Harry Potter Fanfiction.


This has been moved, modified and expanded upon, from my FF.net page. This was the only other extended piece I had on there, any other pontifications upon Fanfiction that show up here, will be entirely original to this blog. For those interested, my screen name on Fanfiction.net, is LordsFire, I'll come up immediately if you do an author search for me there.

Harry Potter:

This series, while one of the most commercially successful book series ever, is oddly enough, also one of the more poorly written. Rowling's series sells on a few things; engaging writing, an interest-grabbing premise, and well-written characters, for a children's story. On the flip side, starting with book four, when she started trying to transition the series from a children's series, to a young adult series, the entire thing began to fall apart. Her characters never experience character growth, of any sort, ever, until the very end of the story, if then. The sheer power of magic within the world presents so many different ways to simply break the world, many explored in fanfiction, it's not even funny. Mixing real-world, non-magical techniques and equipment with this allows even more breakage. The Death Eaters, Aurors, and Order of the Phoenix all fight like poorly organized and hideously under-trained militia; I would bet on a single platoon of British Marines that were Squibs, versus all of them combined, primarily because the well-trained soldiers would gather intelligence on the enemy, use fire and maneuver tactics, cover, indirect fire, ambush tactics, a whole host of things that would completely dominate the sorts of fights that show up in Harry Potter. Also, Snipers. I'm not even going to begin to go into all the other plot holes in the series, there are simply too many that are too egregious.

As to the characters of the series; at the end of the first novel Hermione is a bookworm who has an uncommon amount of respect for authority, Ron is a slacker average joe who really just wants to have fun and is not suited for life-or-death struggles, and Harry is a protagonist who is so absurdly passive it's ridiculous. At the end of the seventh novel (sans epilogue), Hermione is a bookworm who has an uncommon amount of respect for authority, Ron is an average joe who is too much of a slacker to be suited for life-or-death situations, and Harry has arguably, possibly, experienced some genuine character growth when he chose to go confront Voldemort and take the initiative for like the second or third time ever in the series. Even though that was a horrible plot-mandated occurrence.

Ironically, it's the peripheral characters who experience character growth. Neville becomes courageous. The twins become responsible enough to run their own business. Tonks and Lupin get married. Ginny goes from a terminally shy fangirl to a fairly average teenage girl (but a fairly average teenage girl isn't really a very interesting character, honestly).
As to romantic crap; Harry Potter is probably the single most flame-ridden fandom for romances; primarily Harry/Ginny versus Harry/Hermione. In all seriousness, as best I can tell most of that comes from incredibly crappy Harry/Ginny fics rather obviously written by people who have no idea how a serious relationship works, and gave the cannon pairing a bad rap. Since I first wrote this rant, I've also uncovered a great wealth of incredibly crappy Harry/Hermione fics, so yeah. In all honesty, I don't think any of the main characters show enough maturity in the cannon to be in a real romantic relationship, so think the entire shipping wars are even more absurd than they are in other places. I also notice that Harry Potter fanfics tend to have people writing 'romances' starting at absurdly young ages, even more so than many other fandoms. That said, any sufficiently well written romantic story, I can read and enjoy, though in my personal experience there are more well written Harry/Hermion stories, than Harry/Ginny stories. Even if there are as many badly written stories for each ship.

My final thoughts on the series primarily concern Severus Snape. From what I have heard, most of the ridiculous fascination with his character as a 'good guy' comes from an incredible actor being cast into the role, and delivering a commanding performance. I've never watched the movies. I've seen snippets here and there, but never more than a minute or so at length, and don't think I've seen a single scene with Snape in it. So my opinion of him is based entirely upon the books, and that opinion is very simple:
The man is scum. He systematically uses his position of authority to blatantly favor crass bullies, and pick on an already-abused child, for his resemblance to his (dead) father. The man's pettiness is obscene, and as many fanfics have portrayed, he would be summarily fired by any school administrator with a shred of sense. He is not, however, a complete monster, as he does try to protect the lives of his students, even those he hates, even if he makes them a living hell. However, not being a complete monster is far from enough to make him a worthwhile teacher, or someone who should be around children at all. In the end, I think his character is another result of the children's/young adult's series switch, in the children's series, he was the arbitrary untrustworthy adult authority figure, to contrast with Dumbledore as the trustworthy authority figure, and McGonagall as the useless authority figure. Once it became a young adult series though, he becomes something much more offensive.

Ironically, Snape and Voldemort, being villains (Snape possibly an anti-villain), are the two most well-developed characters in the series, as Rowling went to the trouble to give detailed backstories explaining their character and motivations. Harry is, also ironically, the shallowest character, as he lacks basically any depth or growth whatsoever for pretty much the entire series. If you want more on Harry as a character, have a look at Brutal Harry, my novel-length fanfic covering a more realistic reaction on Harry's response to the Dursley's abuse. Be warned, it starts out pretty dark, as I was making a point via extreme in the prologue.

All in all, if the series had stuck to being a children's series, the overly-done villainy of some characters, and myriad plot holes would be plentifully forgivable, but as it tried to transit into more "serious" material, the cohesion of the story simply falls apart. I would, however, very muchly like to see Rowling write more, either as a series started in a Young Adult or Adult age-bracket, or purely children's material. She does have strengths as an author, even if the latter part of her series was torn down under its weaknesses.

As a note, Rowling does have a new book, aimed at older audiences, coming out later this year. I can't remember the name, but I'm looking forward to seeing how she's grown as a writer. Hopefully, she's at least heard some of the thoughts coming out of the fanfic community. Once you sort out the dregs, there's some good stuff in it.

Thoughts on Fanfiction Fandoms, Ranma 1/2

As one of my first posts here, I'm stripping some of what I put on my FF.net page, and moving it to this blog. It annoys me some when an author's page is too cluttered, but I do want to express these thoughts somewhere. I've also edited/added to my thoughts here.

Ranma 1/2:
Probably my favorite fandom, as far as the fanfiction you can find in it goes. It's important to note that I've only actually read the Manga up into the arcs dealing with Principal Kuno's first series of shenanigans, and have never watched the Anime at all. Thus every character introduced after Principal Kuno, I pretty much only know through Fanon depictions, and the occasional single/partial chapter I read that someone referenced.

My primary thoughts on the series as canon, is that it's a romantic comedy, that's so far into crack-territory that you can't take any of the characters or their actions seriously. You simply can't apply serious morality to the series at all, because it's so departed from reality as a fundament of the series. Pretty much all fanfiction I've read, aside from stuff by Black Dragon6, however, departs from the un-reality of crack-humor, into some form of seriousness or another.

When you do enter into a more serious realm, where you take a serious, quantitative look at the morality of various characters and their actions, the entire series disintegrates.

Allow me to stress this before I go further, if you remove the humor elements, every single aspect of the canon characterizations falls apart. This means that none of the canon depiction of relationships hold true anymore. With the comedic unrealism removed, the behavior of absolutely everybody means very different things. As an example to drive the point home, by author fiat, in some plot arcs, Ranma cares little, if at all, about being dressed in feminine clothing while in girl form, in others, it's something he absolutely loathes. If you try to take seriously everything falls apart.

Character deconstruction ensues:

Akane... Ah, Akane. As I said, in the original cannon, she's just one of a cast of crack-fic entities, but if she's taken seriously... She's inexcusable. Of all the cast, she has the closest to a normal life, and chance at being able to interact with normal society healthily, at least prior to the 'hentai horde' ambushing her for dates. Her animosity towards males is, at that point, somewhat understandable, but as the series develops, and so does her relationship with Ranma, her conduct is utterly inexcusable. She refuses to trust him, in essentially anything ever, and is both physically and emotionally abusive to someone who, she of all characters other than Genma has best reason to know, is a horribly scarred and socially impaired young man, who is not at all to blame for that fact. Drakensis wrote a piece, called 'Ignorance' I believe, it's in his accumulated short stories 'series' on his profile, that gives an excellent idea of just how ignorant Ranma would possibly be if the series were not crack/humor as in cannon. I have a personal particular antipathy towards 'serious' stories that try to portray her as a sympathetic character without first developing her character out of her abusive behavior, particularly because I've been in a very untrusting, emotionally abusive relationship in the past myself.

Again, to stress, in canon, she is the 'true' fiance, as I understand has more or less been stated directly by Rumiko Takahashi, and as long as the humor underpinning is present, that can hold up fine, but without it, she is a deeply destructive individual. I've read a couple of stories where I ended up liking her, but mostly I don't, her behavior is simply too close to my personal history of pain.

Ukyou, once removed from the humor elements, is, from all my understanding of the canon events, is the only fiance who can possibly be viewed in a good light. From the age of five or six years old, she was pushed by her father to hunt down and kill her best friend for his betrayal of her. That's a young enough age that he could very easily break and warp her entire concept of moral behavior, and you can very easily get a total psychopath out of those kinds of circumstances. Yet, the instant that what really happened becomes clear, and Ranma realizes she's actually a girl, she drops that, and instead tries to befriend him/court him again. Considering her age then, and the age at which her father started pushing her towards murder, that's damn impressive, especially in the structure of Japanese culture, with how it focuses on familial authority and honor more than western culture does. Combine this with the fact that (to my knowledge) she never tries to freaking *kill* anyone, and that while she has a temper, it never crops up for no reason whatsoever, she is literally the only fiancee that could be viewed as a protagonist rather than antagonist.

Shampoo and Cologne are an interestingly different story. The apparent tribal laws regarding 'obstacle is for killing' and etc would make them to be a vicious bloodthirsty group of savages. What actually happens however, ends up being nothing of the sort. They never kill anyone. Ever. Whether this is because Shampoo and Cologne possess a morality that exceeds that of the rest of the tribe, or they're far, far more bark than bite, for all their manipulative schemes. I personally have a bit of fondness for Shampoo as a character, probably partly because I didn't read far enough into the series to where the more blatantly manipulative plots are attempted, and I am a very direct person, and appreciate that she is too. By the end of the story, however, both are clearly untrustworthy and manipulative, even if they never quite cross to complete monster, though they come close several times. Ultimately, they are sometimes allies, sometimes villains, and if I were in Ranma's position, I'd be working to permanently break the culture of the Amazons.

The rivals, Mousse and Ryoga, when viewed in a more serious setting, are near total scum. Ryoga has a few redeeming moments in the portions of the story I read, and from what I understand, Mousse may later as well, but they're both recklessly dangerous (Ryoga nearly kills Akane in the arc that introduces him), willfully blind, and literally trying to kill Ranma for incredibly petty (or flat out untrue) reasons. They're both deluded, overpowered, and incredibly dangerous. If I was in Ranma's position, and it was not a comedy setting, I would cripple or kill these two, just to protect the public at large. Preferably cripple with something like the Moxibustion, but if that wasn't available, you simply can't leave cannons that loose running around, because they will kill someone if they don't have the Rule of Funny protecting the world from them.

Ranma himself is literally the only character who makes out as possibly a 'good guy,' aside from Kasumi. Up through as far as I read, the only blatantly reprehensible act he committed was his pretending to be a forgotten 'sister' of Ryoga. That arc was actually one of the main reasons I stopped reading, as I found it hard to find any characters to sympathize with anymore. Aside from that, admittedly rather emotionally horrific, prank, Ranma is nearly a paragon of virtue as far as anything serious goes. He's an incredible slacker academically, and is blatantly incompetent at forming healthy relationships, though that is hardly his own fault. He has had, quite literally, every authority figure or role model in his life fail him miserably, both his parents threaten his life deliberately or accidentally for incredibly callous reasons, and literally everyone around him is trying to use him, yet he still tries to be, and succeeds essentially all the time, at being the hero. How everyone else uses him so much is why I'm so fond of, and I'm sure why so many people write, crossover fics that set Ranma up with just about anybody who is a character outside of the Ranma series. I think that the opening chapter of 'Process of Elimination' by Durandall/Brian Randall, is an excellent example of just how far Ranma is willing to go to save the lives of others. In one of my writings, I intend to explore more realistic consequences of Ranma's life on his psyche, those who follow my fanfiction should see that down the road.

My final thoughts on Ranma fanfiction in general are that, like just about every fandom, if the writer does it well, pretty much any plot set up, character development, or romantic pairing are believable, though some take a lot more justification than others.

Over the last year, I've run through a fair number of old Ranma fanfiction archives, and discovered that a lot of the old stuff is complete crap. Oh gosh, it is terrible. I used to think that Ranma fanfiction, while less common overall than, say, HP or Naruto stuff, was of general higher quality, I've since realized that it's more a matter of the good stuff having had longer to rise to the surface. If people express interest, I'll post some stories that I *do* like, and why.