accidental magic, Harry was at absolutely no risk of going the way of Ariana Dumbledore. But in the environment described in canon, he most certainly was. And, if JKR didn't want to deal with the unpleasant implications of Harry's childhood upon the introduction of Obscurial canon, she shouldn't have made the man who knowingly condemned Harry to "ten dark and difficult years" Ariana's brother. |